ADOLESCENT HOMILIES:
Every simple minded homily that ignores the flux of factors in the background tends to be adolescent.
Example: Religious traditions that have survived tests of time should be overnight replaced by rule under scientists of objective morality. This is too stupid for words. For one thing, there is no scientific basis for deriving non-contingent ought from is.
Example: Judge not lest ye be judged. This could make some sense if applied to presuming to judge the eternal soul of another person. Or if to encourage walking a mile in shoes of others to promote understanding of their perspectives. However, it becomes nonsense or worse when applied as a homily to forbid making judgments about who to associate with, what to do next, how to devote one's life, how to protect one's self or family or nation, and so on. It is impossible to live without making judgments about preferences.
Example: Turn the other cheek. This could make sense if applied to shame one's opponent or to prepare to defend oneself. However, it becomes nonsense when applied to forbid defending one's self, family, business, nation, or culture.
Example: Free trade. This could make sense if oligarchs were not already positioned to turn free trade upside down by warping it into the buying and selling of politicians, political favors, and sometimes entire banking systems or governments.
Example: America should return lands its ancestors stole. The infinitely regressive stupidity of this should be obvious. For people to whom it is not obvious, further discussion would be a waste of breath.
Example: All Whites should pay reparations. The infinitely regressive stupidity of this should be obvious. For people to whom it is not obvious, further discussion would be a waste of breath.
Example: Government should ensure equality of outcomes. This is too stupid to merit further elaboration.
Example: Governing experts should assess fairness in all things. This is too stupid to merit further elaboration.
Example: Everyone should have a right to cross any border they want and move to any nation they want. It is obvious that not every form of acculturation is suitable to transfer to a different culture.
Example: Gov should pay for sex transition procedures. This is part of the indoctrination of people into sheeple.
Example: Gov should require public schools to allow pan-sexuals to lecture to children in order to reduce bullying and to promote self esteem. To protect children from crib to coffin from facing challenges and adversity is to keep them in snowflakiness, perpetually.
And on and on and on. It may be harder to find a conventional explanation that is NOT presently under the PC control of a system that selects for eliteness by selecting for what will corrupt a free thinking society into a mass of easily farmed sheeple. Adolescent Sheeple, trained to believe elites will be selected to take their freedom in exchange for security and to reign in benign rule.
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CHOSEN RICH:
The modern rich, as our knowbetter chosen people, tend no longer to see their purpose in promoting real charities. Their purpose now is to turn every society into an elitist-run, social-business, regulation-out-the-wazoo, corporation. This is their take on modern charity and virtue. They have become adept at working backwards to a convenient rationalization for them to keep and capitalize on their money by converting everyone else to a serf socialist. For their own good, of course.
The effect: Forget about self-actualization above the level of a sheep. Forget about individual responsibility and about virtue on account of hard choices willingly made. Forget about autonomous families whose children are not groomed to every perversion favored by elites. Instead, focus on such immediate rewards as elites allow on account of following their manipulations and directions. Most of all, forget about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. And all the people say, PC now, PC everywhere, PC forever.
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Do you believe math activates itself?
Are you for some reason making a distinction between higher mindedness and moral purposefulness?
If you feel no higher minded purpose, is it your other minded purpose to waste time as a troll spewing irrelevant nonsense?
Your predictable response is not needed. Save your valuable time.
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II think the media side mainly with open borders. I think their controllers want that, as a political way to replace the Constitutional Republic with National Socialism that is mainly to be run for elites.
Maybe you do not sense things the same way. Or maybe you like that agenda. IAE, I respect your right to your political opinions.
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I think you are right about Tyson realizing the impossibility for a mortal of proving God, yea or nay. Yet he keeps asking for.physical evidence. I don't think all the evidence necessarily needs to be quantitatively physical. I think it can, perhaps must, be qualitative.
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The knowitallism that most concerns me is the seemingly coordinated and funded attack by most of media, academia, Hollywood, and their hirelings against the values under which the U.S. was founded.
I can appreciate constructive criticism. But the hatred against all things American or Christian seems beyond the pale. Especially when it appears most such haters recognize no consistent moral principles apart from those devoted to the destruction of the republic and its borders.
I detest moral busybody knowitalls, whether they be priests, elites, or pretending scientists of morality.
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HELPING RELIGIONS TO MAKE MORE CONSISTENT MORAL SENSE:
I don't know how the idea of perfection could be applied to a Godhead that exists, i.e., fluxes. If a thing were perfect to some ways of thinking, it would be static. It would not express changes or sequences. Or if it did, the sequences would be perfectly repetitive. Like Nietzsche's eternal return.
Which intuitively seems wrong. Or, IT would have no need of we evolving and changing mortals. Yet here we are.
So a better approach would seem to be to think about God as a reconciler that has all the power of an ultimate reconciler. And access to all the knowledge that has accumulated in respect of any particular space-time. The Conscious aspect need not itself retain all such knowledge, provided it could access it from Substance. In that respect, each part of Substance is a store of Information that has cumulated to it, as of its manifestation in space-time.
If you conceptualize the fundamental aspects of a trinity of Consciousness/Substance/Information (not just the local and temporal expressions that emanate in respect of such Trinity), that trinity could be conceptualized as the Godhead. I do not think any aspect or face of the trinity of CSI could be expressed, absent some entailment with the other two faces. I think the fundamental aspects flux in correlation, such that no face is the superior and sole determiner of the others.
While the Godhead may have power to store, access, and express all the power and knowledge that has been accumulated to any part of space-time, such complete power and access would abide in it as a Trinity, but not necessarily in any one of the faces of the Trinity.
I would not call redirections, changes, or fluxes "mistakes" from the perspective of the Godhead. I would call them ongoing and continuous adjustments in respect of appreciation of feedback from within the system as it is giving forth expression. That is why I think our Wills are relevant. Not as free wills, but as participatory wills. Perhaps we are eyes and senses for various perspectives of God?
I do not know whether religions may eventually embrace such ideas. Such ideas seem to me to be more consistent, coherent, practical, and useful than much of the self cancelling contradictions, ambiguities, and absurdities I see flowing from religions that too literalistically presume to know and teach the ultimate and eternal nature and character of the Godhead. In this day and age, I do not think priests, elites, or knowitall moral scientisimists, can much longer well defend self-cancelling contradictions. I suspect much of the Bible, interpreted metaphorically and subject to knowledge at the time and place it was written, need not necessarily be inconsistent with such ideas.
Insofar as the Godhead seems to have need of us, and Consciousness seems to be innately empathetic, and the Godhead functions to reconcile our unfolding apprehensions, it does not seem unreasonable to me to interpret our situation as one where God is empathetic of us and our situation. Regardless, intuitive faith in such a concept can help assimilate and sustain a civilization.
I think the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule can in main be summarized thusly: Be ye empathetic. Actually, I don't think we can do other. It's just that conscious appreciation of such innate moral injunction can inspire, affect, and tune our expressions of empathy. Perhaps to lead us to more fulfilling and self actualizing civilization.
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Metaphors: I am surely willing to declare that the biblical stories are better taken as metaphors or figures of speech, rather than as accurate physical descriptions of an eternal being or state of being. They can function as references for inspiring people to come together in respect of an innate source of empathy (good faith and good will), which is necessary for a civilization to sustain itself.
Empathy: As to empathy between any two perspectives of consciousness that happen so intuit or sense one another, I think that is as nearly self-evident or intuitive as can be experienced. Which, to me, is the most important aspect for most religions.
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Measuring with defined numbers: Considerations regarding zero and infinity can be interesting.
See http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/63315.html.
I should have said that you will not measure a defined number when you divide a number by zero or when you divide infinity by zero. The point is that this inability to measure a defined number by dividing by zero or by infinity is analogous to inability to evidence an eternal God, as a fact or not a fact, by using measurements.
IOW:
1/0 = Infinity is not a statement of fact.
But, for some purposes, it is useful to note that
Limit 1/x = oo As x gets closer to zero, the value of 1/x
x->0 grows without bound (i.e., approaches infinity).
Nor is 1/Infinity = 0 a statement of fact.
But, for some purposes, it is useful to note that
Limit 1/x = 0 As x grows without bound (i.e., approaches
x->oo infinity), the value of 1/x gets closer to 0.
See also https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/possible-to-multiply-or-divide-infinities.220746/:
"[F]undamentally, we add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers. ∞ ∞ is a mathematical concept, but is not a number.
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Pathetic: As to pathetic, your apparent inability to find where I have recently discussed the evidence fits the bill. It signifies a lazy and incorrigible mind. I have cited the evidence. You just don't like it because you will accept nothing less than empirically measurable evidence. Which is a near braindead stance when it comes to expecting from the perspective of a part of a system to prove the complete quantitative nature or qualitative character of an encompassing holistic power over all.
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Repeating:
As I said before:
The point is that the premise of the argument, that a God relevant to moral issues can be proven or not by empirical measurements is, well, stupid.
So the evidence has to punt to immeasurables, that are nevertheless generally experienced. So the evidence is qualitative, and the interpretation of such qualitatives is what theists and atheists often disagree about.
The qualitative evidence does abide. Among other considerations, it consists first in self evidence, in the evidence of one's own conscious being. Then in general observation of the flux among consciousness, substance, and information. Then in appreciation of the observer effect and its importance to the manifestation of measurable appearances. Then in consideration of the inextricable interrelation and flux among all measurable expressions of substance. Because humans cannot relate to any ultimate thing-in-itself as a measurable.
Then in appreciation that no one really has a clear explanation of a difference among ultimate causation, causation, or correlation. Then in appreciation that space-time can be interpreted as a derivative of math-based sequences that avail interpretations of space-time. IOW, that all that we measurably experience may be based in little more than sequences for balancing algorithmic systems and representations of math, based in digitized ones/zeros, plus/minus charges, yes/no directions.
Which begs a question: What pulls the math out of otherwise nothingness to activate it, to avail it to express sequences capacitated via feedback to experience conscious sensations, interpretations, apprehensions, and appreciations of orders of systems and patterns that become favored to survive, replicate, and evolve out of otherwise chaos?
Whatever IT is, IT is availed to our rationalization, to serve as an attractant for inviting us to come in Thanksgiving to reason together, to inspire and assimilate our values and purposes in good faith and good will. In respect of IT, moral empathies are innately availed to be rationalized.
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Which is the fundament of what is needed as a reference for inspiring people to assimilate and evolve with common values and contingently moral purposes.
When a so-called atheist SAYS he does not believe in any basis for higher mindedness, his ACTIONS will almost certainly belie his words. For he will surely seek to impress his fellow atheists, or to justify his social deviances, or to impose his ideas about the best government, or to destroy faith-based references for inspiring assimilations of common mores. And he will tend to do so out of faith that his efforts are for the better or best. Otherwise, he would be detected as a fraud and would often risk being thrown out of his support group.
Note: I tend to avoid literalistic debates about infinite regressions (Original Creator or First Cause) or golden harps (Heaven), that seem to hobgoblin little minds. To prop them as arguments or counter arguments seems strawmanish to me. I am concerned with the Changeless-Changer. The identity and nature of the Source for unfolding fluxes among qualitatively ever-receding aspects of Consciousness, measurable Substance, and cumulating Information.
Falsification: As I said before: The method of science deals with what can be falsified. The problem is, if some things beyond the measure of science are true, then, being true, by definition, they cannot be falsified.
The problem then is how to distinguish between things that are beyond falsification that should reasonably be believed to be true or valid v. things that should reasonably be believed to be false or invalid.
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QUALITATIVE EVIDENCE OF A GODHEAD:
The point is that the premise of the argument, that a God relevant to moral issues can be proven or not by empirical measurements is, well, stupid.
So the evidence has to punt to immeasurables, that are nevertheless generally experienced. So the evidence is qualitative, and the interpretation of such qualitatives is what theists and atheists often disagree about.
The qualitative evidence does abide. Among other considerations, it consists first in self evidence, in the evidence of one's own conscious being. Then in general observation of the flux among consciousness, substance, and information. Then in appreciation of the observer effect and its importance to the manifestation of measurable appearances. Then in consideration of the inextricable interrelation and flux among all measurable expressions of substance. Because humans cannot relate to any ultimate thing-in-itself as a measurable.
Then in appreciation that no one really has a clear explanation of a difference among ultimate causation, causation, or correlation. Then in appreciation that space-time can be interpreted as a derivative of math-based sequences that avail interpretations of space-time. IOW, that all that we measurably experience may be based in little more than sequences for balancing algorithmic systems and representations of math, based in digitized ones/zeros, plus/minus charges, yes/no directions.
Which begs a question: What pulls the math out of otherwise nothingness to activate it, to avail it to express sequences capacitated via feedback to experience conscious sensations, interpretations, apprehensions, and appreciations of orders of systems and patterns that become favored to survive, replicate, and evolve out of otherwise chaos?
Whatever IT is, IT is availed to our rationalization, to serve as an attractant for inviting us to come in Thanksgiving to reason together, to inspire and assimilate our values and purposes in good faith and good will. In respect of IT, moral empathies are innately availed to be rationalized.
Perhaps you prefer to imagine your moral code, interests, and empathies are non-existent or based in nothing? If so, good luck inspiring any relevant following to assimilate or sustain any purposefulness behind that kind of amoral vacuity.
Meanwhile, blabber on about your moral vacuity. Btw, if you believe in moral vacuity, why do you care to bother to be here? What's it to you?
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Consciousness of the mystery of things is the key.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ― William Shakespear, Hamlet
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“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.” ― William Shakespeare, King Lear
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IMPORTANT IMMEASURABLES:
The point is not to seek such a measurement scale. The point is that, even so, we have no choice but to make choices in how we go about identifying with, adopting, and pursuing ideals and purposes that are qualitative --- such as the pursuit of happiness. In that respect, those qualitatives are of real import, even though not measurable.
Among non-constipated thinkers, a moment's reflection would reveal that there are many concerns that are real, yet not measurable. Of specific pursuits, I do not know what best to recommend for any self-reliant adult. I do have personal preferences for how people may come to reason together in order to assimilate common and sustainable pursuits, so they war less with one another. My preferences are derived in respect of founding ideals as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Not in respect of entitlement-minded millennial sillies.
I think some of the important ways for assimilating ought-from-is are best found not in science, knowitall pervs posing as elites, drug and sex addicts, or big gov, but in good faith reflection about immeasurable moral pursuits. Of course, wannabe people farmers and advocates for perversion will always balk at such a notion. Great jokers, they are. After they take power, they may be good for about one generation before they tend to be overrun by the real abusers. You know, the ones Libs are scared to confront, while they make fun of patient Christians.
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REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLICANISM:
Ideally, I am for a Representative Republic. Ideally, I would constrain oligarchs so they are not empowered to engage in the buying and selling of politicians, judges, regulators, governments. Maybe impose a progressive tax on personal consumption. Tax all charitable contributions, including to Churches and especially to Foundations. Enforce borders so the nation is not overrun with people whose conditioning is antithetical to preserving a representative republic. Restrict immigration to assimilable limits. Provide a safety net that includes decent health care and does not destroy the work ethic. As national wealth increases, use infrastructure jobs to enhance productivity and general access to life's pleasures. Decentralize regulations and expenditures to the local level best situated to address the problems being addressed. Free speech. End PC. Pass most of Levin's Liberty Amendments. These goals would pertain to an evolving mix of nationalism, free enterprise, welfare. They are not, taken together, descriptive of any present political movement. Test: What form of collective government is best suited to promote a decent system of civic faith, family, and fidelity in order to promote individual human freedom and dignity among its free-thinking citizenry?
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WIBERALS AND COLLECTIVISTS:
Wannabe collectivists of all stripes will tend to be most politically active and vocal. Regardless, I think the biggest danger now faced by the representative republic is coming from Wiberals.
My definition: A Wiberal is someone who makes every good thing worse by making the perfect the mortal enemy of the good --- while having nothing practical to replace the good with. A Wiberal is someone who condemns America in the here and now for not meeting his/her/ze expectations with regard to the distant future. A Wiberal judges the past, with no sense of context, and then condemns everything that arises out of it that does not meet his present sense of entitlement or need for immediate gratification. A Wiberal is someone who thinks Love means never having to work, while the Fairie Gov pets every pleasure. For a Wiberal, anything less is racist, bigoted, or mean. And God must be to blame. A Wiberal is the mutant mindscrewed offspring of doper hippies and the grandchildren they "educated" beyond their intellects.
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Did you say something? It's hard to tell above your nonsense. Do you imagine you have some scale with which to measure or evidence benevolence or goodness? Or the worthiness of biblical metaphors and parables?
Juries often hear evidence on all sides of an issue. They tend to decide based on factors such as personal or direct experience, individual preferences, credibility, likability, agreement with the law, etc. Different jurors may apply inductive logic concerning the factors they deem important, yet vote differently.
IAE, reasoning can proceed based on self-evidence (direct experience, such as experience of Consciousness), induction (empirical testing), or deduction (based on deductive logic). We certainly have evidence of a universe in which Consciousness, Substance, and Information flux. Well, unless your brain is mis-wired.
Btw, are you saying there is no evidence of Consciousness or no evidence that Consciousness continues generally in the world even after a particular individual passes on? Are you saying there is no evidence of an Observer Effect, with regard to such matter as becomes manifest? Are you arguing that Substance and Information could exist in the entire absence of Consciousness? Above your misdirection, noise, and nonsense, it's hard to determine what you think you are saying.
Maybe you should spend a little more time in your funny farm?
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INFINITE REGRESSIONS:
I tend to avoid drawing specific inferences relating to original creation or infinite regressions. I concern myself with what is and what is unfolding. Btw, is your identity as a perspective of consciousness visible or configurable to a calculation? Do you think all Consciousness everywhere must end at such time as the human form meets its end?
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QUANTIFYING BENEVOLENCE:
Benevolence, good, quantification: How does Tyson suppose he can measure such concepts?
Why presume a relevant God should have foreseen the unfolding of all events, throughout all eternity? Such a construction would seem of no more dignity than a perpetual recycling robotic program. Like perpetually playing solitaire with the deck always stacked the same way and the cards always played the same way. Why suppose God should be entertained with such robotic stupidity? Good for math games, perhaps, until the math is solved. But not much good for pursuing a happy life or existence.
Why does Tyson believe or presume relevant benevolence and goodness should be subject to quantitative diktat, rather than qualitative feedback? If God is relevant to mortal perspectives, and engages in re conciliatory feedback with the various perspectives of Consciousness (which would include far more than just perspectives from the human form), and the appreciation of such feedback changes with unforeseen consequences and perspectives, then how could such feedback be pre-designed or pre-determined?
Tyson seems to want his cake and eat it too: A purely benevolent dictator God, that is relevant to human actuation and participation. That seems like mad silliness for juvies.
Tyson is also silly when he asks for a sign. Suppose God were miraculously to assemble a spacecraft in front of Tyson out of thin air. Would Tyson take that as evidence of God? Almost Certainly not. Tyson would almost certainly chalk that up to superior space aliens.
Why are so many people who become adept with math and measurable quantification seem so blind concerning immeasurable qualitatives? On what scales, using what well defined parameters, does Tyson suppose he or any other mortal would have power to prove or measure qualitatives, such as with regard to which moral code is best suited to the world or to any particular time or place? How does Tyson propose to objectify all subjective experiences? Suppose you crafted an algorithm seemingly capable of factoring every pertinent measurable. Each time it factored something new, it, itself, would have expanded its capacity. So, how would it pre-factor its own increasing capacities?
To become good at quantitative physics, one must invest considerable effort. Perhaps that tends to reduce one's common sense. How else to explain the moral silliness of Tyson types?
