It seems to me that Philosophy is in the best position to challenge ideas and examine the logic of existing ideas.

It isn't case of taking sides but challenging foundational assumptions. Where are these radical academic philosophers?

When I studied philosophy as part of my degree I saw plenty of avenue for radical opinions but the course material didn't encourage this avenue. The course material raised some profound issues but then tried to fit them into the existing value system. For me philosophy is nothing to do with defending our societies and our actions now.

I'm in the UK I think we are still dominated by class hierarchies and stereotypical right-left divides/dichotomies. It is such a tired political scene leaving a sense of apathy. Trump has given some British people a false sense of superiority and colonial smugness — Andrew4Handel

Higher education, the place where philosophy has taken up permanent residence, has been corporatized.

In other words, it's not that the current intellectual state of philosophy can't effectively contribute to better understanding social problems. It's that philosophy is dependent on institutions that are mostly interested in academic work that has immediate, highly-profitable commercial applications​.

In other words, philosophy needs a new home, not a personal makeover.

I've shown you why your belief is wrong and you've failed to counter that, too. — Thanatos Sand

You have been talking about apples.

I have been talking about oranges.

Let's just leave it at that.

I have no idea what you mean by progressive elites. Elites are politicians like Obama, Clinton, and Trump who work for elite corporations, banks, and rich people. Progressives working to help the people and not working to primarily serve those entities are not elites. And we do need them in office since they are the ones who pass the laws. Just a few weeks ago, an elite Centrist Democrat shelved the vote on Medicaid-For-All in California. If he had been a progressive, he would have let the vote go through. Representation matters.

And local people don't have any power over the elites. It's progressives in office like Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General who made a huge difference in the Civil Rights Movement and was a vital ally to it and its leaders like King. He was able to send down the national guard to make sure colleges were de-segregated. Local citizens can't come close to the needed power/authority in accomplishing such things. — Thanatos Sand

Power needs to be decentralized and given back to local communities.

Do you agree or disagree?

I am talking about a system that is global in scope. Neo-liberalism affects everybody. I simply used Ferguson, MO as one small illustration.

If you are not looking at it from the perspective of neo-liberalism and globalization you are not talking about the same thing as me.

I have no reason to believe that a "progressive" in office who does not recognize and consciously oppose neo-liberalism is going to make any difference.

It's not an either/or. Working to address and diminish racist police brutality is a priority in itself, just like stopping Jim Crow laws and segregation was an issue in itself. If MLK and the Civil Rights movement had waited until they attacked the whole system, Blacks would still be drinking from separate water fountains and kept away from lunch counters. — Thanatos Sand

Or the oppression of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South was simply transferred to other people such as those employed in Third World sweatshops.

If you think that you can convince me that it is not a zero-sum game I will listen.

But I am convinced that the change the OP seeks will only be realized by ending the game.

Decentralizing power and giving power back to local communities is the key to positive change, in my estimation. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

In other words, using police brutality as an illustration, the solution to the police brutality in places like Ferguson, Missouri won't come from putting progressive elites in power in Washington, D.C., it will come from giving power and control to ordinary people at the local level.

The people of places like Ferguson, MO need the power to deal with their problems themselves. They don't need top-down solutions from the neo-liberal puppets of multinational corporations in Washington, D.C. Being a puppet who is progressive rather than conservative does not make you any less dangerous to the common people who are suffering from the system that gives you your power and privilege.

Neo-liberalism and it's pet project, globalization, are the dominant forces in politics.

We can either spin our wheels trying to stomp out weeds such as police brutality while other weeds grow or we can attack the whole system at its neo-liberal roots.

Decentralizing power and giving power back to local communities is the key to positive change, in my estimation.

In other words, on a clear day, blue sky, you look up and lo!...there's the inside of your cranium in the upper atmosphere. Exactly. The physicalism of neuroscience and brain scans have gone way off the deep end in trying to make mind follow the brain, culminating in the most inane ideas I've ever heard: eliminative materialism, type physicalism, etc. If you're having a thought or feeling or intuition or mental imagery that can't be correlated with brain scans...guess what...it's like demon possession and you must be crazy. A very naive way of thinking; actually, I don't think there is any thought going into these interpretations of the mind body problem. What a shame to throw away what makes us human: metacognition: that is, not only thought, but thought about thought about thought, and so on — Anthony

I'm​ not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with Sheldrake.

