With this ignorance you are just giving more fuel to people who are stopping us from intelligent policy making. But I don't think that either of you are the kind to contribute to good policy making — Lionino

Young people could certainly step up more than they have. Only a third of young people voted in 2022. That's pathetic. — RogueAI

Just ignore the deniers. — Mikie

There is absolutely no debate left to be held other than how to mitigate the consequences and stop further temperature increase. — Christoffer

I think from what I'm reading in this thread, there's a lot of psychological fear of the idea that Trump might be president again. — L'éléphant

Not 'psychological'. Fear, period. Although as I’ve said, I don’t believe it.

It occurs to me, speaking of psychology, that Trump’s thinking is entirely and completely subjective. — Wayfarer

Doesn't jibe well with the Buddhist concept of interdependence and no-self. — praxis

Everytime I see a mention of Trump, I am reminded of several Buddhists who are his avid fans.
— baker

Now that is interesting. Do you have any theories why he appeals to them? — Tom Storm

I am the Ubermensch — Brendan Golledge

More important than which interpretation is right is which reading is more promising from a psychological and ethical point of view. — Joshs

Enactivist writers such as Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela emphasize the beneficial ethical implications of the decentering of the Cartesian subject. They assert that a thoroughgoing understanding of the groundlessness of personhood reveals the mutual co-determination of subject and world. This realization can in turn lead, through the use of contemplative practice of mindfulness, to the awareness of universal empathy, compassion and benevolence.

‘In Buddhism, we have a case study showing that when groundlessness is embraced and followed through to its ultimate conclusions,

the outcome is an unconditional sense of intrinsic goodness that manifests itself in the world as spontaneous compassion.” — Joshs

This is why the Buddha never advocated attributing an innate nature of any kind to the mind — good, bad, or Buddha. The idea of innate natures slipped into the Buddhist tradition in later centuries, when the principle of freedom was forgotten. Past bad kamma was seen as so totally deterministic that there seemed no way around it unless you assumed either an innate Buddha in the mind that could overpower it, or an external Buddha who would save you from it. But when you understand the principle of freedom — that past kamma doesn't totally shape the present, and that present kamma can always be free to choose the skillful alternative — you realize that the idea of innate natures is unnecessary: excess baggage on the path.

And it bogs you down. If you assume that the mind is basically bad, you won't feel capable of following the path, and will tend to look for outside help to do the work for you. If you assume that the mind is basically good, you'll feel capable but will easily get complacent. This stands in the way of the heedfulness needed to get you on the path, and to keep you there when the path creates states of relative peace and ease that seem so trustworthy and real. If you assume a Buddha nature, you not only risk complacency but you also entangle yourself in metaphysical thorn patches: If something with an awakened nature can suffer, what good is it? How could something innately awakened become defiled? If your original Buddha nature became deluded, what's to prevent it from becoming deluded after it's re-awakened?

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/freedomfrombuddhanature.html

They assert that a thoroughgoing understanding of the groundlessness of personhood reveals the mutual co-determination of subject and world. This realization can in turn lead, through the use of contemplative practice of mindfulness, to the awareness of universal empathy, compassion and benevolence.

For those who benefit from the hidden dependencies of modern life, a corollary need is a sense of reassurance that interconnectedness is reliable and benign — or, if not yet benign, that feasible reforms can make it that way. They want to hear that they can safely place their trust in the principle of interconnectedness without fear that it will turn on them or let them down. When Buddhist Romanticism speaks to these needs, it opens the gate to areas of Dharma that can help many people find the solace they're looking for. In doing so, it augments the work of psychotherapy, which may explain why so many psychotherapists have embraced Dharma practice for their own needs and for their patients, and why some have become Dharma teachers themselves.

However, Buddhist Romanticism also helps close the gate to areas of the Dharma that would challenge people in their hope for an ultimate happiness based on interconnectedness. Traditional Dharma calls for renunciation and sacrifice, on the grounds that all interconnectedness is essentially unstable, and any happiness based on this instability is an invitation to suffering. True happiness has to go beyond interdependence and interconnectedness to the unconditioned. In response, the Romantic argument brands these teachings as dualistic: either inessential to the religious experience or inadequate expressions of it. Thus, it concludes, they can safely be ignored. In this way, the gate closes off radical areas of the Dharma designed to address levels of suffering remaining even when a sense of wholeness has been mastered.

The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism
by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/rootsofbuddhistromanticism.html

We don't experience ourselves as being inside a mind, but as being inside a body which is inside the world. We don't experience our minds as being radically free or absolute but as being constrained and contingent upon our bodies — Janus

If you look at the general history of human culture it is fairly clear that humanity has been labouring under the "aegis of tutelage", fixated by the idea that there must be some absolute authority or lawgiver. The horrific crimes against humanity which such absolutism has given rise to are hardly questionable. although of course it is possible to bury one's head in the sand in denial.