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LIB LOVE:
Again, I am not a literalist. The Bible is one among numerous possible systems of metaphors for inspiring people to come together in respect of higher mindedness.
I think I saw where you said you believe in Love. Do you have some hypothesis based on a rigorous definition of love that has been subjected to scientific and falsifiable testing to determine in what way Love is or should be an existent, emergent, or fundament?
I prefer the word empathy. It seems to avail room for tough love and to recognize that we live in a system based on competition and conservation of matter and energy. Too many silly milleneals seem to think Love should tolerate everything, oblivious to the absurdity of such a position. I wonder, should this Love, as your guiding principle of morality, make everyone give up all food products based on eating any animals, insects, bacteria, etc?
The empathy I believe in is as an innate fundament, that emerges with numerous unfoldings.
Notwithstanding your numerous writings and efforts, I see little indication that your notion about Love is based on much mature analysis or that it inspires much mature following. I suppose you could substitute the word Wellbeing, but that would just substitute one silly notion for another.
Is this plain enough for you?
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How big a fall is it from wanting to turn adults into farmed sheeple to wanting to groom and molest children? The Aino/Dino/Rino apparatus is a corrupt infestation against human decency, deceiving itself under claim of promoting humanists. Meanwhile, it destroys human freedom and dignity, economies, and nations, as it trains young minds into doper mush.
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WIBERALS:
A Wiberal is someone who makes every good thing worse by making the perfect the mortal enemy of the good --- while having nothing practical to replace the good with. A Wiberal is someone who condemns America in the here and now for not meeting his/her/ze expectations with regard to the distant future. A Wiberal judges the past, with no sense of context, and then condemns everything that arises out of it that does not meet his present sense of entitlement or need for immediate gratification. A Wiberal is someone who thinks Love means never having to work, while the Fairie Gov pets every pleasure. For a Wiberal, anything less is racist, bigoted, or mean. And God must be to blame. A Wiberal is the mutant mindscrewed offspring of doper hippies and the grandchildren they "educated" beyond their intellects.
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GRUNTERS:
Our eyes interpret appearances, not things in themselves. Things do not present themselves to different eyes in the same way. Everything we sense is an interpretation of an appearance or presentation. A representation.
Communication is interpreted through senses. It does not require a language. Animals sense demeanor, fear, playfulness. Without words, just actions. Actions become symbols of mind state. Were we to hear a gunshot together, we would usually know it without needing to tell one another, Hey, that was a gunshot.
Much of the way the world works is similarly communicated. The trick is in learning to see, listen, and think. IOW, God can speak for God-self, without books, scribes, or priests. The books are not valuable for speaking for God or for confining God. They are valuable for historical insight into other people's interpretations regarding God.
Again, it is amazing how many people presume to be talking about the God of such and such a book. But no mortal is qualified to reduce an understanding of eternal God to a temporal book. That is just silly. God is God.
As to a relevant God: A God/Deity that is imagined to have designed the world or a simulation thereof, and then left the design, would not be relevant to moral concerns on Earth for the here and now.
As to the here and now import of God ideas: They can serve as attractants around which to invite or inspire people to come to reason together in good faith and good will in order to assimilate decent and sustainable social mores that seem best suited to the time and situation.
The alternative seems to be ever more intrusive rule by elitist busybody law regulators, who seem to want everyone to be forced to marry the government. That is a sub-humanizing affront to the highest need on Maslow's pyramid: self actualization. But hey, dopers may like it.
I fail to see why this should be so hard. It is a bit tedious to need to reduce it to long lists of simple grunts. How well read are you, really? Are you really suited to discuss important issues in terms beyond grunts? Other than complaining that grunts are not simplified to your satisfaction, where is there any evidence of actual thinking on your part? Not trying to be rude. Just wondering if you really have anything to say that is worth thinking about. There are plenty of people like that. They hold no interest for me.
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RELEVANT GOD:
I believe in a relevant God that has not left the building. A relevant God would not be incapable of being surprised or pleased by feedback. A relevant God would abide as Reconciler of the Participatory Wills of all perspectives of Consciousness. A relevant God would speak/signal via the re-presentations that appear to all perspectives.
What is sad is to see literalists (plain English people) conflating interpretations by people limited to their time and place with the actual permanent character and purposefulness of God.
For their time and place, what we now consider horrendous may well have been considered by them to be quite just and fair. Perspectives and interpretations change. I am not a biblical literalist. But I do see the Bible as an important reference, provided it is studied by people with more than an adolescent clue about how history, culture, philosophy, and theosophy unfold.
The people that do not believe in God, yet judge God based on a literalist take on sacred stories, seem to me to be astonishingly adolescent. Maybe secondary to being raised in an entitlement minded culture, as if God should be irrelevant upon failing to make the world give them a perfect living. And then, when called on their perpetual adolescence, put their hands on their ears and cry, Speak plain English please! Truly amazing.
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PLAIN ENGLISH:
No doubt, the plain English people can answer every concern with plain and objective answers. NOT.
We can appreciate some problems without necessarily being able ever to provide complete, objective, best, plain English answers to them.
Btw, I have been using plain English. Simple, actually. The problem, that is apparently beyond your depth, is that no human really knows much about the ultimate origin or limits for our universe/world/life/purpose/morality.
Some of that we participate in to make for ourselves. But there is no knowitall elitist dictionary to answer many such concerns. It is adolescent to think there is. Sorry about that.
People often turn a blind or adolescent eye on spiritual or moral issues. If they focus on individual citizens, they tend to turn a blind eye to what is needed to sustain a decent republic. If they focus on a republic, they tend to turn a blind or adolescent eye on what is needed to sustain decency among citizens.
The problem for wisdom is how to reconcile among important contending concerns. There is no scientifically objective answer for that. For example, the ideal of the most happiness for the greatest number seems to provide a pat plain English prescription. But it is largely nonsense.
It certainly does not guide purely logical or quantifiable answers.
Common sense would seem to show that to expect a participatory and relevant God to have pre-reconciled a best answer among contending concerns that are not amenable of resolution before each flux of feedback from subjective perspectives is presented is, to put it plainly, morally adolescent and silly.
Now go bang on a plain English book.
You remind me of someone living in a cave of his own making. Be well.
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Who spoke of knowledge. IAE if you want to speak of knowledge, you need to define it. Perhaps share what you know of knowledge. I speak mainly of common sense. Sense of empathy for being in the here and now. You speak of judging an idea of an eternal God and how you would substitute your judgement concerning its direction. You as a judge of eternal knowledge? I don't think so.
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NOUN-VERB:
The ing tends to turn a verb into a gerund. I think upon the Godhead as a noun-verb. In common sense, a Changeless-Changer. To be is both to exist as a noun and to act as a verb. To try to separate the functions into precise compartments leads to silliness. Btw, would you say that existence exists or that being bes?
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Smoking might be what has clouded your sense.
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I can see the problem in your imagining or presuming to know better than God.
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HORRIFIC GOD:
Given the evolving nature and character of human culture, who is qualified to say what would have been better or more fit to the situation? If cows are ever fitted with more conscious appreciation, will they be asking people, "Do you mean to say you did not have better alternatives?"
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BEINGNESS:
Beingness is appreciated by using your sense of being. If you do not sense your state of being. then I cannot likely help you.
Does Consciousness exist? With Substance? And Information? CSI, as a co-relating system of feedback and flux, is being in existence.
Do you sense feedback concerning your Consciousness in respect of such beingness?
People seem to want precise, atomistic, definitions.
However, CSI fluxes such that no component of it can abide in the complete absence of the other two. They are being together in a state of existence.
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Good faith and good will are the answer.
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I think you need to work on it for yourself. Good luck with that.
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CHANGELESS-CHANGER:
Maybe you're complaining because math and conservation necessarily entail balancing equations and replacement of the eroding old with the evolving new? Beingness is fundamental, but change is continuous and emergent.
Much of how we appreciate life has to do with attitude and point of view. Often, we can participate in making of it good or Ill. If one believes God or Beingness is bad, it more likely reflects that back at you. Such tends to be the fate of pessimistic non-believers in a generally empathetic goodness.
That said, much harm can come with taking temporary interpretations of metaphoric signs and projecting them as permanent and literal orders from God. Reconciliation of the limited understanding of humanity to God is not necessarily antiseptically clean.
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JEWS:
Jewishness seems usually to be matrimonial. Jews may mix less because of culture, but some mixing occurs. A Jewish woman who marries a non-Jew will produce offspring that are 1/2 Jewish by blood but 100% by tradition. If a female offspring then marries a non-Jew, her female offspring will be 1/4 Jewish by blood but 100% by tradition. And so on, until many Jews will eventually be so mixed as to be Jewish by blood in only a tiny fraction.
So the idea of a Jewish race seems quite peculiar and artificial. Even more so the idea of Jewishness as a specially chosen race. Yet, culture and tradition have preserved that peculiarity. And careful respect for detailed law and regulation. That is, big gov.
However, big central gov is anathema to many of America's founding ideals. Perhaps even inclining towards death to representative republics and traditional institutions that protect smaller gov, such as traditional ideas about family, marriage, and national borders.
Careful cultish preferences may to some extent account for Jewish selectiveness towards ruling intelligence. Not necessarily in favor of preserving representative republics.
The consequence seems to be Jews leading minorities and metrosexuals to destroy borders and to control "Whites" under banners of racism. The idea seems to be that only Whites, actually all Whites except white Jews, are by specially contrived convention, "racist."
I do not personally consider such contrivance to be either good or reasonable. Nor do I think it reasonable to classify my apprehension as racist, bigoted, privileged, bad, or wrong. When did wanting to judge individuals by the content of their character become wrong?
Of course, such contrivance cannot be defended in reason, logic, good faith, or good will. Which is why the people-farmers that promote it depend on yelling, shouting down, conquering institutions, blocking traffic, paying agitators, indoctrinating mush minds, importing collectivists, eroding borders, and taking over the moral grooming of children.
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Good luck preserving clear lines for your distinctions. I think race is such an artificial and mixed construct that no clear line can, to much good or reason, be preserved.
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Race 2. noun. a group of people of common ancestry, distinguished from others by physical characteristics, such as hair type, colour of eyes and skin, stature, etc. Principal races are Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid..
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Superficial distinctions, such as skin color, sbape of head, genetic background or mix.
You seem to have wandered away from Monty Python. Are you looking for the room for contradiction or the one for argument?
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MATH:
What does the Math that defines our experience of Universe act on?
May it be a "vacuum" that is capacitated from no other "thing," to communicate and express digitized counterbalancing signals of yin and yang, one and zero, yes and no?
What activates the Math, to avail it to express sequences that can via feedback sense, interpret, apprehend, and appreciate orders of systems and patterns that become favored to survive, replicate, and evolve out of otherwise chaos?
Is there an innate, meta power that perpetually accompanies and activates the Math and the feedback systems and algorithms that are expressed with it?
Is the System as a Holism a Changeless-Changer, a Fundament-Emergent, that signals the Vacuum with Black Holes, that signals feedback appreciation via evolutionary unfoldment, that signals innate empathy among all patterns that feedback with the unfoldment?
If Something produced or produces the Vacuum and all that is unfolded with it, may that Something reasonably be rationalized as a Godhead that is fundamentally compelled to express a fluxing balance of Conscious Appreciation, Substantive Measurables, and fluxing cumulating Information?
May IT, in innate respect of feedback, appreciate and Reconcile us?
May IT reasonably be rationalized to serve as an attractant, to invite us to come in Thanksgiving to reason together to inspire and assimilate our values and purposes in good faith and good will? May innate moral empathy reasonably be rationalized in respect of IT?
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ALGORITHMIC SEQUENCES:
The real issue is not time or space, but math based sequences. Problems: What activates the math, and what is it acting on?
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FUNDAMENT - EMERGENT:
I think specific experiences of Consciousness are affected by a feedback process with surrounding expressions of Substance and Information. However, I doubt any Substance or Information could abide in any meaningful sense in the entire absence of Consciousness. To me, each of the three, CSI, seems like a fundament in that general sense. Or, if you prefer emergent, they are co-equal correlative emergents, each being necessary to the expression of the other two.
We appreciate sensations. Interpretations of a feedback flux among CSI. The unfoldment of that flux is affected by our sensory appreciations.
We do not have causal free will. But our senses participate as feedback with an unfolding flux. Thus we express not free will, but Participatory Will. Our perspectives participate with an encompassing Reconciler-Principler.
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GENERAL BELIEF IN CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN IDENTITY:
Do people believe in themselves, that is, their own perspectives of Consciousness? What do they believe they are perspectives of, if not a fundament of Consciousness?
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HEAVEN AND HEREAFTER:
People may have general faith that there abides something the particulars of which defy knowledge or imagination. Except possibly as metaphors, they do not tend to imagine an eternity of gold, ice cream, harp playing, or any other particular. So they retain fear along with faith. Moreover, there abides be an instinct for self preservation. Otherwise, you would not compete as well to survive and would not as likely have evolved to be present. So rational weighing of merits of death v life or measurable material v nonmeasurable spiritual is simply not possible. IOW, that exercise is silly.
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RACISM:
I hardly need a dictionary to tell me what common sense says about racism. Racism is judging a person's competence, reliability, values, and purposes based on superficial physical attributes, such as skin color or shape of head. Often, is is unwillingness to revise evaluations even in the face of performing evidence. The Left has expanded the word racism to apply to unwillingness to appreciate one's latent biases or sense of superiority attributed merely to such superficial physical attributes. In its biased presumptuousness, Lefties have often been trained to be oblivious to their own superficial biases and presumptions.
Survival and competition often require quick decisions. People necessarily form quick impressions and biases that are, in statistical relations, often correct. This happens in job interviews, jury selection, and voting decisions. Lefties, in their self righteousness, do not advise their base to study the candidates and issues in detail. No, they advise them to get out and vote.
However, even when performance evidences exceptions to such biases, a hard racist will often retain his biases.
To assimilate a representative republic, it is necessary to assimilate shared civic values, for judging people based on content of character and competence instead of on superficial characteristics. In modern society, business competition generally necessitates development of such skills. So, a reliable, competent, decent person of any race has good chances to find good employment and social fulfillment.
Why, then, all the division? I think it is intentionally funded and agitated by corrupt people that seek to profit by tactics of divide and rule, in order to replace the republic with a new global serfdom. Some know this, and some practice it even while remaining oblivious to their corrupt tendencies.
Who are the biggest racists in practice? Answer: The divide-and-rule wannabe people-farmers and their easily bribed and indoctrinated stooges. Unfortunately, they have now occupied every institution of political and social persuasion. The consequence of such interminable divide-and-rule evil is this: We can no longer trust our academics, journalists, politicians, priests, judges, bankers, students, counselors, or one another. We have been unraveled so that we have now met the enemy, and he is us.
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HUMAN NURTURING:
Humans require long nurturing. Parents nurture children qualitatively, with feel good stories. Leaders likewise nurture constituencies. As children grow to become responsible adults, they learn to take the stories figuratively. The children that do not grow into responsible adults often either continue to take the stories literally, or they use them as openings for fraud or abuse.
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THREE BODY PROBLEM:
Search "three body problem in physics."
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BLACK HOLES AS CONTINUOUS LOOP FOR RE-FORMULATION AND RE-EXPRESSION OF CSI: May Black Holes correlate with a digestion of accumulated stores of Information, to turn them into a Vacuum Source that avails a continuous loop for "putting flesh on math" in order to activate and express new patterns of CSI, to be fluxed from old? May the Vacuum of a Black Hole avail the translation of old accumulations of math-based Information into experiences of new perspectives of Consciousness, for such Consciousness to experience participatory appreciation of new Substance? May such Vacuum avail translation of Old perspectives of Consciousness into expression of new forms of Substance and/or Information? May such looping and churning lead to changes, both in increments and in phase shifts, in fundamental measures and rules that establish fluxing parameters for the unfoldment of our Universe?
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WITTGENSTEIN AND PSEUDO:
Pseudo back at you. You have not explained or inspired a thing. Certainly not any kind of basis or system for ethics or morality. Perhaps because you intend only a non-explanation posing as an explanation? In that case, why do you bother to be here? Are we supposed to be in awe? Why? Btw, learn how to spell Tractatus.
Aside: A prof I previously encountered claimed to teach about Wittgenstein. He referred to the Tractatus as nonsense. But apparently you can preach sense about the Tractatus?
As to passing over in silence, that would be obvious with regard to any attempt to explicate an objective or quantitative science concerning morality. With regard to advocacy to not practice, promote, or write about qualitative bases or practices concerning morality, I doubt Wittgenstein lived a consistent position. Rather, he said Ethics cannot be known as a science. Yet, he respected ethics deeply.
With regard to any implication that we should pass over all specific principles or issues of ethics or morality in silence, please identify any colleges or media of significance that do not report or opine in specifics concerning issues of social morality. Do you advise voters to pass over candidates in silence, with regard to their differing positions relating to social and moral issues? I call B.S.
See http://sackett.net/WittgensteinEthics.pdf, where Wittgenstein said: "Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it."
NOTE: I avoid any attempt to define God's ultimate purposes, absolute values, or the nature of any possible heavenly hereafter. Nor do I try to write out any never-changing specific moral principles. I mainly rationalize an innate basis for moral empathy. Compare Wittgenstein's discussion concerning "a tendency in the human mind." I simply think that tendency is innate. Fundamental. Spiritual. Not that Consciousness implicates love, but that it implicates empathy. Often, tough love.
Perhaps you believe there is no such basis, perhaps you can prove it, or perhaps you believe we should be satisfied to follow such elitists as claim to prescribe morality for us? IAE, if you feel an elite or specific purpose here, what is it?
Concerning any yea or nay advocacy about specific principles for ethics or morality, if you seek to derive much of sensible consistency either from Wittgenstein's writing or from his life, I doubt you will get very far.
See https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-mystical-in-wittgenstein-s-early-writings/.
[Regarding the Analytic Tradition] "Comparatively little has been written on the parts of Wittgenstein's early philosophy that deal with "the mystical," "eternity," "the meaning of life," "timelessness," "God," "ethics," and similar spiritual themes that come up in both the Tractatus and Notebooks. When they are written about by philosophers whose academic training and experience is narrowly confined to the British analytic tradition, they usually suffer from an obtuseness and lack of feeling for their subject matter that makes their commentary of little value."
"Wittgenstein described certain experiences that for him personally constitute "absolute value" rather than merely relative or instrumental value, that give insight into "the meaning of life," and that suggest "what makes life worth living." One of these experiences Wittgenstein speaks of is the experience of being "absolutely safe," of being "safe in the hands of God." A second he describes as "seeing the world as a miracle," or "[wondering] at the existence of the world," or seeing the world as God's creation and with such wonderment and astonishment that one is prompted to say "how extraordinary that the world should exist.""
"Wittgenstein also believed, Atkinson stresses, that there were certain ineffable truths about what is real that had to be passed over in silence yet were not for this reason unimportant or insignificant for human life. Indeed, what we must pass over in silence may be just as important -- or much more important -- for the early Wittgenstein, Atkinson shows, than what can be expressed through language. Among the things relegated by Wittgenstein to the realm of silence are God, the mystical, eternity, the wonder at the world's sheer existence, one's higher or true inner-self, and the meaning of life."
"The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required). (Tr. 6.4313)"
So I do not think you can safely call Wittgenstein a consistent God non-believer. Nor can you say he did not view ethics or morality as important.
DOWN TO THE NITTY GRITTY: For the nitty gritty of day to day life, whether you wish to admit it or not, you have no choice but to make choices. To in practice live a code, whether or not your code fluxes, and whether or not you wish to put its unfolding principles in writing.