He is against physicalism/materialism.

I personally believe that everything is interconnected and reciprocal and that the mind is not a dead-end closed system contained in a skull and cut off from everything else.

I feel that society has a lot of problems that could be altered by philosophy. I feel we need to challenge norms and preconceptions still. I think we need a radical confrontational philosophy not one that delineates and attempts to justify the norms, nor just a dry fairly helpless theorising. — Andrew4Handel

Two possible scenarios:

1.) People are starved for new ideas and the intellectuals and leaders who will marshal those new ideas are preparing themselves for that role.

2.) The most influential intellectuals and leaders of today--the ones who are mentoring tomorrow's intellectuals and leaders--want to give up on finding new ideas and instead jump on the trans-humanism trend and replace human thought with powerful artificial intelligence.


I sense that 2.) is the most likely. I hope that I am wrong.

There are lots of great ideas that are not getting any visibility. — Rich

I would include the work of Ken Wilber in that.

I'd be interested in hearing what you have in mind.

Even if no brain = no mind, does your mind end at your skull?

I believe that Rupert Sheldrake has suggested that the mind is a field like gravity and that it extends beyond one's skull.

The American Anthropological Association had to release a statement focusing on race as socially constructed because they operate in a political world where anything more nuanced would allow ideologues who misunderstand the science to use it as nesting material... — VagabondSpectre

Yes, the point is that the science of biology provides no evidence of "races" within the human species. There are no biological races within the human species. To find race within the human species you have to look outside of biology.

And when you look outside of biology and find categories of race that people have constructed you find that those categories are based on arbitrary characteristics.

In other words, no inherent characteristic of a man or woman makes him or her "black" or "white". You could place anybody you want to in the category "black". You could place anybody you want to in the category "white".

In biology, on the other hand, you can't place anything you want to in the category "vertebrates", the category "plants", etc.

I'm glad that you do now agree with me though, that different ethnic groups do have statistically significant genetic differences which is what leads to the consistency of characteristics between more closely related individuals (same family, same ethnic group), and deviation in characteristics the more distant the relation (different family, different ethnic group). — VagabondSpectre

Again, if I remember correctly (I haven't read it lately), the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race says that the genetic differences within the racial groups we have constructed are greater than the genetic differences between those groups.

Again, the categories that we call "race" do not reflect any biological reality.

That kind of anonymity has mostly disappeared. Presumably it lives on in the underground and illegal economies, and can reappear sporadically in carnival circumstances, but not for us normies. — Srap Tasmaner

The irony is that it is likely people in those informal economies / black markets who are doing most of the stealing of the identities that governments create and force us to have.

Thatonekid — Thatonekid

Context is missing here.

Why would the robots be used?

Is it simply a case of automation--replacing human workers with machines to save on labor costs and maximize profits?

Are the robots an innovation, like an artificial heart, that would add to the treatment options at the disposal of providers and patients? Or would they be intended to be standard treatment in all cases?

Machines/AI/robots are replacing humans in providing every other kind of service. A robot can't smile, ask how your day is going, ask your granddaughter how old she is, etc. like a human working a cash register. When machines replace human cashiers we lose that interaction and the emotional/psychological benefits, but I don't hear anybody stating unequivocally that it is morally wrong to take that away.

But people, whether they approve of the change or not, know what they are losing and what they now have when a machine replaces a human cashier. People know the costs and the benefits of both ways. As consumers they are not being deceived. They are simply being forced to adjust to what the market now demands and supplies.

I can't imagine a scenario where machines replace humans in health care and patients do not know what they are now getting. If the machine isn't really listening like a human nurse listened, won't they know that? Just like a customer at a retail store knows that the machine won't ask how her day is going like the human cashiers did, won't a health care consumer know the difference between a human by her bed and a robot by her bed?

It seems like we can rule out deception, fraud, etc. and simply ask if the care that a patient gets from a machine is better or worse than the care he/she would get from a human and if any care lost is justified by things like costs being lowered and more money being available for a more comprehensive battery of treatments.

The last month, I've been 'working' in a Govt. contract in which there is literally zero workload. I have turned over a single document and a single PPT. Everyone tells me I'm 'lucky to be getting paid' but it's really not satisfactory.

