Mind Expanding Things that Aren't Science

Topic

We seem to have lost the old Thought Provoking (TM) mind expansion thread, so here’s a replacement.
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Astrology:
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/06/i-was-an-astrologer-how-it-works-psychics
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Before you scoff, there are some interesting insights in the article that you don’t have to be a believer to appreciate. Here’s a couple of extracts that made me wonder:
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I’d understood organised religion to be something between an embarrassment and an evil. Yet as Aids did its dreadful work – this was the 1990s – I watched nuns offer compassionate care to the dying. Christian volunteers checked on derelict men with vomit down their clothes. I became uncomfortably aware that New Agers do not build hospitals or feed alcoholics – they buy self-actualisation at the cash register.

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I also learned that intelligence and education do not protect against superstition. Many customers were stockbrokers, advertising executives or politicians, dealing with issues whose outcomes couldn’t be controlled. It’s uncertainty that drives people into woo, not stupidity, so I’m not surprised millennials are into astrology. They grew up with Harry Potter and graduated into a precarious economy, making them the ideal customers.

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Some repeat customers claimed I’d made very specific predictions, of a kind I never made. It dawned on me that my readings were a co-creation – I would weave a story and, later, the customer’s memory would add new elements. I got to test this theory after a friend raved about a reading she’d had, full of astonishingly accurate predictions. She had a tape of the session, so I asked her to play it.

The clairvoyant had said none of the things my friend claimed. Not a single one. My friend’s imagination had done all the work.

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And my favourite:
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I can still make the odd forecast, though. Here’s one: the venture capital pouring into astrology apps will create a fortune telling system that works, because humans are predictable. As people follow the advice, the apps’ predictive powers will increase, creating an ever-tighter electronic leash. But they’ll be hugely popular – because if you sprinkle magic on top, you can sell people anything.

Replies

Dave wrote:

It was an inspired move when they switched to the more enigmatic “Are we evil?”

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Dave

I’ve been watching some wildlife documentaries on youtube and god, nature is brutal. I can’t stand watching some of this stuff, there was a bit with a young seal whose mom had just been devoured by orcas and who was basically abandoned to die by the rest of the seals who didn’t want to adopt him. Fuck seals!

 

I always wonder about what animals think. For instance, would that baby seal know he was going to die? I wonder how unique humans are – if we are – in their experience of the life cycle, the anticipation of death, the meaning of life etc. When I look in the eyes of my neighbor’s cat it seems he must be very wise, very stoic. But in all likelihood he is just waiting for me to give him some yoghurt.

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Christian, Rocket, njerry, DavidM

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Why do we expect every child star to become a trainwreck?

https://www.intheknow.com/post/child-star-toddler-to-trainwreck-explained/

JRCarter wrote:

Why do we expect every child star to become a trainwreck? https://www.intheknow.com/post/child-star-toddler-to-trainwreck-explained/%5B/quote%5D
That is interesting. I think the major point is that it is child labor that is fairly unregulated.

At the same time, I’d like to see more stats. Naturally, the first question is if you isolate the group of all child performers, do they show any greater risk for negative outcomes than teens in general? There are obviously a lot of child performers and most will not choose to continue performing as a career. Just as there are a lot of children athletes that do not continue after high school or into college – even if they are champions.

Also, we mainly hear about the disasters or catastrophic outcomes for child stars because they are stars. They are in the news. However, the vast majority of teens that suffer drug addiction, abuse or suicide are not child actors or musicians. So, would a more general approach be more beneficial than focusing on this small group?

 

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JRCarter, Rocket, Christian

Wittgenstein, who is the most influential philosopher in my eyes, once wrote “about that which one cannot speak, one must remain silent.” However, what he meant was about which one cannot speak “sensibly.”

Unfortunately, as he acknowledged, the only things that concern people day and night are those about which we cannot speak sensibly.

So we are doomed to obsess over experiences that we cannot sensibly, or rationally, express. Something that Camus or Kafka, close seconds to Wittgenstein, might call the kernel of absurdity.

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DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

Wittgenstein, who is the most influential philosopher in my eyes, once wrote “about that which one cannot speak, one must remain silent.” However, what he meant was about which one cannot speak “sensibly.”

That seems a pretty arbitrary restriction. Should we be silent about emotion, or confusion? Why?

 

Take two people – one says “I love you” to the other and the other responds, “no, you do not love me.” There is no sensible argument either could make to definitively prove their statement to the other person or conclusively disprove the others’ statement. So there would be nothing gained discussing it except to further confuse the situation.

It’s not that people cannot love each other, but that love cannot be explained or demonstrated verbally. People could try to point to examples of “love” but really those examples are actually descriptions of events rather than about love itself, which is the response he came up with to the Socratic method.

In his eyes, philosophy was essentially eaten up with disorders from the misuse of language. In Plato’s REPUBLIC, Socrates asks what is “Justice” and people give him examples that he refutes, but for Wittgenstein, that was like going up to a person playing chess, pointing to a knight on the board and asking “what is a knight?” The player would demonstrate how a knight can move on the board, capture pieces or be captured, and that would explain it.

Then, if Socrates was the questioner, he would pick the knight up from the board hold it in the air and ask “yes, but what is a knight?” as if he just asked something profound. But there is no sensible answer to that question. The piece only means anything in context of the game.

We all have probably known people like that, and you can probably see why the Athenians asked Socrates to drink poison.

Socrates’s method of questioning justice presupposed that there is some sort of specific meaning or ideal concept that actually exists in some defined or at least definable form, when there is no reason to suppose such a ridiculous thing. It was a word invented and agreed upon to describe events or actions that have what Wittgenstein called “a family resemblance.” No one could give a comprehensive definition of justice or love or divinity, but everyone knows what you mean by it and can provide examples of what they mean when they use it in context.

So, in that sense, Wittgenstein was more about taking action – being just, merciful or loving – rather than tying yourself in knots trying to understand things that have no meaning except in action.

 

 

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DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

We all have probably known people like that, and you can probably see why the Athenians asked Socrates to drink poison.

Ha!

You can’t use language to give a perfect definition of anything, probably. Except (maybe) some mathematical concepts.

 

For instance, you can’t prove love or give a perfect description of what is is, but you can legitimately speak about it in a way that makes sense to yourself and others.

 

About taking action: I am not sure that is always preferable to talking or thinking. I had a tai chi teacher who always said when you’re not sure what to do, don’t do anything. Just relax.

Anonymous wrote:

For instance, you can’t prove love or give a perfect description of what is is, but you can legitimately speak about it in a way that makes sense to yourself and others.

True – but to what point exactly? You can’t really speak about these sorts of things in a way that is divorced from a context where they are actively operating. To do so is insensible.

You can claim a certain event or outcome is unjust without having to provide or get into a detailed explanation of what justice “is,” for example. The caution here is that it is very easy to derail sense into nonsense by picking away at the conventions of language. By discussing the pieces separate from the board, so to speak.

 

Anonymous wrote:

You can’t really speak about these sorts of things in a way that is divorced from a context where they are actively operating. To do so is insensible.

It may be insensible, but it can still be worthwhile. Why does everything have to be sensible?

 

Like I said language is imperfect in this regard, but it is still a good tool to communicate feelings, vague ideas, etc. Language is to a large extent a creative thing, not a mathematically precise tool to describe reality.

I think it was the ancient Taoists who said to the effect that when trying to articulate or describe emotions that all the words are wrong.