Perhaps part of your code is to seek to convince us how brilliant you are. To seek that, you will need to try harder and do better.
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I should perhaps better refer to many Human Secularists not as obsessed, but as misled, confused, or distracted.
Assuming Godel is correct concerning our incapacity to achieve a complete explanation, there abide aspects about the nature of our universe that are beyond our explanation. There abide measurables and un-measurables. Un-measurables exist beyond our natural explanation. I think ethics and mores exist. Wittgenstein said, if ethics exist as anything, it is supernatural.
I think subjective consciousness in some form or other is an innate fundament with regard to the unfoldment of what we experience as universe. I think the Observer Effect, writ large, abides at some level for every measurable unfoldment. The fundaments for such unfolding experience may be conceptualized as qualitative Consciousness, quantifiable Substance, and accumulating Information. CSI.
James Michener wrote a book called The Source. I take the flux among CSI to be the Source. Or Godhead. IT is what IT is. Whether there abides a meta math and/or mathematician behind IT may make for interesting speculation, but a resolution of that speculation may be beyond the capacity of mortals with regard to word and language games. I am concerned with moral unfoldment in the here and now, not so much with the heavenly hereafter.
If Consciousness is considered as a fundament, and at some level is of the same essence in every perspective, then there would seem to abide an innate basis for empathy among and between perspectives of Consciousness. Such an innate basis for empathy would be qualitative, not entirely measurable or reducible to objective science. That may relate to the general applicability of our moral injunctions: Be empathetic. Walk a mile in another person's shoes so as not to rush to judgment. Respect or love the Source. Be of good faith and good will among others. Golden Rule. Veil of Ignorance.
Problem regarding Veil of Ignorance: Some people suppose, from proto perspective, everyone should wish equality in outcomes among all living creatures. However, the way of conservation and evolution make that silly. Life abides among systems, such that death, destruction, replacement, recycling, conservation, competition, flux, and change cannot be avoided. Organisms use and feed on one another. Many must be cultivated or bred to the use of others. A sufficient test for a moral system cannot reasonably be supposed in an idea of equality of outcome for everyone or every form of being.
In his The Republic, Plato proposed a test from the perspective of a system of government. Under his Noble Lie, Plato divided social classes into three categories, whereby every citizen of the Republic is born with a metallic property. Bronze are the Producers (farmers, miners, industrial workers, etc). Silver are the Auxiliaries (military). Gold are the Guardians (rulers of the state, philosophers).
However, Plato's system would amount to elitist diktat to run the details of everyone's life. It would demote the quest for self-actualization, which is highest on Maslow's heirarchy of needs. So, neither a moral philosophy based on individuality (the Veil of Ignorance) or on group collectives (Plato's Republic) would seem in itself to offer a consistent, coherent, or decent way forward. Which puts us back to Wittgenstein: "Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural ...." However, Wittgenstein also indicated he would never denigrate ethics.
So we are in this position: We have no choice but to make choices. If we do not assimilate and identify with codes for mores or ethics, then we will soon be cast out from any group we may need to enhance our lives or survival. But no code can be objectively derived from mere science or logic. Or from stooges radicalized to doxx and shout down all opponents. To what then do we look?
We can rationalize in circular word games, perhaps even design to trick or terrorize the less insightful among us. But above the rationalizations, I think we actuate something beyond science. Something from The Source. When we come to reason together in good faith metaphors and in goodwill, we accustom ourselves to enlarge our interests and to identify more with the interests of a support group, nation, republic, or culture.
I don't say what interests a particular person should undertake. I say he should be encouraged to explore and find his interests as much as reasonably possible for himself, wherever such unfolding interests may lead him. But he needs also to learn to temper his development in decent regard for the interests of others. To decide what to tolerate, and what is beyond toleration to his purposes and for the culture with which his identity finds much of its basis.
However, no knowitall elitist can answer such concerns objectively or scientifically. I do not like knowitalls that want, against my search for self-actualization, to make secular laws to rule every situation. A pox on such busybodies and people-farmers.
I want more supernatural respect for an innate need for every American to seek self actualization. I don't purport to know what system is best for every kind of culture or society. I do know that I do not want people from cultures that do not value self actualization to overrun my country, to vote to turn it into another serfdom by selling it out for what I consider to be subhumanizing idiocy on behalf of corrupt, selfish, people-farming, lying knowitalls. Who have little to no clue regarding the non-objective, unscientific, subhumanizing nature of much of what they wish to prescribe. Who get lost in word games and literalisms, while assimilating little appreciation for common metaphors and figures of speech.
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If not supported in any higher minded good faith or good will or in anything more than ideology, why should I care about any ideologue's ethics? Do you imagine any ideologue's ethics come from some kind of Virgin birth out of the womb of Mother Nature, rather than simply out of whatever happens to have been his indoctrination and conditioning?
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Well, were any of those people gods? Did they know or even have the remotest clue about the "Mind of Mother Nature"? Do they advise how humanity should proceed in altering genetic designs? Are they in unison about how humanity should behave, how population should be controlled, who should be educated and how, how medical resources should be allocated, who should serve whom, whether lower class workers and brutes should be bred to do lower class and brute work, and so on?
Are their ethics and mores functional and adaptable to changes on account of war, scarcity, pestilence, or natural disaster? Should reduction of pain ever rule over enhancement of pleasure, so that, in event of worldwide holocaust, worldwide euthanasia may by elites reasonably be determined to be ethical or moral? What about mass reduction of motherly pain in order to euthanize the pleasure of fetuses?
What about feedback. People often obtain what they thought they wanted, only then to appreciate necessary or unintended consequences that they do not want. Does it remain "ethical" for even a fool to continue to seek to fulfill what he thinks will enhance his well being? What about mass foolishness, as in the case of California's stupid forest management that has now produced horrific fires, waste, and environmental damage?
Plato believed the masses should be highly regulated. Karl Popper considered the political system advocated by Plato to be totalitarian. Did you know that? Is totalitarianism really ethical? Plato believed in the immortality of the soul, an afterlife, and transmigration of the soul. Do you not find such beliefs to be religious?
See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/:
"[A]t no stage of his philosophy does Plato go into a systematic treatment of, or and commitment to, basic principles of ethics from which rules and norms of human interaction can be derived and justified. Instead, Plato largely confines himself to the depiction of the good soul and of what is good for the soul, on the assumption that the state of the soul is the necessary and sufficient condition for the good life and its moral precepts."
You cite a lot of names, but how much about them or their reasoning do you really know? For what ethics or mores did Wittgenstein advocate?
See https://genius.com/Ludwig-wittgenstein-a-lecture-on-ethics-1929-annotated:
Wittgenstein ---
"Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural ...."
"This shows that it is absurd to say "Science has proved that there are no miracles."
The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle."
"My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. "
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JEWS:
Jewish culture is often seen as a main impetus for insufferable busybody central gov intrusiveness. That is, eventually forcing everyone to marry the gov, out of some misguided notion of being chosen to know best how everyone should live their lives.
This is often blamed for undermining representative republics that avail self actualization, in order to replace them with global elitist diktat --- whether under communist Nomenklatura and princelings or under Kabuki socialism run by and for oligarchs using trained and cheap stooges.
This seems to pass for post modern liberalism, but seems especially prevalent in much of the part of Jewish culture that is enamored with detailed laws for everything. As if there were a special science of morality best known to Liberals (now nearly the opposite of classical liberals). But I could be wrong.
I wonder how many secular humanist Jews see themselves as specially chosen (or act consistent with such culture), yet claim not to be religious either in belief or in practice?
Here's my religion: I don't care what a person calls himself. But PC busybody intrusiveness is not needed or wanted.
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Where did I say that logic is adolescent? The fact that you misrepresent that I said such a thing demonstrates that you are either very poor in reading comprehension or in practicing logic. Logic itself is not adolescent. But people that know little about how to apply it and how it is limited can easily be adolescent. For more, read about logic and Godel. When you learn how to address an issue logically, get back with me. Meantime, I have little interest in conversing with someone that is so ridiculously poor in applying logic. Until then, regards.
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Is Humanism strictly a science? Is it strictly based in objectivism ? Is it lacking in practice in PC cultish dogma? Does it promote zealous knowitalls that shout down free speech or contrary ideas? How do you distinguish between a concept of a God that inspires good faith and good will versus a concept of higher mindedness founded in preferences for guiding nature?
Determining what one should devote one's life to is based on subjective imagination. Why do you think calling that process Secular Humanism somehow magically changes that? How do you distinguish between a concept of a God that inspires good faith and good will versus a concept of higher mindedness founded in preferences for guiding nature? Do you imagine you have discovered a completely scientific basis for deriving ought from is? If so, publish it for scientific peer review.
Not every religious idea focuses on eternal salvation for mortal perspectives of consciousness. A religion or spiritual outlook can focus on being attuned and receptive to feedback concerning what seems appropriate in good faith and good will as one develops and assimilates one's moral code for dealing responsibly with others.
In terms of humanism, spirituality, and higher moral mindedness, I see no clear, objective, or scientific line in practice between respect for such a source of higher mindedness as being spiritual versus natural.
IAE, I fear the post modern priests of PC Human Secularism and their monolithic. ideological, dogmatic corruption of every institution of political, social, and moral persuasion at least as much as I fear the preachers of old time religion.
Your ideas are stunted. Sorry. Our very currency depends on the full faith, trust, and good will that is assimilated among the general citizenry.
Among the affairs of civilization, if you want to believe ought can be derived scientifically, objectively, and solely from is, you can continue in your uninformed delusion --- as unsupported in logic, science, and historical experience as such delusion is.
Humans exist ... with interests and values ... that cannot be derived or assimilated exclusively with appeals to science or logic.
Since your understanding of limits on logic is adolescent.
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Bad things: Start with the knowitall PC b.s. I mean in practice. The PC among atheists (who are mainly of the moral religion of human secularists, sometimes pretending to be moral scientists).
I agree that the general dogma is so general as to be nearly worthless. Except for pretending to be a complete alternative to religion.
You're simply cherry picking the things you take to be good and attributing them entirely to the religion of Human Secularism, as if no one else makes any contribution. Moreover, the vague nature if your manifesto offers little specific guidance. The real guidance\diktat comes with the PC monopoly by ideologues serving oligarchs.
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You fail to realize that a society that assimilates to practice a concept of a moral religion (even the moral religion of Human Secularism, as dogmatically fed to us in great gulps of PC) is assimilating its practices in respect of a feedback process with That Which Defines And Avails Our Unfoldment. You also fail to appreciate that you are simply unqualified to say as fact whether or not such unfoldment has nothing to do with God.
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Well, is there a purely objective, non-contingent, true philosophy of morality?
So many people are shooting against religious based moral philosophy. As if there must be a truer and better basis for moral philosophy. They shoot against all religions as presently organized. But they lack insight that, as moral philosophy, organized Secular Humanism as presented among PC constrained institutions (meaning all modern institutions of significant social persuasion) offers its own kind of devout cultish "poisonous" thinking.
Secular Humanism has offered little of decency or intelligence with regard to how to assimilate and sustain a society to promote human freedom, dignity, and self actualization. Rather, it has fixated on instant and juvenile gratifications and PC identity politics, for which its proponents seem quite willing to use divide-and-rule tactics to tear down every nation, republic, and culture.
For example, by misguided (poisonous?) forest management practices in California, PC Humanists have contributed to a holocaust that may now contribute to global cooling. By zealous commitment to all things Gay, they may well be contributing to the replacement of the family as the primary institution for rearing succeeding generations, with misguided central gov to be run by and for intrusive oligarchs. They promise better security in exchange for surrendering personal autonomy by marrying the gov. But by what objective standard is what they are offering "better"?
Moreover, anti-religionists seem to lack insight that a great many religionists take their sacred stories more as metaphors and beginning points for inspiring congregants to come together to assimilate in respect of a feedback process in good faith and good will. Perhaps a lot of anti-religionists are mainly upset because not every organized church presently celebrates fixations of gratification-wired rebels against society.
Of course, many attempts at social assimilation seem now to be thought by "educated" humanists to be "racist." The latest twist is that to advocate for equal opportunity under law is to be racist against all the non-white races, tribes, and organized whiners that want superior rights. IOW, per the moral religion of PC Humanists, to not be racist against Whites is to be racist. This is the "new enlightenment" being offered by our "superiors" under modern education.
While the prescriptions of PC Humanists are often wrong or devastating in their consequences, their adherents seem never to be in doubt. I call that bull headed, unthinking, stupid dogmatism. Adolescent, unadulterated crap, posing as educated and superior intelligence.
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Morphing common meanings and institutions will tend to advantage some and disadvantage others. Traditional institutions such as relating to marriage and family have facilitated the rearing of generations so that less gov oversight was needed.
Changing the traditions and definitions is being accomplished by increasing gov intrusion. This seems to be good for a minority of people, but at the expense of many. As seen in the destruction of inner city families.
The destruction is excused by favoring the values of a minority over those of a majority. That is how militants excuse their activism.
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Perhaps you think there are no militant, dogmatic, narcissistic, oblivious, selfish atheists or gays that put their personal pleasures above the general interests of society? Look in a mirror. You may have outed yourself.
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Avenatti: Believe women. Except when they accuse me.
The Left: Open borders and redistribute wealth. Except mine.
Oligarchs: End nations. Except my private islands.
Academia: End protection under law. Except for Anarchists, Militant Atheists, and Gays.
The philosophies of Leftists, Globalists, Dinos, and Rinos are bankrupt when they are not self annihilating.
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To advocate for equal opportunity under law is to be racist against all the non-white races, tribes, and organized whiners that want superior rights. IOW, to not be racist against Whites is to be racist. This is the new enlightenment offered under modern education. F it.
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CAUSATION: When a math equation or a chemical algorithm re-balances, a mortal may ascertain and take part or manipulate with regard to what preceded or CORRELATED with the change. A mortal enjoys Participatory Will, not Originating Free Will. But a mortal, whose every sense depends on the present state of accumulated affairs, may not say what first CAUSED the first preceding thing or event.
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For all we know, some truths are beyond even God, or knowable only to God, or communicable by God.
Beyond metaphors, I fail to appreciate how or why a God so far above mortals could or should communicate meta truths to mortals, without first promoting them to a capacity or status beyond mortal. I fail to see why mortals should expect that pursuits of science must eventually lead them, as mortals, to a true or complete understanding of the mind of God. See also Godel.
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Re: "When my bank account gets low I can't take out a calculator and do math calculations to put money into my bank."
True, that. But metaphysics relates to that which is beyond physics, i.e., beyond the aspects of our universe that are physically measurable. Sometimes, it seems to relate to something like counting fairies on the head of a pin. Can the act of trying to count them actually coax some unexpected aspect into practical existence? Can scientific tinkering bring new forms of beingness into existentiality that otherwise would not have become manifest? Could a superior alien being design a simulation that would avail us to experience a perception of a physical world?
Can God deal with some meta math, or math of maths? That's a head scratcher.
Tegmark has talked about a MUH, mathematical universe hypothesis.
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Nothingness does seem to be like a non-conceptualizable conceptualization. So I agree with much of what you say.
Except, I do not believe that science can evidence a non-conceptualizable conceptualization, i.e., an originalizing creator. Science begins with hypotheses and then seeks evidence that tends to confirm, until it falsifies. An idea of an originalizing creator, as a non-conceptualizable conceptualization, cannot by science be falsified. But that does not mean it is proven by science as a true factual description of the state of our affairs.
The existence of an originalizing creator is not necessarily part of my ongoing experience. The existence of a changeless-changer, on the other hand, is conceptualizable in respect that it is part of my ongoing experience. We directly experience that both we and our universe remain identifiable, even as we change.
Why do I prefer a concept of a changeless-changer over a concept of an originalizing creator? Because I find the concept of a changeless-changer to be consistent with experience, while the concept of an originalizing creator, by itself and entirely outside our universe, is not relevant to any moral purpose. Simply put, the idea of a Deity that created and then left the creation, by itself, is either irrelevant or absurd for communicating or fostering moral good faith or guidance for mortal beings. How do we intuit guidance from a non-communicant that has entirely left the building?
I prefer the intuitive idea of God being with us (Immanuel) to the idea of God being non-receptive and non-communicative. I sense the first idea to be helpful for assimilating moral purposefulness, the second idea --- not so much. In wordplay, I would have less of a problem with an idea that God temporally created us and then stayed with us. Indeed, the idea of a temporally changeless-changer seems consistent with that.
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I do not experience anything before or after time. I experience the here and now. I tend to pass over anything before or after time as beyond my scope. I do punt to "something always was, is, and will be," because the existence of something is consistent with my senses, while the existence of nothing defies my utility for logic.
If nothing can exist, then is nothing, in itself, an existent?
My senses of beingness and logic do not avail me to get much of a handle on that kind of question. I have seen the argument that everything came from nothing being used to rationalize atheism, and I have seen that argument being used to rationalize theism. Personally, I do not find that argument especially useful for much of anything.
I do think there was a "vacuum duration sequence in math" before mortals could experience time-space, and I expect there will be a "vacuum duration sequence in math" after which mortals will no longer exist, for a duration, to experience time-space.
However, if that vacuum once birthed a universe for mortals such as us, then I find little reason to suppose IT has not, or will not, be recycled to do the same, recurrently for succeeding mortals.
As to whether God experiences that "vacuum duration sequence in math" as a passage of time, I could only speculate. If pressed, I might suggest that such math sequence simply exists and does not itself, absent manifestation of fundaments of Consciousness, Substance, and Information, entail an experience of time as such.
IOW, I would conceptualize that the potentiality of math-based sequences and fluxes is more fundamental than space, time, matter, or energy.
I think Hawking metaphorized time as a "chronological (sequential) protection device." Insofar as math expressions in sequences, such sequencing entails that some occur before others and some after others. However, if the Math sequencing is looped, then determining whether one sequence precedes or follows the arrow of another may depend on any given perspective taken by the Mathematician.
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If nothing can exist, then is nothing an existent?
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Well, I don't think a bazillion universes are necessarily needed. May not our universe as we experience it have begun from a vacuum, eventually to end with a vacuum, then with such vacuum seed a succeeding universe, and so on, in perpetual recycling flux? The Vacuum/Universe could abide as one system that avails an infinity of sequential representations.
Would it make sense to argue for a first and only creation of space-time-matter-energy if there could just as well be an endless number of recycling firsts?
To me, the better question for a conceptualization would relate to the Nature/Character of the vacuum. May a Mathematician define and reconcile with Math-based parameters in a way that avails the expression of one trinity (Godhead?) of fundaments, being Consciousness, Substance, and Information --- none of which could be expressed in any particulars without feedback and participation with the other two?
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Interesting! I had seen a clip by Krauss. I agree that space-time as measurably and physically experienced by mortals is an effect that emerges in respect of something more fundamental.
Problem is, the so called nothing is actually something. Even if only a math based matrix for sponsoring potentialities. Or vacuum. IT is what IT is -- always has been, always will be. At least, I have no way to intuit or evidence to the contrary.
I am unable to imagine, much less replicate, how something could come into sequence after nothing. That would violate every impression I have with regard to how math functions.
By the way, to say "nothing is," is much the same as to say that "not is, is is." It's like gab-baloney. The vacuum, as a sea of potentialities, is not a nothing.
So, is IT an immaterial thing that has Conscious capacity to use Information to facilitate and reconcile manifestations of Substance? I would agree with that. Caveat: I do not think such an IT, as a Conscious expression, could express itself except in correlation with Information and Substance, as propertied fundaments.
