If you are not self assured that you know who you are and you know what you want then you should not be leading a country. That is partly why I advocate that these two questions should be internally asked by all of us regularly.
1. Who are you?
2. What do you want? — universeness

I agree in theory, but many people are not even in a position to ask such questions. They are often unaware that they don't know who they are or what they want. They've been fooled into thinking they are what their parents/friends/school/therapist/culture/occupation tells them they are and they need to experience a profound shock, circuit breaker or ontological threat to leave this behind. I don't think it's to most people's tastes or in their interests to conduct such soul searching.

I respect that, Javi, and I have read how important this is for you. Bushido - new word for me. :up:

To be true to your own nature, to be who you are, to be honest. — universeness

One of the main problems with this is that people frequently have no idea who they are or what they want. The really tough part is working that out. :smile:

Pretty much. I'd trust a social worker with an actual drug history more to solve drug issues than someone that read it in a book. There's no replacement for experience where it concerns social issues. One of the reasons poverty is such a pernicious problem. — Benkei

Agree with most of the points you made. Don't forget social work is generally a degree level discipline. When I recruit social workers for my organisation, they frequently have 4 years of university behind them. Sometimes several degrees. But yes, experience and aptitude is more important. When I hire someone with a lived experience of substance misuse, they still need a degree. Lots of terrible mistakes made by people who don't have some foundational education - professional boundaries, case formulation and planning, unconditional positive regard.

But not any person can manage such complex responsibility. How can we expect from the PM to solve inflation or unemployment if she is not responsible with herself? — javi2541997

I fully understand your view and I expect many people share it. I personally think that some of the best leaders are flawed people with problems. I don't expect leaders to be perfect or to role play sober righteousness. I like leaders to be human and complex. If that means a penchant for dancing and booze on occasions, great!
.

NZ is in fact world class - another Singapore or Finland - when it comes to effective public policy to deal with health, education, pandemics, trade, whatever. But climate change is another order of magnitude entirely when it comes to the scope of the problem in question.

Dig into the “morality” of the current responses - left or right - and it is all a mess ripe for cynical exploitation. — apokrisis

Yep. We need a whole new way of conceptualizing our world, it's not just tinkering with existing systems, or adjusting our priorities. That kind of change takes time we don't have.

Exporting buttloads of coal, as your country does, supports the formation of your community in far reaching ways. So I guess that's moral? — Tate

And that's actually a great example in support of my argument. As I said, the community is engaged in a conversation about what is right or moral. And some of us, as part of that community, protest and take direct action against industry and government - American military bases on Australian soil, the coal industry, environmental destruction by corporations. None of these issues can be solved by one guy's will to power as per your OP. Only communities can change the behavior of communities.

As soon as we think of ourselves as natural elements of the environment, we're no longer limited by morality, but just by whatever constraints are in the system. Our selfishness is an evolved trait. We don't really have any choice. — Tate

That might be how some view this, but I don't think this is inevitable or has to follow. I think of myself as a natural element in an environment. I don't think of morality as limiting, more as supporting the formation of my community. There's an ongoing conversation in community (which I participate in) about what constitutes moral behavior and these boundaries are explored and do change. Selfishness is no more an evolved trait than selflessness. Personally I see no reason to accept a 'will to power' model, it seems reductive and tendentious as a 'will to sex', 'will to be loved', 'will to whatever'...

Another similar degree of moral stupidity arises in neoliberalism where we are all meant to be self-making entrepreneurs acting in a free market … but that “angelic” aspect of our human nature is still anchored in the unfortunate material fact of only having the one planetary ecology to despoil. We still have to share the one commons. — apokrisis

Nice. Yes, I remember meeting with a climate change activist back in the days when it was called the 'greenhouse effect'. He said something like - 'People don't like to be told they need to change their approach and values for the good of the community. Sounds like communism to many and will be resisted bitterly, even if it means a collective suicide." That was around 1988.

That little party looked pretty gauche, but who cares? Trump doesn't dance or do drugs/booze but he's hardly a paragon of virtue or sober leadership.

