@Olivier5. Pain is an objective fact? That it is a fact is undeniable; but that it is objective is under suspicion...

If pain is objective, then why do doctors ask us patients things like, “What is your pain-level on a scale from zero to ten, zero being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain you’ve ever experienced”? If it were objective, why would they ask this? Wouldn’t they just determine it by some test, rather than a questionnaire?

What if a radiologist brought you the x-ray images of your body he just took, and asked you, “OK, do you see anything here? Do you think the bone is fractured?” Yet, apparently, no neurologist can scan your brain and determine how much pain you are in...and indeed I’m not sure at all WE know, even in our subjective selves...

I recall a psychological study that was done, apparently of the difference in pain tolerance among groups of various religious leanings. Differing strengths of electrical shock were administered to both Catholics and Protestants, and their reports of the degree of pain they felt were recorded, but with this caveat: the Protestants were told that the Catholics reported lower levels of pain for the same amount of shock...low and behold! It turned out that the Protestants could tolerate a whole lot more pain than their Catholic brethren.

Another anecdote: my brother, a man fearful by nature and preternaturally squeamish about his health, who rushes to the doctor if he feels his heart skip a beat, was stationed as a Marine officer in Diego Garcia back in the 90s. A contest arose b/w the British and American officers about who could run a marathon the quickest, and he, being a very able distance runner, signed up. I think they had to wear their fatigues and boots and all, for, as he related to me, after he crossed the finish-line victorious (he beat the Brits), he found, after removing his boots, that he had lost every one of his toenails due to chaffing.

It seems to me that these examples, and many others that could be brought to bear, show conclusively that pain is a subjective, not an objective, affair. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I would like to hear it.

@Olivier5. Mr. Olivier, I thank you for your willingness to debate with me on this topic, not only because it is highly entertaining to me, but because I know it has also been profitable to you; for I drew you out from the depths of squeamishness to the heights of God and nature, and now you have brought us back down to concern for sexual pleasure. This is what philosophical discussion ought to be like!: leading one back and forth between the mundane and the elevated.

As to whither we should go from here, I like the distinction you made between medical and non-medical surgeries; may we expand that to include all such procedures? In other words, a doctor might treat you for various things: he might, for example, stitch up a wide wound that nature herself is insufficient to heal because of its width, and therefore the wound would be subject to infection without human intervention. Wouldn’t we call that a medical procedure?

And if a human being suffer such severe pain that the quality of their life be diminished, wouldn’t the physician justly prescribe painkillers that correct this? And wouldn’t that be a medical-, as opposed to non-medical, procedure?

As for the latter, the non-medical ones, wouldn’t a face-lift be an appropriate example? For, as we age, the tissue of our skin weakens, and becomes therefore prone to the force of gravity; yet certain vain ppl, knowing or learning that a physician, due to his peculiar knowledge, can surgically lift the skin, contrary to nature, and make us look young again, hire him to do just that.

And they also hire him to excise the praeputium, for a different reason; not a medical one, but a religious one, and now they even want him, ppl who are not afraid of losing pleasure during sex, to mutilate their genitalia so that they become a female instead of a male, or vice versa.

But let me ask you this: the argument those in severe pain make, that they deserve to be prescribed special painkillers because their extreme pain compromises the quality of their life; how is that different from those whose quality of life is compromised because they cannot enjoy intercourse in the way their souls feel it ought to be enjoyed due to their gender-identity?

I guess my general question is, what is the difference between medical and non-medical interventions or procedures, and can we make clear definitions for each that separate them difinitively?

The idea of freedom of speech derives from the Enlightenment philosophers, who developed it out of the need to protect themselves and their peers from persecution from the political/ecclesiastical authorities. It was never meant as a right that any citizen may exercise to say whatever he will...

...that it has become so in our day is evidence that they were not prescient; that they were unaware that their political views would result in the democratization of the university, and the dilution of the idea of free speech into the notion that Everyman ought to be able to say what he will.

There was a contract made b/w the philosophers and the citizenry: “Let us say what we want,” the former proposed to the latter, “and, though what we say offend your beliefs, nevertheless, we will profit you through the application of our theoretical investigations to your material lives, by making you wealthier and healthier”, etc.

That, my friends, was the modern social contract.