I would agree with a conceptualization that math, to be activated, needs a Mathematician. However, that Mathematician, to experience Consciousness in a way that humans relate to it, would need some correlative sense with regard to fundaments of Substance and Information.
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You seem to be stuck on "our" universe. However, I am not disputing a space-time continuum for "our" universe. But I think that continuum may better be conceptualized as consisting with math-based matrix sequences, such that presentations in terms of space-time may be more like derivatives.
I am suggesting there has never been a complete absence of every math-based matrix --- each of which may have capacity to define and present untold universes and experiences of space-time.
I see no reason to suppose that all math-based potentialities, such as that define sequential continuosities for the system that our universe obeys, have ever been entirely out of existence.
The problem of an infinite regression of math-based matrices remains.
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Every measurable manifestation unfolds in respect of math-based pre-conditioning parameters.
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Not cause, but catalyst. I suspect the ultimate catalyst for all changes abides as a necessary flux of a trinity of (qualitative) Consciousness, (quantifiable) Substance, and (cumulatively recycling) Information. To the extent Consciousness abides as a fundament among the trinity, IT would seem to abide as the conscious aspect of the Godhead.
I agree the ultimate catalyst would not simply be the conscious aspect of the Godhead. However, I doubt any ever-presenting aspects of Substance and Information could abide without the ever-presenting aspect of Consciousness.
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GODHEAD V NATURE --- UNCAUSED-FIRST-CAUSE (Irrelevant God Without) V CHANGELESS-CHANGER (Relevant God With Us):
Unlike the idea of an uncaused First Cause, an idea of a Changeless Changer need not necessitate reference to an infinite regression of preceding firsts.
A flux of CSI may be conceptualized as sharing a fundamental property that does not change. That property is that Consciousness, Substance, and Information are each defined by the other two and cannot be expressed without reference to the other two. That property does not change. However, whatever the specifically expressed forms that may be sponsored, unfolded, and presented in concert with their flux do change. In their changeless property, they constitute the Godhead. In their changing manifestations, they constitute the Natural Cosmos.
I think Spinoza touched on this, if he made reference to the world that is God's Nature and also to the world that is expressed (caused?) by Conscious God.
As to Causal Free Will: For all we can know, it may be that, like mortals, God, as reconciling consciousness, can only know contingent participatory will, as opposed to unrestricted, unlimited, creative, Free Will. Apart from math-based fundamental properties of Substance and Information, how could God as Conscious Will, manifest to express measurable existents?
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There is a point where there was no time, space, matter, or energy for the universe that now presents us with the Earth. But you are not qualified to say whether there was or was not a point where there was no time, space, matter, or energy for any universe or proto universe. Sorry.
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FIRST CAUSE:
No, the first cause argument is not valid. It is circuitous special pleading that refutes itself.
Nor is it usefully relevant. If a God created and then left the building, then such a God has become no longer relevant. If God remains with us, is inextricably linked with feedback concerning our experiences of consciousness, substance, and information, and if such a God is reasonably to be intuited under our common sense of beingness, then such a God may be relevant as an attracting reference for inspiring us to be willing to come to reason together in good faith and good will.
But what does "causation" mean? Does it mean manipulation of frequent correlations in proximate space and time? Or does it mean that which first set a chain of pre-ordained events into unfolding manifestation?
To varying orders of significant practicality, we can often measure correlations among events that unfold in chronological and spatial sequences. But how can we identify, measure, or prove the first causal producer, any more than we can identify, measure, or prove the ultimate material building block-in-itself from which all formations may be presumed to have been built --- without making circular reference to such formations?
I can no more reliably or logically purport that there must abide a First Causal Producer than I can purport that there must abide an Ultimate Thing-in-itself building block. My senses and sense of being pertain to an existing flux of potentialities. They offer no insight into whether there may have been a time or place when or where no potentiality existed. To suggest there was no-thing and no potential thing until a some-thing Created and produced itself is to suggest a contradiction that is beyond analysis in mortal logic.
What can be directly sensed and known is the general existentiality to which one is presented. Not the first creation of existential potentiality.
For all we know, potentiality has always existed --- fluxing, phasing, and repeating among various modes of presentation. To seek to prove there must have been a time or place when and where no thing and no potentiality existed is to seek a non-existent existent.
That is an errand that is not practical or worthwhile to any mortal observer, farmer, technician, scientist, theologian, or philosopher. Nor is that errand necessary to an ideation of a system of moral purposefulness. Nor is it necessary to an ideation of a relevant Godhead that avails the conserving, unfolding, presenting, and reconciling among myriad of feedback potentialities and expressions of good faith.
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The math-based sequential predecessor to that which defines our system of natural laws could just as well be a correlate as a cause. Whatever its potentiality in respect of its own time and place, if it existed, it was not a no-thing or a thing entirely outside all time and place.
I agree that existential potentiality may well be eternal. I would agree that there may be circulating repetition or phases among modes for presenting universes. But to say there must have been a time or place when there was no time or place --- with that I would pass over in silence.
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I can image and imagine an array of possibilities and potentialities that is both expanding and infinite, yet mathematically conserved to fluxing parameters. I can llikewise imagine a most superior sponsor or Godhead for such unfolding. But I cannot imagine how a Godhead could abide beyond or outside of that. I cannot imagine how a Godhead of potentialities not existing could create itself into existence.
In that respect, I relate my conscious conceptualization of the Godhead to such math based possibilities as I can consciously imagine. In that respect, I relate my inferior Consciousness to that which capacitates a superior sponsoring Consciousness.
I can imagine a possibility for each person to pre-organize the Substance and Information around him so that in many respects it would perform as he may in words image and direct. Such pre-organization would entail that whatever is directed into measurable manifestation would be conserved to laws within laws within laws. Because it would obey laws of Nature, it could not reasonably be thought to be entirely superior (supernatural) to Nature.
I can imagine a sponsoring Godhead that could do the same, in a cosmic encompassing sense.
Thus, a self-believing self-actualization for each perspective of Consciousness would seem to unfold in correlation with such spiritual vector of fluxing potentialities and powers.
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Deism relates to what is oft called Nature's God. It leads to a regression of tiresome notions about whom God has created so he can get around to punishing or rewarding them as He has preordained. It is a mind trap for absurdities. Yet, it abides with many supposedly religious conceptualizations. It is a gateway for gab-baloney. What is the purpose of a God idea, if it conceptualizes a God that cannot be surprised and thus not pleased?
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I think a Spinoza kind of panentheism makea more sense for inspiring moral purposefulness, which seems usually to be the purpose for most spiritual belief systems. I think many avowed a-theists, in the preferences they promote, are more like Nature Pagan Panentheists.
Problem is, many seem short sighted and prone to organize around pursuing immediate pleasures that may not tend to inspire or sustain any viable or long term culture or civilization. They may do better if they were inspired to come to reason together in more humble good faith and good will, as opposed to frolicking full time around pleasure trees.
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Take a belief system that every person is entitled to claim, be, and require everyone else to celebrate whatever sex that person wants to act out at the time. Is such a belief system consistent with Nature or objective facts, or is it so superior to nature as to be Supernatural? Is it based in science, religion, and/or psychological illusion or delusion? Is its intolerant, dogmatic, and devout promotion over other belief systems bigoted? Is it based in worship of a Giant Flying Queer Fixation of Nature over all other belief systems? Among a-theists, is such an avowed belief system a common alternative over other religious practices and systems?
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Why are you talking about a Creator Deity? That is NOT my idea of the Godhead, as I have said on many occasions. I do not trouble myself with infinite regressions concerning original creation. Rather, I relate to what is: CSI.
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Regarding tribal balkanization and identity politics: So far, the Scandinavian countries that promote high taxes and high welfare enjoy culturally homogenous societies that are not bordered with illiterate and hostile populations or agitated for those that profit by increasing tribal animosities. Time will tell the rest of the story. Diversity at un-assimilable rates, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
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I don't know. Denmark is a highly literate and homogenous society. Could social democracy in the style of Denmark work very well for a culturally nonhomogenous society that is bordered with illiterate and hostile populations and divided and agitated for those that profit by increasing tribal animosities?
Is it fair to call it institutionalized brainwashing when masses of people are educated beyond the competence of their intellects?
Take a belief system that every person is entitled to claim, be, and require everyone else to celebrate whatever sex that person wants to act out at the time. Is such a belief system consistent with Nature or objective facts, or is it so superior to nature as to be Supernatural? Is it based in science, religion, and/or psychological illusion or delusion? Is its intolerant, dogmatic, and devout promotion over other belief systems bigoted? Is it based in worship of a Giant Flying Queer Fixation of Nature over all other belief systems? Among a-theists, is such an avowed belief system a common alternative over other religious practices and systems?
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This is all brought to you by subhumans that want to destroy the nation so they can farm the world's masses. They are enraged against Trump because they thought they had the deed done through Hillary. So now they have academically and scientifically categorized everyone that opposes Hillary as either a toxic male or a misogynist racist. To ensure their position this time, they are importing hordes of liberty illiterate sheeple and cultural collectivists. Every liberty loving free thinker needs to get mad as hell about this and cut the crap right out of the goosey fems and femimen that promote it. Then RICO the hell out of the oligarchs that fund it.
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Where do Leftists (and Atheists?) go to assimilate their moral values? Leftists have become head over heels enamored with "trans-experiences" (built on sand) with regard to drugs, sex, marriage, family, humanity, species, cyborgs. They do not seek individual or familial responsibility, self actualization, or cultural loyalty. They seek pleasurable experiences and to use others to obtain them. Many want immediate pleasure to be their objective criteria for morality and fairness. They do not seek to assimilate any sustainable or decent culture or representative republic. This is because they have no lasting ideals to assimilate. This is why they are unable to defend or sustain any lasting culture or nation. Rather, they are trained to be suited to be overrun, divided, and farmed.
So, they seek to vilify all belief systems that inspire and support sustainable morals and families. Thus, many seek to marry a communal government, to be administered by so-called fair-minded and elite moral scientisimists, whom they imagine will be naturally benign --- because Natural Paganism is the pleasure religion that underlies their so-called secular humanism.
Of course, once these Trans-Moralists (Progs) vote to throw away their nations and republics, the oligarchs they took to be their friends will simply farm them for cheap labor. And stronger willed yet crazed cultures will subjugate them, for they are without sustainable backbone to defend themselves. Free stuff and equality -- yup, yup, yup.
Scratch a Secular Humanist, find a selfish hedonist calling himself something like a Trans-Moralist Prog and pretending to represent a higher, godless, and more "objective" morality.
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Were perfection availed to mortals, there would then be no need for change, time, or space. Mortal existentiality would be pointless. You seem to be complaining that God did not elevate you to God's place. So, you want to claim the title anyway, by denouncing God.
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Your first sentence is nonsense. Morality pertains to what one should do. Oughts.
What person that seeks spiritual insight does not do so in part because that is what he feels he ought to do?
What person that seeks to justify atheism does so not in part because that is what he feels he ought to do?
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To take what is and say it must be what was objectively most fit --- is to reason to a conclusion. That mode cannot serve as much of a guide with regard to how one should purpose one's life.
Yes, you did misunderstand.
I am suggesting that atheists are not objective. I do not think pure conscious objectivity exists. To be conscious implicates subjectivity. I think everything that unfolds does so in concert with a feedback process of subjective-objectivity. Subjective consciousness implicates objective goals. Conscious objectivity implicates subjective entailment.
As I see it, avowed atheists believe they are, and should be, seeking a philosophy or belief system that is objectively consistent, coherent, and complete. But why do so many think they "should be" seeking to explicate such a system?
Why is it so important to avowed atheists or agnostics to try to draw purely objective lines between atheistic believers, agnostic doubters, and religious believers? I think they are trying to draw objective lines in windblown sand. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
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It's hard to have "to do" with something that does not in practicality exist. Atheism, like Communism, exists in the real world much as unicorns. Atheists that do practicably exist and live do believe in various ideas or ideals that are religious in nature, because they are devoutly believed even in the absence of knowledge or scientific support.
Do atheists devoutly respect, even if only in lip service, moral codes that are not provable in science? Surely. Otherwise, they would quickly die or be outcast. When they do so, they are either promoting themselves to godhood or else they are promoting someone else as their moral guide --- even in the absence of scientific proof. So how does this make them more scientifically, morally, or spiritually rational? Lol.
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Say "there are no bad things," and say it three times. Does that make it true?
Nope. Beingness does not let anyone off so easily. To choose not to choose is itself a kind of choice. That is the hard nature of beingness. To believe a belief system is wrong or not good is itself a kind of belief. To believe in an idea or ideal of goodness or virtue or justice is to engage with believing in a way that cannot be objectively proven in science. Yet, to live requires that one engage in choices that one feels or believes are better than others. At least, so long as one believes it is better to live than to choose death.
By what fundament of Nature does Evolution prefer those that seek to continue to live and replicate as being "more fit"?
BTW, I'm pretty sure there are many more avowed Christians than avowed Atheists in many categories. So your point about more Christians favoring asylum seems rather pointless. The point remains: Atheists, like everyone else, adopt many beliefs that cannot be based purely in objectivity or science. The pretense of being completely objective or fair minded is simply that --- silly pretense.
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So, a-theism is a belief system? A stance among hard atheists that no evidence, no experience, no intuition, and no sense-of-beingness can be allowed to dislodge? A hard nosed commitment to the methods of science. Except when it comes to social mores and purposes?
I find it mind boggling when I look at the willingness of Secular Humanists to "justify" by rationalization the strangest of ideas --- such as the "virtue" of importing people from completely antagonistic cultures in order to overrun the voting and citizenry of Western representative republics and replace them with elitist diktat from either islamofascists or Corporate Fascist Socialists.
Under what strange belief system do so many secular humanists religiously justify the nurturing of such an oligarchically farmed onslaught against human decency and self actualization?
Whatever the religious like nature of their justification, it is certainly not based in objective science. Yet, they name call as much as any frenzied priest! Heretic, yells the zealous priest. Racist, yells the zealous human secularist. A pox on the both of them, say I.
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So the Left, instead of recognizing.the equivalency of corporatist run socialism with fascism, now wants to equate representative Republic nationalism with fascism. And these people want to tell us how educated they are? Good grief
If the purpose of PC public schools is to equalize so as to leave no child behind, that translates into reducing education to a lowest common denominator. That eventually translates into turning the masses into sheeple to be farmed by kids whose parents provided for their educations outside public schools. That tends to translate into global death for all representative republics. New Serfdom. And if you oppose that, you must be a "supremacist." Antifa and SJWs are trained to tell you so. S/
If you want to help produce a better society, then help avail people with oppprtunities to self actualize and to overcome their own chosen challenges. Do not do for them what they need to learn to do for themselves. Do not teach them they are entitled to take from you Whatever they feel they need.
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Citizens that prefer nationalists over globalists are racists, just like people that prefer doctors over veterinarians are specieists. S/
Why not allow ONLY the pervs, deviants, malcontents, illegals, and felons to vote? Oh wait, so long as they are given free rein to stuff ballot boxes, what's the diff?
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Personally, I am not receptive to biblical literalism. I am receptive to a concept of inextricably interconnecting, fluxng, and feedback Consciousness that abides as a fundament beyond restriction to any particular body, I.e., God.
In that connection. I am receptive to biblical metaphors for providing a common and historical language as a point of reference or inspiration.
However, I respect that many people need simpler answers and clearer instructions.
Regarding yourself, during some time that your identity, friends, business standing, social standing, and capacity for circular rationalization were more dependent on accepting biblical literalism, you were perhaps more receptive to it during such time.
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Musing: Perfect non-trivial truth may be beyond the reach of mortals while mortal. We may only pursue practical truthiness. Yet, that capicitates us for astonishing technologies as well as mind boggling systems of moral rationalization.
Whatever the Truth of God, it has capacitated mortals to construct various systems of religious metaphors that have perhaps for a time been appropriate for their age. They present as they present. It is what it is. Subject to a flux feedback "conversation" with the Godhead.
Even tenets of Human Secularism, as practiced, flux with that Conversation.
For example, were Earth to become a vast firestorm or friendly only to silicon based A.I., would mass killing apocalypse then be reasonably thought merciful, notwithstanding anything written in the Ten Commandments or Human Secularism?
A closer example: Look at the willingness of Secular Humanists to "justify" by rationalization the most mind boggling of ideas --- such as the "virtue" of importing people from completely antagonistic cultures in order to overrun the voting and citizenry of Western representative republics and replace them with elitist diktat from either islamofascists or Corporate Fascist Socialists. Under what strange belief system do so many secular humanists religiously justify the nurturing of such an oligarchically farmed onslaught against human decency and self actualization? Whatever the religious like nature of their justification, it is certainly not based in objective science. Yet, they name call as much as any frenzied priest! Heretic, yells the zealous priest. Racist, yells the zealous human secularist. A pox on the both of them, say I.
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Science itself cannot de-convert. Science deals with what can be both conceptually described and, to orders of practical significance, measured. It does not deal with describing, measuring, testing for, or proving the ultimate cause or perfect measure of that which can only be experienced, described, conceptualized, and measured to degrees of significance. Science does not attempt to answer the ultimate cause of infinite regressions. Nor does it deal with or measure any ultimate, perfect, or complete conceptualization concerning any thing-in-itself. Nor can it provide or inspire objectively non-contingent answers concerning what humanity or any civilization, culture, or individual "should" seek to do.
IOW, science cannot replace innate conscious empathy, identification, metaphors, or parables for inspiring spiritual based pursuits for individuals or groups.
Even if a spaceship were to form out of thin air, strong atheists would simply attribute the feat to space aliens, never to a Godhead. Science cannot answer such issues, so the Godhead could not use science to de-convert, convert, or prove any non-trivial thing to the complete satisfaction of either a believer or a non-believer. What converts or de-converts people are personal experiences, intuitions, empathies. You are receptive or you are not. Science-in-itself cannot fix that.
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TRANS-MORALISTS: Where do Leftists and Atheists go to assimilate their moral values? Leftists have become head over heels enamored with "trans-experiences" with regard to drugs, sex, marriage, family, humanity, species, cyborgs. They do not seek individual or familial responsibility, self actualization, or cultural loyalty. They seek pleasurable experiences and to use others to obtain them. Many want pleasure to be their objective criteria for morality and fairness. They do not seek to assimilate any sustainable or decent culture or representative republic. This is because they have no lasting ideals to assimilate. This is why they are unable to defend or sustain any lasting culture or nation. Rather, they are trained to be suited to be overrun, divided, and farmed.
So, they seek to vilify all religions that inspire and support sustainable morals and families. Thus, many seek to marry a communal government, to be administered by so-called fair-minded and elite moral scientisimists, whom they imagine will be naturally benign --- because Natural Paganism is the pleasure religion that underlies their so-called secular humanism.
Of course, once these Trans-Moralists (Progs) vote to throw away their nations and republics, the oligarchs they took to be their friends will simply farm them for cheap labor. And stronger willed yet crazed cultures will subjugate them, for they are without sustainable backbone to defend themselves. Free stuff and equality -- yup, yup, yup.
Scratch a Secular Humanist, find a selfish hedonist calling himself something like a Trans-Moralist Prog and pretending to represent a higher, godless, and more objective morality.
SCIENCE: Science deals with what can be both conceptually described and, to orders of practical significance, measured. It does not deal with describing, measuring, testing for, or proving the ultimate cause or perfect measure of that which can only be experienced, described, conceptualized, and measured to degrees of significance. Science does not attempt to answer the ultimate cause of infinite regressions. Nor does it deal with or measure any ultimate, perfect, or complete conceptualization concerning any thing-in-itself. Nor can it provide or inspire objectively non-contingent answers concerning what humanity or any civilization, culture, or individual "should" seek to do. IOW, science cannot replace innate conscious empathy, identification, metaphors, or parables for inspiring spiritual based pursuits for individuals or groups.