Can't disagree with any of this. :up:

Although they do seem to call this Platonic realism, so I need clarification. :wink:

Thanks. Ok, I see the confusion. For me if 'the good' is a discovery we can make - like Platonic theories of math, then idealism is surely what we are talking about because The Good is then a Platonic form which resides in its ideal in a special realm, outside of time and space, right? Any version of good we do on earth is simply an instantiation of the form.

I have heard that some people who have been depressed for years have broken free of that when they start doing something creative. — Athena

No question. And another big one is doing something for others.

I was commenting on your quote. What examples? Maybe you could just answer if this view implies Platonism or not. :wink:

Indeed. Reason has long been a part of Islam and Christianity. Look at the work of apologist William Lane Craig - Christianity is a religion of reason - it's just that they're the wrong reasons... :wink:

For Christians, the veracity of the New Testament is their basic premise or axiom. — Gnomon

Just an aside - plenty of Christians I know and grew up with do not think the New Testament is the inerrant word of god and that much in it is wrong or myth. It's more that they feel (faith?) it is true, above and beyond the old books.

In Ethics, the examination is whether morality is objective or subjective (we have morality as a matter of convenience or cooperation, for example). If objective, it exists independent of how we view it, we just need to discover it. — L'éléphant

Does this view necessarily entail that ethics are Platonic and therefore we discover truth through idealism?

Indeed. It's puzzling how a child that can barely string two or three words together knew when she heard the claim that it was not true, and then went on to demonstrate that much, and yet highly educated people seem to have talked themselves right out of that. — creativesoul

Isn't part of this because they have taken Plato's cave allegory to heart? The assumption being that those illusory shadows are everywhere and that only adults and smart people can work to discover the truth behind the deception of appearances.

I agree with you about modest empirical matters. But isn't the problem for us the other stuff - values, justification and truth? Seems to me philosophy is often about living two sets of books - quotidian life where we take realism for granted. And 'theory' where little, perhaps nothing, is certain. The question is how much do you allow the latter to impact upon your life and choices? The moment one stops to investigate being and what we know, we can readily arrive in a world of infinite regress or a hall of mirrors of phenomenological perspectivism.

If everything is theory-laden, then our judgements are fucked because we would find ourselves in an infinite regress of theory-ladenness. — Janus

Do you have good reasons to think this is not the case?

is it moral to make a decision without the ability to prove whether or not it had a net benefit, — CallMeDirac

This was answered earlier. If we don't know then "no". Not having the ability to prove what might happen means you don't have evidence to justify taking action. No offence but do you realise how silly the scenario is and how useless it is to gauge how people should behave in the world? It's so easy to generate irresolvable scenarios out of impossible putative events.

or should one make a decision that, while possibly having a net loss, could be proven to have had a net benefit or loss; does the result of the provably beneficial or detrimental decision change whether or not the decision was the correct one to make based on the available information in the scenario? — CallMeDirac

Knowing later the person mass murdered millions does not change the original decision because the evidence did not exist justifying the act. And if we killed the guy, we'll never know.

I don't think I've got anything to add to my earlier points. Nice to talk about movies for a change. :up:

Is not the genre of Dystopian Sci-Fi essentially nationalistic? — ucarr

Is it?

These glorifications within the arts date from Homer to Tolstoy to Riefenstahl. Regarding toxic hero-worship of warfare, I measure culpability of Nietzsche greater than that of Riefenstahl. — ucarr

Culpability isn't really an issue for me. Marvel films are light entertainment for kids (and adults with a particular taste) and they borrow their look from comics and from other sources in the same manner that advertising rips off their ideas to sell sports cars or perfume. It's all surfaces. To me Marvel films are closer to World Wrestling Entertainment than Nietzsche.

Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkim & Lang's Metropolis are celebrated classics. Well, both pictures have nationalism folded into their aesthetics. Has anyone complained about this? — ucarr

Not sure why complaining came up or even matters. I dislike Marvel films for their shrill, derivative banality. The point is that they are not Eisenstein or Lang. But this is a matter of personal taste.

