Cases of 'might makes right' are clearly discernable in cultures without the human rights background of the West, conspicuously the People's Republic of China, where individual rights are held to be subordinate to the requirements of the State, as well as in other authoritarian and one-party states. — Wayfarer

Might makes right is the doctrine of modern Western capitalist countries as well, given that the pursuit of justice costs a lost of money. For many people, it is prohibitively expensive.
People can do all kinds of things to you, things that are nominally illegal/criminal. Yet if you don't have the money to pursue them legally, this counts as agreeing with them, condoning those actions done to you.

Judgement is about power, not truth? What kind of shitty philosophy is that? — ToothyMaw

The one that pretty much everyone I know lives by. And they are doing well!

That's one of my favorite maxims, Baker. But you can't teach the whole world. — Tom Storm

And this exonerates you when others treat you poorly?

I have a similar story to move kids past things that are obsessing them - an ill parent, an incident of bullying. I tell them that they will carry the problem, but they have a choice of holding it in their hands so that they cannot do anything else, or putting it in their pocket or backpack so that they can get on with the stuff before them. — Banno

But this doesn't address the "big picture". There are several assumptions in "putting things aside" and "moving on". If these assumptions aren't elucidated and if they aren't the right ones, "putting things aside" and "moving on" can do more harm.

For example, the assumption can be "I should just move on, let it go, because I am worthless". If this is one's assumption for "putting things aside" and "moving on", how is "putting things aside" and "moving on" helping one??

The popular maxim that we can't control what others say to us but we can control how we react is also similar. — Tom Storm

Another popular maxim says that we teach others how to treat us; and that if they treat us poorly, it's because we have taught them to do so.

Then I suppose most people live a pretty sad existence. — ToothyMaw

Not at all. They get pleasure when judging others. This pleasure, the gratification of moral indignation is a motivation for judging others. To withold judgment would be to deny oneself this pleasure.

Maybe for an authoritarian regime that murders people for speaking their minds. — ToothyMaw

No, it's how ordinary people are: they love to judge others, in matters big and small. It's how they exert power.

my point is that judgement should be withheld until we find out if it is indeed false. — ToothyMaw

Judgement is about exerting power, not about truth.

When we're setting out to do anything, there's two things to ask ourselves: why to do it / why should something come to be the case, and how to do it / how does something come to be the case? We've got all of the descriptive sciences, including the ones you're talking about, investigating the second type of question, the "how does", to great results.

But we barely have any systemic investigation into the first question, the "why should". — Pfhorrest

Because for a psychologically normal person, the Why is supposed to go without saying, be something that the person takes for granted.

Yes, but not to agree with him, but to understand his deeper motives and find alternate ways of satisfying them that don't so deeply dissatisfy others'. — Pfhorrest

Then you wouldn't be "walking in his shoes" to begin with. You wouldn't be empathizing, you'd be projecting, following your own agenda.

If you're already sure you know what's right and wrong, then why randomly empathize with others??

Extreme egalitarianism?
— baker
Yes, otherwise known as altruism. Everyone matters. Everyone.

No. For one, this is not how the world works.
For two, what you're describing sounds more like codependence or borderline personality disorder symptoms.

And what would such extreme empathy have to do with finding out what's good or bad??
— baker
What do you think "good or bad" even mean? Because this just sounds like a bizarre question to me.

You're not answering my question.


Do you believe in objective morality?

As I have attempted to counsel him on several occasions, I told him that learning to let things go (good and bad) is the most important lesson in life any of us can learn, that carrying feelings (particularly anger) can have devastating effects not only on the quality of your life, but the lives of those around you. — synthesis

That's just nihilistic quietism.

To find out what's good or bad, walk some miles in other peoples' shoes, put yourself in their places, experience for yourself what it's like to go through what they go through, and if necessary figure out what's different between you and them that might account for any differences that remain in your experiences. — Pfhorrest

Why on earth would anyone do that???

Would you empathize with Hitler, see things from his perspective, see, how from his perspective, what he did was good and right? Exactly.

Apart from such extreme empathy being impossible to do, what should the purpose be for it? Extreme tolerance? Annulment of responsibility? Extreme egalitarianism?

And what would such extreme empathy have to do with finding out what's good or bad??

It seems like this is simultaneously a principle that everyone must have already learned as children,

No. What children are taught isn't empathy, it is projection under the guise of empathy.
The whole idea is remiss anyway, as small children aren't even able to reason about morality in terms of empathy. See Kohlberg's stages of moral development. A person cannot relate to a moral reasoning that is outside of the stage they're in.