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Already answered. Can you not read? It is obvious that human secularists are religious, in the sense of being devout opponents of what they take to be Christianity. Moreover, many also seem oblivious to the problems in their own moral and ethical systems of thought. Some (poor misguided souls) seem even to think the scientific method can entirely objectively answer how to derive ought from is. Others think issues of morality and ethics are irrelevant --- except as pretense in pursuit of power. Such people tend to be uninformed, uninsightful, and not very scientific in their moral, spiritual, and religious dogmatism. In those respects, they can hardly claim to be intelligent. But thanks for playing.
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Einstein said a lot of things. Perhaps you are a diviner of the beliefs of the now dead?
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I happen to share much of Spinoza's thinking, and I do not find it to be meaningless in either a spiritual or a moral sense. There may be some confusion about whether Spinoza considered God to be mere material Substance versus the cause for the expression of material Substance. Regardless, my take is that "What Is" fluxes in the way it is presented. I think it fluxes to present Consciousness, measurable Substance, and cumulating information. CSI. I do not see how any of C, S, or I could present in the absence of the other two. I think that is a problem that is beyond mortal discernment, so I do not trouble with it. Sorry that you seem to be trapped in it.
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You cherry picked your definition to suit your bias. See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/religion: 1. The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. ‘ideas about the relationship between science and religion’ 1.1. A particular system of faith and worship. 1.2. A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.
Sam Harris is a smart guy, but he is chasing a rainbow as he tries to find an objective and scientific basis for describing a system for deriving Ought from Is.
Steven Weinberg's point is obvious to any reasonably smart and unbiased 10 year old kid.
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Whatever floats your boat. A lot of Christians believe God has already determined the Alpha and the Omega and stands outside time and space. But I doubt they consider God to be meaningless.
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Btw, I personally am not a deist in your sense. I try not to chase infinite regressions. I simply take what is as being what is. Consciousness is Consciousness. A is A. Panentheist seems closest to describing my take.
I think "What Is" fluxes in the way it is presented. I think it fluxes to present Consciousness, measurable Substance, and cumulating information. CSI. I do not see how any of C, S, or I could present in the absence of the other two. So I do not concern myself with original creation. I simply take what is, and by sense of beingness intuit that it is connected in respect of how it fluxes and presents. That feedback connectivity is the ground for what I sense to be innate empathy.
I think the CSI Godhead is innately empathetic, but I do not think that implicates nothing but love. I think it implicates tough love, because the feedback system, in its measurables, is one of conservation of matter and energy. Still, I think appreciating an innate and interpenetrating property of empathy can help instill a sense of purposeful meaningfulness among people receptive to it. I suspect Spinoza was not far from being of like mind.
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Spinoza differed from the thinkers of his time, but he did not consider himself an atheist. Go punt again.
EDIT: I doubt even Einstein considered himself an atheist.
See Wikipedia.
Einstein used many labels to describe his religious views, including "agnostic", "religious nonbeliever" and a "pantheistic" believer in "Spinoza's God". Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no." He conceded that, "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.
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Where did I say the list of thinkers was limited to scientists? Did you not notice my reference to Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
Why do you equate being a deist with being an atheist?
Why do you think being concerned with a Source for beingness and goodness is meaningless, as a reference for inviting people to come to reason together in good faith and good will?
Why do you think religious metaphors must be taken as literal truths in order to be religiously or spiritually meaningful? Why should you think that people who take religious metaphors as often being helpful for inspiring good faith communications must tend to be less intelligent?
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You're too easy. Look up the definitions for religion. Do you think the ethics or morality of human secularism are founded entirely in the methods of science?
Lol.
If the Golden Rule as promotion by Jesus is too broad to be testable or meaningful, then so also is Sam Harris' promotion of human well-beingness.
Per Steven Weinberg: "Now, Sam Harris is aware of this kind of counter argument [to utilitarianism], and says it's not happiness, it's human welfare. Well, as you make things VAGUER and vaguer, of course, it becomes harder and harder to say it doesn't fit your own moral feelings, but it also becomes less and less useful as a means of making moral judgements. You could take that to the extreme and make up some nonsense word and say that's the important thing and no-one could refute it but it wouldn't be very helpful. I regard human welfare and the way Sam Harris refers to it as sort of halfway in that direction to absolute nonsense."
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If the purpose of PC public schools is to equalize so as to leave no child behind, that translates into reducing education to a lowest common denominator. That eventually translates into turning the masses into sheeple to be farmed by kids whose parents provided for their educations outside public schools. That tends to translate into global death for all representative republics. New Serfdom. And if you oppose that, you must be a "supremacist." Antifa and SJWs are trained to tell you so. S/
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So, believers in the moral religion of human secularism tend to be less intelligent? I doubt that is true.
However, do a large number of people who pride themselves on being good at quantification puzzles tend to be more easily led into malevolent moral philosophies for rationalizing and deforming qualitatives, in order to soothe their search for orderliness or to further their people farming? Does their appreciation for qualitatives tend to be deformed or rendered inferior to their fascination for quantiatives ? Answer: Often, yes.
Unabomber, Leopold and Loeb, Bernie Madoff, Dr. H.H. Holmes, Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, Pablo Escobar, Martin Shkreli, Philipp Budeikin, Josef Mengele, George Marquardt, Kim Philby, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Stalin, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, Margaret Sanger, Beverly Allitt, Belle Gunness, Mary Ann Cotton, Ilse Koch Born. Katherine Knight.
Were the following named people unintelligent: Baruch Spinoza, Robert Boyle, Issac Newton, Leonhard Euler, George Berkeley, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, Leo Tolstoy, William Thomson Kelvin, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Our revels are now ended, these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. --- Shakespeare
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Where did I say the list of thinkers was limited to scientists? Did you not notice my reference to Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? Why do you equate being a deist with being an atheist? Why do you think being concerned with a Source for beingness and goodness is meaningless, as a reference for inviting people to come to reason together in good faith and good will? Why do you think religious metaphors must be taken as literal truths in order to be religiously or spiritually meaningful? Why should you think that people who take religious metaphors as often being helpful for inspiring good faith communications must tend to be less intelligent?
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The difference between so called right wing and left wing terrorists is a difference with no significant distinction. Like the difference between fascism and communism. They are both forms of intimidation and control by elitist oligarchs or nomenklatura and their stoolies over the general populace. They both serve a subhumanizing agenda by using the tactics of divide and rule. Both are directed against human freedom and dignity for the masses. Neither promotes freedom of expression, enterprise, or association. Neither serves the American Ideal of conserving liberty. Both demonize the other, and then try to cover decent free-thinking conservers of liberty as being "the other." Both lie about their aims and about ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, both are owned, operated and hedged by Deep State sheeple farmers. Unfortunately, between them, they control every institution of political significance. Except for Trump, they have crowded out any significant representation for ordinary, decent, free thinking Americans. If human decency is to be salvaged, ordinary Americans will need to call out this BS and stop allowing themselves to be intimidated by PC and name calling. It is past time for tolerating this crap.
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I will never never forgive the Obamas for doing their best to destroy the Republic and replace it with a Deep State system of elitist diktat. All this minor whining they do is just flimsy cover for their treasonous assaults against the ideals expressed under the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. If you want to be ruled by Deep State scum of scum, they are your people.
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I think you are confused regarding a few things. Such as concerning who does most of the car keying, sign destroying, mattress carrying, and general whining and noise making. And concerning the division between right and left, freedom and totalitarianism, and individual responsibility versus subhumanizng sheeple-collectivizing.
I grant you that there are various conflicting tribes of Left Wing subhumanizing kooks and fascist socialists. Perhaps you want to call some of them social conservatives? However, all such kooks against a free thinking republic tend to be among the fascist socialist collectivizing Left. IOW, they are your people, not mine. And I denounce all of them.
IAE, you won't find many of such ilk among Conservers of Liberty that advocate for freedom and dignity for responsible adults and for evaluation based on content of character instead of skin color and other superficial tribal traits, such as those promoted by hood-brained Progs.
Now back to your crib with you.
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A comment addressed generally to Progressives: Dems won't stop Antifa. Won't stop shouting down speakers at liberal universities. Won't stop doxxing conservative senators and commentators. Won't stop car-keying, billboard-defacing, flash-mobbing, terrorizing, shushing, suspending, abusing, firing, dogging Conservatives. Won't check who is funding, timing, transporting, feeding, or even arming the Caravan. Won't stop nipping at DJT 24/7/365. Won't stop conflating being a free-thinking American with being a racist, bigot, misogynist, chauvinist, phobe, rube, etc. Won't think about the best interests of the nation, because they dislike the President for not being nicer to an anti-American Press that is owned and indoctrinated to serve fascist corporatists seeking continuous supplies of desperate and cheap labor.
So how is this virtuous? I don't get it. I try to respect and empathize with every perspective. I try also to remember that empathy entails more than love. It also entails trying to avail people and cultures to make the best of their circumstances. I do not think that necessarily entails inviting them all to jump borders or to adopt the governance of the USA. My father understood the need for tough love. I think DJT also understands that need. And the importance of not availing people to act on mere wishes that may not be well thought out.
It's hard to make sense of the reports about who is behind the Caravan. This is one take: https://joeforamerica.com/2018/04/whos-really-behind-the-illegal-immigrants-the-migrant-caravan-and-pueblo-sin-fronteras/.
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Participatory Will. Not entirely free will. Dynamic reflexive factoring. CSI. Agree that eternal salvation of a particular body based entirely on belief makes little sense. Bodies per se are not saved in perpetuity. But perhaps consciousness, generally, is. What is "I"?
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Socialists like to point to Sweden as an example of a socialist success. But Sweden does not have a socialist economy. It does have high taxes and big welfare benefits. However, at least until recently, it has also had a work-willing homogeneous population. As Sweden imports more and more entitlement-minded, non-assimilating foreigners, it will be interesting to see how long it continues to be successful. Personally, I am ok with a kind of increasing welfare-infrastructure, provided it is well managed and the general society is work-willing and assimilating. However, that is NOT what our Progs are trying to produce. Our Progs are trying to produce non-assimilating hoods of people permanently separated based on race and origin. And permanently dependent on gov rulers beholden to fascist corportists to "educate" them concerning how they should think and what they should want. Divide and rule. Indeed, Progs have turned the term racist into Newspeak, so that people that want assimilation and individual evaluation based on character and competence are now called racists, while people that want to keep tribes separate and averse to one another are now called fair-minded. Decent people must stand up to such ilk, even though they are practiced in assaulting, abusing, shunning, suspending, and shouting down all who disagree with their agenda for en-serf-ing the masses under fake elite ruling "moral scientists."
The Left does not really want to help the masses. It wants to enfeeble them, body and soul. It wants to destroy their nations, families, traditions, sense of individual competence and responsibility. It wants to replace responsible parents with secular nuns and neutered friars married to the gov. All free thinkers that resist are branded deplorable.
The Left's name calling has lost all its power against free thinkers. It's time to wade through them like crap through a goose.
The Left has been hell bent on importing and indoctrinating swarms of lofos. So now they congratulate themselves on winning votes from one of the stupidest, most Incompetent electorates of the USA yet. How many Dem seats will these clowns have to defend 2 years from now?
Otherwise smart people seem often to be among the most dangerously foolish concerning religion and politics. This is why diktat from the intellengentsia, far from being "progressive," is such a terrible idea.
The variety of rationalizations among apologists for Islam can be astonishing. What brutishness can the liberal mind not excuse?
Congress is funded in large part by interests that like anchor babies to become citizens. Unfortunately, I think Congress is essentially neutered on this point. Meantime, the practice will continue to be to confer citizenship on people whose culture prefers security under governmental diktat over liberty under the Bill of Rights. For the republic, this simply cannot much longer be sustained. Trump will have to act. And Scotus will need to defer. I regret that it has come to this.
I am a valuesnationalist. I welcome all that are prone to assimilate their values to the American Ideal of individual freedom of expression, association, and enterprise. Problem is, real world factors and bad actors are making it very difficult for people to assimilate other than based on race and superficial differences. When people of foreign value systems flood the nation faster than they can be assimilated, they become more prone to cling to divisive systems of values. Thus, diversity has become a Trojan Horse for Cloward-Piven, which itself has become a tool for wannabe people-farmers.
The enemy consists of people that think they know best how to make a law to solve every problem by regulating the hell out of it. Legalistic busybodies that impede self actualization for everyone else.
Maybe Christianity did not cause warlords. Maybe warlords simply found Christianity a convenient means for assimilating followers and exercising authority over their minds, which eventually developed into assimilating fear and hate. Maybe fear and hate become necessary when surrounded by enemies that likewise deploy fear and hate.
No matter the theosophy, competition among societies seems often to advantage those that deploy fear and hate. Maybe good faith in a reflexive process of feedback (prayer?) can promote hope for eventually civilizing most of the world. What's so bad about the messages of the Ten Commandments and promoting good faith and good will?
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WORM: Is Jim Acosta a worm? Well, see https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/worm:
Any of a number of creeping or burrowing invertebrate animals with long, slender soft bodies ....
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INVASION: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/invasion: an occasion when a large number of people or things come to a place in an annoying and unwanted way
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Interesting stuff, John. I can only try to make sense for myself at a broad, conceptual level. I do not seek ultimate truth, because I think our approaches to reality through science are limited. That is why I brought up Soros' interesting idea of reflexivity --- even though I oppose much that Soros stands for. You are aware of various problems with limits on measurements and trying to describe a system as a whole from a perspective that is limited from within. So the best I can do is to pursue measurable reality as closely as I can, while trying to appreciate qualitative realms that are beyond empirical quantification. But I doubt a clear line can be drawn between what is purely quantitative versus what is purely qualitative. I think those realms flux. Much as consciousness, substance, and information flux. Meantime, one may at least try to conceptualize an approach towards being as consistent, coherent, and complete as then and there seems possible.
I doubt a complete explanation can ever be had from a completely deterministic approach. Nor from a completely random approach. Yet, we are able to develop technologies to astonishingly significant levels of reliability. Somehow, patterns most fit to endure survive and replicate. Nature does that, and then humanity participates in carrying evolution further by designing for systems that are most fit. IOW, we participate in designing how we will evolve.
That begs a moral question: How should we design for our unfolding evolution? How can one get a grip on that question? I do not think one can do so purely with empirical science. That brings in a role for conceptual philosophy. How do we happen to conceptualize, assimilate, and identify with various interests, values, and purposes? And how should differently assimilated cultures interact? So long as we value human self actualization for individuals, I do not believe strong globalism with erosion of nations is the way to go.
I have to go meet my ride buddies now, but I much appreciate the feedback. Have a great day.
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Yes, because everyone should know that all Blacks are dependent on White Overlords and Virtue Signalers to feel sorry for them. (sarc)
How has feeling sorry for Afghans worked in Afghanistan? Clue: They do not envy you. How well does it work for busybody virtue signalers when they try to improve other lives by taking them over? A lot of people prefer self actualization. They prefer to take responsibility as individuals for pursuing their own purposes, to feel the self worth of earning them. Who does willingly surrender self actualization in return for allowing someone else to dictate their lives? Yes, desperate people do that. As well as people conditioned to it. But what free thinker wants to be like them? Ugh!
How well does it encourage Narco-Republics to reform when they are able to send their refuse population to other nations? Really?
Our politics are so driven by money that any political analysis that pretends to be driven solely by virtue (signaling) is probably BS. Would Dems really support open borders for all that want to cross if most of them were prone to support Repubs? Really? Do they open their private beaches and homes? Of course not. When they fund open borders (by supporting the feeding, transporting, and arming of caravans) in a way that detracts from the lifestyles of most of the citizenry, do they pay? I doubt it. More likely they pass on the cost to the next generation, while they continue to widen the chasm between the political rich and the pawned middle class. IOW, they are "virtuous" on your dime and with your sweat. How many among them have actually served on the front lines of any defense effort? Did Obama, Clinton, or LBJ? Read the story of LBJ's Silver Star for a good laugh. Does anyone else ever tire of self righteous virtue signalers?
I wonder about sheltered people that are good with puzzles: Do they really tend to know better how others should live their lives? Or is it racist to ask?
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?????????????????????????????
hole/vortex
information/significance
random/determined/evolution
?????????????????????????????
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Maybe Christianity did not cause warlords. Maybe warlords simply found Christianity a convenient means for assimilating followers and exercising authority over their minds, which eventually developed into assimilating fear and hate. Maybe fear and hate become necessary when surrounded by enemies that likewise deploy fear and hate.
No matter the theosophy, competition among societies seems often to advantage those that deploy fear and hate. Maybe good faith in a reflexive process of feedback (prayer?) can promote hope for eventually civilizing most of the world. What's so bad about the messages of the Ten Commandments and promoting good faith and good will?
*************
The enemy consists of people that think they know best how to make a law to solve every problem by regulating the hell out of it. Legalistic busybodies that impede self actualization for everyone else.
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TOPS:
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Hi John.
I am mainly an autodidact. I have read much of the Western Canon. Well, listened to it on Audible, because I had a job for many years that entailed a lot of driving across Texas while representing the state in various lawsuits. I am now retired and I am enjoying the heck out of my Harleys with my Chapter Brothers and Sisters. I am about to go to the Lonestar Rally.
I like most of the ideals as expressed in the Ten Commandments, Great Commandment, and Golden Rule. And John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance. The way I would paint it is this: Imagine you were a proto-consciousness about to be birthed, but with no idea of where or to whom. If you were then able to idealize a system of justice, how would you describe it? Is there a best, objective answer to such a question? Is there a God that is moving towards such an answer?
I do believe in what I would call God, but I probably have a very different conceptualization about God (and Consciousness) than most people. I conceptualize Consciousness, along with measurable Substance (matter and energy) and cumulated Information (substance is a cumulated store of information), as ultimately being more like a fundament than a mere emergent. IOW, I do not think Substance or Information could manifest apart from some entailment at some level with Consciousness. I think everything that manifests to a measurable record or experience is in some respect entailed with some expression of Consciousness. I think Consciousness does undergo various changes, perspectives, levels, layers, reconciliations. I am unresolved about whether Consciousness can have a holistic perspective, but, to my intuition and experience of self, I do think it is inextricably connected. I think the same basic aspect of Consciousness is in all of us.
Consciousness is consciousness. To me, that is the ground for empathy. Which is the ground for all notions about morality. But empathy is about more than love. It is also about tough love and respecting the need for others to pursue self actualization on their own terms. It entails respect for the arts, interests, and purposes that happen to have been assimilated with the identities of other perspectives.
I am not especially patient when White Overlords or Virtue Signalers think they must feel sorry for all Blacks or that all Blacks must be made to feel dependent on them. Feeling sorry for Blacks has ruined many Black families. I watched a documentary about Afghanistan last night. Feeling sorry for Afghans has not worked especially well in Afghanistan. Clue: They do not envy us. How well does it work for busybody virtue signalers when they try to improve other lives by taking them over? A lot of people prefer self actualization. They prefer to take responsibility, either as individuals or with their culture, for pursuing their own purposes, to feel the self worth of earning. Who does willingly surrender self actualization in return for allowing someone else to dictate their lives? Well, desperate people do that. As well as people conditioned to it. But what free thinker wants to be like them? I wonder, how well does it encourage Narco-Republics to reform when they are able to send their refuse population to other nations? In any case, I tend not to purport to have the best answers. But the self righteous dogmatism of Leftists does tend to amaze me.