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Sensible simply means that the person you’re talking to should understand what you’re saying in the context of your conversation. So, in that context everything should be sensible. I don’t think anyone would say, every so often you should strive to make no sense when you are talking to someone or writing them a letter. Just to, you know, punch things up a bit.

However, it starts to break down when people – especially philosophers – begin to examine ideas either devoid of any context or misapplying their approach as if the idea has properties that below to things in other categories outside any sensible context. Like “existence” or the “self” as if these things have any meaning separate from specific circumstances where they are used in context that can be extrapolated generally.

Questions like “what is existence?” or “does the self exist?” are inherently pointless not simply because there is no answer to them but they are senseless to the extent that any answer is equally valid or more to the point equally senseless. It’s not like there is an answer but it cannot be put into words, but that the words themselves don’t have any innate meaning other than to facilitate conversation about specific experiences in a limited setting.

This seems appropriate:

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Anonymous wrote:

Sensible simply means that the person you’re talking to should understand what you’re saying in the context of your conversation. So, in that context everything should be sensible.

If sensible means intelligible, then philosophers should be the first to shut up.

 

I think there’s a problem that runs through Western philosophy, that everything has to be cold hard Logos. To the extent that people like Aquinas tried to prove God. I don’t think the ancient Chinese philosophers tried to prove the Dao.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I think there’s a problem that runs through Western philosophy, that everything has to be cold hard Logos. To the extent that people like Aquinas tried to prove God. I don’t think the ancient Chinese philosophers tried to prove the Dao.

That’s very true. “The Map is not the territory” is a common phrase from the 60’s when it became clear that language is limited and those limitations are necessary to make it useful and at the same time also mean that a great deal of human experience cannot be precisely written down or spoken about. Most arguments about the proof of God ended up being circular – essentially “God is because God is.” Similarly, Descartes “I think, therefore I am” is circular in the end because it makes no more sense than saying “I am, therefore I think.” The error is that all arguments presuppose some sort of essential nature to what are contingent terms – like existence and thought. There are just signposts point vaguely at a variety of similar experiences. You don’t “exist” outside of some specific experience you’re having any more than you can simply think exclusive of whatever you are thinking about at the moment.

If a map was a perfect representation of the land it mapped, it would not be useful because it would have too much detail to decipher. Language equally eliminates everything that cannot be communicated. At the same time, various works of art and poetry can “say” things about human experience that cannot be summed up precisely in words as well. Like the old phrase, “if you have to explain a joke, then it isn’t funny.” More to the point, a joke has an effect that can’t actually be explained effectively.

Wittgenstein has an enigmatic quote attributed to him and it appears in his notebooks collected as the philosophical investigations:

“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.“

It’s not easily explained – like a joke or riddle – but essentially the idea is that even though scientific study can explain a lot about the way the world works – including human minds, society and bodies – and expands the ability people have to influence or direct their environment, this knowledge doesn’t provide any guidance on what people should do or why. Those questions can’t really be asked in any scientific way, so experiencing and taking action in life is really the only way to examine it rather than trying to write a philosophical system as a kind of guidebook for it.

In a microcosm of this, I remember listening to a report that found for most corporations, Tuesday was the most productive day of the week. Primarily, this was attributed to the fact that Mondays were usually filled with weekly meetings and meetings are not productive. People don’t do any direct work on the business – they aren’t on the factory floor or at their desks making calls or sales – though the planning in the meetings will influence what is being produced or sold.

So, it’s good to have a plan, but like Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

 

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Rocket, JRCarter, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

So, it’s good to have a plan, but like Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” ― Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

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Rocket, JRCarter

I had a real a-ha moment today. Time for a new me, I think. Also there’s a really awesome thunderstorm out right now, and thunderstorms mark special occasions.

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njerry, Todd

I was watching something that talked about the universe possibly being a “simulation” run on a supercomputer in another continuum, and it said maybe our reality wasn’t “real”. But that is stupid isn’t it? Even if it is a simulation of some kind that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Everything that exists is real.

 

I am not sure if the simulation hypothesis is the same as solipsism. Solipsism is basically saying only our own consciousness really exists and all we experience, including out interactions with other beings, is a kind of emanation of the self. Obviously consciousness is real, so does the simulation produce several different conscious observers, or is there just one? I think it is a kind of psychopathic philosophy that states other people aren’t “real”.

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Rocket, Todd

Whoah!

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DavidM, Christian, njerry, Dave

Lamps and lights in video games run on real electricity.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I had a real a-ha moment today. Time for a new me, I think. Also there’s a really awesome thunderstorm out right now, and thunderstorms mark special occasions.

Now I’m seeing you go “a-HA!” against the background of a thunderstorm and a lightning strike.

You haven’t turned into a supervillain, Arjan, have you?

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Rocket

Christian wrote:

Now I’m seeing you go “a-HA!” against the background of a thunderstorm and a lightning strike.

Haha yep it sounds a bit dramatic.

 

I saw something in the mall here which made me feel sad and I felt determined never to be like that. It felt like a kind of turning point. Under other circumstances I could end up like that.

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Rocket, Todd, Christian

I know how you feel Arjan. I’ve seen guys like that and hoped I never end up like that. My strategy is to make sure I keep in contact with the people in my life. Talk to them when you don’t need to so they don’t think that you just view them as tools and only good when I need something. Yesterday I went out to dinner with my cousin. I was not thrilled about the restaurant but I had not seen her in a couple of weeks and need to say Yes more often than No.

 

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njerry

Has anyone watched the latest thing by Adam Curtis, Can’t Get you Out of My Head? I thought it was interesting, although it is very long winded. It’s really all about surveillance and AI and ways to control humans. It already seems terribly out of date though, not mentioning the covid stuff.

 

I’m thinking about going vegetarian, but it is tough. I like meat too much. I have bought organic meat, lately, so I get the feeling that those animals had an OK life, but it is damn expensive. Weird in a way, that trying to do good (eating organic meat)  rather thna evil (buying factory farm meat) comes with a monetary penalty.

[njerry]

Anonymous wrote:

Weird in a way, that trying to do good (eating organic meat) rather thna evil (buying factory farm meat) comes with a monetary penalty.

Not really weird, when you consider that the meat-factory option involves cost-cutting measures that require creating horrible conditions for the animals involved. It’s the equivalent of historically turning a blind eye to slavery because we wanted inexpensive cotton and tobacco, or the modern example of ignoring the abuse of Southeast Asian child labor so that we can afford to buy the latest Nike sneakers.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by njerry.

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle

True but it goes against the feeling that there should be a reward for virtuous action. You want to do good but the only consequence you experience is your wallet getting lighter.

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DavidM

We’re living in a weird world where only rich people can afford ethics.

Governments can levy penalties on corporations that do harm to the environment — fines on carbon emissions for example. If they did the same to corporations that factory-farm animals, that might go some way to making ethical farming more cost effective. But that’s the only way it’s ever going to happen, because otherwise our society is set up to require things as cheaply as possible.

 

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Todd

[njerry]

The most obvious solution is to penalize those corporations and individuals that do harm to the environment, while simultaneously offering incentives/subsidies to those that take steps to benefit or heal the environment, as a way to balance out the costs of doing business. But it’s also obvious that such a solution is at odds with the desires of the heads of those large harmful corporations, so don’t hold your breath.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by njerry.