But again, 'critical thinking' in the original Platonic context, started with very different background assumptions to critical thinking in the current day and age. — Wayfarer

Could you sketch out the difference, please?


Obviously, there are several ways to interpret "critical thinking". In the OP, I was referring to critical thinking as it is usually understood in modern secular academic textbooks about the topic (notably, in textbooks about informal logic and informal logical fallacies). But beyond that, people tend to have diverse ideas about what comprises "critical thinking" (e.g. I've seen Bahais argue that if one thinks critically, one will see that Bahaullah is the prophet of God).

Culture and society allow people to accept their impulse to seek dignity and decency. — Wayfarer

And to tie this with the OP question: Would you say that philosophers advocate for critical thinking in an effort to seek dignity and decency?

These domains barely tolerate restriction by rule of law.

What would be the general motivation to adoption? — Pantagruel

That description by authority becomes the norm the masses are expected to obey.

It's what we have in psychology, for example: Psychologists study the population, then, based on empirical findings assess what is statistically normal, and then, because the psychologists have considerable institutional power, the statistically normal becomes the norm, the normative that people must live up to or else get stigmatized as "abnormal" and needing treatment.

merely dilettante pessimism.
— baker

You'd have to explain that. Pessimism doesn't mean an utter inability to do what one doesn't want to. — schopenhauer1

Consequent pessimism is paralyzing. You're at most, talking about occasionally having some pessimistic thoughts. I'm talking about real, consequent 24/7 pessimism. That's the kind that makes one see the futility of every human action, 24/7.

Antinatalism is about empathy or compassion for the future people that would be created by the procreators. — schopenhauer1

But since, if the antinatalist is successful in convincing other people not to procreate, the potential future people will not exist anyway, so no compassion or empathy for them, so the point is moot.

Compassion and empathy are meaningful only in relation to already existing entities.
It's not possible to feel actual empathy for someone whom you don't know because they don't exist.

The compassion and empathy you're talking about are idle perversions.

This actually seems unempathetic.. being more akin to eugenics and nefarious programs in the past. I also don't see how shaming people is compassionate.. Rather, it's just more social pressures to see a certain outcome- ends justify the means.

It's empathy and compassion for existing people -- such as for those who are burdened with looking after orphans or the defective. Social norms are there to protect and serve the normal, the majority.

The motivation is to prevent future sufferers from suffering.

But there are not going to be any future sufferers!

That seems pretty egoless being that the antinatalist has nothing themselves to gain from it, since they already exist and all.

It looks more like the final drop of pleasure that the antinatalist is trying to squeeze out of life.

Have you ever consistently made an effort to have a pessimistic attitude to life, yet were able to dilligently get up every morning and do your work well?
— baker

Much work gets done because it has to be or X will happen. — schopenhauer1

IOW, you haven't consistently practiced pessimism.
Getting up in the morning and thinking, "Oh no, not this again", but then getting dressed and going to work and doing it well is merely dilettante pessimism.

One of the points of the OP is not only do we survive, we can evaluate any given task needed to survive (in the socio-economic-cultural superstructure). That's why I see this situation as a negative. Here we are, being able to negatively evaluate the very tasks needed to survive (and find comfort and survive).

Yes, we've been over this. I'm not seeing anything special in this. You need to break eggs in order to make an omelette. Most people don't cry over the eggs being broken.

(and find comfort and survive).

What do you mean by "find comfort"?
Are you saying that you see the futility of life as it is usually lived, but you nevertheless find ways to feel comforted? By what, how?

I am very concerned people want to see X from another person because they have a vision that just needs to happen for the other person. — schopenhauer1

But proponents of antinatalism are doing the same thing: they want to see other people stop procreating because they (ie. the antinatalists) have a vision that just needs to happen for the other people.

Antinatalism, precisely because of its specific anti-life content, is not a stance that can be backed up by empathy or compassion for other people.

If someone argues for selective natalism/selective antinatalism (as has typically been the case throughout human history, such as in the form of forbidding sex outside of marriage, killing defective newborns, or stigmatizing unwed mothers and their children), then this can still be motivated by empathy or compassion for one of more parties involved.

But with antinatalism, there can be no such motivation -- other than to please the ego of the antinatalist (who will be dead within a few decades anyway, so why care about him).

You whiner.

Antinatalists want to stop this "pressing" of more laborers.. even if people don't think about their procreation in those terms, they are doing it, so advocacy to get more awareness of this. The parents are voting "YES MORE LABORERS!" (even if unwittingly). The antinatlists are saying, stop. — schopenhauer1

Here's the thing: What's in it for the antinatalists??