Our politics are so driven by money that any political analysis that pretends to be driven solely by virtue (signaling) is probably BS. Would Dems really support open borders for all that want to cross if most of them were prone to support Repubs? Really? Do they open their private beaches and homes? Of course not. When they fund open borders by supporting the feeding, transporting, and arming of caravans in a way that detracts from the lifestyles of most of a nation's citizenry, do they pay? I doubt it. More likely they pass on the cost to the next generation, while they continue to widen the chasm between the political rich and the pawned middle class. IOW, they are "virtuous" on your dime and with your sweat. I wonder, how many among them actually served on the front lines of any defense effort? Did Obama, Clinton, or LBJ? Read the story of LBJ's Silver Star for a good laugh.
I wonder about sheltered people that are good with puzzles. Do they really tend to know better how others should live their lives?
One of my biker buddies happens to have higher degrees in math, physics, and computer science. He spends most of his time trying to figure out the universe. He comes out every now and again for fresh air by riding with us. When I talk with him, no one else listens, but he is used to that. He is trying to figure out a math-based TOE, even though he says the three-body-problem seems to signal that such an endeavor is impossible. I hope to have a few beers with him when I get back from the Lonestar Rally.
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Jeff,
CONTRADICTION: Where have I claimed that I or anyone else (whether White, Female, Asian, Gay, Mixed, Whatever) knows or can know the best objective moral code? I have not claimed such a thing. Rather, I have suggested that so-called objective morality is CONTINGENT. For example, it is contingent on the value system that a person or culture happens to have adopted, become invested in, and identified with. I said IF a person values certain things, THEN he/she may experiment objectively with ways to pursue them. Nor have I said that what I consider the American Ideal should be applicable to all cultures. Much depends on local geography, history, tribes, traditions, sacred metaphors. I do not think an American style Bill of Rights would automatically be the best thing for every nation.
SMALL GOVERNMENT: I mentioned reflexivity. That is a Soros concept, oddly enough, with which I find some value. I think values and ideals necessarily change. For example, IF and when too many individuals acquire capacity to impose WMD style destruction on the world, then I and many others will likely believe ideals of personal freedom would then need to be more restricted. There would then need to be more central control.
So an ideal of small government is contingent. It depends on having a society that can support it. If you don't have large central government, then you need something to do its job. Such as assimilated traditions and loyalties for families, cultures, and shared metaphors for discussing what is goodly or godly. If you destroy those, then you will need invasive central government and control. But when people obey central authorities out of fear or coercion, it can hardly be said that they are virtuous on that account.
RACISM: You are confusing identification with one's country and ideals with being antagonistic to other people simply on account of race. I did not say foreign cultures are always corrosive. I said they are corrosive when they are imported faster than they can be assimilated. Again, I DO NOT CARE what race a person is. Many of my close relatives and friends, and likely yours, are of mixed race and ancestry.
I do care whether people assimilate to defend the prevailing system of freedom of expression, enterprise, and association with which I have been nurtured. That may be patriotic. But to call it racist is simply an exercise in silliness --- with which I have little patience. However, riddle me this: Why is is ok for other nations and cultures to defend their foundational ideals, but not so for most Americans?
KANYE WEST: I would agree that Liberal White Overlords and Mass Media/Academia have been running full tilt to form a new Plantation. However, more and more free thinkers among minorities are escaping or have escaped that Plantation. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Candace Owens, Darrell Scott, Derrick Hollie, lloyd Marcus. Are they all racists or Uncle Toms? As for Hispanics and Asians, see https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/28/trumps_approval_rating_rises_among_hispanics_137382.html and https://www.10news.com/newsy/this-chinese-immigrant-founded-a-protrump-movement-heres-why.
I suspect you don't hear much from such people because so many intellectually dishonest "tolerant Liberals" are so quick to call them racists, key their cars, shout them down etc. Why did Ben Shapiro need a hundred law enforcement officers to protect him at Berkeley? See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/us/california-today-price-tag-to-protect-speech-at-berkeley-600000.html. Maybe more faux-Liberals should broaden their reading?
SECULAR V. SPIRITUAL: There is no "Wall of Separation" in the Constitution. Liberals have wrongly worked that to death. There is no secular objective morality that is not contingent. Whatever the basis for disparate moral codes, it is not well found in secular science. As to atheists making arguments by appealing to Christianity, I have seen that personally and frequently. It's almost funny. But then, it is right out of the Alinsky handbook (Rule 4).
IDENTITY POLITICS: I don't like Identity Politics. I prefer principled policies. I explained before some of the problems with Identity Politics. If you want to defend Identity Politics on principle, then you have some very heavy lifting to do. You may want to read Vonnegut's short story about Harrison Bergeron.
LIBERAL MIND: The Liberal Mind, conditioned as it is, is a bit of an oxymoron --- like Military Intelligence. Mainly, it consists in being quick to call other people racists as soon as the Overlord Class tells them.
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME: Places in Arizona do not recognize Daylight Savings Time. You would know that if you had done an Ironbutt Motorcycle Ride through Arizona to Texas.
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TOPS:
The problem is that social values are not especially derivative of objective facts. For example, I doubt economic rationality rules most consumers decisions. Values are assimilated based as much on feelings as facts. I think the greater problem occurs when feelings are confused with facts. Or when people think they can prove the objective best moral answer to every issue.
Nowadays, many people seem primed to call everyone that disagrees with then by some hateful name, such as racist. This may be secondary to their confusion concerning Hume's Is/Ought Problem. I do not believe in an entirely objective system of oughts. I think Sam Harris' idea (see The Moral Landscape) of making morality objective by measuring for general welfare or well-being tends towards just another wrong-headed direction, along with notions of the greatest utility, pleasure, happiness, or goodness for the greatest number. Moreover, such notions invite too many people that fancy they know best to imagine they in their special wisdom and expertise should make a law to solve every problem objectively, by regulating the hell out of it. Many seem to want to become neuro-moral-scientific, legalistic busybodies, bent on impeding self-actualization for everyone else.
When questioned, they may grow red in the face and call people names. It would be hard to fail to notice that. I wonder, when they presume to know best how to regulate fairness for the masses, what do they do when some among the masses question their objectivity, expertise, or good sense? Well, then they say ugly stuff, such as to Kanye West and Candace Owens.
I think moral principles can be objectified only contingently. For example, IF we happen (reflexively) to have assimilated over time to share certain values (such as the preservation of human freedom and dignity), and if we idealize a society that can avail its citizens with opportunities for self-actualization, then we may come to assimilate and share certain general values -- such as smaller central government. Then, we may tend more to value faith, family, and fidelity over somewhat impractical notions for tolerating every kind of open-bordered violence and deviance.
I aspire to be an American Valuesnationalist. I welcome all that are prone to assimilate their values to the American Ideal of individual freedom of expression, association, and enterprise. Problem is, real world factors and bad actors are making it very difficult for people to assimilate other than based on race and superficial differences. To make matters worse, such race-based groups then seem prone to call other targets racists. When people of foreign value systems flood the nation faster than they can be assimilated, they become more prone to cling to divisive systems of values that are corrosive to the American Ideal. Especially when they are supported by wannabe people farmers and their trained agents. In that way, diversity is turned into a Trojan Horse for Cloward-Piven, which becomes a tool for wannabe anti-nationalist people-farmers.
To add insult to injury, many atheistic globalists will pretend to be Christian patriots and "moral scientists". They may even claim to know best how to resolve Is/Ought issues because of their faux-superior educations. As if Is/Ought issues were subject to objective determination and proof by authoritarian elites (secular/scientific priesthood), to be dictated down to the unwashed masses --- and to belittle questioners such as Kanya West and Candace Owens. Maybe they should reprise Monty Python and do a bit about "He is a racist and I can prove it."
This is what Liberal mind control looks like: https://youtu.be/6MmB7_e7ftY
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is/ought
He's a racist, and I can prove it. Monty Python
talk to the welfare class this way?
Shapriro can be a voice of reason. It seems powerful interests on all sides are expecting to profit by stirring up hate and fear. Maybe the new business model, especially for mass media, is to produce more hate and fear because we are producing fewer durable goods. Is there a better way to kill freedom of speech and thought than for wannabe rulers to preach PC while they stir up hate and fear?
https://www.facebook.com/IJRRed/videos/339843033415582/
https://www.facebook.com/Breitbart/videos/338542876952085/
https://www.facebook.com/numbersusa/videos/1022412267815468/
https://www.facebook.com/numbersusa/videos/2055394571183894/
https://www.facebook.com/realCandaceOwens/videos/468271786999778/
https://www.facebook.com/turningpointusa/videos/2159001171085648/
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-case-against-liberal-compassion/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=case-against-liberal-compassion&fbclid=IwAR2poB5L7t1U-PG0SoBoUD3z2Z3029KiEzX-V_012a2NjuigUraw3xhAyj8
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When you don't have an argument, resort to name calling. Racist. Yeah, that'll do it. Pretty weak stuff. So now it's "racist" among those-that-know-best to prefer a republic that promotes colorblind policies for encouraging residents to assimilate. What a joke!
Most Americans want to help the truly needy. However, many among us object to how Leftists have politicized the welfare state to provide Democrats with a voting base. With the cultural revolution of the late sixties, Liberal elites alienated the Democrats' traditional base. Then, to keep their party in business, the Democrat party became a coalition of the white liberal overclass allying in part with the welfare underclass. Because voting Democrat had become a job Americans were refusing to do, Democrats began taking money from oligarchs seeking cheap labor, in order to fund race-based political bribes meant to guarantee themselves a voting base.
It's hard to think of anything uglier than Liberals taking from Americans to provide their party with a voting base to oppose everything loyal Americans stand for --- even to the point of utterly corrupting the media-academia complex to try to turn the republic into a kabuki farce. There are adjectives for that, but I am trying to remain civil.
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Sympathy for the plight of cold and hungry barbarians may have led the Romans to allow an influx of refugees foreign to Roman culture that was too fast and extensive to allow them to be assimilated as loyal citizens.
Every person of any skin color can seek to assimilate to a common ideal of human freedom and dignity. Or, each person can choose to play imavictim and forever pretend the world owes him or her, and that anyone who declines to admit that is a "racist." No doubt, (race-based) identity politics would appeal to such a person. It does not appeal to me. So, by some trick of postmodern logic, that makes me a "racist."
An underlying question pertains to the extent to which republics, in respect of their varying local conditions, should continue to be allowed to assimilate and sustain their separate characters within the global system. To me, it seems obvious that powerful interests and persons are uniting to oppose effective borders for defining separate nations.
Among such persons, anti-Trumpers opposing legal immigration enforcement have been promoting hatred of Trump non-stop. Perhaps it should not be surprising that hatred has become reflexive throughout what remains of the USA. The greater question before Americans is whether to seek to preserve the Republic and any ideal of a colorblind society --- in which people are appreciated for the quality of their character instead of the color of their skin. Meanwhile, it appears every game of madness will reverberate, T for Tat, among the mad.
I think George Soros talks about an idea of reflexivity. Although he seems to have an open border agenda that I find unappealing, I think there is something to the idea of reflexivity. Perhaps even something spiritually reconciling for the long run.
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REFLEXIVITY:
Every person of any skin color can seek to assimilate to a common ideal of human freedom and dignity. Or, each person can choose to play imavictim and forever pretend the world owes him or her, and that anyone who declines to admit that is a "racist." No doubt, (race-based) identity politics would appeal to such a person. It does not appeal to me.
An underlying question pertains to the extent to which republics, in respect of their varying local conditions, should continue to be allowed to assimilate and sustain their separate characters within the global system. To me, it seems obvious that powerful interests and persons are uniting to oppose effective borders for defining different nations.
Among such persons, anti-Trumpers opposing legal immigration enforcement have been promoting hatred of Trump non-stop. Perhaps it should not be surprising that hatred has become reflexive throughout what remains of the nation. The greater question before Americans is whether to seek to preserve the Republic and any ideal of a colorblind society --- in which people are appreciated for the quality of their character instead of the color of their skin. Meanwhile, it appears every game of madness will reverberate, T for Tat, among the mad.
I think George Soros talks about an idea of reflexivity. Although he seems to have an open border agenda that I find unappealing, I think there is something to the idea of reflexivity. Perhaps even something spiritually reconciling.
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Dems that resisted at all costs vetting immigrants for terrorists now want to complain that Trump is setting the table for terrorism! How reflexive is the craziness? When did the fittest become the craziest? Is this the greatest show on earth or what!
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FEMINAZIS:
These animosities will not be allowed to die in two weeks. This is because the business model for the New Economy is largely based on buying political influence and keeping people sharply divided into subgroups that are primed with razor sharp animosities. Too many people have found it profitable to invest in ways to sell by igniting FEELINGS of hate and fear. Without those products, how would modern media, academia, and socialistic despots make their profits? "Whitey" is the new scapegoat found to be most profitable for uniting haters. New "studies" are constantly being invented for finding ways to blame Whitey.
I suspect the Final Solution to the Whitey Problem is thought to be in opening borders in order to destroy nations. Might this be because it just so happens that the borders that are easiest and most profitable to invade just happen to shield populations that are largely White? People that just want to assimilate to colorblind societies, in good faith and based on sharing ideals of human freedom and dignity, now tend to be discounted as impractical --- if not delusional. Nazis could never have taken away America's freedoms. But Feminazis driven by hate and bogus notions of "fairness" may be poised to give them away. Rah rah boom dee ay.
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Neither the Old Testament nor the Koran offer much by way of a consistent moral philosophy. A difference is in emphasis. There is more of an attempt at history, literature, parables, and poetry in the Old Testament. The Koran is more a collection of simplistic mutterings.
The metaphors and parables of the Old and New Testaments seem more easily to allow way for re-interpretation in respect of changing times. So, Western Civ was allowed a Reformation and Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation eventually encouraged the laity to read and think for themselves. In that way, the Bible eventually smoothed the way for the West for more individual freedom of thought and speech.
So the Old and New Testaments have been more useful for providing common metaphors and traditions in respect of which to inspire people to come together to communicate more honestly in good faith and good will.
I do not personally believe they should be interpreted as precise, objective, or scientific explications of Moral Reality. But I do believe there may well abide an underlying spiritual basis for their good faith purposes. However, our relationship with that underlying basis (Source) seems to be dynamic, reflexive, and unfolding. IOW, that relationship is not, and perhaps cannot be, completely encapsulated in any cook book of spirituality.
So what does this have to do with apologetics? This: Our civilizing relationship with the Source is an unfolding one. Civilization necessitates managing of cooperation and competition. That necessitates unfolding assimilations of shared values, mores, and purposes. Apart from silly pretense, there is no objective science of morality. To develop and inculcate shared values, mores, and purposes, it is necessary to inspire people to come together in good faith and good will, to participate in an assimilative process of rationalization. Which necessarily entails apologetics of some kind.
A difference between West and East pertains to practices by which those apologetics are developed and used for specific applications. For pursuing self actualization (the top of Maslow's Pyramid), the Ten Commandments, the Great Commandment, and the Golden Rule seem to have worked fairly well.
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WHO SUPPORTS OPEN BORDERS:
Feeling fraud-y today? Google your question and do some honest research for yourself.
Answer: The people and anti-American journalists that pretend not to want open borders, even while they work to swamp the citizenry with undocumented illegal aliens. The people that call Trump "Hitler" for wanting to defend the borders. The lying liars that lie when they say they do not want open borders. The people that prefer to serve oligarchs rather than to learn to think for, and be responsible for, themselves. The people that support chain migration. The people that pretend swarms of illegal aliens would not tend to undermine the representative republic. The people that advocate that aliens decline to assimilate to Ideals that are needed to preserve a representative republic. The people that seek to replace nations with globalism (under the control of syndicates of oligarchs).
See https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-new-guard-of-the-democratic-party-absolutely-supports-open-borders.
See https://www.breitbart.com/midterm-election/2018/05/07/dnc-chairman-keith-ellison-promotes-open-borders-campaign/: “Yo No Creo En Fronteras,” said the shirt worn by Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim who is also the vice-chair of the Democratic Party’s progressive caucus. The slogan means “I Do not Believe in Borders,” and it is being pushed by open-borders groups.
See also https://openborders.info/leftist-agenda/.
EDIT: Add https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-conservativelyspeaking/soros_rented_evangelicals_outed_by_christian_leaders/.
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WHITE SUPREMACISM AND OPEN BORDERS:
The push may as well be to equate globalism with open borders. To equate borders with White Supremacism. To equate the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights with unfairness, inequality, racism, and evil Whities.
The reality is that open borders would discount needs for different forms of governments among different geographies, cultures, and societies. It would promote desperate, cheap labor. It would further advantage syndicates of oligarchs. It would grossly undermine the the rule of law among all local governments.
It is a lie to equate the ideals expressed under the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights with racism. Those ideals pertain to self actualization, at the top of the Maslow Pyramid. They are ideals that could be, but are not, assimilated by every human being. It is a vile, evil, malicious, manipulative lie to accuse Americans that aspire to self actualization as if on that account they must be racists. It is a lie promoted by evil oligarchs and their vile, stooge, divide-and-rule Dems.
Perhaps even worse are the fake Christians. See https://www.facebook.com/Breitbart/videos/338542876952085/.
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When I put on my Nostradamus hat, I see much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anti-Americans stooges for oligarchs have succeeded in rotting the electorate with liberty-illiterate imports and indoctrinees to such an extent that it will take a miracle to revive the Republic. If Republicans do prevail, Dems will lose what remains of their minds and Trump will continue towards restoring the Republic. If Dems prevail, the DC Apparatus will rot more than it has. I will be riding my Harley, regardless.
I suspect some Dems will soon enough be proposing that everyone should submit a DNA sample, so a central committee of geneticists, phrenologists, and sympathy-o-crats can scale and allocate "reparations" based on a victim curve. Weights will be tested and assigned based on various notions about genetic and personal markers, such as relating to skin color, propensity for health, strength, attractiveness, ethnicity, mental quickness, mental deterioration, and drug addiction. Maybe 10 points could be assigned for being Gay or Black, 7 for being Muslim, Hispanic or Native Indian, 5 for having high cheek bones, minus 3 for being Christian, minus 5 for being White, minus 5 for being male, minus 5 for being healthy and strong, minus 10 for being smart and/or attractive, minus 15 for being Asian or rich. The weights would be re-apportioned each year, depending on how the make up of the Board changes. Kurt Vonnegut likely foresaw much of this idiocracy as a result of musing among the Tralfamadorians.
Regardless, by the Iron Law of Oligarchy, I expect the Republic will continue to succumb under Self-Godded Sub-Humans that want to rule the world through the apparatus of the USA. They will continue to use their captive media to propagandize that their rule of a worldwide Borgdom (kabuki world) is necessary in order to save the planet from climate change, pandemics, international terror, competing syndicates of oligarchs, rogue WMD nations, and rogue individuals with WMD capabilities. I expect they will find it helpful to agitate, invent, exaggerate, and play up such threats. When helpful, they will hedge bets on all sides by creating and extending conflicts in order to guarantee their continued profiteering and power mongering. They will even sell such perfidy as "the Christian thing to do."
It is in respect of this jungle, infested with cold-blooded, predatory Oligarchs and their Stoolies, that Trump has to govern. This is akin to a bloody propagation of the fittest to replicate, and, if they can get away with it, it is un-tempered by any godly or higher mindedness -- apart from the kind of pretense often seen among priests and proud pan-sexuals, as they sexually groom or abuse children.
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The concern of Americans is to preserve the Constitutional Republic. Not to serve race baiting racists that cannot see Americans apart from their skin color.