The original question was are they like radio plays? It's a good question. My response to that is they are simple, visual artefacts that depend upon sound and music to drive home the overstated imagery.

As Plato might say: "opinions" (doxa) are the currency of sophists that, like Monopoly money, doesn't cash out at the supermarket or in philosophy. — 180 Proof

Perfect. All I've got is the social critic Dirty Harry: "Opinions are like arseholes. Everybody has one."

:up:

if the dictator is killed, there is no way to know if more were saved — CallMeDirac

If you don't know, the answer is clearly 'no', right? And you can't ever know.

Unless you are George W Bush or Tony Blair....

As I said, this is one of those absurd and therefore pointless scenarios, and some philosophers, like Peter Singer, would on this basis say that the question is not realistic and can be ignored. I would always say you don't act unless you are certain you are going to prevent many more deaths.

Strong consequentialism would argue you can kill the 10,001 people, if many more are saved.

Would we kill Pol Pot along with 10,000 innocent people? You would save 2 to 3 million people.

Either kill 10,000 random people and 1 genocidal dictator or don't
(The dictator has the means and motive to commit a genocide of unknown proportion) — CallMeDirac

Ok, so let me see if I can follow this. I'll simplify it.

- A man who might kill millions is amongst a group of 10,000 others.
- You have the option to kill him along with 10,000 other innocents and prevent a potential mass murder.

That it?

I'm curious how another consequentialist would personally resolve this issue, and whatever similar points have been handled by more competent philosophers. — CallMeDirac

The problem with scenarios is that we can always invent some absurd notions that are impossible conundrums. The real world almost never throws up such situations. So for me, who cares, right?

On a more engaged note - I don't think I fully understand the actual scenario set up. Can you re-phrase it?

I wasn't a fan of The Dark Knight but you're right that it had somewhat more complex characters and dialogue.

Makes sense to me and I feel like it may end up being the way forward.

No, it's not fine. We cannot peacefully coexist that way. — baker

Ok. Bye.

I think I made it clear that I definitely hold no ground with trans-phobes. — ToothyMaw

I understand that. We'll see how this one goes, right?

Although it brings with it the burden Camus talked about. — Tate

Which burden is that? A la Sisyphus?

Where are you heading with this? What are you looking for? These threads often descend into trans-phobia and become a conga line of suck-holes bathing in Fox News style judgments.

But neither he, nor anyone else, is free to dictate what effect that choice should have on others and how others should respond to it. — baker

That's a strange way to frame the argument. That secondary issue is, should fanatics have the right to threaten and kill people whose art/opinion they don't like? There's only one correct answer here.

What if it an author wrote a book about a bikie gang and a club decides to kill the author and publisher and anyone else involved because the book took a controversial view of the club's history?

It's not fine. It's part of the answer to the OP's quest: to understand religious autonomy. — baker

I'm saying it's fine that you make difference judgements to mine - after all no one is going to get killed.

My comment wasn't a reference to the rightness or wrongness of anything. It was a reference to 'old'.

And further, for a religious person to request input on how to practice their religion -- from outsiders of that religion??? (Like in the passage you quoted earlier.) This is absurd. — baker

So we disagree on this point and the others are not significant enough to follow up. Irshad Manji is a Muslim. When she makes comments about Islam and the wider world community, it is worth listening. That's a judgement of course, and one you obviously don't share. Fine.

thought he was condemning religion and prostitution at the same time. That's why I asked if he had a problem with prostitution.

He answered that by asking me if I'm Catholic.

I have no idea what's going on there. — Tate

No problem.

Thanks

Prostitution is often called 'the world's oldest profession'. When someone points to religions being old as a criterion of value, I point out this. One of the very things religion often condemns - prostitution - is probably as old as religion. And it was a jape - hence the emoji.

Anyway enough on this, right?

The point is obvious and please try to communicate without name-calling. Lots of things are old. My point is, so what?

Is there something wrong with prostitution, Tom? — Tate

Why do you ask, are you a Catholic?

[reply="Adamski;730291" Ok. Thanks.

I feel god in my heart is a reason. — Adamski

Do you have a particular god in mind?