Whatever deal life offers that includes happiness. Like, "Dear Posty McPostface: "Here's the deal. You will go to college, major in philosophy, gradua...
Happiness, like love, is--as you said--not something you can grab onto directly. One must approach happiness from the side, by living the kind of life...
Your wife is raising squirrels? Literally? I like squirrels, determined inventive rodents that they are. Most of their charm is probably owed to their...
You might be interested in a book that came out in 1964; I found it very useful in my thinking. The Secular City by Harvey Cox. I read it quite a whil...
This is true. You are young enough that you may possibly see a Mars landing and (with a good deal of luck) a successful return of the astronauts. The ...
Back door or front door: I am against having blasphemy laws in any shape, manner, or form. There are rules of etiquette instructing us to be nice to o...
Another large and relevant issue. In the 1960s there was an exodus from the churches -- Catholic and Protestant both -- that greatly reduced the membe...
Well, that's the tricky part... In Europe there was the Zentrum Catholic party in Germany, for instance. There were also Christian democratic parties ...
I'm perfectly free to be in politics, and to be partisan, so I'd say democratic socialist. Americans get nervous (and well they should) when church an...
I have nothing against the black athletes who gave the 1968 black power salute, but this wasn't civil disobedience. It was at most impolite. The punis...
"The church" -- the Body of Christ -- be it Coptic, Catholic, or Calvinist, has to be in the world without being "of the world". Tricky. If the church...
In the light of Tim Wood's good response, it looks like there are no easy outs. You promised the impossible; you are not the first person to do that. ...
I don't think there is a subconscious mind in the form that Freud theorized. What there is (IMHO) is a mind that is mostly non-conscious, but is very ...
If economics is a science, it's not a very good one. Lots of people understood that the run-up of house prices in our own neighborhoods was abnormal i...
My assumption is that there is no specific criminally chargeable relationship between Trump, or the NRA, or any number of far-right groups and the var...
Why do you think Tim Wood was parodying? I noticed you used the Apostle Paul's formulation from Corinthians: "When I was a child, I thought like a chi...
The idea that "human beings" are a fallen species has a lot to recommend it. It accounts for a lot of bad things that happen. I'm a failed believer (I...
Christians believe in Christ's salvation of a world fallen into sin by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. St. Augustine explicated the theory. If you w...
Daniel De Leon, 1852 - 1914, American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer, advocated revolutionary...
The formerly rich should suffer no more than having to take jobs like everyone else, and of course, losing the power, luxury, and leisure they one had...
FAD, I'm not trying to sell you on socialism or capitalism here. I'm just trying to explain the basic theory. Where does "profit" come from under capi...
Isn't that what the capitalist Harvey Weinstein is being prosecuted for? It isn't clear to me why you think you wouldn't be able to make and sell popc...
From your perspective, you need a free-floating mind separate from your body in order to have heaven. Is it the case from God's perspective that you m...
Crises can sometimes moot the points of disagreement. Person A may favor targeted fiscal stimuli to get the economy back on track, while person B may ...
Do you have any interest in psychotherapy? I don't mean getting it (god knows we could all stand a few hours on the couch). I mean studying-doing. I w...
I hear you. I was mimicking the way Rogerians talk. "I'm afraid there's no doubt about it, Dave." ** "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Y...
"I think I hear you saying that Rogerian therapy methodology seems like a good, non-threatening way to discover truth, Mr. McPostface." Getting a gay ...
"Normal" would be at the other end. "Normal" is a good state to be in; "normal" means full function. It's very nice. If you define "depression" as hav...
quack, quack. I agree that some kinds of surgery are frequently ineffective. Surgery for lower back pain, for instance, seems to be frequently ineffec...
Why placebos 'work' along with actual pharmaceuticals is something of a mystery, especially when the number of people affected by a placebo is signifi...
"I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens." Woody Allen. Parkinson, alzheimers, metastatic cancer, extreme multi-drug re...
No. The best I could do is a Google search and pull a quote or two. like: Freud bought Nietzsche's collected works, but he felt that Nietzsche was mor...
In your discussion with Praxis several terms are getting mixed together. Ego has a particular meaning in Freuds psychodynamics. The Ego mediates betwe...
I have not used "adaptation" as a casual concept or trivial matter. Adaptation to global warming is more like moving heaven and earth: very difficult....
What, pray tell, is the alternative to adapting? One can throw one's self off a bridge, take poison, or blow one's brains out OR ADAPT. Resistance is ...
Never mind foreign invaders. Does the staid midwest really want all those interesting people back who left for sunny and liberated California or the s...
The hackney's slogan "think globally act locally" applies to climate change, and on the local level there is some (but not overwhelming) reason for op...
Have you considered selling sex toys door to door? I'm pretty sure you would meet at least a few people that way. You would at least have quite a few ...
One reason young people settle down is that the 'frivolity' of their youth can get tiresome. Getting drunk the first time is novelty. 50 times later b...
I don't view it as hypocrisy; I am, rather, grateful that she isn't depending on god to cure her physical ailments or drop a bag full of money in her ...
If you want to make friends, then you have to hang around with other people: actual, face-to-face warm-blooded mixed-bag people. Your recent experienc...
One of my sisters is an extremely doctrinaire fundamentalist Baptist Trump fan. I'm pretty much her opposite. We both come from a large family where n...
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