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Todd

I don’t think that would actually work as it rests on the entirely unfounded premise that the material production of our civilization can ever be environmentally sound. Economically, the reason that these companies may be harming the environment is for profit, but at heart that hinges upon the ability to profit from meeting the demand — and the demand is coming from us. Practically all of us want “affordable” food, phones, clothes, cars, energy and fuel. By affordable, though, we really mean cheap and if companies were regulated with a focus on environmental concerns then no one would be making any money and no would would be getting all this cheap stuff — some of that stuff being food, clothing and shelter — and no one would have a job. The demand is based on the price so as long as it remains cheap then there is an economy, but that demand will fairly quickly evaporate once whatever the thing is – your smartphone, this computer, that cup of coffee – that is on the market actually has to cost as much as it would need to to offset the ethical and environmental damage.

The regulators know this so there is a kind of three card monte scam where they don’t actually put regulations in place that they know would kill an industry and the industry leaders are happy to pay fines for what regulations are in place as a cost of doing business. So the enforcement teams – very well-intentioned and dedicated people probably – can be very active seeking out infractions and levying fines, but even if the companies were all completely in compliance, it is still incredibly bad for the environment and that doesn’t even include the many nations that basically have no real environmental regulations on their industries.

Even then, when you look at the actual people and organizations in charge of maintaining and helping the natural environment – again, very dedicated and well-intentioned people – they will tell you that many of the problems they are dealing with in the wilderness and oceans, lakes, rivers, rain forests emerged from conservation policies in the past that had devastating unintended consequences.  Often, we just don’t know what is the right thing to do for the environment, and whatever we try to do can just screw it up worse than what the corporations are doing to it.

We’ve got laws coming that could do something about factory farming here, but I think there is nothing that prevents supermarkets from buying their meat in countries that don’t have those laws.

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Yes, that’s a headache and laws can always be changed or simply not enforced whenever a new government takes over after elections. Like with just about everything, laws only work if the behavior and attitudes of the population is already aligned with them. Prohibition is the prime historic example.

Honestly, the most effective responses to environmental costs have come from the private sector. I once interviewed David Attenborough and he talked about a large part of conservation was working with the corporations as “the boardrooms of these companies are filled with human beings that have children and grandchildren and they do not want to be the people responsible for leaving behind a ruined world.” Over the years, reduction in carbon and hydrocarbon pollution has been due to technological innovations and efficient practices that emerged from private industry rather than regulations.

I’m actually interested in seeing what comes out of the pandemic as far as its impact on slowing down the world AND providing so much use of virtual communications systems like Zoom or MS Teams in place of actual physical travel. The entire airline industry is based on environmentally unsound principles, but so are most of our transportation systems whether moving people or products. Replacing physical travel with electronic communications would be a big change and then replacing fossil fuel generation of electricity with nuclear or solar or some other non-polluting source would have greater impact.

At the same time, it’s a complex system so we can’t really predict what that impact will be or that it will be entirely positive. Essentially, the environment is not a machine. There can be no 1 to 1 response to any change we make. At this point, rather than taking action, I think we should be using our expanded data processing capabilities to just get a clear picture of what is actually happening.

I guess this ties into the “consumerism” discussion we had a while ago. I think consumerism can actually be part of the solution, if people derive satisfaction from consuming ethical products. Maybe we need some kind of enlightenment, where people realize they don’t want their pleasures come at the cost of suffering by others.

 

The horror scenario I envision with that travelling thing you mention is where an upper class can still fly and travel the world despite high prices and the proles have to stay home in their pod apartments, isolated and deracinated. I want people to travel, see the planet and meet other people in the flesh. People should be able to fly to the other side of the globe. I dread a future where meeting people is commodified by zoom (justified by climate concerns). I have a fiery seething hatred for people who say corona lockdowns aren’t a big thing because you can see other people’s faces on your computer or iphone. We should be able to go to other people, and hug them.

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Anonymous wrote:

We’ve got laws coming that could do something about factory farming here, but I think there is nothing that prevents supermarkets from buying their meat in countries that don’t have those laws.

I think there is something. It’s called “the EU”.

Which is why one immediate fallout from Brexit for us was “Now we can buy cheap crap from the USA!”

 

 

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Rocket, lorcan_nagle, Todd

DavidM wrote:

Which is why one immediate fallout from Brexit for us was “Now we can buy cheap crap from the USA!”

That’s what we’re good at! Cheap, cheap crap!

Honestly, so much of the stuff produced today is just astonishing in how low quality it really is…

Interesting video on the first “planned” city of the Soviet Era. Probably not the first planned city in history, but certainly in the modern era. The interesting bit of trivia was that it was based on Gary, Indiana. Like one of the comments points out:

“Who would name a city Gary? And who would model a city after a city named Gary?”

(honestly, Gary is not a bad city nowadays. Like Pittsburgh, once the steel industry collapsed, it had a kind of renaissance unlike places like Flint and Detroit)

Anonymous wrote:

“Who would name a city Gary? And who would model a city after a city named Gary?”

True. We all know that cities need to be named Danny.

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Todd

It is a solid name.

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Christian

Magnitogorsk literally means Magnet Mountain.

 

And no it’s not the first planned city, there have always been planned cities. I think Chang’an the ancient Chinese capital was planned. And Kyoto. Most cities are planned to some extent, Amsterdam’s ring of canals was also planned.

 

Grachtengordel – Wikipedia

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Christian wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

“Who would name a city Gary? And who would model a city after a city named Gary?”

True. We all know that cities need to be named Danny.

I thought that’s what you named streets?

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Uncle Retrospective, Christian, Rocket

Streets can grow.

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Uncle Retrospective, Rocket, Dave, Todd, Daniel R

 https://youtu.be/Li_MGFRNqOE

 

“When a whale is worth more as whale oil than a whale…”

“When a tree is worth more as a bunch of 2×4’s than a tree…”

“Realize, with social media, the user’s mind IS the product…”

Are you your “likes?”

 

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Todd

 

Anonymous wrote:

 

Fun fact: Tolstoy froze to death fleeing from his wife.

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There is an interesting movie about that called The Last Station.

Apparently, the last novel he was reading before he died was Dostoevsky’s THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Tolstoy never met Dostoevsky in person, but he and his wife were friends with Dostoevsky’s wife strangely.

The Brothers Karamazov is something everybody should read. Other things by Dostoyevsky that I’ve read were a lot worse though. I absolutely couldn’t get through Notes from the Underground, but maybe that was partially because the translation was bad.

 

Chekhov, Lermontov and Gogol are also great. Though I never got to read anything by Tolstoy.

 

 

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I got into Dostoevsky’s THE IDIOT and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Tolstoy has a lot to recommend as well, though some volumes are dangerous in the sense that you could injure yourself with them.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a good one to get into, though. However, I do find Tolstoy’s theory of history compelling. He believed that “world historic” figures like Napoleon in his time or we might point to Stalin or Hitler or Trump today actually have little to do with the direction of history which is really made up of millions of individual actions that build up to move the mass of humanity in a direction. It’s at the core of WAR & PEACE as he often shows that Napoleon’s orders could not have possibly had a direct influence on the battle as he received his reports with a delay and then sent orders that his commanders ignored because they came based on old information. Meanwhile, his opponent, the Russian general Kutuzov (a real person in history, like Napoleon) essentially let matters take their own course and letting the people under him fight as they see fit.