The ancient notion was that the tension b/w philosopher and citizen was unresolvable, something that just had to be suffered or dealt with.

@Olivier5. Well, I am a circumcised American, and have never felt as though I was mutilated...

...but that is immaterial to our discussion. What is more material is your confession that you advise your American friends to “let their kids’ genitals [be] the way nature or God made them.”

Now, before, you said your opposition to non-medical surgery was based on pure squeamishness, not on any theoretical grounds. But now you seem to advance a philosophic reason for that repugnance: that is against either God or nature. That is what I was trying to point out earlier, that since you were not opposed to medical surgeries, such as the removal of a tumor, your opposition to non-medical ones, like sex-change operations, must be based on something other than that you simply find them gross or cringe-worthy. Aren’t all surgeries cringe-worthy, if you think about it? Someone cutting into your body for whatever reason? To “mutilate” it, or remove a foreign, potentially harmful object or unnatural growth, etc?

In fine, Mr. Olivier, may we accept your statement that the reason you object to non-medical surgeries is that they are against God and nature? Or would you like to amend that sentiment?

Lurking behind this entire discussion is the question “what is the proper relationship b/w the university and the government?”, and that is a question that is very old, reaching all the way back to when the university was called the “academy”.

Freedom of thought has not always depended on the existence of the university: it (the former) surreptitiously maintained itself through the dark ages, often by men attached to ecclesiastical institutions.

Only when Machiavelli and his followers won the war waged by the state against the philosophers, and universities became generally accepted as places where smart men could come up with ideas that materially benefitted the citizenry, did the two institutions, that of the university and that of the government, unite in a common goal.

@Olivier5. I must return to one of my questions that I put to you and re-ask it, for you never answered it: would you oppose or disapprove of a physician excising a malignant tumor from your testicles, even though you cringe at the thought?

Furthermore (and I am reluctant to ask this further question for fear that you focus in on it alone and thusly fail to answer the above, which I prefer you do rather than answer this one), when you say that you “routinely advise parents against” circumcision of their children, I can only assume that you hold some public position which carries the authority to give such advice; and, racking my brain, the only such office I can think of is that of physician. Are you indeed a physician?

If not a physician, perhaps someone who has partial knowledge of medicine, such as a physician’s assistant, or a nurse?

Or, since you “routinely advise parents”, are you maybe a general counselor of sorts? at a school or mental health, a children’s sports clinic or club?

@Olivier5. Mr. Olivier, let me ask you some questions, if I may.

Would you cringe at the surgery on your genitals that would remove a malignant tumor? Even if you cringed at it, wouldn’t you approve of it? Yet you don’t approve of a similar sort of surgery whose intention is to change sex. Doesn’t this show that what you really cringe at is related to the reason for the surgery, not it’s object or location?

You describe ppl willing to undergo surgery to change their sex as “gross” and “crazy”. But if a man feels he has the soul of a woman, and wishes his body to conform to his soul, and therefore conceives of his nads as a sort of malignant tumor, why do you cringe at the notion of his having them excised? Or, though you vicariously cringe at it, why wouldn’t you empathetically approve of it, just as you would approve of having yours cut out if they were malignantly cancerous?

Finally, if you agree with the above analysis, and admit that what is cringe-worthy about sex-change is not explained by grossness or craziness, on what rational basis, other than visceral repugnance, do you base your disapproval of it? For you have stated that you disapprove of it. Come now! As a philosopher or student of her, on what rational basis do you rest your opposition to the changing of sex?

@Valentinus. But a parent CAN hide his or her shame from the children...at least while the parent lives...

My aunt had an affair with the barber, and produced her only son, but, despite evidence that came out surreptitiously over the years, she denied it to her dying day, and the son only learned of it after his mom was dead.

When he did learn of it he attempted to contact his half-brothers in the barber’s, his dad’s, family: they accepted him coolly...

The moral is, what your mama wished to remain hidden, so should you wish.

I made a mistake in my speech: when I said, “I believe the evidence suggests that sexual desire for the OPPOSITE sex is inborn and perfectly natural...”, I meant to say that I believe that it suggests that desire for the SAME sex is so...

My bad!...

Hope I got it right this time.

