I agree -- it's economics that is the main driver of social disharmony. Ideals and ideas follow economics. Those who have and control economic resourc...
Refugees are a problem for the countries to which they flee. They saturate the labor market, cost the destination state money for necessary services, ...
First a note on vocabulary: the word you want is 'deprivation' not 'depravity'. Depravity means moral corruption; wickedness. Two or three billion peo...
And what makes you think that you're going to land a spot in one of those caves? Welcome to the rest of us who will be busy digging holes in the groun...
Yes, given the complex but fragile technology we have built, civilization could collapse -- almost literally 'over night'. Most civilizations have req...
Many academic fields -- chemistry, geology, mathematics, English or French literature, history, sociology, classics, supply chain management, etc. are...
Plummeting parishioners has been a perplexing apostolic problem in Europe and North America since the 1960s, at least. The article you cited says "Our...
Yu Hua wrote a fascinating piece in the 9/5/18 Guardian about the enormous amount of change that has taken place in China over her (50 year) lifetime....
Male long distance bike riders quite often end their ride with a very numb dick -- it can take a few days for the nerves in the penis (squished agains...
Indeed. Your first sentence describes a sycophant--not a philosopher. I'm all in favor of critically examining ideas for their substance and validity,...
How would philosophy "cause" independent thinking? So much of what we are starts long before we get to the stage of philosophizing about it. Some chil...
One of her fears was that surgery would result in more widespread and more difficult cancer. What used to be -- maybe still is -- a common way of oper...
Statistics are in favor of young people not thinking about death a lot. If one grows up in a healthy working class/middle class community, death will ...
Yeah, well... the 18-23 year olds probably don't want to think about the balance of payments problem; the state of American railroad unions; the annua...
What you need are good reading skills (comprehension, memory, ability to consolidate learning, etc). One needs to have received at least a solid high ...
Right -- not necessarily. Very intelligent people don't compete with morons in street crime, holding up convenience stores and shooting the clerk, or ...
I wouldn't for a minute minimize the degree to which individual time and labor are exploited in industrial society. BUT... Not only not free, but phys...
Sure, as a noun naming a completed process it's abstract, but in concrete terms, death is a material process. Except if we are killed instantly (as in...
That's not death. That's life under less than ideal conditions (which is generally the case). Just remember... you're slightly uncomfortable? Pains in...
Death is a buzz kill, no doubt. When I was a young man I didn't think about dying, didn't happen to have many funerals to attend, didn't talk about de...
Have you heard of "Death Cafe"? No, it's not a term for really, really bad food. It's a simple program where people meet over coffee and cake and talk...
I don't feel or think like I am a slave. Do you? Really? I do not share the situation of a sentient toaster. And by the way, a sentient toaster would ...
I agree with a lot of your down-beat points. People who are consciously and deliberately upward mobile start planning their child's glorious career be...
Bertie was a smart cookie born into aristocracy. Even if life wasn't perfect for him, he probably didn't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how ...
I'm trying to decide what grade to give Reason. On the one hand, he is a good boy in school and at home. On the other hand, he often fails to complete...
You might enjoy a series of "sort of sci-fi but more about energy and technology" books by James Howard Kunstler. It's his "World Made by Hand" series...
You sound a bit unhinged when you make statements like "marriage is for children and serial killers". A free rhetorical tip: don't go off the deep end...
Handel and Schubert may have been childless, but J. S. Bach fathered and supported 20 children plus turning out a massive amount of music (and he was ...
There are a number of features of gay culture that heterosexuals would do well to imitate -- one is the openness about who, what, and how one finds so...
Oh come on, commit yourself: is God in or out of the material world? What do you prefer? God in the material world, or absent? Take your pick. You're ...
Many of us grew up in the fading age of the triple-decker universe: heaven up there, hell down there, earth in between. God was definitely Big Daddy. ...
In just a few years, how did this medievalist suddenly have the knowledge to write a book about our ancient past AND our distant future? Pass the salt...
Among gay men these terms (beautiful, gorgeous, hunk, etc.) are common. But you are speaking of straight men and women interacting. I am guessing that...
You are quite right that survival requires technology. That has been true for at least... maybe 200,000 years? Ever since we started to employ stone t...
Per Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will al...
Perdidi corpus meum = I lost my body (Mary, that's the second one this week!); perdidi corpus = I lost the body; (I don't know -- it was in the kitche...
They are short and enigmatic. What does the hairdresser see between the two mirrors? If the mirrors are back to back (or front to front) he or she pro...
There are two assumptions here, one possibly supportable. It may be that people have children so that a new human can experience happiness. That only ...
Does anyone happen to know how discussion proceeds in non-North American settings? Do discussions of politics on the Internet deteriorate into verbal ...
I'll respond later; right now I must go and exploit technology that already exists and purchase food and beer. It's warm and humid outside. Were I a y...
People should definitely spend less time on social media, whatever their ideological leaning. Have I ever met an "incel" in real life? I don't know. I...
I don't like lists of words that are verboten. It's good to know where words come from, but just because their source isn't kosher, doesn't mean they ...
Are humans part of the biological continuum (nature)? If we are, then it would seem to be the case that we reproduce for the same reason that all othe...
Nice fluffy 6 sided crystals of H2O = snow. What do the crystals on the south pole of Mars look like? Cubes. https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/images1/s...
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