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Well, that's OK. I was just suggesting that abstractions aren't always as understandable as we might like to think. If it doesn't help, it doesn't hel...
August 25, 2020 at 07:17
It's your idea in your terminology so, of course, it would (and should) seem quite understandable to you. Abstractions can be brilliant while we spin ...
August 25, 2020 at 05:54
You know, you could stand a refresher course in attitude. I'm glad you have immersed yourself in difficult intellectual study. It's dirty work, but so...
August 25, 2020 at 00:18
The claim "Human nature does not exist" has never made sense to me. All other animals come loaded with a range of characteristics that does not finall...
August 24, 2020 at 05:31
We are conscious beings, but we have no idea how, in some event long past, consciousness began to become a feature of human beings. IF we have no idea...
August 21, 2020 at 01:35
Indeed. You're right. Our capacity to destroy is much greater than in the past (nuclear weapons) and our willingness to change our energy consumption ...
August 19, 2020 at 04:05
The assumption keeps surfacing, one might suppose, because you keep "sounding" like you are peeved. But I'm glad you are not peeved. I, on the other h...
August 19, 2020 at 03:58
Have you read a lot of their stuff? I confess: I have not, though of the three I've read and enjoyed Marx most.
August 18, 2020 at 23:07
Nonsense. Intellectual responsibility isn't missing any more now than in the past. As for barbarians -- they have been running things for millennia. C...
August 18, 2020 at 23:04
Are you feeling peeved about not getting enough attention as an autodidact? I can understand that--there are many unofficial intellectuals who get no ...
August 18, 2020 at 22:56
OK, so I agree that the elite that is running the country has been doing a piss-poor job of it, not just in the last 4 years, but for decades. HOWEVER...
August 09, 2020 at 07:58
The rationale, as stated by the mayor, Jacob Frey, is that the police withdrew (on orders from HQ) to avoid a violent confrontation which might result...
August 09, 2020 at 07:50
The Rolling Stone article is quite a laundry list of dirty linen. I'll speak to Covid 19, with a local application. That first: Minnesota and Minneapo...
August 09, 2020 at 03:24
My guess is that the developing brain does follow genetic rules, but that's not the whole story. For one thing, the mother's body is also following ge...
August 07, 2020 at 21:03
And is the composer of the music you liked practicing rhetoric on you by way of notes? I have some difficulty applying the term 'rhetoric' to music or...
August 06, 2020 at 00:49
A regular Jesus you are. Have you considered announcing your deity status or at least sainthood? I can see a new religion growing up around you: Hanov...
August 04, 2020 at 20:54
Some people think there isn't more to the internal monologue than idle mental chatter; I don't believe that. Freud, and others, proposed a 3 layer mod...
August 04, 2020 at 20:44
I voted "no" because in most cases violent protest is counterproductive. There are cases in extremis where violence could certainly be justified, such...
August 03, 2020 at 22:12
Very much a KAKISTOCRACY right now. Government by the worst--i.e., Donald Trump (with other kakistocrats waiting in the wings) https://www.gstatic.com...
August 03, 2020 at 21:48
Yes, it's important to disambiguate terms like "authority" and "authoritarian". Thank you. I was very inspired by Emma Goldman's writing, some 40 year...
August 01, 2020 at 02:26
I voting for Biden, but holding my nose. It is essential to get Trump out of office in November, just as it will be essential to get Biden out of offi...
August 01, 2020 at 00:27
Strange indeed. I think you are utilizing too many labels in your thinking. Pick a label, any label -- communist, neoliberalism, libertarian socialist...
August 01, 2020 at 00:22
In: Privilege  — view comment
The "conspiracy" was entirely open and well documented. restrictive title covenants including bans on selling homes to blacks and Jews in both urban a...
July 31, 2020 at 19:48
In: Privilege  — view comment
Why would anyone want to be treated like blacks are treated on a bad day in the criminal justice system? One of the benefits of having some sort of pr...
July 31, 2020 at 05:29
In: Privilege  — view comment
Is privilege a burden from which one needs to be relieved? Why would anyone in their right mind wish to relinquish their privilege? I've got a little ...