History – or more directly historians – are like people watching a surfer on a wave and get the sense that she is moving, but in truth it is the wave that is moving and the surfer is mostly trying to stand still and not fall off the board. There is an exchange in Cloud Atlas that feels inspired by Tolstoy:

Haskell Moore: No matter what you do it will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean.

Adam Ewing: What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?

As Nabokov points out in his lectures on Russian Literature, it really refers to a period from the middle of the 1800’s to the Russian revolution and ends with the Soviet era. Compared to French, American and English literature, it is very short and small, so the fascination is with how it produced masterpieces that equal or excel all the many more masterpieces from other cultures and languages when it barely had a culture of its own — and even then, Russia almost completely created an entirely new culture around the same time this literature was produced.

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njerry

Anonymous wrote:

I got into Dostoevsky’s THE IDIOT and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

I couldn’t get through the Idiot. It just didn’t grab me and I put it back on the shelf. I haven’t tried Crime and Punishment yet but it is definitely on the must-read list.

 

You should really try the Brothers Karamazov, it’s right up your alley. I think it could be the deepest philosophical novel ever written. I’m not sure if you’re an Alyosha or an Ivan.

 

I think there might be historical reasons for why Russian literature bloomed up like that. There was a lot of cultural ferment, Russia had gained a lot of teritory in the 18th century, it had built Saint Petersburg as their brand new capital and opened up to the world.

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The only Dostoevsky I have read was Crime and Punishment, and that was years ago. I thought it was excellent (even though it ripped off every episode of Columbo ever ) and always intend to read more but never got around to it.

Never read Tolstoy. Tried Chekov and found it a bit of a grind.

Really like Russian metal bands though

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Chekhov is probably the lightest of the Russian authors, but he can pilot the hell out of a starship!

No matter what anyone tells you about how secretly dramatic they are, 90% of the time his plays are torture for an audience while actors just love acting in them (and torturing an audience with them). It really takes a strong production to make them worth seeing.

In that regard though, the movie VANYA ON 42nd STREET is worth the time, but it has a cast that you’d enjoy watching no matter what they did.

On the other hand, this one has a terrific cast too, but — though it may be unkind to say — I’d rather eat glass than see it.

Anonymous wrote:

I think there might be historical reasons for why Russian literature bloomed up like that. There was a lot of cultural ferment, Russia had gained a lot of teritory in the 18th century, it had built Saint Petersburg as their brand new capital and opened up to the world.

Essentially, Russian society, dominated by the aristocracy and a growing bourgeoisie, was in the process of completely reinventing itself, and quite literally and intentionally, the upper class was trying to turn itself French. They spoke French in conversation and read a lot of French literature (and German too naturally as it was in the way to France). As a result, writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky not only had a lot to say, but they also now had the means and models to follow to say it. They were handed a medium – literature – that had been developed over centuries to communicate their ideas from a very dynamic and dramatic perspective.

A lot of this was driven by the censorship of a Tsar who was not really smart enough to grasp all the concepts in their writing and their writing in many ways improved as they found ways to write what they wanted and get past the stupidity of the censors and the Tsar.

All that ended with communism though, as those censors not only were much smarter than the Tsarists but they also told writers exactly what to say.

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DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

Chekhov is probably the lightest of the Russian authors, but he can pilot the hell out of a starship!

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I always thought Sulu was the pilot and Chekhov was the navigator

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The Russians also have some great poets, and the two greatest are two women, Anna Akhmatova and the best, Marina Tsvetayeva.

I think in Russian society, poetry was held in higher regard than prose as well. Naturally, and I think this is true generally, translating poems from any language into English flattens them out since the choice of words and sound of the words is a great deal more important in poetry than fiction. Russia’s literature was always a bit eccentric compared to Western Europe as well. Tolstoy wrote two of the greatest novels in history, but he really only considered ANNA KARININA a novel while he thought of WAR AND PEACE as not quite anything specific, novel or epic or poem. Most Russian writers were not quite comfortably with the brevity of a short story or the full length of a novel and really mastered the novella form.

The Salem witch trials portion of the video is interesting and this longer video goes into even more details that can essentially be introduced with “everything you think you know about the New England Witch Trials is wrong!”

When you really look at the history of the Witch mania in colonial America, it really makes the depiction of it in fiction – especially in the Conjuring film series – a little distasteful. Especially when the people who actually condemned people for witchcraft very soon after recanted their sentences and nearly everyone involved completely repudiated the idea that any witches even existed within a few years of the trials.

The Man Behind Critical Race Theory

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory

In Islamic thought Ibn Arabi is an interesting figure. In religion recently I feel myself drawn to Islam, and Ibn Arabi wrote great poetry.

 

Weird how life goes. I used to be the staunchest atheist, but now I feel the world makes more sense as a spiritual struggle between good and evil.

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Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

In Islamic thought Ibn Arabi is an interesting figure. In religion recently I feel myself drawn to Islam, and Ibn Arabi wrote great poetry.   Weird how life goes. I used to be the staunchest atheist, but now I feel the world makes more sense as a spiritual struggle between good and evil.

Yes, though I think it manifests mostly as the struggle to not do evil more that between good and evil. It is hard to think of them as objective objects in the world any more than it is to conceive of a God that is separate from existence but influencing it.

We were talking about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky above and they had surprisingly similar views on it though it got Tolstoy excommunicated. Nevertheless, his writings specifically about Christianity are compelling as a guide for moral behavior. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche had similar views of the world but came to completely opposite conclusions. For Nietzsche, pity was the worst thing in the world and for Dostoevsky, it was the only thing that made a person human.

No person is entirely good or evil and no action or event or idea is entirely good or evil either. Vonnegut would ask whether it is humane. “We are healthy only to the extent our ideas are humane.”

In our world, it is intensely difficult to be humane. We look at other nations like Russia, China and Iran and think those places are obvious tyrannical or dystopic, but no doubt the people there look at America and think exactly the same thing. We look at how they treat their people, but really the vast majority of Russians and Chinese live very similar lives to our own. The people they persecute are their minorities, so if we looked at our own countries from the perspective of our minorities, we would likely (and we do, to be honest) see the same accusations of injustice and mistreatment.

“It is slavery, for slavery is nothing else than the utilization of the labor of some for the enjoyment of others. That slavery may not exist people must refuse to enjoy the labor of others, and look upon it as a shameful act and as a sin.”

–Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata

We can’t blame our leaders for making war or committing mass murder or torture when, really, they aren’t the ones carrying out the orders. As long as people just like us are willing to be soldiers, we can’t simply blame the generals. As long as there are people – just like us – willing to torture in black site prisons, we can’t simply blame the C.I.A. Anyone could be that person. Until it is impossible for any individual human to commit inhumane acts, then we’re all guilty.

I think that realization and its growth in humanity may be the first step toward a more humane world as well.

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Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

No person is entirely good or evil and no action or event or idea is entirely good or evil either. Vonnegut would ask whether it is humane. “We are healthy only to the extent our ideas are humane.”

I think people are fundamentally good, but we’re easily seduced or manipulated by evil. There are people who can be coerced to hurt others, like for monetary reward or they can be made to demonize others because they’re told it will benefit society to do so. I agree hobody is completely evil (except maybe some psychopaths) it’s more like we can become possessed by it.

 

As it is however we’re up against great metaphysical evil.

Anonymous wrote:

As it is however we’re up against great metaphysical evil.