What do antinatalists get or hope to get if other people stop producing children?

I did, and the notion that someone who otherwise has no actual power over you could just make something up (completely setting aside whether it's actually made up) and thereby wield something worth being afraid of over you suggests a problem on your end. — Pfhorrest

It's just another thing that people can manipulate others with; as such, it's yet another cause of concern, yet another thing to be prepared for.

A "problem on my end"? Fuck you for that. Perhaps you live somewhere where you get to cast the first stone and thus establish your supremacy.

think they should not only keep all the fences and national guard in Washington, DC. (around the Capitol), but even better, fence off the entire city and then build prison walls around the metro area because this is where all the politicians, the lobbyists, and anybody else who has been destroying our democracy needs to be kept for the next 50 years! — synthesis

See, you don't want people to live up to their full potential! You want to put them into prison for that!

I am afraid that people like you who desire salvation (from the challenges of life) feel that everybody else must change the way they think in order to feel as desperate as you do.

It's leftist religion. "Save me, save me, save me" (and save everybody else because they're going to have to pay for it). — synthesis

*sigh*
*facepalm*

I'm not going to defend things you merely imagine I said or stances you merely imagine I hold.

The fact that you need to resort to such lowly tactics just goes to show that your position has no merit.

You keep whining about big corporations and big government, but you also want people to be free to live up to their full potential.

Guess what? Big corporations and big government are exactly what some people being free to live up to their full potential looks like. It's you who wants the nanny state to protect you from others living up to their full potential.

Does having a strong personal desire for something justify it? What would curb an initial personal desire? What kind of argument would it take? Is there something analogous we can look to here for something that will cause great harm, but can be personally desired and one does not go for it due to this? — schopenhauer1

Here's some anecdotal evidence:

Back in college, I had a classmate who wanted to have a child despite being single (after finishing college and getting a job, of course). This was just around the time when legislation about artificial insemination, sperm donation etc. was being passed here, so the topic was current ; IIRC, there was even a referendum about it. Her argument was that it would be cruel to deny single women at least this pleasure of having a child. (I thought it was absurd for a single woman to want to have a child.)

This was her initial personal desire. From what I gathered, her reasoning was that if she's too plain to get a boyfriend, then at least the state should make it possible for her to get a sperm donor, to at least have a child if she can't have a husband.

What could curb that initial desire of hers? Well, my ranting about her romantic ideas about romance being idiotic and that having a child out of contempt for herself being a useless sacrifice of herself didn't help.
It seems that her desire to have a child, even as a single mother by a sperm donor, was driven by her desire to feel validated as a human being, which was to her the second-best option to having a child by a husband.
I can't think of anything that could change that.

My wagon will always remained hitched to the traditional conception of American freedom. — synthesis

By golly, what are you complaining about then??!

How much socialism do you want? Who doesn't want to live in a country where you are free to live up to your potential?

Socialism is about lowering the bar far enough so everybody is miserable. — synthesis

False dilemma.

Who doesn't want to live in a country where you are free to live up to your potential?

All one needs to do to in order to live in a country where you are free to live up to your potential, is to reconceptualize "free" and "live up to your potential", so that the new concepts match one's reality, whatever that may be.

It's hard to live with a pessimistic outlook on life if one actually has to work for a living. In contrast, pessimism is the luxury that the privileged can afford. Such as those living off trust funds.
— baker

Again, makes no sense. (and I really want to add fuckn before sense. You have to explain this as it is not evident by just you stating this as fact. — schopenhauer1

Have you ever consistently made an effort to have a pessimistic attitude to life, yet were able to dilligently get up every morning and do your work well?

If at the next elections, Americans will vote for Trump or his children (and chances are, they will), you will be one major step closer to the America you want: a dog-eat-dog country in which every man is on his own.

The Donald.

I wonder if this would cause someone to stop and think more when considering procreation and putting more people into the world. — schopenhauer1

No.

But if the trends toward "euthanasia" and wrongful life and wrongful living lawsuits become stronger, then this could create the conditions in which people might become more careful about producing children. Ie. when matters of life and death become something that is acceptable to talk about and to routinely threaten people with, it seems people will be more likely to distance themselves from having children altogether.

On the other hand, another factor that could contribute to this being more careful about producing children is to objectify and commercialize children even further (a trend that is already well underway) and to strenghten the social image of a child as a luxury, a potentially prohibitively expensive luxury, in the same category with fancy sports cars, diamond necklaces, or fur coats.