You are quite forward about being unable to define good and bad, and so I am focusing on those. Usually someone who cannot define good or bad does not go on to depend on those words in their philosophical or moral theories. — Leontiskos

And don't get me wrong. I am a moral realist and have no difficulty talking metaphysics. I think an act is right or wrong, not subject to my subjective definitions or beliefs. — Hanover

I don’t know about any rules that I could apply to anyone else but me — AmadeusD

That seems ass-backwards to me, baker. "A mind" presupposes existence whether a "declaration" is made or not. — 180 Proof

the self-destructive individual acts out inferiority — kudos

Mind is thus treated no differently than organism , which has no true ‘inside’ given they it is nothing but a system of interactions with an environment it defines on the basis of its normative way of functioning. — Joshs

Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents. — Janus

So you know things exist and you don't need a mind for knowing that?
— baker

The point is this: being a mind that is 'aware of being-a-mind-among-other-minds' (ergo finitude) presupposes 'mind-independent nonmind'. In other words, to say that 'existence is mind-dependent' entails 'the nonexistence of mind' (via infinite regress: mind dependent on mind dependent on mind dependent on ...) which is self-refuting. — 180 Proof

Basically, I'm simply arguing that whatever exists, always exists for some mind. The sense in which it exists without reference to a mind is simply unintelligible and incoherent. That is the mistake that creeps in for mistaking the assumption of mind-independence, which is all very well within the context of science, for a metaphysical principle, which it is not. — Wayfarer

Existence just is the case — 180 Proof

Wayfarer is a property-owning householder with material possessions and family responsibilities. So I probably don't fit into your stereotyped image of what 'an idealist' must be, whatever that is. — Wayfarer

https://pathpress.org/appearance-and-existence/

Thanks, very interesting page and site. I will take some time to try and absorb that. — Wayfarer

But was there such a behavior though? Weren't there enough good hearted people who cared for all people and wanted to help, just to get a shotgun to the face and screamed to get off their property? That there were enough people who tried to make things better for all, especially low-income low-educated people?

Isn't it the false promises of neoliberal capitalists on the right side of politics who promised these people the garden of eden; only to flush it with factory chemicals, doubt, fear and rage?

And then they turn their backs on- and want to fight those who actually stood on their side, making them suffer and in the end just utter back to them: "ok, then rot in your filth you morons".

We can blame culture, but part of the great irony is that the people in power around Trump, as well as himself, does not care for these people other than to feed their narcissistic blood flow, cash flow and voter booths.

After all this time, how much longer should the people who actually care for these Trump supporters as human beings have to wait for these Trump supporters to realize which side actually fundamentally supports them? Because they get so much hate and so much shit all the time while trying to reach out that at some point... enough is enough.

I'm talking about fence-sitters.
— baker

Anyone who's on the fence towards such a side does not seem to have the capacity to understand reason. So it doesn't matter what you do, they are attracted to the childish bullshit that Trump spews out. It is clear by these recent years that it's a cult behavior; reason doesn't work, facts doesn't work. The only thing that works is if they realize the suffering they stand for, if they see it head on, if it produces a cognitive dissonance; in the same way as cult members realize what state of mind they're in. Listen to cult survivors and how they reason, what made them realize their faulty ways. Someone waking up from the Trump cult will echo the same reasoning.

It's easier on your ego to think that ..
— baker

No, it is true. They follow cult behavior to the letter. Treating anything a leader says as truth, as something to applaud without any attempt to rationally understand what it all meant is part of a cult mentality. Why do all these QAnon and conspiracy people intersect so well into the Maga culture? They follow the same cult mentality; the same psychology.

I don't care about my "ego", I care about making honest observations of what is going on.

Such is democracy.
— baker

Yeah, a sloppy version of it. Democracy needs care and systems to protect it. Because the result of a sloppy democracy is civil war. If someone gets voted in to dismantle a democracy, crowning themselves king; then the other half who didn't want that, will show that they did not want that. So protecting democracy and protecting it from such destructive forces as well as keeping the peace require better care for that democracy.

Democratic tolerance can only function until the intolerant becomes tolerated. After that you don't have any democracy anymore.

The irony is that various right-wing political options have a better understanding of democracy than anyone else. They understand that democracy is a dog-eat-dog fight and they don't pretend it's anything but that.
— baker

You're talking about demagogues, not democratic people. They don't understand democracy, they understand the abuse of democracy by acting as demagogues, that's what a dog-eat-dog concept entails. By any means; fool the people, take the power. And if that power leads to anti-democratic actions, then what democracy really exists in their minds other than autocratic power?

What's even more scary is how sloppy people treat democracy. It's the same as how sloppy they treat freedom of speech. The constant appeal to them in broad, vague and simplified terms as some defense against actions aimed to supersede their actual purpose. And the so called educated just fumble their words trying to point it out to these people, it's absurd.