Anyway, this whole time, I was negotiating for a new role - a 'work from home' job in a leading technology company - design and implement their whole documentation system. Three interviews and an assignment. All looked good, all the feedback was great - but it's a no.

It's one of those 'sliding doors' moments - on one side, a bright future, job security and income, on the other, continuing to look for work, getting further behind on the bills, putting up with long and pointless hours in an office cubicle. I'm a boomer, near official 'retirement age', it's more than likely the last chance of that kind to come along. It came down to me and one other, and it went to the other.

I GUESS this is when the effectiveness, or otherwise, of your practice - your philosophy practice - really becomes evident. If you do have a solid practice, then you will feel a lot of disappointment, but you will be able to keep going - one foot in front of the other, and one day at a time. I guess, all things considered, I have to do that.

But I do need to say, at this point, it really sucks. ;-( — Wayfarer

As far back as I can remember thinking about work and life, I have looked at it this way:

1.) My goal is to constantly, tirelessly, diligently do my life's work. It is not something you retire from like formal employment in formal labor markets.

2.) I may never complete my life's work, but by constantly, tirelessly, diligently working at it I am at least setting the stage for other people to complete it.

3.) Everything that I do--school, relationships, employment, recreation, church activities--is working on my life's work. Formal employment in formal labor markets is enough for only a lucky few people to do their life's work.

4.) Formal employment in formal labor markets may not be available at all times or forever, but there is always other work that can be done to keep progressing towards the goal. Volunteer work. Friendships. Spiritual and intellectual pursuits. Creative pursuits.



What I hear in your words is frustration with capitalist markets.

Fortunately, there are many ways to be productive and make contributions without having to make transactions in capitalist markets.

Since our bodies are constantly changing, loosing parts and gaining new ones, our bodies and brains are not identical with the bodies and brains we had a week ago. — nixu

Someone recently said to me that every so many years all material that a person's body was previously composed of has been replaced with other material. I do not know where he got the number, but, if I recall correctly, every 13 years was the number he said.

If that is true then 13 years after a child is born all of the material that his/her body was composed of at the time of his/her birth is gone.

Interesting angle. I've been thinking about identity lately because I have the sneaking suspicion it's a source of much confusion and conflict. It's generally taken for granted, so I wonder what alternative identity paradigms might look like... — Roke

I don't know about personal identity such as "I think of myself as heterosexual". But with respect to impersonal identities, such as a Social Security number, an alternative is:

1.) They are always taken voluntarily.

2.) In the case of public things such as Social Security, those who voluntarily take an identity and those who do not are always treated equally. If you do not want to take an identity such as a 9-digit number and your face is not enough for the government to work with, they can use your fingerprints to identify you. The latter is not creating something arbitrary and assigning it to you. Meanwhile, I suppose that somebody could find a way to replicate your fingerprints and commit fraud, but surely it would not be nearly as easy as stealing a 9-digit number.

I think the ethical challenge is a bit of a softball though. Utilitarian ethics, for example, have no problem with this. The reality is that there is widespread coercion in social life - that's a big part of what society is. — Roke

But people living in liberal democracies set limits. People in the U.S. are upset that the Affordable Care Act forces them to purchase a commodity, health insurance, from the marketplace, and feel like it violates their constitutional rights.

I am saying that I think that a government telling you, without your consent, "You will from this point forward be identified as...", is overreach just like some people feel that the ACA individual mandate is overreach.

Example: money. It has no value if it cannot be used as a means to acquire other goods, like a car — Samuel Lacrampe

I am sure that I could find a coin or a paper currency that is no longer legal tender but some collector would love to keep.

And if it is dark and I do not have a flashlight, a dollar bill could be valuable as a light source after I strike a match or flip a cigarette lighter.

It is I think self-evident that we are not merely material beings. This is because of many reasons but mostly do to the fact that we actually have analytic proofs for the soul. for example: There are things that are true of me but are not true of my brain and body. So "I" am not identical with my body and thus I must be non-material substance called the soul. — nixu

Do you believe that your mind ends at your skull?

"There is of course no disputing that in modern Western society whites often oppress blacks and men often oppress women. This is bound to be the case in a social context in which people are forced to compete for scarce resources and to differentiate themselves from each other in any way which will accord them greater power, however illusory that power may be (nothing, after all, could be more pathetic than the belief that 'whiteness' confers personal superiority or that men are in some way to be valued more highly than women).