@Olivier5. You said earlier, “You don’t actually have to conform to PC in real life”, but don’t you see all the public men and women who are regularly censured for violations, in speech and/or deed, of the PC standards that have been set by our society, and suffer loss of their jobs and of their public standing?

The chief prohibitions in the guidelines of this forum, the ones which condemn the transgressors of them to banishment, are exactly these same societal prohibitions, the PC ones I just referred to, namely, that one profess no idea or sentiment that is either sexist or racist or homophobic.

Now, let me ask you this; indeed, let me ask this entire forum, and I ask also that the moderators allow you, the members, to be my jurors, and not banish me without a proper trial—for I would accept the majority of you, should you condemn me, as my proper judges; nor would I wish to be a member of a club the majority of whose members does not accept me: were I to argue that homosexuality is against nature because two men or two women, by means of coitus, cannot produce offspring, and that that is the obvious teleological purpose of coitus, namely, to produce offspring, would that sentiment constitute homophobia on my part?

It is as though I hear now an uproar, and loud calls for conviction and banishment. But I beseech you to hear me out, fellow members, for I have more to say that may temper your indignation, and I hope to convince you that I am not a hater of gays or lesbians. Indeed, I have known many homosexuals throughout my too long life, and some of them have been close friends. I always treated them as human beings, just as I would treat any heterosexual... and one of them was my dearest friend.

Furthermore, I believe the evidence suggests that sexual desire for the opposite sex is inborn and perfectly natural...something which, I suspect, coming from me, is surprising to you. How then do we reconcile these disparate natures, the teleological one and the evidentiary one?...

...for now, I hold my cards close to my chest. If any of you are interested in hearing my opinion, I would be glad to express it; but, as the popular phrase goes, “let me be perfectly clear”: if rational statements against PC opinions are automatically assumed to emanate from hate, without consideration for the source or motive, then full philosophical discussion and consideration of the most important things to us is impossible, either in this forum or any other.

The value of a human life differs little or none from that of any other living thing...

I place a stick of wood on the fire only to notice that, soon afterwards, driven by the heat, an army of ants I did not know resided there begins feverishly scurrying about, hoping to find a safe passage out for their queen. Upon discovering no such avenue, and pressed by the circumstances, many leap into the void and are vaporized by the fire, much like those human beings who leapt from the Twin Towers on that fateful day...

My girlfriend cries out to me from the laundry room: a snake has cornered her there, his head protruding from underneath the door. I have no choice but to cut it off with the tip of a forcefully driven spade shovel, much like the sword that severed Cicero’s head from his body as he hung it out, bearing it to his assassins...

Finally, a gadfly alights upon me, and I swat it with the alacrity that the Athenian jury swatted Socrates, their gadfly, for questioning their accepted beliefs...

Mere life, friends, has little value, whether human or animal. It can only borrow value from something higher than itself which it sustains.

I think there is good reason money has gotten such short shrift among philosophers...

Socrates, in The Republic, if I recall correctly, describes its origins in the need that arose in a barter-market to represent the value of the goods when both parties to the exchange could not be present there simultaneously...

Other than that and, of course, Adam Smith, what philosophical weight has ever been given to it?...other than by a parade of Nobel Prize winners?

@Nikolas. It was not Socrates’ insistence that he knew nothing that was offensive to the authorities. Indeed, he used this statement as a form of false modesty—technically true, since his inquiries always led to new questions—...but everyone knew he knew much more than he led on about.

What was offensive to the authorities was exactly what was stated in the charges: that he corrupted the state religion...

...and the images on the wall, the ones we must come to see as false if we ever escape the cave, represent those gods.

...and I think the two charges work in unison. In other words, Socrates corrupted the youth by teaching strange gods, not by loving boys sexually...

...as a matter of fact, in all the Dialogues, Socrates steers his audience away from sex toward an, anachronistically, “Platonic” relationship.

At any rate, in Ancient Athens, pedophilia was a practice countenanced quite openly; to have sentenced one to death for it would have decimated the aristocracy.

@Olivier5. Just to clear a couple of things up...

We have Xenophon’s Memorabilia, alongside Plato’s Dialogues, as another source, sometimes more powerful than Plato, of the details of Socrates’ life.

Secondly, The charges against Socrates were twofold: corrupting the youth, and teaching gods other than the official gods of Athens.

