baker

Appropriate to what, by what standards?

I'm not sure whether you're actually asking this, or whether it is just part of your discussion.

What excuses? Copy-paste them.

How could it possibly end well??

Democracy is what brought us a police state and cutthroat capitalism.

I see now you meant 'universal' in that sense, not as in 'most present in various lists of criteria for how to examine one's life'.

I want you to spell out the assumptions you're working with. Ie. your assumptions about what it is that makes a life "examined".

I imagine Hitler, for example, spent quite a bit of time in self-examination. Why shouldn't his count as an "examined life"? What are the assumptions ...

We have capitalism. End of story.

And you wonder why there is a negative image of psychologists .... Read again what I said.

It's not possible to justify moral realism while being a consequent moral realist.

But on the grounds of what? It serves the purposes of capitalism if people are willing to be violent toward eachother, if they are competitive in a li...

It's not cynicism. I grew up in a traditionally Catholic country where it is normal for the priest to have illegitimate children, or a least be an obv...

As long as we live in a capitalist society, the above is a lost cause.

I've become inclined to think that this is actually what spirituality is all about, and what it means to be spiritual -- but sans the anxiety.

Ah, why do I bother.

*sigh* What a right-winger. Always blame the other person. Always place the whole responsibility for the quality of the communication on the other per...

Enough people couldn't have vaccinated early on, even if they wanted to, because there wasn't enough of the vaccine, and in many countries, there stil...

Oh, what a spiritual person you are.

*sigh* I'm saying that the gender differentiation in sensuality biased toward the female form isn't nearly as pronounced as you claim it is. *sigh*

Please remind us how global warming and global pollution have come about!

Why should the Afghans have democracy? Can you justify? We have democracy, and what good has it done us?

*sigh* The popular perception of incest is what this thread is about. Popular perception is not based on statistics. *sigh*

It's more that it is culturally acceptable for men to talk openly -- and crudely -- about their view of the female body, but not so much for women to ...

Not relevant anymore. Hormonal contraceptives (widely used) change the distribution of fat on a woman's body, so she doesn't have a(s much of a) hourg...

You're one, per your own admission:

So you wouldn't consider, for example, masturbation a moral issue?

It always matters. Even if university education is free, one would still need considerable resources in order to be able to keep up with those who cou...

I heard that in an older version of the story, there is no strawberry, but a poisonous fruit, and that a Buddhist teacher, wanting to appeal to a West...

Not only that. But many people interested in Zen seem to think that Zen is a kind of "anything goes"; that if they are "just doing their own thing", t...

I'll put it that way: If you find yourself calculating how many hours you need to work in order to be able to pay for a theater play ticket or a book ...

The question is, educated in what? "Educated" as in being a member of the socio-economic elite, or as in vocational training?

Not simply impervious to knowledge and wisdom. But in order for knowledge to have a chance to become wisdom, the person has to meet the socio-economic...

*sigh* I couldn't be if I wanted to. *sigh* You're the one asking about whether something is permissible or not. Well, my compassion is limited, and y...

The institution of contempt.

Taboos tend to have to do with things that people are assumed to want to do, but which collective social wisdom says it would be better not to do it. ...

Why not? I summon you to clarify your criteria for what type of examination counts as proper examination, and what doesn't. Because your earlier formu...

But that's because you don't have the Holy Spirit inside you and you don't understand things properly!$#632""!!!

Public opinion about a topic isn't based on statistics, but on what comes through as the most vocal. And in the end, public opinion matters. That's wh...

When the matter became so politicized, so ideologized that the public opinion became "Vaccinated people are perfectly safe." Come forward with a more ...

Oh, personally, I'd go by the one drop rule. Practically, I think this is a lost cause, the damage is done, and the system will just have to gradually...

The thing is that in the mind of such a person, there is objective morality. I mean this in the metaethical sense. Such a person has an unfailing conv...

This is very general. You could say this same thing about Hitler and about Mother Theresa, for example. Or the Dalai Lama. They all live(d) examined l...

I think that for one's moral stance to be strong, one has to believe that it's not merely one's own, subjective, partial, biased view, but that it int...

It's not relativism if the person is a narcissist, or, specifically, an epistemic narcissist or egotist. Such a person is firmly convinced that "the w...

The closest candidate for moral objectivism/absolutism being the solipsist.

What you quoted above from Tolstoy, this idea I first heard from a Hare Krishna devotee. Then from a Catholic. Then I read it in a book on literary th...

In the essay in the OP, Benjamin talks about translating Dichtung. A word that has no English equivalent.

Sometimes, you can be really narrow and petty. Sure, you, in particular, might not be in the business of diagnosing some other people, but you have wo...

This sounds like something out of an American self-help book, and certainly not universal.