I’m not sure how metaphysical evil or good actually is. Again, it is difficult because we live in a world where good is best defined as the absence of evil and happiness is the absence of misfortune. Perhaps not impossible, it’s really difficult to find cases where happiness is a positive, definable thing while let’s say the doctors find a lump in your wife’s breast. The misery that results is very definite and identifiable. Then, when it turns out the lump is a benign cyst, the happiness that follows is a result of it not being the terrifying thing that it could have been. And that elation is far more impactful and intense that the satisfaction of any direct want or desire.

No matter what evil is inflicted on masses of people, it is actually not a vast monstrous single thing. Hurricanes and other disasters affect millions of people, but it’s many individual tragedies that make that up. Just as with mass incarceration or genocide. It’s not a mass entity of evil inflicting misery on a homogenous group of unfortunates. It’s many, many individuals committing inhumane acts on many other individuals with each case being very specific.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I’m not sure how metaphysical evil or good actually is. Again, it is difficult because we live in a world where good is best defined as the absence of evil and happiness is the absence of misfortune. Perhaps not impossible, it’s really difficult to find cases where happiness is a positive, definable thing while let’s say the doctors find a lump in your wife’s breast. The misery that results is very definite and identifiable. Then, when it turns out the lump is a benign cyst, the happiness that follows is a result of it not being the terrifying thing that it could have been. And that elation is far more impactful and intense that the satisfaction of any direct want or desire.

No matter what evil is inflicted on masses of people, it is actually not a vast monstrous single thing. Hurricanes and other disasters affect millions of people, but it’s many individual tragedies that make that up. Just as with mass incarceration or genocide. It’s not a mass entity of evil inflicting misery on a homogenous group of unfortunates. It’s many, many individuals committing inhumane acts on many other individuals with each case being very specific.

Well it’s not like an evil cloud hanging over our heads, it’s people doing evil things. But I don’t really accept that good and evil are just impulses in the brain, atoms bumping into each other creating various morally neutral phenomena. It’s an impulse to hurt, to distort, to destroy, to enslave.

 

I kind of like Islam better in some ways than Christianity, with its command to fight evil, rather than Christian non-resistance to it.

Anonymous wrote:

Well it’s not like an evil cloud hanging over our heads, it’s people doing evil things. But I don’t really accept that good and evil are just impulses in the brain, atoms bumping into each other creating various morally neutral phenomena. It’s an impulse to hurt, to distort, to destroy, to enslave.

Still, it really doesn’t matter if they are just chemical reactions in the organism or some metaphysical force. Either way, they are forces outside the control of the conscious human individual. There are no free decisions. The people committing evil rationally don’t see it as inhumane and, most importantly, they don’t consider alternatives to be more humane. Those people committing irrational evil – psychopaths – obviously are not in control of their actions almost by definition.

We’re doomed to commit various evils and eventually to perish to evil.

Anonymous wrote:

I kind of like Islam better in some ways than Christianity, with its command to fight evil, rather than Christian non-resistance to it.

In the end, though, neither approach has had significantly better or worse results. Nor have any entirely secular or rational ideologies when applied to a mass of people.

There is a problem in the idea that it’s just atoms I think. If it is just atoms, life is irrelevant, or at least not more relevant than a mineral or bunch of air. Human suffering becomes irrelevant, it is just impulses in the brain. I think we do have some kind of urge towards goodness.

 

Of course all religions have pretty bad track records when you look how the institutions behaved throughout history, I just like some of the stuff I’ve been reading about Islam. I’m not going to convert anytime soon, but it is stimulating the brain cells. There is a sufi house near here that I might visit sometime.

Anonymous wrote:

There is a problem in the idea that it’s just atoms I think. If it is just atoms, life is irrelevant, or at least not more relevant than a mineral or bunch of air. Human suffering becomes irrelevant, it is just impulses in the brain. I think we do have some kind of urge towards goodness.

However, the assertion that it would mean life is irrelevant is not an argument against or in any way disproves materialism. Life obviously is irrelevant to the matter and energy in the universe. An avalanche doesn’t feel sorry for the skiers it crushes and smothers. By all available evidence, the only thing in the entire universe for whom life is relevant are the living trapped in it, and that is very conditional considering how irrelevant other people’s lives are to us.

Again, if there is more to our existence than the material framework and our subjective experience within it, then how does that immaterial structure convey any more useful relevance to our existence – individually or universally? If there are gods or spirits or souls, we didn’t choose that or the many convoluted theological and spiritual conditions that emerge from all these metaphysical constructs any more than we chose to be made of atoms and exist in a universe of matter and energy.

Essentially, neither belief that the world is entirely material or that there is a divine structure conveys a better practical perspective on how to be a good person or avoid evil. Obviously, since we are in a material world, knowledge of it can be useful, but it won’t tell you what to do or what is the right thing to do. Similarly, a spiritual framework obviously doesn’t supply any more useful wisdom in the daily activities of a person’s life. In the end, whether you believe life is relevant or significant to a higher power or that it isn’t, you’re still stuck in the same place when it comes to actually living it. No one knows if they are doing the “right” thing or not.

However, a belief in a higher power does come with the benefit that you can justify just about anything you do or is done to you is part of some mysterious but ultimately beneficial plan.

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Todd

I never trust atoms; they make up everything.

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njerry wrote:

I never trust atoms; they make up everything.

I don’t like being around electrons. They’re always negative.

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njerry

Anonymous wrote:

that is very conditional considering how irrelevant other people’s lives are to us.

Is that true though? Everybody I know has an immense respect for life. I think it’s often just the practicalities, how we think things need to be solved, where people differ. (And those differences get exploited by leaders and ideologues who want people divided and fighting eachother.)

Anonymous wrote:

Is that true though? Everybody I know has an immense respect for life. I think it’s often just the practicalities, how we think things need to be solved, where people differ. (And those differences get exploited by leaders and ideologues who want people divided and fighting eachother.)

If everyone really has an immense respect for other people’s lives then why so much murder, war, homelessness, imprisonment, crime, etc.?

What good is an immense respect for life anyway if those same people don’t really behave in a way that actually values other people’s lives outside of their own? Again, it’s not the leaders causing the divisions and fighting because the individuals following them actually have to do the fighting. There would be no leaders if there weren’t many, many more willing followers. The leaders are leaders because they are already moving in the same direction as the people they lead and telling them what they already want to hear.

Anonymous wrote:

If everyone really has an immense respect for other people’s lives then why so much murder, war, homelessness, imprisonment, crime, etc.?

Well that’s the big question…I think almost all people are basically good, but we get seduced into giving in to evil, for instance because propaganda tells us it will serve a good purpose.

 

I am not really denying there is a lot of evil around, like I said I think we’re up against great evil. And I have a suspicion part of the answer is seeing life as extraordinary, more than just meaningless physical phenomena.

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Todd wrote:

njerry wrote:

I never trust atoms; they make up everything.

I don’t like being around electrons. They’re always negative.

I’m positive I lost some of my electrons the other day.

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Anonymous wrote:

Well that’s the big question…I think almost all people are basically good, but we get seduced into giving in to evil, for instance because propaganda tells us it will serve a good purpose.   I am not really denying there is a lot of evil around, like I said I think we’re up against great evil. And I have a suspicion part of the answer is seeing life as extraordinary, more than just meaningless physical phenomena.

I think most people are not really good or actively interested in being or doing good, but mainly want to feel good. In both the sense of not feeling physically or mentally bad. Most people are just naturally and simply looking out for themselves and not actively out to hurt anyone. Most evil actions result from the same desires of looking out for yourself.