Money can have no certain value because it has an ambiguous nature: it is both the means to wealth, and wealth itself.

Masculinity becomes toxic when it’s actions offend a woman, and the standard for judgement varies widely...

Some women are offended only when you slap them... some are offended when you open the door for them.

@Pfhorrest. Pure curiosity, the sort that “killed the cat” as the saying goes, I don’t believe, alone, can lead one to true philosophy. One must be discontented with his present world, have a hole in his soul that needs filling by what he knows not, before he have the motive that might lead him there. If this appears to be a Continental sentiment, well, the Continent was the birthplace of philosophy, and her source for many centuries, until only yesterday so to speak, and may yet have something to teach us, in particular about the dangers of abstraction:

“The university’s task is illustrated by two tendencies of the democratic mind to which Tocqueville points. One is abstractness. Because there is no tradition and men need guidance, general theories that are produced in a day and not properly grounded in experience, but seem to explain things and are useful crutches for finding one’s way in a complicated world, have currency. Marxism, Freudianism, economism, behavioralism, etc., are examples of this tendency...

“The very universality of democracy and the sameness of man proposed by it encourage this tendency and make the mind’s eye less sensitive to differences...Our temptation is to prefer the shiny new theory to the fully cognized experience...Producing theories is not theorizing, or a sign of the theoretical life. Concreteness, not abstractness, is the hallmark of philosophy. All interesting generalization must proceed from the richest awareness of what is to be explained, but the tendency to abstractness leads to simplifying the phenomena in order more easily to deal with them.”

It seems to me that, someone to whom philosophy appears to be the neatest puzzle to be solved, might indeed be prone to the error outlined above.

Btw, I hope the inclusion of quotation marks, though I do not betray the author, shields me from being exiled for plagiarism!

@Pfhorrest. I think you misunderstand me. When I say one should dwell with a book/soul for a long while, I don’t mean that one should strive to thoroughly master some philosopher or work in an academic sense, as being able to answer any question about it or him for some university exam. I mean rather that, should a college examiner, or indeed anyone at all, ask you, “who have you read that truly influenced you, and why?”, you be able to say, for example, “Nietzsche, because he opened my eyes that were before blind, and caused me to see the world as it actually is, contrary to the preconceived notions of it that I had entertained since my youth; I, who assumed that science was the route to all knowledge and goodness; though now I see that the dark disparate cultures of peculiar peoples is what generates those things in the world...”

Now, you may disagree with me in this thumbnail analysis of Nietzsche, but I only use him as an example...

In my intellectual life I have encountered one or two or three, or maybe four or five, souls that captivated me in this way, and that is the key term, “captivated”. To become a true student of philosophy, you must be in a state of destitution from the start, like a freed slave, as though wandering and weary in a world where you only find barren soil for your subsistence, but always hoping for and seeking nourishment...

...and the nourishment is there!...as I have found out during a life brief and full of evil...

So, the true student of philosophy is a truly lamentable soul...but the only human being who has the motivation within him to correct his situation, and, at least so far today, also the means, if he look hard enough outside. For the material still exists and is accessible...though how long such an existence remain for a rare and endangered flower of civilization, I cannot tell.

@Janus. For my part, I was thoroughly entertained by this word-play, and especially since it was participated in by someone who might one day “virtually” cut my throat.

I would rather see him enjoy himself in a controversial thread than bring the hammer down.

@Possibility. Ha ha! Let me tell you a funny story, Mrs. Possible...

When I was in sixth grade my teacher was one Ms. Conrad, an attractive young auburn-haired woman on whom I developed a crush. This was the year the educational authorities had decreed that, starting in sixth grade, boys and girls were to be instructed in sex.

So, one day Ms. Conrad put the anatomical charts up on the board revealing the cross-sectional male and female genitalia, and described to us that the sperm was produced here, and the egg there, and that their combination ultimately resulted in a baby, etc.

Now, I had never been been inducted by my own parents into “the talk”, so I knew next to nothing about sex. For one thing, I was way too young: it would be another 5 or 6 yrs before I developed into a young man (which was traumatic for me, being such a late bloomer and watching my schoolmates grow hairs where I couldn’t, for example). But my curiosity was fully developed even at age eleven...