No, democracy is what it is and that kind of mentality is not democracy at all. That only proves that they do not understand democracy or they do not care and just use the public's low education of what it means in order to take power. — Christoffer

How anyone thinks that the guy behind this outrage is a fit and proper person for the candidacy beggars belief. — Wayfarer

I'll pick the side that is *not* cheering on a mendacious narcissist wannabe dictator. — Wayfarer

I recently finished reading "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", and am moved to propose that the ultimate purpose of the book is to encourage the average man to become something greater; to stand up to his own self and demand that "it" (that being his personal constitution) evolve. Which is what (in my opinion) a lot of Friedrich Nietzsche's writings are ultimately directing the readership to do, grow. — Bret Bernhoft

Sometimes I feel you vacillate between a kind of (weak?) idealism and indirect realism. — hypericin

And this 'idea' is incoherent because it implies either (A) a Matryoshka doll-like infinite regress of minds-which-exist within minds-which-exist within ... ad infinitum (i.e. 'it's turtles all the way down) or (B) that "some mind" which "whatever exists for" is not ultimately "whatever exists". — 180 Proof

Part of me says that the world deserves Trump. — Hanover

It's been years of people trying to balance things and say that we need to listen to these followers of Trump, hear their perspective on life and understand their situation. But when you listen to them, when you listen to Trump speaking to them, it's clear that they are downright utterly stupid people who basically joined a massive cult. — Christoffer

No reason beating around the bush, it's stupid people who are bitter and angry against smarter people for getting more attention. Spoiled adults who behave like screaming children in stores when not getting more candy for their fat asses, and their God is Trump, a representative of themselves, just as stupid,

but able to storm the white castle of power.

Not trying to pick a fight, I'm just trying to understand people's attitudes. — Wayfarer

And every time you say such things, a fence-sitter is closer to slipping off into Trump camp.
— baker
I don't think it matters, it seems that nothing matters. They won't listen to reason or criticism, they're captured by Trump's narcissistic "embrace" regardless. — Christoffer

‘Republicans Nominate Secessionist Felon for President’. How’s that going to work out? — Wayfarer

In the United States, a person may have their voting rights suspended or withdrawn due to the conviction of a criminal offense. The actual class of crimes that results in disenfranchisement vary between jurisdictions, but most commonly classed as felonies, or may be based on a certain period of incarceration or other penalty. In some jurisdictions disfranchisement is permanent, while in others suffrage is restored after a person has served a sentence, or completed parole or probation.[1] Felony disenfranchisement is one among the collateral consequences of criminal conviction and the loss of rights due to conviction for criminal offense.[2] In 2016, 6.1 million individuals were disenfranchised on account of a conviction, 2.47% of voting-age citizens. As of October 2020, it was estimated that 5.1 million voting-age US citizens were disenfranchised for the 2020 presidential election on account of a felony conviction, 1 in 44 citizens.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_the_United_States

Admitting that you've lost is unamerican.
— baker

How so? What is particularly 'American' about never admitting you lost? — GRWelsh

Think about the absurdities it would lead to. No political candidate would ever concede an election. No professional athlete or sports team would ever concede they lost a game or match. No one would ever pay up on a bet, because they'd refuse to admit they lost the bet. Society couldn't function like this.

What you are describing is being a sore loser or being deluded.

When can we call these idiots actual morons? — Christoffer

clearly those people are not capable of educating themselves. — unenlightened

They swallowed every word — Wayfarer

But the justification for non-monks to procreate nonetheless, because they hadn’t reached that level yet…they’ll just reach it on a future cycle..isn’t that how the argument goes? Strictly speaking, all adherents would immediately stop aspiration for starting a family. — schopenhauer1

all adherents would immediately

Admitting that you've lost is unamerican.
— baker

How so? What is particularly 'American' about never admitting you lost? Think about the absurdities it would lead to. No political candidate would ever concede an election. No professional athlete or sports team would ever concede they lost a game or match. No one would ever pay up on a bet, because they'd refuse to admit they lost the bet. Society couldn't function like this. What you are describing is being a sore loser or being deluded. — GRWelsh

Here is a frame of good versus evil. Within this frame there is no possible answer. How can a fair player win against a cheater? They cannot, they will always lose to the aces up the sleeve. And the conclusion then is that the good guys have to cheat like the bad guys do. The old gold of "They go low, we go high" does not work, it is fool's gold. — unenlightened

How can a fair player win against a cheater?

Therefore the first step towards a solution must be to reject the comfortable fantasy that "we" are the good guys, and "they" are the problem. Because clearly, for a large minority of America, it is the other way about. Clearly, for these people the game is already rigged so they always lose and they don't want to play by "our" rules any more.

I've never noticed this. It makes perfect sense though. — Tom Storm

If his actions "undermined confidence in the system" then there wasn't any worthwhile confidence in the system before to begin with.
— baker
Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen? — Relativist

The problem is that you (plural) don't know whom you're up against and you don't even care to find out what it would take to win against them.
— baker

What would it take to win against them? — Fooloso4