However, I haven’t really seen any evidence that belief in a meaningful life actually contributes greatly to the good and happiness in the world. It may give the person some relief but only if they don’t examine it too much. Essentially, the idea that there is a higher purpose or benevolent meaning to all the mess of obviously meaningless suffering all around us just seems absurd if you follow it. It’s like a universe designed by the Joker.

It seems clear that most spiritual beliefs are simply designed to relieve tension. I recall reading in one book on the origins of religion about a tribe of people (in the Arctic, I believe) that suffered seasonal winds that were simply brutal. They formed a ritual to fight the wind spirits by going out, baring their asses and farting into the wind. Crazy right? However, what did it accomplish? Rather than suffering inside and taking all that tension out on each other, they went out together as a community and released all that tension in the best way they could think of. So it built up the connections between the community and made everybody feel better though it did squat to stop the wind.

You see that all over anthropology with things like rain dances or ghost dances or any number of folk rituals that have no magical effect but, again, make people feel like they are doing something against something that cannot practically be dealt with.

However, the real problem that people have contended with from the beginning of the modern age at least but honestly all the way back as far as we know is not how to find the meaning of life, or even how to be happy, but how to be and do good in a world that obviously has no essential meaning or purpose.

If you found out that you were actually a character in a book or novel or some sort of simulated fictional game even and were created for the pleasure of not even the creators of the game or novel, but for the many many readers or players who had nothing to do with the creation of your entire existence, well, you would absolutely know the meaning of life and your place in the universe. All the evil that is done to you and that you do is just part of the drama for the entertainment of unknowable entities that are so separate from our reality that they can’t even be said to exist and we certainly wouldn’t “really” exist in their world either.

So, there you go – you now have a life with a definite purpose or meaning, but how does it help you live?

Isn’t that the plot of Free Guy that Ryan Reynolds movie?

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And for THE ILIAD, if you think about it.

Well it’s been generally my experience people do care and want to help others. Reading tip: Humankind: A hopeful history by Rutger Bregman. It debunks some old research that painted human beings in a bad light, like the Stanford prison experiment and Milgram’s shock experiment. And gives other examples of why people can turn out to be better than we expect.

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Todd

Yeah, but we’re all commoners. Get some wealth and power and then see how you and your peers behave.

Reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines. “How do you think they made all that money — by doing good?”

It’s not that people are good or evil but that we are all capable of either. There is no one in the world that’s done anything monstrous or heroic that any one of us is incapable of also doing in the same circumstances. It’s just that our world seems to reward vicious and brutal behavior and punish the selfless.

how many scam calls do you get every week? Have you ever had your credit card stolen or an account hacked? I’m solidly lower middle class and these attacks are a near constant just for the tiny equity I have. Finding an honest contractor to work on my home’s HVAC or do any construction or finding an honest mechanic is like a quest for the Holy Grail in Los Angeles.

However, though they may be doing evil, they aren’t evil people. They have good reason to scam and cheat. Reasons that mean survival for them and their dependents. We’re up to our necks in a malignant world and eventually it will drown us, but we still tread water as long as we can. Mainly, I think we’re used to it, and as a result the little drops of comfort and good feel all that much more important against the ocean of misfortune and ill will.

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Anonymous wrote:

Reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines. “How do you think they made all that money — by doing good?”

I’m not sure the super rich should be envied. I think maybe it is more complicated to lead that type of life. I’m poor for my country’s standards but the life I live is OK I think, except for the stuff I worry about like creeping authoritarianism and hate between different groups in society and some things I tend to obsess about. But I have a home, I have food. Corona really fucked me up though because for my mental health it is important I get out of my house and do things.

 

Anonymous wrote:

Finding an honest contractor to work on my home’s HVAC or do any construction or finding an honest mechanic is like a quest for the Holy Grail in Los Angeles.

 

Don’t you have websites where you can put up reviews for mechanics etc? Usually when I need something I find online some company or product and you can see reviews by other customers so you can filter the bad ones.

 

I live in a rented apartment from the regional housing association, they have to fix shit for free most of the time, at least when something important is broken like the central heating or the plumbing. Small things I have to do myself, but I often have a friend or family taking care of it.

 

Maybe I’m lucky but I’ve never really been scammed. I had one time when I think my email was hacked. That sucked and I had to change that password which I used on a lot of sites

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I’m not sure the super rich should be envied. I think maybe it is more complicated to lead that type of life. I’m poor for my country’s standards but the life I live is OK I think, except for the stuff I worry about like creeping authoritarianism and hate between different groups in society and some things I tend to obsess about. But I have a home, I have food. Corona really fucked me up though because for my mental health it is important I get out of my house and do things.

Don’t buy the hype. It is better to be rich than poor anywhere in the world. Not that it buys happiness. The more you have, the more you have to lose, but also… you have more!

Seriously though, that is sorta what I mean by “we’re used to it.” If it were true that people are basically good, then there is literally no reason anyone in the world should worry about food or housing. But that isn’t even true of just the United States which has acquired and hoarded so much of the wealth of the world. Instead, we feel lucky and we’re expected to feel lucky if we aren’t starving to death in a ditch.

Not to be too depressing or negative, but that’s essentially what I mean as far as the improbability of human goodness and the meaningless conditions of existence in the world. There is all this suffering built in to the way we live that increases into pure misery at the bottom and barely diminishes to mere unhappiness at the very top, and we all know this and experience it, but no one has any idea why it should be this way. Why exactly are we suffering all this and allowing it to be suffered?

As a race of intelligent and aware individuals all experience life together, why are we so needlessly bad?

 

Anonymous wrote:

If it were true that people are basically good, then there is literally no reason anyone in the world should worry about food or housing.

Well I didn’t say people are entirely good, nor that the world is perfect. Like I said, I think it is more like people’s basic nature is good but some are “possessed” by evil. Ideas that are whispered in their ears. In Buddhism, evil is often compared to clouds that obscures the sky. The clear blue sky is still there, you just have to wait for the clouds to pass. The mirror is still the mirror once you clean off the dirt

 

I think overall conditions in poorer countries are getting better. However just because the situation is bad in some places I don’t think you can conclude from that that people are bad. I do think a lot of people care about this kind of stuff, it’s just not easy to fix. And a lot of people give to charities.

I don’t buy the idea that being rich makes you unhappy. Rich people might be unhappy, but I don’t believe it’s ever because they are rich. If it truly is, then there’s a really obvious way to fix it, and plenty of poor people who would be happy to help them fix it.

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DavidM wrote:

I don’t buy the idea that being rich makes you unhappy. Rich people might be unhappy, but I don’t believe it’s ever because they are rich. If it truly is, then there’s a really obvious way to fix it, and plenty of poor people who would be happy to help them fix it.

True, you don’t need money to be unhappy. Life is all you really need.

Seriously, though, money can’t buy happiness, but it does provide a major buffer between you and many of the usual unhappy events.

However, happiness is really impossible to define. There is an interesting saying that goes something like a happy person knows they are happy, but I’m not really sure that’s true. I’m not even sure people know when they are actually unhappy. Happiness is not a identifiable “thing.” We’re focused on some object and either we want to be pursuing the object or we don’t and I think that may determine a sense of happiness.

My grandparents were of the generation of the Great Depression and World War 2, my grandfather was a hobo riding the rails for work and despite the excessive hardships, pretty much all of them and my great aunts and uncles would say they were happier then than they were in the 70’s and 80’s when I was around to talk to them.