...so I raised my hand, and Ms. Conrad pointed to me, “Yes, Todd?”, and I asked, “Ms. Conrad, but how does the sperm get to the egg?”...

...you might imagine the bedlam that erupted among my classmates. There was a chorus of laughter, followed by whispers among groups of girls who laughed and smiled and glanced at me. Barry Draughn, a country boy who sat directly behind me, poked me in the back: “Todd, haven’t you ever seen chickens do it?”

But worst of all was Ms. Conrad’s reply: “You’ll just have to ask your parents,” she said with a smile.

I had a lot more to respond to your post, but I have taken all my time responding to what “the talk” reminded me of, so I will answer more fully later. I hope this reminiscence entertained you.

@Pfhorrest. So I take it, Mr. Pfhorrest, that if you were enthusiastic about the art of say, making moonshine whiskey, and wished to become a master distiller, that you would prefer to make day trips to the various moonshiners, learn what you can in a short time from each of them, compare their various techniques in your leisure and choose which ones you liked best, rather than apprentice with an acknowledged master and learn from him over several years?

@tim wood. Mr. Wood, when the moderator uses such vile language and threatens exile or banishment, he is motivated by moral indignation, THE enemy of philosophy, never by pedantic considerations like “quality of OP”, or “lack of evidence”, etc, as you justly point out...

...and that indignation is directed against those who dare suggest that any class of human being is less equal than any other. No doubt about the equality of all human beings may be countenanced by anyone, and the correct response to such doubt is outrage by (almost) everyone, and threat by those who hold the power to effect that threat.

In previous posts in various threads I have attempted to explain the source of this phenomenon, reveal its roots in the origin of philosophy, and argue that nothing has changed since Socrates was put to death for the corrupting of the youth of Athens.

Let me just point out that, as I speak, a debate is being raised in the States about whether transgender students should be allowed to compete in sports according to their “gender”, or their “sex”, things that were synonymous until yesterday. There is an ongoing war between the traditional concept of nature, and the new one based on advanced egalitarianism...

...but he who espouses the former will be subject to censure...in society at large, but also particularly in this forum.

@Possibility. I agree with you that pain and suffering are necessary ingredients of life, and I believe that was a point of contention earlier in this thread, when the OP was still around (it seems that you and I have, however, hi jacked this thread, and it must seem a bit strange to those looking into it for the first time and comparing what is being said in it now with how it began). An ongoing state of happiness, as you termed it, is impossible, and if there be an happy human being, he or she too must suffer sometimes. But it must follow, mustn’t it, that if that is true, and there exist a happy human being in principle at least, that his or her happiness depend upon something more substantial and lasting than things like physical comfort or security or pleasure (?)

Forgive me if it is not natural for me to draw the conclusion that the “host of fears” your mother instilled in you as a child must have sprung from her abuse at the hands of those whom a child most obviously can be expected to trust...yet you, as a child or even as a young adult, did not know the source of those fears. I would like to learn, if you are willing, how those fears were transmitted to you, how they manifested themselves in your soul and affected your behavior, and how you were able to overcome them.

Finally, I would be very interested to learn what impact your mother’s revelation, at the ripe old age of 80, had on you children, and the family, and it’s friends, in general. And how could she have kept it a secret for so long?...or did she? Did anyone else other than the participants know?

@Possibility. Well Mrs. Possible, you have certainly been very forthcoming about aspects of your early life, about your parents and brother, etc...so in that way you have definitely explained yourself, unlike the most ppl you just referred to who are unwilling to do so because of the desire to make an unquestionable first impression.

...and I understand, from something I saw while walking through another corner of this forum, that you are the mother of a few children yourself (?): what I want to ask you is, how much has your parents’ longing to have the “perfect family” affected the way you parent your own children? either in style or content?

I would suspect that, as far as content goes, you don’t adhere to your father’s 50ish-worldview, but, as far as style is concerned, I suspect you want your children to be as happy as they can possibly be, mirroring your father’s “burning question” to you: “are you happy?”...

...would that be an accurate assessment?

I tend to side with those in this discussion who contradict the assumption that we can know well our own time simply because we live in it.

