baker

How can you tell whether some reasoning is false and some behavior is bad? Psychology, as a (scientific) discipline can say at most that the statistic...

I'm saying that for criticism, one must have some philosophy, a stance that is _not_ rooted in the idea "the statistical average is the norm", and tha...

One is fully capable of overcoming one's idle fascination with paradoxes and mysteries.

Criticized on the grounds of what? With what justification?

Indeed, what I said earlier is not empirically defensible, on account that it would be unethical to perform experiments with which we could test the h...

Long live the Ottoman Empire!

It is tabooed to suggest that the assumption (that life is for eating, drinking, and making merry) is not justified. Like you say, we usually take for...

Early Buddhism distinguishes between two types of desire: tanha and chanda. Tanha is the craving we're all familiar with; we tend to imagine it in the...

Yet conscripts might also have a far more pragmatic approach to fighting, an attitude of "Let's just get over with it, as quickly and as effectively a...

"Suffering is manageable" is a phrase that I expect you to be familiar with, given the terminology you use. You keep talking about "reducing" sufferin...

That's like saying that the operation was successful, and who cares if the patient died! A.k.a. bhava tanha. "Just like you, we also don't actually kn...

So what conclusion do you draw from this? And what implications does your stance have here for the possibility of philosophically approaching the topi...

You used the word first.

Why mystify??

It's entirely in place to dismiss the remarks of someone who has presumably devoted decades of his life to something, but who then made a flippant rem...

Instead of seeing it in terms of "total world dominance by the US and its client states" we can see it in terms of "total world dominance by consumeri...

The religious theme not often mentioned in regard to the recent Ukr. crisis. But this conflict isn't just NATO/the West vs. Russia, it's also Western ...

It's not clear, though, whether China wants Taiwan for itself, or whether they just want that Taiwan wouldn't come into US' hands. Because it's questi...

I wonder what Barker thinks about cookbooks. Maybe he just barks about them.

In Freudian psychology, altruism is classed as an advanced ego defense mechanism.

Millions of tiny organisms die just so you can breathe. To say nothing of those who must die so that you can eat.

Bah. I don't believe this. I find men generally to be too aloof toward women for the above kind of reasoning to apply.

People are generally like that, this isn't limited to men-women interactions. Which happens when one or both of them don't actually want to be in the ...

I think this is how people are in general, so I would replace all "man" and "woman" in your text with "person". Ie. Each person tends to think of them...

But women objectify themselves and other women in this same way. Pick up pretty much any "women's" magazine, book, tv show, seminar, webinar, and ther...

The West and the Ukraine, from the onset. They default to viewing Russia as the enemy and Putin as a monster. They've done so for a long time.

Genre. Do read up on it. It should answer our OP question.

Where in the world (geographically) did this take place?

You're on this ice here. Psychology works with statistical averages as the normative. That which is statistically average is the norm that all must co...

That's why Odin invented links! Edited for missing word.

What good is a god who doesn't show favoritism?

That's Hindu thinking. It's unintelligible to someone with a Christian (or generally, Abrahamic) background.

I'm talking about the genre of a text, and your apparent inability to recognize it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre

Sometimes, you do, and sometimes, you do have some say in the terms of engagement, even if you're the weaker party. The only ones one really has to fe...

You can't negotiate with bad faith. It's why the whole thing started anyway: a party that makes clear that they are only willing to deal in bad faith ...

Suck up to the capitalists or otherwise play to their advantage, as usual.

What does advertizing and fame have to do with the genre of a text?

You don't pay others enough to do it for you, though.

Which is which? Red tones are for yes, or for no to the question at the top?

Because it is not advertised as one and it does not classifiy itself as a Zen koan. Nor is it advertised or does is classify itself as a logico-philos...

A man who can be thusly overpowered isn't much of a man, then.

If it would be advertised and classifiy itself as a logico-philosophical tractatus, then, perhaps. But it is not and it does no such thing. It's a col...

Why spend one's time with whatever just any person claims is true about hell and how to get there? Actual religions have actual doctrines, and those a...

I think you underestimate craving, tanha. That's not "meditation", that's zoning out. Early Buddhism isn't interested in merely minimizing suffering. ...

You'll need to spell this out. What other options are there? In specific terms, please, not just anything that might fall under "awareness, connection...

Which is a potential indicator that happiness cannot be found "outside". No, no such opposition. The idea is that doing things that one finds pleasura...

Mere asceticism doesn't solve the problem, indeed. Need, need, need, must, must, must. You have such a compulsion around all this. Birth is compulsory...

Taiwan is pretty much the world's most important factory of semiconductors. Whoever has Taiwan has the say over one of the most important commodities ...

I think the main reasons why so many people have such difficulty understanding Putin are these: 1. The very concept of "benevolent ruler" has become u...

Yes. The West is so used to acting in bad faith that they cannot even conceive that someone else would not do the same.