July 30, 2020 at 23:42
In: Privilege  — view comment
How actually privileged are poor white trash? Definition: White, but broke for the last dozen generations; lacking in education, job skills, or helpfu...
July 30, 2020 at 15:37
Maybe "business' is just to... I don't know, real and substantive, down to earth. The following statement is certainly not true for everyone intereste...
July 16, 2020 at 15:27
I also question whether those tactics have a significant effect on ideology, as practiced, as thought, as written and read. And even if it were effect...
July 14, 2020 at 17:17
Today on National Public Radio The World program, the name of the Washington Redskins was deemed unsayable. It wasn't unsayable just a week ago on NPR...
July 14, 2020 at 04:41
I don't have a Black Lives Matter lawn sign, bumper sticker, or pin and won't be getting one. I'm white; maybe I have a touch of white supremacy, or s...
July 12, 2020 at 06:20
I've always thought that most of O K L A H O M A was a petroleum soaked shit hole. It's a good thing Oscar Hammerstein II never ventured out there. Ha...
July 12, 2020 at 03:57
There was a huge pogrom / race riot / arson and bloody massacre in Tulsa, OK on May 31/June 1, 1921. Read about it here. About 300 blacks were killed,...
July 12, 2020 at 03:46
Just wanted to go on record, here. I heartily loathe the military industrial, corporate business culture of not just the US, but of much of the world....
July 11, 2020 at 21:07
An interesting side, here: During and after the civil war, there was considerable difficulty identifying how many, from what company, from what state,...
July 11, 2020 at 21:03
The MIC and the NDEA is one of your abiding concerns, and it isn't altogether misplaced. However... The NDEA did have some democratizing effects by en...
July 11, 2020 at 16:40
As well they should! After all, it is well known that English majors reading Milton leads to nothing but trouble.
July 11, 2020 at 15:59
At the heart of the human condition is a contradiction: we have had, do have, and will have both good and bad impulses at work at the same time. That ...
July 05, 2020 at 17:40
BLM is legitimately described as a working class group, pretty much, in terms of their demographics and many of their aspirations. Their espousal of "...
July 04, 2020 at 20:19
There is a culture war going on now in the United States, because a culture war has been going on here since the getgo, 1620, or there about. How coul...
July 04, 2020 at 03:07
Viruses mutate regularly -- true. Generally these mutations are very minor and do not prevent a given test from recognizing the virus. Why? Because th...
July 03, 2020 at 22:12
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum! The key idea about which I have changed my mind is the existence of God, and associated religious ideas, such as the ...
July 03, 2020 at 21:52
Over-Population is part of the environmental crisis which the power elite ignore to everyone's peril. If the population must be decreased (say, owing ...
July 01, 2020 at 04:58
Vestis virum reddit. Clothes make the man. Men, women, blacks, whites--all of us, dress to express self, culture, aspiration, politics, class, and so ...
June 26, 2020 at 06:10
Given human error and greed removed, ANY system of government would probably work pretty well. The problem is, though, human error, greed, sloth, and ...
June 23, 2020 at 20:06
I don't have a time machine, but I suspect sexual activity hasn't always been the free-for-all it currently seems to be. For one, humans have lived in...
June 21, 2020 at 19:11
As @"Nils Loc" noted, "insanity" isn't a psychiatric diagnosis. It's a very outdated term. Whether people are diagnosed with major mental illnesses or...
June 21, 2020 at 06:31
What makes you think your thought was random? Was there a random voltage fluctuation in your brain that caused that thought to occur? A cosmic ray str...
June 18, 2020 at 03:11
The kind of unconscious activity I was referencing goes on all the time and is often high level. Most people have had the experience of "sleeping on a...
June 16, 2020 at 16:39
The most powerful (by dint of brute power) and the richest members of the elite are multinational, China, Europe, and North America contain most of th...
June 16, 2020 at 16:34
Yes, to some extent. The elites have common financial interests (and competing ones, as well), and common issues with respect to governance, taxation,...
June 16, 2020 at 16:31