Now, they gave several reasons for this – everyone was poor so everyone helped each other out. Crime was down because no one had anything to steal. We all pulled together during the war, but the obvious thing that they didn’t mention was that they were young!

If you go back and read the newpapers and diary and journal entries of people at the time, there is no real sense of great happiness. People were desperate, scared and fighting each other. Even public opinion on World War 2 was divided and often so negative, there was a real risk America would pull out. Hard to say if people were or weren’t happy – I never trust any studies that try to determine that – but they certainly didn’t seem any happier than people are today.

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I think what makes people happy is quite variable. Some people like rest, some people like commotion. Some people like city life, others like a rural life. People can get satisfactions from their job, or from family, friendship, sex, books, movies, pets, food, nature, anything really. What’s important is giving people the tools and the freedom to arrange their lives in a way they like.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

People can get satisfactions from their job, or from family, friendship, sex, books, movies, pets, food, nature, anything really.

And alcohol, cocaine, opioids, gambling. Seems like the overwhelming urge in life is to escape it.

When it comes to alcohol there are huge cultural differences. Mediterranean countries have more moderate drinkers, people who have a few drinks daily but never get really drunk. Whereas in more Northern countries people often binge drink. Northern countries also generally see more drugs use and also psychiatric drug use. I have a suspicion many mental health problems have something to do with living in inhospitable climates.

 

This is also why I’m a bit skeptical of those “happy countries” surveys that always have Nordic countries in the top.

 

 

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Yeah, the deeper question is who exactly are the “happy” people in those studies. Which particular people out of the entire nation are the happiest versus those who are not? Also, can you really trust people to be able to honestly tell you that they are happy?

Whenever I go to Thailand, we meet a lot of farmers and laborers that grow their own food, don’t have a lot and make a little money essentially sharecropping for the land owners in the region. However, they seem a lot happier than the landowners or city workers. It’s mainly that they are at more risk when misfortune occurs like disease or disasters. Nevertheless, they do like to drink from time to time.

This was an interesting video that provides a good counterpoint on the idea that civilization is inherently less violent than prehistoric barbarism.

One interesting element that I think the video touches on but doesn’t explore is the fact that a lot of the statistics on violent deaths among “primitive” societies was actually due to encounters with colonists from “advanced” societies (advanced usually just means “European”). In the United States, Native Americans had never really had a massive destructive war until King Philip’s War in the late 1600’s.

Honestly, just thinking about it before looking at the evidence, warfare would not be a natural impulse in human beings. First, as is often pointed out, humans are actually incredibly social animals even compared to other social species. We are so social, we are able to form bonds and integrate other species tightly into our families and societies. Like someone pointed out before, put ten random chimpanzees or gorillas into an enclosed space for twelve hours and only one or two will come out at the end, but millions of strangers spend thousands of hours cramped into planes every day with hardly any incidents over decades now. We are not as naturally inclined to violence as people might think.

Secondly, in precivilization, human labor is worth a hell of a lot more to any social group than anything that might be acquired in a war. The most valuable thing any individual has in those groups are the other individuals in the group. So, there would be a strong incentive not to risk that in a conflict. This is why in the archeological record, most weapons are actually designed for hunting and not very suitable for battle until well after human settlements and civilization are underway.

Third, obviously, warfare needs an infrastructure. First, you’d need something worth fighting for – and that usually has to be developed land, enslaved labor or tribute and all those would have to be developed by civilization. Second, you’d need the organization to create a military, manufacture weapons and motivate soldiers – and to get all that, you’d need civilization to produce the surplus needed to go to war. A primitive group doesn’t have anything – people or supplies or labor – to spare to make warfare practical.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

This was an interesting video that provides a good counterpoint on the idea that civilization is inherently less violent than prehistoric barbarism.

Pinker is debunked, at least his view on hunter gatherers. Rutger Bregman who I mentioned earlier also thinks he’s wrong.

 

I think if you want to have a way to live the good life, you could do worse than look back at primitive societies, how they lived in harmony with nature. You can idealize this too much, of course there are assholes in any age and problems in primitive society too, but I do believe one of the main evils of our age is losing touch with nature. Of course we can never “go back” to how hunter gatherers lived, but we can glimpse truths about ourselves and modern life from the way they must have lived.

 

Maybe one of the most important things is finding your “tribe”. i think everybody needs a kind of supportive network of family and friends, who can help you when you are in trouble and whom you can help. Primitive societies often were groups of say 15o people max, and you’d know and trust them, and they would trust you and not backstab you. We lost that. We now live in these huge amorphous blobs of people, “societies”, of millions of people who we often can’t trust because we don’t know them. Do you know the IRS employee who checks your tax return? Do I trust the contractor who is going to fix my plumbing? etc. This is a task I set myself lately, to form these types of bonds with the people around me. I am in a meditation group, and I asked some of the people if we could contact each other if there was another lockdown, just give one of them a call if we were in need of something, and that was OK.

 

I’m not a Nietzschean, but I think our idea of “being good” is twisted by Christianity to mean self sacrifice. When I say “most people are good” I don’t mean we are all humble and place other’s interests before ourselves, but rather most people just aim to live a good, happy life, in accordance with our nature, without a desire to cause suffering. We want to be happy, have satisfying lives, and form mutually beneficial bonds with the people around us. In a  community of people you care for, you are happy to lend others your talents to make their lives better as well, but that does not mean you have to make yourself miserable in doing so.

 

I guess what I mean is you gotta fight for your right to party.

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Anonymous wrote:

I think if you want to have a way to live the good life, you could do worse than look back at primitive societies, how they lived in harmony with nature. You can idealize this too much, of course there are assholes in any age and problems in primitive society too, but I do believe one of the main evils of our age is losing touch with nature. Of course we can never “go back” to how hunter gatherers lived, but we can glimpse truths about ourselves and modern life from the way they must have lived.

Hard to say. First, we know almost nothing about the way early humans actually lived in any specific sense because naturally, they were prehistoric. They didn’t leave a lot behind. Second, the little we do know indicates that they certainly didn’t actively live in harmony with nature. There is much evidence that the first thing humans did when they moved to new areas was to set massive fires to burn away the undergrowth so they could more easily move around and hunt.

New evidence suggests humans manipulated their environment with fire thousands of years ago – Geographical Magazine

It was more that they didn’t have a choice but to live in harmony with nature more than it was a principle with them. Not that it’s a bad thing. “Nature” is a human concept in itself.

Anonymous wrote:

Maybe one of the most important things is finding your “tribe”. i think everybody needs a kind of supportive network of family and friends, who can help them when they are in trouble and whom they can help. Primitive societies often were groups of say 15o people max, and you’d know and trust them, and they would trust you and not backstab you. We lost that. We know live in these huge amorphous blobs of people who we often we can’t trust because we don’t know them. Do you know the IRS employee who checks your tax return? etc. This is a task I set myself lately, to form these types of bonds with the people around me. I am in a meditation group, and I asked some of the people if we could contact each other if there was another lockdown, just give one of them a call if we were in need of something, and that was OK.

Of course, a lot of conflict today is “tribal.” It’s what we see in protests and in actual wars between actual tribes in various places throughout the Middle East.

Ironically, the golden age of peace for both the Christian and Muslim world was when conversion was basically enforced and the original ethnic divisions eliminated by religious authority. Then, almost immediately, the uniform religious believers divided up in to various denominations almost along the same old ethnic lines.