However, it is a conceptual mistake of the first magnitude to attribute the causes of such oppression to internal characteristics or traits of those involved. So long as sexism and racism are seen as personal attitudes which the individual sinner must, so to speak, identify in and root out of his or her soul, we are distracted from locating the causes of interpersonal strife in the material operation of power at more distal levels2. Furthermore, solidarity against oppressive distal power is effectively prevented from developing within the oppressed groups, who, successfully divided, are left by their rulers to squabble amongst themselves, exactly as Fanon detailed in the case of Algerians impoverished and embittered by their French colonial masters.

It is not that racist or sexist attitudes do not exist - they may indeed be features of the commentary of those who exercise or seek to exercise oppressive, possibly brutal proximal power. But that commentary is not the cause of the process that results in such proximal oppression and it is as futile to tackle the problem at that level as it is to try to cure 'neurosis' by tinkering with so-called 'cognitions' or 'unconscious motivation'.

This, I think, explains the otherwise puzzling success of 'political correctness' at a time when corporate power extended its influence over global society on an unprecedented scale. For this success was in fact no triumph of liberal thought or ethics, but rather the 'interiorizing', the turning outside-in of forms of domination which are real enough. The best-intentioned among us become absorbed in a kind of interior witch-hunt in which we try to track down non-existent demons within our 'inner worlds', while in the world outside the exploitation of the poor by the rich (correlating, of course, very much with black and white respectively) and the morale-sapping strife between men and women rage unabated.
Once again, we are stuck with the immaterial processes of 'psychology', unable to think beyond those aspects of commentary we take to indicate, for example, 'attitudes' or 'intentions'. The history of the twentieth century should have taught us that anyone will be racist in the appropriate set of circumstances. What is important for our understanding is an analysis of those circumstances, not an orgy of righteous accusation and agonised soul-searching..." (emphasis the author's) -- David Smail, "Power, Responsibility and Freedom".

From The Powerpuff Girls Movie:


"Middle Girl: Hi!

Professor: (jumping backwards) Aah!

Middle Girl: What's your name?

Professor: Oh, um, my name? My name is Professor! Professor Utonium! (he bows) Hello!

Girls (All): Hello, Professor Utonium! It's very nice to meet you!

Professor: It's very nice to meet you too! Umm.. what are your names?

Middle Girl: Well, you made us, so shouldn't you also name us?

Professor: Umm, okay! Ohh.. this is so cool! (kneeling down, hand on chin, gesturing to the middle girl.)

Well, now let's see ... because of your directness and opening right up to me, I think I'll call you ... Blossom!

[Blossom seems pleased, smiling brightly and holding her arms out in front of her. The blonde girl erupts in peals of giggles as the other two look at her in puzzlement.]

Professor: Well, aren't you all cute and bubbly! That's it! You'll be my little Bubbles! So, we have Blossom, Bubbles, and...

[Focus on the third girl, eager faced and blinking excitedly in anticipation of her christening.]
Professor: Mmm ... Buttercup! Because ... it also begins with a B!

[The eager smile evaporates into a dour frown, as Buttercup crosses her arms in front of her.]..."


Does that sound like a parent coercing a child into having an impersonal identity?

Well, at a minimum, a newborn would require an identification number, tied to a date of birth and linking it to its parents. Pretty neutral impact - just ensures that the people who brought you into the world take responsibility for you, and that you are able to participate in certain things by a certain age, as agreed upon as appropriate by the majority. And why not give it a name? I'd rather be called Kevin than #658478632.

And how else would you track everything that relates to you? "Here's my $1,000, Mr. Banker. I hope you remember my face when I come to get my money next year."

Like Nils Loc said, the values of the parents and society are the potentially damaging aspects of identity, not the black and white pieces of identification that allow us to fairly participate in society. — CasKev

None of that answers the question: What right does anybody have to coerce/force anybody into having an identity?

What right does anybody have to create something, assign it to you without your consent, require you to possess documentation of it even if it is against your will, use it to monitor your behavior without your consent, hold you responsible for any transaction made with it by any person even if you did not consent to the transaction, and make you pay fees and jump through legal hoops if you want to change it?

Nobody is saying that official, legal identities should not exist. Such identities can be accepted voluntarily. The question is what right does anybody have to force anybody to involuntarily have an identity.

Why isn't it immoral for parents to impose identity on their children then?... — Nils Loc

They don't.