I believe one can “live” in a prior age by reading the writings that emanated from it, and I think the proof of this are the innumerable men who have done just this—despite the barriers of language and culture. Furthermore, I would predict that these men would attest that they came to know their own peculiar place and time infinitely better by having read those antique writings, and I think this is further proof that only through being inspired by literature in the grand style can we understand our own time and place...much less Elizabethan England or Machiavelli’s Florence, etc.

These old writings, in all their variety of language and context of culture, survived the ravages of the centuries, nay millenia, outlasting monuments and cities, for a reason: they taught men something about themselves they could never have gleaned merely from the study of their own constricted time and place.

@Possibility. Characteristically, Mrs. Possible, the next morning, after I have participated in this forum the previous evening, I go back over in my mind what I posted the night before. When I did so this morning, I cringed: I realized I had confused MeToo with Black Lives Matter, which is scarcely excusable considering the context of our conversation, and the fact that I too have been a victim of sexual assault...though that was long ago, a one-time thing, when I was a young man and escaped my attacker...though at the time I felt as though I were fighting for my life, and it left no scars, either physical or psychological.

So, my obtuseness here does indeed betray me to be a white male...

But, having gotten to know you somewhat in this limited time and circumstance, I felt that your response to my faux pas would be primarily bewilderment...which it was, rather than indignation. I thank you for that. Now I owe it to you to answer your question: what is the point to all my questioning—and I will do so...

When we were debating over acute angles, I got the impression that you were using an opaque and abstruse terminology based on quantum theory and the postulation of extra dimensions just to escape common sense everyday recognitions. Unable to break through this screen I was reminded of something I had read before: that ppl who have suffered crises in their youth, whether divorce of their parents or sexual abuse or death of a loved one, etc, tend to adhere to one of two extremes: they either cling to some or other absolute and irrefutable view of the cosmos, or they become attached to theories that tend to make everything indeterminate...

It should be obvious in which camp I suspected you to be, and that is the reason for me asking these questions...though I must confess that, from what I have learned, you are a much more complex subject for analysis than I would ever have suspected.

Finally, my apologies—and I hope that my offense is seen as a peccadillo, not as a crime.

@Ori. Well, Mr. Ori, as far as #3 goes, I wish I could do the same and SOME ppl here not get offended...

As far as #4 goes, why would you be surprised?...

As for #6, it seems to me that anyone you might share a space with might become at least somewhat abusive at some point...after all, two ppl living together cannot agree on everything...

...but seems to me you’re speaking from fresh experience...care to adumbrate on that?

@Possibility. Wow.

Okay, so, am I correct to assume that, since your mom responded to the MeToo movement, that y’all are Aborigines?...

So, it is easy for me to see how your mom wished to create the “perfect family”, and participate in that...but, what did your dad wish to escape from HIS childhood? What was his upbringing like?

@Ori. Ok, Ori, so, say you have your “ideal” situation: your own private domicile, and friends that you can go out with and whose company you can enjoy, together with them, in public places, before retiring back into your private space...

Doesn’t that, first of all, assume that you must “get along” with your friends around a restaurant table, for example? Who will pay for the meal? What sorts of topics may be introduced for conversation, beyond the trivial ones like “what happened to me at work today”? What if one of them takes a greater interest in you, and wants to follow you home? What will you say? “No, lets go to your place”, so, if things get unpleasant, you can leave and go back to your private place?

Finally, isn’t it a great comfort in life to share a space with someone? When they start breathing down your neck, make sure you have a private place to go to. I am in my own private place right now, and that is why I can text this to you without her breathing down my neck...

But I wouldn’t replace her with loneliness just because she likes to breathe down my neck.

@Possibility. I tend to agree with you Mrs. Possible, and I think your psychological analysis is on-spot.

Extremely drunk patients file regularly into the ER; because they are so drunk, they hardly even make a human impression on their care takers because of unconsciousness, and when they do, it is often a belligerent one, so they become anonymous ppl, difficult to deal with, that they have to, nevertheless, deal with...but they are also ppl that may easily be judged for their lack of moderation; then, unfortunately, it so happens that they are disproportionately of a certain minority race whose difficulties in adapting to the majority have never been cleared up by society...which was the cause of their drunkenness in the first place!