I don’t think societies can be good or even that morality can be uniformly good. Respecting women in one culture means letting them work, control their bodies and being involved in politics while the exact same principle in another culture means keeping them at home where they are protected and cherished without having to make money, decide if they want children (of course they do!) or voting. Each cultural value can be equally criticized by the opposing if they only look at the negative outcomes.

Individually, I think the Christian values are actually valuable. Again, the question isn’t how to find meaning or purpose in a world – like Neitzsche’s Will to Power which is no better a guide than an religious teaching – but how to be and do good in a world that by all appearances has no meaning or purpose and offers nothing of the kind. In that sense, a good person does not act out of anger, pride, envy, greed, fear, etc. and does seek love, humility and acceptance of all other human beings. Divorced from the dogma and superstition and organized representatives, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism tend to emerge from the same basic urges that allow people to live with themselves and others peacefully and with the least suffering.

As far as societies, honestly, I can’t see that it matters what the principles are – from democratic to anarchist to authoritarian to totalitarian – as long as everyone agrees to abide by them and they are applied fairly to every individual in the society. This latter part is crucial as very few societies are able to hold each member equally accountable and almost always some hierarchy and exalted minority arises.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Ironically, the golden age of peace for both the Christian and Muslim world was when conversion was basically enforced and the original ethnic divisions eliminated by religious authority. Then, almost immediately, the uniform religious believers divided up in to various denominations almost along the same old ethnic lines.

I’m not sure about those “golden ages”…what would the golden age of Christianity be, the high middle ages? In those times heretics were generally tortured and executed.

 

When I mentioned “tribes”, I mean the way societies were organized by hunter gatherers…I understand that in our time, tribalism is more negative. I just mean emulating the way people lived together in hunter gatherer society in a way, surrounding yourself with a group of people you trust and care for, people you know well. That’s something that’s lacking in our facebook, zoom, socially distanced, anonymous city life. Modern life with its loneliness and insecurity is almost like an algorithm that produces misery.

 

I really don’t like much about Christianity, with its original sin and its masochism. Also the forgiveness stuff is a bit overblown. (And it’s contradictory, because the sinners will still end up in the furnace of fire, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.) All religions have their good bits, but I recently have been reading stuff about Islam and it’s pretty interesting, and appealing in a way Christianity really isn’t. Buddhism and Taoism are also fun to read about, although a lot of Buddhism is pretty stupid. But for a general explanation of the universe, Taoism can’t be beaten.

 

Some Christian literature is great though, one of my favorite books is a penguin book I have of the sayings of the desert fathers.

Anonymous wrote:

I’m not sure about those “golden ages”…what would the golden age of Christianity be, the high middle ages? In those times heretics were generally tortured and executed.

Not as much as people have been tortured and killed for their beliefs in the 20th and 21st century, honestly – Just in Europe.

The burning of heretics and witch trials was much more an element of the early modern era – the 15th century and later with the renaissance and protestant reformation. The Spanish Inquisition was established right at the beginning of the Renaissance and the last wave of witch trials took place in the mid-1700’s within the lifetimes of the American Founding Fathers. Hardly in the middle ages.

Anonymous wrote:

Not as much as people have been tortured and killed for their beliefs in the 20th and 21st century, honestly – Just in Europe.

Yeah well just because some things are worse doesn’t mean it’s good.

 

During the high middle ages you had the crusades, including European crusades, against the Cathars in France and the pagan Balts. I don’t think there was any real freedom of thought.

 

The Islamic golden age is probably a bit better in that regard, although they burned heretics too. They persecuted shiites, mutazilites, sufis, philosophers, and also Christians and Jews on occasion. It’s always peaceful and tolerant as long as you obey and don’t get any “dangerous ideas”.

Anonymous wrote:

During the high middle ages you had the crusades, including European crusades, against the Cathars in France and the pagan Balts. I don’t think there was any real freedom of thought.   The Islamic golden age is probably a bit better in that regard, although they burned heretics too. They persecuted shiites, mutazilites, sufis, philosophers, and also Christians and Jews on occasion. It’s always peaceful and tolerant as long as you obey and don’t get any “dangerous ideas”.

And in 1949 you’d get lobotomized basically just for not complying or disobeying your parents. Or imprisoned and forced to go through drug therapies for the mental illness of homosexuality. Or simply ignored and let die in the street if you were alcoholic and homeless — even today the “missions” are one of the few leftovers from the Medieval church that are left to deal with a modern problem.

When the Western Militaries bomb Libya or Syria or Iran, what is that but telling people there not to get “dangerous ideas?”

It’s always easy to criticize the worst events of any period or culture, but you’d have to be wearing blinders to think that the comforts of the modern era somehow justify the immense horrors of the period from 1500 to today. What really have we accomplished with this freedom of thought that would be to the lasting benefit of human beings compared to the threat of nuclear war and global warming? Fairly soon the human race could end up in new Middle Ages far worse than what our ancestors faced all those hundreds of years ago.

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Rocket, Todd

Nuclear war and global warming is bad. But what do you propose here? Returning to theocracy? Getting rid of the enlightenment?

 

Anyway I do think religion has many positives. Just the role of religious institutes in history is a problem. That’s my issue with the “golden age” thing, there was a lot of repression going on. Not a lot of gay couples in those days for instance. I think those freedoms are really essential for any civilization worth living in.

 

 

Anonymous wrote:

Nuclear war and global warming is bad. But what do you propose here? Returning to theocracy? Getting rid of the enlightenment?

More that we still have many of the worst elements in our culture today – including theocracy and superstition –  in most of the world in some form and we’ve discarded much that was great in the Middle Ages. We have not improved as a species since the middle ages – we’ve just built more stuff. Even then, look what we do with it. In the Middle Ages, labor naturally was highly valued, so people were more valued in the social order and the social order was fairly well maintained throughout the Medieval period. Wars were very limited due to the demands of not only the Church but of the agrarian communities. Contrary to popular belief, people were worth more in the Middle Ages than they were in the enlightenment or even than they are today. Especially after the Black Death eliminated a lot them making labor extremely valuable.

I’d say that the modern world is better at handling plagues, but even recent history would prove a counterpoint to that.

 

Anonymous wrote:

More that we still have many of the worst elements in our culture today – including theocracy and superstition –  in most of the world in some form and we’ve discarded much that was great in the Middle Ages. We have not improved as a species since the middle ages – we’ve just built more stuff.

Well I am not claiming modern life is great, obviously in many ways it’s a horror show. That’s how this discussion started I think, I believe religion or some kind of spirituality could for some people help them deal with this era we live in a better way, make sense of it. We kinda live in “Biblical” times, or maybe the Kali Yuga. I mean for many it’s  a certainty we’re near Armaggedon.

I honestly see religion as part of the problem.

I look at the abortion rights fight here in the US. It’s the fundamentalists that are using “God” as a reason to undermine women’s rights. “Christians” here will try to use religion as a club to deny various groups their rights while at the same time claim they are “persecuted” and they are “endangered”. It’s all bullshit and really all about control.

I think we as a species need to evolve beyond religion. It’s one thing when you’re a peasant centuries and millennia ago and had no understanding of the workings of the world and the universe, but we know so much more than we ever have. We are constantly learning new things. “Because God said so” is not a valid reason or explanation.

And you don’t need religion to be a moral and ethical person.

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