They simply say, "We will call you..."

They do not say, "You will be identified as..."

They're just another form of coercion... — Nils Loc

I have never heard of any parent saying to his/her child, "If you want to be a member of this household you will be identified as...and you will have documentation of it".

It seems this is far more crucial to the future ability to consent to contracts than a birth certificate and a social security number. — Nils Loc

It might be difficult enforcing a contract if one or more of the parties does not have an identity that can be tracked, but lack of identify does not necessarily mean that a person cannot enter a contract.

Furthermore, if I enter a contract with you and then destroy every documentation of my identity, is the contract then voided?

1. For those that like pomo, do you think these features are fair characterisations of pomo writing? If so, do you think they are related in any way or is it just historical happenstance that they both occur in the same movement? — andrewk

I think that they are related.

But the way that I would characterize the second feature is this: if a point that you are making is that the rules of literature, art, architecture, etc. are a repressive Enlightenment/modernist relic, what better way to reinforce that point than intentionally breaking the rules in your own writing?

It's hard. My first post in this thread was dismissive, and I feel bad about that.

I think in some ways it's mainly a difference in attitude toward logic and science. Do you see them as liberative or oppressive? There's a touching passage in Tarski's little Introduction to Logic that I'll quote in full here:



I shall be very happy if this book contributes to the wider diffusion of logical knowledge. The course of historical events has assembled in this country the most eminent representatives of contemporary logic, and has thus created here especially favorable conditions for the development of logical thought. These favorable conditions can, of course, be easily overbalanced by other and more powerful factors. It is obvious that the future of logic, as well as of all theoretical science, depends essentially upon normalizing the political and social relations of mankind, and thus upon a factor which is beyond the control of professional scholars. I have no illusions that the development of logical thought, in particular, will have a very essential effect upon the process of the normalization of human relationships; but I do believe that the wider diffusion of the knowledge of logic may contribute positively to the acceleration of this process. For, on the one hand, by making the meaning of concepts precise and uniform in its own field and by stressing the necessity of such a precision and uniformization in any other domain, logic leads to the possibility of better understanding between those who have the will to do so. And, on the other hand, by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought, it makes men more critical--and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today.

That's Tarski writing from Harvard in 1940, having fled Poland before the German invasion.

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value. — Srap Tasmaner

My observation is that the one thing people who ridicule or dismiss postmodernism almost invariably leave out is this context: postmodernism is a response to modernity / the Enlightenment.

Without that historical context everything anybody says about postmodernism is a distortion, in my opinion.

It all seems to be a big symbiotic relationship. Without the Enlightenment postmodern theory would not exist. Enlightenment champions/sympathizers are galvanized by the attacks postmodern theory makes against their beliefs, values, institutions, etc. The latter and former increasingly feed off of each other, it seems.

Truth is a social construct? What "truth" is that statement referring to? Truth as a concept used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers? Truth as a concept used by the first Christians? It is referring to truth as an Enlightenment concept, is it not? Context matters.

In the political context, it does mean outright maliciousness in many cases. What else can we call killing those who think differently to you to hold power? Or systematically devaluing a particular sort of person so you can just take whatever they own? Or closing a border to people fleeing conflict? Power is maliciousness a lot of the time. Do people realise at the time? Not necessarily, some just think they are doing God's will, helping savages or stopping terrorists, but that doesn't change its cruelty and malicious goal. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Wasn't that malicious behavior around before anybody ever heard of "postmodernism"? Wasn't it around as part of pre-modernity and modernity?

Weren't Manifest Destiny, colonialism, etc.--the kinds of things that postmodernists criticize, not facilitate, it seems to me--direct or indirection products of modernist ideas and values? How was the removal of Native Americans--something before "postmodernism"--any different from any other "killing those who think differently to hold power" or "systematically devaluing a particular sort of person so you can just take whatever they own"?

I have heard it said that postmodernism is "modernism on steroids". Maybe that is saying the same thing that you are saying in fewer words.

"Race is a social construct" for instance is neither accurate nor useful, and it by definition discards the genetic reality that modern science holds as the objective differences between races. While it's true a specific distribution of genetic traits exists on a spectrum (i.e: the genetic trends of characteristics which delineate ethnic groups), to ignore that ethnic gene-pools do have different characteristics is to ignore reality. — VagabondSpectre

But if I remember correctly, the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race says:

1.) There are no biological races in the human species.