Too many non-Whites are being brainwashed by corrupt media serving corrupt oligarchs --- brainwashed, first to want to take what others have produced, then to bury the republic under the rule of the despots they serve.
The Pope seems weirdly supportive of nation destroying, child abusing, priest enabling, and blame diverting. It was not the theosophies of Catholics, Jews, or Muslims that supported the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independance and the Bill of Rights. As those ideals are sullied and swamped, it will not be those theosophies that salvage them.
Surprise --- Fake Christians using Christianity as cover for political weaponization. These people farmers believe in one thing: Power. A boot stamped on a human face. Forever. They don't just want you to be a docile slave. They want you to want to be a slave.
It does not advance the cause of human decency to take the human refuse of despots so they can continue unimpeded to produce ever more refuse. That is the despotic prescription for subhumanizing the world, to create a small, greedy, corrupt, and permanent ruling class. It is as evil as it is godless.
Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2: .. Why, then, ' tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
I agree that most elected politicians are practiced liars that lie as needed about their religious beliefs. They need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their base, lest their base be converted to the lying opposition. While I do think Lincoln believed in a higher power or mind, I don't think he was a biblical literalist. Nor do I think the main motivation of the Southern leaders was exclusive of the institution of slavery. You can't advance or get elected by speaking your unvarnished mind.
A sheeple farm will ban anyone that might generate thinking and unrest among the sheep. It is not the testable soundness of their ideas that keeps sheeple together.
Like an abusive husband, Butch Pelosi wants to beat the US Republic into abject surrender. And yet the Femi's keep coming back for more.
Conservatives care less about salty language, so long as their leaders work to restore the Republic. Femi's don't care if their keaders work to destroy the Republic, so long as they talk sweetly about the virtue of the destruction.
Constitutions, families, and churches impede the goal of self selecting oligarchs to rule and farm the masses as they see fit. Anarchists, gays, and secularists become shills, stooges, and stoolies for the sub-humanizing and global agenda of pure psycho sickos.
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Good post. It's as if we're now divided between Red Pill and Blue Pill people. Red Pill people value their individual freedom, responsibility and competency. Blue Pill people value promises of security and of safe keeping --- made by wannabe despots pretending to be benefactors. The USA has twice before endured serious face offs between free thinkers versus securely en-serf-ed feelers --- at the time of the Revolution and at the time of the Civil War. Now, here we are again. The feelers often promise to leave, but somehow they never get around to it. Meanwhile, they call Trump "Hitler," even as thousands of people struggle mightily to get into the country.
Lately, I'm wondering: Why count votes? Why not just count protesters? And count protesters in other nations, too. After all, why should citizenship, much less informed citizenship, be needed to vote? Moreover, why not just let the oligarchs have their way altogether and just skip the Kabuki?
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Libs worship Gov controlled by oligarchic propaganda. When Christian values seem to support their lunacy, then they complain why people don't act more Christian. When Christian values impede the Plantation program of their sponsoring oligarchs, then they ridicule Christianity. When Islamism supports the oligarchic open-border program for undermining the representative republic, then they support that. Bottom line: They are shills and stoolies for anti-American oligarchs. And silly pinkie-waggers.
Virtue signalers are always quick to advocate for the current virtue fad. Border caravans. Tiny homes. Street beggars. Just not with their money, in their homes, or on their streets. They presume they know best concerning which virtue fad you should now care enough about to devote yourself to. Caring mosquitoes, they are.
Taking pity on barbarians at its borders did not work out so well for the Roman Empire.
Obama famously discounted the White Vote. As if its political values revolved almost exclusively around race. In doing so, he made Whites the prrivileged scapegoats for every other ethnicity. Then he expanded his divide and rule evil to divide women from men, youth from responsible adults, inner cities from country folk, and human secularists from Christians. Trump wants to re-assimilate American values. Dems are trained to want to destroy America and promote rule under imagined good despots. This is what consists as the vaunted superior Dem education.
A sheeple farm will ban anyone that might generate thinking and unrest among the sheep. It is not the testable soundness of their ideas that keeps sheeple together.
Society promotes leaders by selecting for the fittest to motivate by any means that works, including deceit, phony promises, divide-and-rule, demagoguery, and thug alliances. To expect some imagined higher goodness will give us better leaders if we replace spiritual faith with phony moral scientisimists is silly. It is an unfounded leap of faith. It is akin to religion that convinces itself that it is not religion.
The borders that define nations also only exist in people's minds.
I agree that most elected politicians are practiced liars that lie as needed about their religious beliefs. They need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their base, lest their base be converted to the lying opposition. While I do think Lincoln believed in a higher power or mind, I don't think he was a biblical literalist. Nor do I think the main motivation of the Southern leaders was exclusive of the institution of slavery. You can't advance or get elected by speaking your unvarnished mind.
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ASSIMILATION:
I seem to hear Gaga advocating for assimilating a culture based on good faith and good will, which she calls kindness. If so, I am certainly on board for that!!! And she is right that those that want to profit and rule us proceed by agitating divisions among us. Now, I wonder if she realizes that may be near hate speech in some minds, that want divisions, hoods, no-go zones, race-based gang-banging, and group-based political favor-seeking?
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SUCK IT UP:
America's biggest problem may consist in divisive animosity stirred by identity-politics-people-farmers, while they continue buying political policies for widening the chasm in wealth between rich and poor and lifting ladders that could allow people tomove into and beyond the middle class. They fan incivility and hatred by preventing assimilation of values among people, by hardening distrust based on superficial differences. Then they blame that on not having even more division.
Identity politics is weaponized politics. It is the deliberate agitation of permanent enclaves of animosity, based on little more than superficial differences, such as tone of skin color. It is poison.
Lisa, my father was military. Tough love. Maybe like Eastwood in Gran Torino. I got out of the active Army in 1970, so I have little idea how the military is run today. My training was to learn to make the best of what I had and not to whine. Maybe that's part of why I just do not see identity politics or nursing grudges as tending to good results on balance for hardly anyone. Not saying I'm sure I'm right. But the clip just did not on balance convince me. I think identity politics tends to do more harm than good for nearly everyone, for the reasons mentioned by Jordan Peterson (and Harrison Bergeron).
Well, from a non-political point of view, I can relate. If such issues were restricted to voluntary forums for seeking understanding, they could do a lot of good. But they are not restricted in that way. They are turned into divisive political weapons by the parties, which pits people in opposing camps and at one another's throats. Who benefits? Only the corrupt oligarchs and their shills that profit from divide-and-rule. Voluntary understanding -- count me in. Identity politics -- count me out. I don't want to play.
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So you want politically forced solutions. Such as what? Quotas, reparations, open borders, end the Electoral College? Have you read the story of Harrison Bergeron?
From what I have seen on the Left lately, your emotional response absolutely does not surprise me. Nor does it surprise me that you have no non-emotional logic to offer. No doubt, some Lefties would be on board for requiring everyone to submit a DNA sample. Then we could move to a Board of Equalization, to scientifically instruct every person concerning whatever political accounting he or she may owe. Maybe you could suck that up?
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VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS:
It was hardly me that went ballistic. I only returned fire proportionate to your unprincipled rah-rah fusillade.
VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS:
In the USA, it seems to have become a cash cow for colleges to encourage even unqualified students to stay in school and take bs courses. Especially given government loans and a rather irresponsible generation of students. Although it may be politically unpopular among students, I think it would be more responsible to encourage more students to opt for vocational schools.
In that light, I had reviewed some sources to see if that may apply to Sweden. You seem to suggest it does not, so I accept that. The reasons I suspected it may apply are found in the following sources.
SWEDEN: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden#Eligibility:
"In the autumn of 2017, 17.5% of pupils did not qualify to secondary education." "[M]any times tertiary education is required before being admitted at university or university college."
See also https://www.studera.nu/startpage/road-to-studies/admission-to-university-studies/selection/: It suggests entry to a course of study in college is dependent on merit. "[T]he better merit rating you have the better chance you have of being offered a place in the course or programme you’ve applied to.
IAE, I am not the only one to think counseling or testing for merit as a qualification would be a good idea.
SOUTH KOREA: Compare Germany and South Korea, which have or are developing Meister Schools versus Work and Study vocational schools: http://ncee.org/what-we-do/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/south-korea-overview/south-korea-school-to-work-transition/: "South Korea is concerned about an oversupply of higher education graduates, however, and is actively encouraging vocational education graduates to join the workforce rather than proceeding directly to further education."
GERMANY: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany: In Germany, "In order to enter university, students are, as a rule, required to have passed the Abitur examination; since 2009, however, those with a Meisterbrief (master craftsman's diploma) have also been able to apply."
"A special system of apprenticeship called Duale Ausbildung allows pupils on vocational courses to do in-service training in a company as well as at a state school."
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I think a student loan bubble is developing in the USA. If Sweden is escaping such a bubble, that is a good thing.
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BIBLE STUDY:
Sweat of brow (work)
Develop talents (responsibility)
Render unto Caesar (gov charity)
First one now will later be last
Tend my sheep
Meek shall inherit Earth
Come with a sword
Go and get yourself a sword (self defense)
Turn the other cheek
Marriage
Fatted calf (vegan)
Lake of fire
I am the way and the truth and the light
Borders and Defense of Israel
Travelers (immigrants)
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JUNGLE:
I would agree that the Oligarchy wants to rule the world through the apparatus of the USA.
If you watch, you may catch how they justify self-godding themselves in this way. They intimate that their rule of a sub-humanized, worldwide Borgdom (kabuki world) is necessary: To save the planet from climate change, pandemics, international terror, competing syndicates of Oligarchs, rogue WMD nations, rogue individuals with WMD capabilities.
It seems likely that they find it helpful to agitate, invent, exaggerate, and play up such threats. Likely that they create and extend conflicts, as they hedge their bets on all sides, to nearly guarantee they profit and gain power. Then they have the temerity to sell their perfidy as "the Christian thing to do." Some dopey Christians seem to buy into that.
Thus, the self-godded Oligarchy adds danger to the jungle. It is in respect of that jungle, infested with cold-blooded, predatory Oligarchs and their Stoolies, that Trump has to govern. This seems to be bloody propagation of the fittest to replicate, and, if they can get away with it, it is un-tempered by any godly or higher mindedness -- apart from the kind of pretense often seen among priests and proud pan-sexuals, as they sexually groom or abuse children. Very goose-stepping gay.
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READING COMPREHENSION:
Once again, you are highlighting your poor reading comprehension. I hope you are not the Swedish exemplar for that. I did not say you claimed Sweden is a planned socialist society. I pointed out that it is not, for those that so often want to claim it is a success story for Socialism. I wanted to clarify what kind of economic/political situation we are talking about when we talk about Sweden.
Every time I write "I suspect," it is based on reading. When I do not say "I conclude," it is because I take what I have read as needing more testing or confirmation. Are you suggesting Sweden does not encourage more students towards trade schools and away from universities at a younger age? If so, I invite you to provide that information.
And why do you still remain so obtuse to the issues I raised: What principle are you espousing? Are you honestly saying the USA should adopt the Swedish model, without taking into account the differences in geography, culture, diversity, nature of governance, and kinds of neighbors? Are you more than a rah-rah bot for Sweden?
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INTELLECTUAL HONESTY:
Frankly, my dear, I find a lot going on in the USA that I take issue against. If you had reading comprehension, you would see that what I admire about the USA is the American Ideal of a representative republic that avails human freedom, dignity, and decency. IOW, self actualization. While security is important, the ideal is self actualization. Why are you so set against the ideal at the top of Maslow's Pyramid?
You need to chill and take my advice about holding up a mirror and not patting yourself so hard on the back. You have simply failed to compare the Swedish population to that of the USA in any way that could support moral or economic prescriptions.
Sweden does not assert direct State control over the means of production, by the way, so it is not a planned socialist society. Rather, it has market-based capitalism, under high taxation and generous distribution of welfare benefits. It is a generally homogeneous society with friendly neighbors. It has not (yet) experienced the considerable danger that comes with dividing the nation into permanent ethnic no-go zones.
I suspect Sweden's homogeneity makes its tendencies for political correctness and criminalizing "hate speech" considerably easier to sell. It does not share a border that is being easily crossed by illegal immigrants that do not intend to assimilate. It does not function as much as a relief valve for Drug Lords seeking to relieve their excess populations or to facilitate trade in narcotics and human trafficking.
Sweden's general citizenry is well educated and tends to have a strong and cooperative work ethic. So far, I doubt Swedes incline to make "imavictim" a lifelong strategy. I suspect Sweden's students focus more on productive studies or trade schools. I doubt Sweden allows students to hang around forever taking nonsense courses. I suspect its college students must demonstrate at least minimal levels of ability and commitment to enroll and remain enrolled.
Despite claims of free education, there is no such thing as a free education or a free lunch. There are opportunity costs. And there are cultural differences affecting financial support from parents. I doubt Swedish college students graduate debt free.
The USA, on the other hand, has a sizable population among which it must deal with large numbers of illegal immigrants, unskilled workers, ill-educated and politically-cultivated entitlement-minded residents, distrustful, envious, easily-agitated, and violence-prone people. Its colleges are filled with Leftist professors teaching collectivist philosophies and using identity politics to keep the people agitated and divided. The USA is a grand prize that is targeted by many depraved, divide-and-rule oligarchs.
Intellectually honest people would not prescribe tactics for the USA in respect of economic security merely because they may have worked for a time in Sweden.
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SCRIBBLERS:
I am sympathetic to decentralized, bottoms up governance. However, I am also aware of the need for central military and environmental defense, assimilating common standards, standard currency, central trade laws, general safety and disaster relief net, research and development to sustain and defend the republic, and basic laws for defending human decency. So I think it is nonsense to expect to entirely wither away the central state. Join-or-die. Compete or be overrun and replaced.
Since recorded history, I doubt there ever has been, or ever can be, a withering away of the state --- except in mayhem. There will always be government/law/control. The issue is how to manage and limit government, with a view to human freedom, dignity, and decency. No matter the form for organizing a government, it will always lead to oligarchy and/or nomenklatura. Read up on The Iron Law of Oligarchy.
The problem, then, is how to check the ever inevitable oligarchy from reducing the government to a sheeple farm. In a market-based society that is governed under checks and balances for a representative republic, the rise of depraved oligarchic control will tend to come about in due course, as oligarchs devise ways to cheat and abuse the faith, trust, and currency of the general population. In politics, it's not especially the cream that floats.
I don't claim a perfect answer for that problem. Nor an answer for all societies and situations. For the USA, I put more faith in an informed, free thinking, godly people than I do in knowitall scribblers, especially the ones that want to "force people to be free". My prescription: Checks and balances; maybe a progressive tax on personal consumption; find reasonable ways to spread political power away from the central apparatus; punish the buying and selling of political influence; RICO or turn bad acting corporations into public utilities; denounce identity politics; expand infrastructure and safety net as economics allows; assimilate a competent citizenry against celebrating entitlement-minded pinkie-waggers; promote R and D as needed to defend the republic and humanity; and promote (or at least do not denigrate) good faith respect for the Reconciler of the Golden Rule.
Aside: I suspect R and D and advances in genetic and cyber design will make humane management and defense very difficult. I doubt what unfolds will much follow the prescription of any present scribbler.
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I would agree that Deep State agents on behalf of self-godded, people-farming oligarchs tend to be selected for being corrupt to the bone. And I would agree a battle is raging in the USA to save the republic from their depredations. What I don't agree with is the delusion among Marxists that their systems will be any less under the fist of such depraved oligarchs. Nor do I agree with Marxists (or any other kind of Collectivists) when they think it good to advocate against three of the Ten Commandments: They promote central control (Gov) over God; they gang up to riot or vote to take other people's money; they riot and covet to get other people's money. Then they chastise ordinary Americans for not being Christian enough. Old Marxists never die. They just grumble on. But they are too far under a rock to be much "onto" anything.
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You are conflating present situations with viable ideals. Perhaps you prefer a nation that divides itself into ever more sub-groups, all claiming victimization, all milking sympathy as perpetual infants, none seeking fulfillment on their own merits as self-responsible adults?
Perhaps everyone should submit a DNA sample, so a central committee of sympathy-ocrats can allocate reparations based on scaling on the victim curve? Perhaps succeeding generations should be raised to be perpetual, limp-wristed whiners? We could test and assign weights to various genetic and personal markers, based on skin color, health, strength, attractiveness, ethnicity, mental quickness, mental deterioration, drug addiction. Give 10 points for being Gay or Black, 7 for being Muslim, Hispanic or Native Indian, 5 for having high cheek bones, minus 3 for being Christian, minus 5 for being White, minus 5 for being male, minus 5 for being healthy and strong, minus 10 for being smart and/or attractive, minus 15 for being Asian or rich.
We could have a Harrison Bergeron style committee to flux such weights as they deem necessary or desirable. They could decide how reparations should be allocated to a 1/1024 Cherokee, 1/4 Black, 1/3 Asian, fluid pan-sexual, rich, undocumented alien with skills. They could review his allocation formula each time his situation changes. Should he/she receive reparations on a one-time basis, or on a yearly basis? Should his allocation be subject to reverse reparations when the membership of the deciding committee changes?
No doubt, some Collectivists would think this kind of central control/planning to be a good thing. Entitlement-minded groups are easily led to seek special favors, and they always need a common scapegoat to unite them in their short-term, destructive politics. They tend not to make oligarchs that own the media and most of our politicians and institutional leaders the scapegoats, because they have the money and means to punish and deflect.
So, the scapegoat to which deflection is made needs to be a softer target. Such as a demographic that has been trained to naively project its good faith, good will, and work ethic ... to assume those values are held by everyone. Presently, the demographic most conveniently targeted by opinion-shaping oligarchs consists of white Christian males with responsible jobs. They are expected to accept that unjust attitudes of extreme privilege and supremacism must be in their skin color and genes. But, of course, not in any others.
So, white Christian males with responsible jobs must be made to atone to everyone else, whose "virtue" consists almost exclusively in limp-wristed virtue signaling. Problem is, good faith and good will do not necessarily apply to practiced whiners, narcissists, sociopaths, or wannabe people-farmers. Rather, many able-bodied "minorities" are taught to believe social justice entitles them to special favors in perpetuity --- not because of the content of their character or the merit of their talent or work, but almost solely because of the color of their skin, the "fluidity" of their gender, or the ancestry of their national origin. There seems to be no statue of limitations on such claims. The expectations are not for a one-time adjustment, but for special favors in perpetuity.
So how can such a mindset consider itself in any way to be decent or principled? How helpful are affirmative-action special-favors? Has welfare as promoted by our rulers really helped Black families? 77% of black births are now to single moms, 49% for Hispanic immigrants. What is causing this? Not enough welfare or socialism? Too much coddling of entitlement-mindedness? Or something else?
MUSING: I think America needs more control over immigration, more assimilation and a better means-tested safety net. We need a safety net that does not impede the work ethic, less entitlement-mindedness, more respect for individual competence and responsibility. Much less focus on race and ethnicity. It's not that I do not see the plight of poor people or people of broken homes. It's that I think such people should be fairly treated --- REGARDLESS of skin color.
But what do I see? Special pleading by Blacks (BLM), Hispanics (La Raza), Gays (men in women's bathrooms; school children being groomed for abuse). This is based on a Culture of Division, based on scapegoating. But who is being scapegoated? Not the real culprits. Not the oligarchs that want to destroy the borders and the republic. No, the scapegoat chosen by the oligarchs to deflect attention away from their divisive hate agitation consists of white Christian males with responsible jobs (now called "White Supremacists"). Yes, there is divisive hate being stirred! But for goodness sake, get the right culprit!