Is there anything going on in this country now besides fear and dependency? — synthesis

Blondie's third term! He's your savior! Hallelujah!

It's hard to live with a pessimistic outlook on life if one actually has to work for a living. In contrast, pessimism is the luxury that the privileged can afford. Such as those living off trust funds.
— baker

Are you saying antinatalists don't have to work? — schopenhauer1

Read again.
It's hard to live with a pessimistic outlook on life if one actually has to work for a living. In contrast, pessimism is the luxury that the privileged can afford. Such as those living off trust funds.

Did you pull this statistic out of your ass or is your head stuck up there?

*sigh*

Either way, your statements make no sense.

If you'd read them, they would.

Why would non-privileged people not be able to NOT have children?

Many people need to have children, in order to produce laborers to help them and to provide a measure of security for when they are unable to work.

Further, in order to endure the hardship of the daily grind, one needs to have a measure of optimism, needs to believe that it's all worth it somehow, that it all somehow makes sense.
Many people find this meaning and this optimism in having children: they work hard in order to provide for their children; their children make their hard work seem worthwhile. In contrast, working hard in an effort to pay for one's hedonistic pursuits is seen as empty, worthless, decadent by some (many, if not most?) people.

I was just stating that you need a combination of the three with political arguments. The pure logic of it doesn't seem to usually affect people.

Sure. Why on earth should it??

All parents have played their part, and so all should pay. — Bartricks

Make them.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way, right?

Your reason. Not our reason. — Isaac

He mimicks the style of philosophers. :p

Personally, I haven't found that a desire for fine art follows sexual satisfaction. A cigarette, maybe, but please, no fine art in the bedroom. — Bitter Crank

Jesus. One desire follows another. The selection and order are not universal. After sex, some people want to smoke a cigarette, some want to collect fancy sports cars and others collect garden gnomes, or whatever. The point is, they keep desiring things after they have satisfied one desire.

This latter is also the idea that underlies Maslow's theory; although Maslow posited that the selection and order of desires are universal (which is disputable).

Are you sure the insatiable-and-ever-rising-desire model is valid? Left to our own devices, I think most people would be reasonably satisfied once their broadly-defined basic needs are met.

It's not like people typically become desireless. They just stop desiring the things they already have (now that they've obtained them), and they desire other things. "Things" here means very broadly -- from material things like clothes and food to less material things like a successul career or reputation.

We, though, are NOT left to our own devices. For at least the last 100 years, retailers and manufacturers of all sorts have been using an array of communication methods to entice us into continually desiring more and "better".

And it works precisely because we operate by the insatiable-and-ever-rising-desire model.

The amount of consumption that occurred in most households began to rise sometime in the late 19th / early 20th century. Why, in 1915, was a house with 850 square feet of floor space considered adequate for 2 adults and perhaps 1 child? It was adequate because people didn't buy so much stuff!

You want to argue they were desireless?
That those prudent, modest people of old were helpless in the face of and succombed to the evil ploys of marketing?

They operated out of the desire to improve their lives. This is an insatiable and ever rising desire. It can become realized in many ways: whether in buying a new home, finding new, more attractive sex partners, changing careers, or in working hard to improve one's reputation, and so on.

Billions would be of no use to you in the case of the collapse of the economy, would they? A gun and the skill to use it would reverse the acquisition of even a trillion dollars in heartbeat in the case of a collapsed system. — Isaac

Hence having your own army is part of the billionaire's plan for ultimate safety.
Rich people don't just amass money while living in sheds. They strategically invest in buildings, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure, means of defense etc. etc. that help keep them safe.

Duh. Read my whole post.

Of course, and obviously: our needs and wants are satiable, and are regularly satiated. There are outliers whose only response to desire is MORE. They are both outliers and abnormal. Most of the men I have known like sex and pursue it enthusiastically. What they do not do is spend more and more time obtaining more and more sex. The amount of sex they want (and get) tends to reach a plateau and stay there. Why? Because enough is enough--literally.
/.../
Moderation is actually necessary to maintain pleasure. If one drank only the finest and rarest of whisky in quantity (as much as one could drink) it would no longer be a pleasure. One would be too drunk to care what one was drinking, and one's taste would become jaded. — Bitter Crank

Sure, but this misses the point. The point is that one keeps having desires. Once one desire is satisfied, another one comes up. One satisfies the desire for food, and the desire for sex comes up; satisfying that, the desire for fine art comes up. And so on, so endlessly on. This is where the problem is.