unenlightened

Like the Rust belt. I think you are wrong. It is not poverty, but decline. Mafias do not thrive by stealing or protecting the tomatoes of peasants, th...

Local news again... Australians and Californians/Texans will be unimpressed by these fires round Manchester, but consider that Manchester is a notorio...

Indeed, I am the other chap's other chap. No one steals my tomatoes, and that is not the case everywhere in this country, never mind lawless stateless...

There is something amiss here though. 'We' stateful, and thus peaceful statistics gatherers, rock up to Australia or North America, or wherever, notic...

I think I am as natural as you. Nice. I think that is an absolutely classic straw man. And violence against straw men is a good old-fashioned way to t...

There seems to be some agreement here. No one is advocating violence as a good in itself. Everyone seems to quite like peace. And everyone agrees that...

You are paranoid suspicious lot, so here are the defenceless tomatoes in person.

No, of course not. If all my tomatoes get stolen or vandalised, I won't grow any next year. I'm not threatening anyone. We can't live together.

That's quite funny. I'm inclined to admit that nothing can be enforced without violence. But then I would suggest that if we agree, we don't need to e...

If how you will react is violent, then communicating that is a threat. That's what it means to threaten. If you disagree, I will bite your head off.

I haven't proposed a world. I have merely pointed out and lamented that the world that we live in is founded on violence. As it is, my tomatoes are ri...

I don't think we do. I think you are trying to justify violence and pretend it is peace. I cannot peacefully put a gun to your head and demand you agr...

No it isn't. If I stand guard over my tomatoes with a big stick, that is violent even if everyone keeps out of my way. Threats of violence are violenc...

Then it is not a peaceful life, is it? I pay you to be violent for me, and then claim to be peaceful. That's bollocks. Fake news.

No it isn't. Armed forces are completely useless to a peaceful life, and only function in a violent life.

Hurrah! And then there are the big sticks that do not look so good on television, and where the hurrahs ring hollow. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-ne...

So the paradox arises because in practice there is a range of X. The lower bound is the smallest denomination of currency, and the upper bound is some...

I'm in two minds about it. How fucked is that? Do we need this to be nailed down? I think it works as a vague finger pointing thing - she a bit upset,...

Always nice to have the truth pointed out to one. Indeed, my big stick is my security against your big stick or some other bugger's big stick. And the...

I'd rather not, and in any case, I used to be the ban-meister-in-chief back on the old site, so it may be that I have a certain elder-statesman status...

Oh yes. But I don't always get what I want.

I treat them exactly the same as an ordinary cabbie.

Well we agree, I think; I called that 'social relations'. I say it is arbitrary in the sense that we could reward homicide instead of punishing it, or...

'The unexamined life is not worth living', said Socrates, which is to say that philosophy is the examination of life. And from where is one to examine...

To call unity requires only a flag. Yes, a shared fear overcomes conflicts of interest by externalising them. There can be no 'us' united without 'the...

Usually a shared fear and hatred of foreigners. There's nothing like an enemy for promoting unity.

It rather depends what it is united around, I'd say. Some klans better disunited.

What I want to point out is that in dream, if one is scared, one is scared of oneself (no one and nothing else is there). Which is to say that being s...

Don't be scared of being scary.

Solipsim is true in dreams: the first principle of dream interpretation is 'everything in the dream is you.' Especially the monsters. That is the diff...

Of course it can, and if you make such a distinction, that western civilisation is the good stuff, and the bad stuff is uncivilised, or un western, th...

It sounds just like a tiger, or a mountain. Approaching from the depths of ignorance, it looks to me as if law is already philosophy, in the sense tha...

It's not all bad: https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/de/-high-level-conference-cultural-heritage-in-europe---linking-past-and-future---special-gues...

"Sheep's clothing".

We're getting ready for his visit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n330OrrJlg

Read my links.

It's always encouraging to find oneself in a minority of one. Here's how I rationalise my insanity. I take 'Western civilisation' to encompass the col...

Yeah, that was a tad "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and exactly the kind of thing W wants to 'sort out'. A picture does not contain its own truth... still,...

What we have here is a galumphing gallimaufry. Hence psychogalosophy.

Doing my best to follow all this, and if the following ramble is not helpful, ignore it. I'm hearing a prefiguring of the digital; logical space as th...

That is clearly the face of someone whose mother is a hamster, and whose father smells of elderberries. Everyone is entitled to blurt out something hi...

I considered a psych thread, or a politics thread, or a flame thread, even a maths thread or a dread thread, but ended up here. This is my birthday pr...

In the context of a European American speaking to an African American about the immigration of South Americans, the use of racialised terms of abuse i...

I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper!...... I fart in your general direction! . Your mother was a hamster an...

I knew a chap had a large farm - a mountain really, no use for crops. He kept horses and left them wild. The thing about horses is that the dominant m...

My first wife couldn't be pregnant because of complications breaking her hip in a car accident. She never felt like a 'real woman' and eventually kill...

There is a fundamental problem. Utility presupposes the beneficiary. One cannot consider the benefit of life to a dog, only the relative benefit of on...

It's called a 'bike'.

Did you look at my link, Tom? Because my intention was to show the utter futility and offensiveness of scoring political points with other people's li...

It's speculative if you have no memory, but if you have some memory, it is experiential. I don't think you can even say that much. Possibly something ...