So, it is not surprising to me that, when another Inuit or Aborigine or Cherokee, etc, comes in drunk to the ER, that one nurse turns to another and says, “Here’s another one!...how many is that this week?”

“I don’t know, but I bet his blood-level is at least .15”

“Oh, yeah! At least that...by the looks of him I’d say .2”

“No, no,... not that high. Look: his eyes are still open and following things...I bet you...”, etc.

@Ori. Wouldn’t you agree though that you already live by bowing to the common rules that the society you live in sets for all its members? In a sense, your true household is that society...

If you want to proscribe your household into the confines of your particular domicile, then, in order to follow your own rules there, you must either have no housemate, or have one willing to follow your rules.

@Possibility. What was your mother like? Was she resentful about having to be a stay-at-home mom and not being allowed to pursue a career?

@Pinprick. Indeed we are all guests in another’s home, just as Socrates and his interlocutors were guests of Cephalus in his home as described in The Republic, an old wealthy man whose love of speeches derived from his age, not desire to pursue philosophy, and whose devotion to the ancestral mitigated against any tendency he may have had to entertain novel or iconoclastic ideas. Had Cephalus remained in the discussion and not handed it off to his son Polemarchus nor left to attend the sacrifices, the reverence for his authority among the youthful interlocutors would have squelched any attempt to gainsay the traditional view of Justice, and this philosophical production called The Republic would not have occurred.

Every day and age has its Cephaluses, it’s representatives of authority. In ours, authority is certainly not based on ancestral or traditional beliefs, as it was in ancient and primitive societies; it is based rather on the principles of advanced egalitarianism, which seeks to make certain classes of human beings, ones often quite differentiated, at least apparently by nature, perfectly equal.

For our society to work it is imperative that the citizenry believe the deductions drawn from these principles of equality and adhere to them in speech and in deed. It was no different for the citizens of Ancient Athens. It was dangerous for Socrates and for his interlocutors to question the ancestral beliefs, just as it is dangerous for us now to question the foundations of equality. It may be unlikely now that we risk our lives in doing so, but we certainly risk our livelihoods; we may not be banished from Rome, but we can certainly be banished from an internet “philosophy” forum.

@Possibility Well, I obviously had preconceived notions of you, Mrs. Possible...

You say that the only compliment you heard as a little girl was that you were beautiful...which suggests to me that you felt under-appreciated for your intellect (?)...

Why was your older brother considered the “real future” of the family?

Finally, a dad who was a recovering alcoholic with a violent temper must have been difficult, if not painful, to deal with as a child; how did you and your sisters deal with it?

@Bitter Crank Well, Mr. Crank, I can see you have been here forever,...which surprises me a bit considering what I, a very recent member, just experienced in this very thread. A certain post of mine was deleted forthwith, and I was threatened with a ban shortly thereafter...

...as far as the “panopticon” goes, I think I just posted a pretty good oversight of everything.

My concern is that, should Socrates have raised some of the questions he did with his interlocutors in Plato’s Republic in THIS, a supposedly “philosophy” forum, he would have gotten kicked out...and then where would the discussion have gone from there, in the absence of “The Prince of Philosophers”?

Of course, Socrates did get kicked out of Athens...and out of his own life, by the Athenian powers-that-be, and modern thinkers are indignant about that, as the most extreme form of censorship, because they have been educated in the Enlightenment ideal of free speech, which was formulated to keep Socrateses from being sentenced to death...

...but in our day, supposedly more enlightened than any day in history, we must still fear the hemlock...

...of course getting banned from an internet site can scarcely be compared to being forced to drink poison, but it has the same effect on philosophical discussion. Advanced egalitarianism has not corrected the prejudices of past times and discriminatory places; it has rather replaced those old prejudices with new ones, which in turn become the new bases for prohibiting speech.

There is now, since my encounter with the rulers of this place, who I must know are now watching every word I say, a whole slew of questions, innocent and unspiteful, that I dare not ask except to my own little self, when my whole motivation when I became a member here was to have the freedom to ask them to someone else.

@Baden If you’ll look back, I never said my post was deleted BEFORE it was posted, which your fellow censor just affirmed.

@Baden So, some other moderator can work “at the speed of light”, but you can’t?

@Baden why won’t you respond to the rest, Mr. Baden? Did it strike you as too uncomfortably true?