2.) Race is a cultural construct based on arbitrary characteristics.

3.) Race was created to justify imperial/colonial subjugation of people.

4.) The genetic variation within racial groups that we have constructed is greater than the genetic variation between those groups.


The American Anthropological Association is a scientific organization, not a postmodern theorist.

A right is a justified claim.

But that does not necessarily mean that it is always a good idea to make that claim.

Who are everybody else's favorite thinkers?

Have you already read Eric Wolf's Europe and the people without history? — Srap Tasmaner

It is probably buried in the many sticky notes on my phone or in a folder full of links I emailed to myself.

Iconoclastic works in anthropological theory are always good.

I've been wanting to read Robert Edgerton's Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. Maybe Wolf should be read first.

Emma Goldman & Simone Weil, but they're not modern. — Saphsin

Weil sounds especially interesting, judging by the Wikipedia article.

It seems to me like quantities may be non-linguistic thoughts. I have read that some traditional cultures only had words for what in English are "one", "two" and "many". But the sight/sense of a tree and another tree is not a quantity. A concept had to be created in the mind and then a symbol (2, two, II, etc.) created to signify it.

Did the symbol come before the concept, or did the concept--something not sensed through vision, hearing, touch, etc.--come before the symbol?

It greatly describes the Postmodern sensibility of avoiding meta-narratives, such as Marxism, Christian eschatology, linear Freudianism, or the Enlightenment...of explaining the understanding of how one must occupy these, but does not need to grant them sovereignty or even substantial legitimacy. — Thanatos Sand

I am going to have to bump it closer to the top of my to-read list.

What are your interests, in particular? — StreetlightX

Cultural anthropology, especially economic anthropology and ecological anthropology. Development, colonialism, neo-colonialism, North/South political and economic relations, etc. Indigenism. Political theory in general. Postmodernism, especially in social theory. Some general philosophy. Some general sociology.

Interesting to see Wendell Berry on someone's list. — Noble Dust

Then you might appreciate this: authors from Mexico and India using Wendell Berry as a source.

In Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri-Prakash quote Wendell Berry extensively.

A pleasant surprise in a book that only by chance got my attention at the last minute before the bookstore closed (after browsing for several hours I had to leave with something).

If anybody could recommend any work by women I would appreciate it.

I have not discovered prose fiction or poetry as intellectual documents to use on my own. I have only experienced them as school assignments to try my best to survive. It's never too late to change habits.

I tend to gravitate to non-fiction that is iconoclastic, original, independent, against the mainstream, etc. Work that recycles or feeds off of already popular ideas does not interest me much.

Who is the Noam Chomsky of female intellectuals?

1. The Sickness Unto Death--Soren Kierkegaard
2. Writing and Difference--Jacques Derrida
3. The Postmodern Condition--Jean-Francois Lyotard
4. I and Thou--Martin Buber
5. Anti-Oedipus--Deleuze & Guattari
6. The Birth of Tragedy--Friedrich Nietszche
7. Phenomenology of Perception--Maurice Merlau-Ponty
8. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime--Immanuel Kant
9. Capital--Karl Marx
10. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding--David Hume — Thanatos Sand

I'm curious as to what makes The Postmodern Condition a favorite.

I don't really have favorite philosophical books. My favorite books are all from the social sciences.

But Thomas Nagel's What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy was my first taste of philosophy and probably what I would recommend to anybody wanting to discover philosophy for the first time. It deserves to be mentioned.

What is "traditional" about devoting all of one's life to consuming commodities? Everything I have read says that such a way of life appeared only relatively recently and has only been practiced by a small percentage of people in a small percentage of places--most people's lives have been lived providing the cheap labor needed to make the commodities that the former live their lives consuming.

As long as global capitalism is a running system somebody will do the mass consuming--somebody will take the minimalists' place.

The only solution is to replace the entire system with something else.

No discussion of category mistakes would be complete without anybody mentioning "religion".

To me it almost always feels like when people are debating (more often quarreling) something about "religion" one person's "religion" is apples, another person's is oranges, another person's is blackberries, etc., whether they sense it or not. Fruitless discussions, usually (no pun intended).

If monogamy is just a cultural feature, why is it being singled out?

Nobody asks if other features of cultures, such as working in cubicles, are morally bad.