America's biggest problem may consist in divisive animosity stirred by identity-politics-people-farners, while they continue buying political policies for widening the chasm in wealth between rich and poor and lifting ladders that could allow people to move into and beyond the middle class. They fan incivility and hatred by preventing assimilation of values among people, by hardening distrust based on superficial differences. Then they blame that on not having even more division. Identity politics is weaponized, divide-and-rule politics. It is the deliberate agitation of permanent enclaves of animosity, based on little more than superficial differences, such as tone of skin color. It is the creation of generations of useless femimen and pinkie-wagging snowflakes. It is poison.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WH3_uvz3bQ.
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It was precisely my purpose to quote Trotsky as criticism of Stalin's system. I have no problem with your addition of context. Do you think anyone was misled to believe I was admiring either Stalin or Trotsky? But might your addition of context mislead someone to believe Trotsky advocated the old principle of who (that is able bodied) that does not work shall not eat?
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The ideal for social justice should be to defend rights of people and generally to be blind to superficial differences. It should not be hand maiden for poisoning our republic with race baiting identity politics.
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I would rather hold on to colorblindness as an ideal than hold identity politics as an ideal. The first would tend to assimilate a nation, the second to unravel it.
I would rather rely on good faith and good will as an ideal among teachers than on agitation for fake fairness among skin-shallow politicians.
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BORED WITH NONSENSE:
Do you ever get bored with nonsense? I suppose fairie tales, as expressed, do not conform to my ideas about them, either. But hey, keep plotting your course to the godless withering away of the state.
Communists would not even be able to price goods in order to allocate them, but for reference to a capitalist system.
The problem is not with people taking responsibility for their own production. Nor is the problem with representative republicanism. The problem is with the buying and selling of party politicians and political influence, as if they were market commodities. That is the problem that is not being addressed, and that needs to be addressed, by every system of organization of the body politic.
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CHRISTIAN: Collectivists think it good to advocate against three of the Ten Commandments: They promote Gov over god; they gang up to vote to take other people's money; they covet and riot to get other people's money. Then they chastise ordinary Americans for not being Christian enough.
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SWEDEN ECONOMICS:
I wonder how all this relates to whether Swedish Welfare Policies in themselves are better, more humane, more efficient, more sustainable, morally superior, versus how other factors may play a larger role (such as homogeneity of population, security from illegal immigrants, people being accustomed to elitist rule)?
Regarding the advantages of cultural homogeneity,
See https://www.cnbc.com/id/48893339:
“Sweden did not become wealthy through social democracy, big government, and a large welfare state,” Nima Sanandaji, who authored the report said, arguing that high equality and favorable social outcomes were in existence before this time.
“[Sweden] developed economically by adopting free-market policies in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It also benefited from positive cultural norms, including a strong work ethic and high levels of trust,” he said.
Regarding average incomes -- See https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states:
"Since Sweden is held up as a sort of promised land by American socialists, let's compare it first. We find that, if it were to join the US as a state, Sweden would be poorer than all but 12 states...."
Regarding freedom of the press and hate speech laws: I took you to be praising your social-welfare diversity, tolerance, and freedom of press.
With regard to Jewish ownership of Newspapers, homogeneity, and group-mind: The USA has a much larger Jewish population, both numerically and proportionately. Yet, the rate of Jewish ownership of Newspapers in Sweden is considerably higher. That may or may not have something to do with commitment to hate speech prosecution --- at the expense of a free press.
IAE, if you express unpopular concerns, you may risk being prosecuted for hate crimes. But how does pointing facts out make one a bigot? Perhaps you are more hubristic and not as diverse, tolerant, or free as you claim?
Hypocrisy about Christianity: Why do you appeal to a blinkered view of Christianity, when you are not even a Christian? And wtf are humanistic values? You mean like opening borders to such an extent as to allow liberty illiterates to flood and destroy republics? Or to turn over so much power to central gov in order to obtain unsustainable security, so as to lose individual liberty and responsibility? Those are not Christian, humanistic, enlightened, or good values. Those are the irresponsible values of virtue-signaling simpletons.
Regarding 70 years: That 70 years has been up and down, so it cannot, except in intellectual dishonesty, consistently be attributed to being a social welfare State.
IAE, good luck sustaining that while losing knowledge-based jobs to more competitive nations and catering to an aging population by importing liberty-illiterate immigrants. Especially since Sweden has an older population and lower birth rate than the USA.
Regarding immigration, borders, and humanity: In addition to a relatively high legal immigration rate, the USA is estimated to have about 22.1 million undocumented immigrants.
Used to Rule under Elitists: Maybe Sweden is historically used to an elitist aristocracy to such an extent that elitist rule suits them. IAE, the Social Democratic mentality tends to promote leaders that, in their hubris, think they knew better than the people what is best for them. Perhaps that hubris leads them to leap to call everyone that disagrees a bigot? Or un-Christian? (How charming.)
Regarding anger and incivility ("rants" and being "pissed off"): Can you read? Do you read? Are you awake to the current raging of the Left? Good grief!
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SWEDISH WELFARE:
So, what is it that you think you are evidencing? - The benefits of being a more homogeneous society?
- The lesser need in a homogeneous society to coordinate indoctrination of the public with fake news?
- That there is not as much political controversy or divisiveness when there is more social homogeneity?
- That Sweden criminalizes expression considered to be hate speech, and prohibits threats or expressions of contempt directed against a group or member of a group?
- That most newspapers in Sweden are Jewish owned?
- That Sweden has a smaller proportion of liberty-illiterate immigrants to corrupt the voting system?
- That Sweden is some kind of special moral exemplar because a high percentage of Swedes support gay marriage and welfare-marrying of the State?
- That Sweden is irreligious and therefore, by some convoluted logic, more Christian?
- That the welfare system in Sweden is sustainable?
- That you can never get enough state-sponsored welfare and free stuff?
What do you think you are proving? That everything good is to be accomplished in all cases simply by greatly increasing taxes and welfare?
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See https://www.cato.org/blog/swedens-big-welfare-state-superior-americas-medium-welfare-state-then-why-do-swedes-america. If link does not work, then search "If Sweden’s Big Welfare State Is Superior to America’s Medium Welfare State, then Why Do Swedes in America Earn Far More than Swedes in Sweden?"
"Swedes living in the USA are thus approximately 53 per cent more wealthy than Swedes (excluding immigrants) in their native country (OECD, 2009; US Census database). It should be noted that those Swedes who migrated to the USA, predominately in the nineteenth century, were anything but the elite."
"A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’."
Scandinavian nations are among the MOST ethnically homogeneous. See map at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bb57cc7a1f4f. ("... in more fragmented societies a group imposes restrictions on political liberty to impose control on the other groups. In more homogeneous societies, it is easier to rule more democratically since conflicts are less intense." "When people persistently identify with a particular group, they form potential interest groups that can be manipulated by political leaders, who often choose to mobilize some coalition of ethnic groups [“us”] to the exclusion of others [“them”].")
2003 Population Diversity Rankings -- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level:
Mexico -- 71
USA -- 85
Russia -- 106
UK -- 109
Sweden -- 128
Australia -- 140
Finland -- 142
Denmark -- 144
Norway -- 146
Germany -- 148
Netherlands -- 151
Japan -- 157
Btw, The USSR broke up in 1991. Your neighbors are predominantly Scandinavian (Finland -142, Denmark-144, Norway-146.) Also Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Britain.
Do you not have access to the Internet, or do you just prefer to shoot from the hip?
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As expected, when you don't have any facts, resort to the "principled position" of calling the opposition names. In the USA, if you have a respectable and decent work ethic, if you don't join a whiny gang, don't fail to finish High School, don't do drugs, and don't have children until you can afford them, then you will almost certainly have little trouble avoiding poverty. Regardless of your race, gender, origin, or orientation.
Otoh, if you coddle and reward whining, irresponsibility, and pleasure riding to the exclusion of a work ethic, then you will get more of it. If Swedes, because they are a homogeneous and sheltered society, have not yet learned this, they soon enough will.
Btw, are you really a Political Christian, or are you primarily just another Lefty Collectivist?
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SWEDEN:
See https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/05/so-long-swedish-welfare-state/:
"Sweden’s GDP per capita only grew at a meager 0.9 percent in 2017."
"Other parts of Europe have significantly lower tax rates, lower wage levels, and are catching up in the knowledge-based economy."
"Since 2002, a dozen studies have been written on the long-term survivability of the Swedish welfare state. In summary, they paint a bleak picture: The Swedish model is simply not sustainable. Sweden faces the same basic difficulties funding the welfare system as many other countries in Europe do. The problem has two roots. The first is an aging population and the second is the gradual buildup of inefficiencies in the public sector."
"One recent paper pointed out that, between 2017 and 2025, all new jobs in Sweden will have to be created in the public sector if that sector is to keep up with demand and retain the same staffing practices. This is of course not feasible in a country with an already large public sector and high taxes, and it reflects the problem of gradually rising inefficiencies in the public domain relative to the private one."
"The long-term difficulty of funding the Swedish welfare model is well known, yet politicians are still uncomfortable owning up to the facts."
"Sweden’s generous welfare model is already a thing of the past, but the country still needs to keep reforming. Otherwise, the system will not be up to the challenge of integrating large immigrant groups, boosting growth, and stabilizing government finances."
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ALT RIGHT AND ALT LEFT GROUPS:
I agree that a lot of things get factored. Dawkins postulated the meme of the selfish gene. No doubt, there is something at work in the meme of the selfish skin color or the meme of birds of a feather flock together. However, many traits are factored. Including civically trained ideals.
My point is a contingent one: IF (BIG IF) a society wants to preserve a decent representative republic for the greater part of its citizenry, then it will seek to train/educate each new generation of citizens to ideals that can more likely sustain that republic.
See map at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bb57cc7a1f4f. ("... in more fragmented societies a group imposes restrictions on political liberty to impose control on the other groups. In more homogeneous societies, it is easier to rule more democratically since conflicts are less intense." "When people persistently identify with a particular group, they form potential interest groups that can be manipulated by political leaders, who often choose to mobilize some coalition of ethnic groups [“us”] to the exclusion of others [“them”].")
My point: Especially as we lose other traits of homogeneity, it becomes all the more important that we at least assimilate and share cultural and political values that can more likely sustain the republic as a body politic land help preserve good faith and good will among the general citizenry.
What is not conducive to a republican body politic is for Whites to declare anyone with one-drop of blood that is not white to be in any way morally or culturally inferior, or privileged, or chargeable as a class to make reparations. Nor is it conducive to a republican body politic for non-Whites to declare that Whites are in any way morally or culturally inferior. or privileged, or chargeable as a class to make reparations.
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As infinite regress, an idea of a first Creator seems a bit like an idea of a smallest (or largest) decimal number. No matter how diligently one pursues an idea of a smallest (or largest) number, one will never reach it. Maybe, the fault is in imagining that Conscious God must somehow be separate from, and superior to, measurable Substance --- as opposed to being a correlate with.
CONTINGENCIES WITHIN CONTINGENCIES:
Atheistic, moral-objectivists tend to imagine, since we can express astonishing technologies by pursuing an imagined objective substrate, that a purely objective substrate must "really" exist. They imagine there is no inextricable relationship between objectively measurable Substance and subjectively experience-able Consciousness. Rather, they imagine that all Subjective experience is entirely the determined and derivative inferior epiphenomena of an Objective substrate.
This seems a bit like subjectively counting numbers and expecting that an objective biggest number must really exist.
Problem is, our Universe also expresses astonishing technologies, without necessarily imagining that it ultimately must depend on a purely objective substrate.
Our participatory capacity to tinker with contingent parameters within contingent parameters in order to filter and produce contingently practical technologies does not evidence that any parameter must ultimately be the expression of some purely non-contingent objective substrate.
Rather, it seems obvious that, for wherever and whenever any particular expression of measurable Substance and cumulating Information is made objectively manifest, each such unfolding manifestation, determined from among all alternative possibilities among math-based parameters for potentialities, is inextricably linked in some way at some level with some subjectively determining experience of observing Consciousness. Three expressions, being CSI, seem to link and flux together in some fundamental way, so that no one of them can be entirely examined in the absence of the other two.
Excepting contrived trivialities, we do not deal with absolutes within absolutes. Rather, we deal with contingencies within contingencies. Not purely Subjectives, and not purely Objectives. Rather, Subjective <=> Objectives.
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CONTINGENCIES WITHIN CONTINGENCIES:
Atheistic, moral-objectivists tend to imagine, since we can express astonishing technologies by pursuing an imagined objective substrate, that a purely objective substrate must "really" exist. They imagine there is no inextricable relationship between objectively measurable Substance and subjectively experience-able Consciousness. Rather, they imagine that all Subjective experience is entirely the determined and derivative inferior epiphenomena of an Objective substrate.
This seems a bit like subjectively counting numbers and expecting that an objective biggest number must really exist.
Problem is, our Universe also expresses astonishing technologies, without necessarily imagining that it ultimately must depend on a purely objective substrate.
Our participatory capacity to tinker with contingent parameters within contingent parameters in order to filter and produce contingently practical technologies does not evidence that any parameter must ultimately be the expression of some purely non-contingent objective substrate.
Rather, it seems obvious that, for wherever and whenever any particular expression of measurable Substance and cumulating Information is made objectively manifest, each such unfolding manifestation, determined from among all alternative possibilities among math-based parameters for potentialities, is inextricably linked in some way at some level with some subjectively determining experience of observing Consciousness. Three expressions, being CSI, seem to link and flux together in some fundamental way, so that no one of them can be entirely examined in the absence of the other two.
Excepting contrived trivialities, we do not deal with absolutes within absolutes. Rather, we deal with contingencies within contingencies. Not purely Subjectives, and not purely Objectives. Rather,
Subjective <==> Objectives.
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SHARK HOLDERS OF GOV DEBT:
Loan sharks know how to turn ordinary people into perpetual debt slaves, just as nicotine sharks know how to turn kids into perpetually dependent addicts.
What kind of oligarchic loan sharks hold Gov debt? It is easy for them to entice the general public with free-stuff promises. All the while, the sharks' claims against the lives of ordinary citizens goes up and up. The goal seems to be to own the public, body and soul. So no escape is possible.
Moreover, no individual can resist, because the tax/interest debt is to be borne by every citizen. All the oligarchic sharks need to do is to stay ahead of the trust con. By owning politicians, diversifying, buying gold, sheltering money in Swiss banks, and conniving by dog whistling within the Deep State.
Since no individual can stand against such worldwide corruption, the only financially secure path is to join in the connivery. To network with those that preach good faith, while living entirely in bad faith.
On Earth, there never was, and never can be, a society in which each mortal produces according to his ability, but takes only according to his needs. Those that preach such evil are themselves either evil or ignorant. Thus, the Ivies.
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The only way to even the table as the fake-news media goes non-stop negative against the President is for the President to go non-stop against the fake news media. The media is the bully, and no bully likes it when someone stands up to him. The oligarchy-owned media wants to neuter ordinary Americans. All that stands between the bully media and its crusade to neuter America and Americans is the President.
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Unless some Indian tribe recognizes the one-drop rule, and one-drop shows Warren qualifies as an Indian for such tribe, then she did not meet the specs to claim the 1 million dollars.
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Dems tend to be stooges for anti-American oligarchs. They will only abandon open borders to fool some voters during the mid terms. Thinking people know how anti-American most Dems and their funders really are.
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Just one more example of the famously superior education, intellect, virtue, and political instincts of a typical Dem. If Dems tend to be so superior, why do they always seem so sure that Criminals, Addicts, Offenders, Dropouts, Illiterates, Gang Bangers, and First Time Voters will tend reliably to vote for them? If they are so caring, why is their history so bad, viz Slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, Incivility, Mob Antics?) And why is the propaganda of oligarchy-owned mass media so often cherry picked for Dems?
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SOCIAL COLLECTIVISM AND MARXISM:
Well, I do not see how you can define or refer to the "deserving," if you remove from individuals the power to participate and remain responsible for themselves, their associations, and their republic.
I would not punish loafers. Loafers punish themselves. Nor would I prohibit various kinds of social safety nets. As a society becomes able to afford such safety nets, as they tend to promote social well being, as they tend to improve the social economy, then more and more citizens will assimilate to agree to fund them. I do NOT categorically oppose citizens of a representative republic in seeking to factor or fund various kinds of social safety nets. I DO want such nets to make good sense, all factors considered. It is NOT ENOUGH simply to say "we wanna," or "you are a racist," or Jesus would say to "give it up."
I DO oppose end-runs by oligarchs to ignore the general values of the citizenry. As by importing new immigrants to swamp the values of the old. Or by funding/bribing/appointing politicians or judges to end-run the Constitutions and the assimilated values of the general citizenry. Or by faithlessly using their good faith against them, by falsely professing Christ, in whom they do not even believe, as justifying values that Jesus never justified. Or by arguing for Marxism as if significantly distinguishable from Communism, as if Marxism has not yet been sufficiently or properly tried. Or by employing Orwellian double-speak to try to make words, meanings, and values meaningless. Or by inventing or double-talking about "objective morality" to apply it as little more than window dressing for end-running the people and their representatives in order to impose the preferences of brain-washing, people-farming despots --- that don't want to be bothered with having to convince or inspire the general citizenry.
I do NOT favor argumentation that Collectivism is generally better. However, I do not oppose argumentation that, for particular purposes, a collective effort may be better for a specific situation or time. Decent leadership needs to remain attuned to, and respectful of, feedback from the general citizenry. It would not presume it best to end-run in order to farm the citizenry as any oligarchy or its knowitall stoolies may deem best.
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FREEDOM:
Well, there is a difference between voluntary cooperation and forced despotism. That difference is not eliminated merely by engaging in Orwellian definitions of freedom. "[W]ho does not obey shall not eat." -- Leon Trotsky
Nature is not itself despotic; it simply is. However, just because Nature imposes parameters does not mean that we lack Participatory Will or freedom within parameters. So, yes, people can work together, in cooperation and competition, to assimilate the values shared by a society. However, no mortal can reverse the Law of Nature's God:
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." -- Genesis 3:19
"If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." -- Second Epistle of Paul
"[He that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers." -- Captain John Smith, of the Virginia Colony
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Musing: Is the Iron Law of Oligarchy a moral law? When is it not moral for parents to believe and function as if they know best for their children? When is it not moral for a bureaucratic functionary to overrule parents? When are such determinations purely objective, as opposed to assimilations of subjective preferences?
Would Spartans have long survived as a society had they not taken a hard line in breeding their human stock? If AI (Skynet?) eventually determines that preserving human society within sustainable numbers necessitates actions to reduce the general population, how should it objectively prioritize among factors?
When is it moral to brainwash people to adopt radically different systems of moral values?
Should the morality of methods depend on calculated guesses and ongoing feedback relating to emerging levels of emergency needs? Can terror or torture ever reasonably be judged moral --- objectively, subjectively, or contingently-subjectively-objectively?
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By what contrived logic can purely objective morality exist? If it does not exist, then, as a behavior, making law, in itself, can no more give expression to purely objective morality than any other behavior.
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Beings that express Consciousness participate subjectively in rationalizing and effectuating their objectives. Necessarily, their OBJECTIVES will be CONTINGENT with their SUBJECTIVE apprehensions. Members of different societies will subjectively favor different objectives and ways for organizing to pursue them. Some societies will favor concentrating power in a dictator, some in an oligarchy, some in voting contrivances among the masses, some in systems of checks and balances for generally representative republics. Whether a particular social allocation of governing power is or should be deemed moral, fit, appropriate, advantageous, or progressive will be contingent with the general situation and culture as it unfolds among its members.
No particular kind of social organization is morally best for all peoples for all situations and times. A person who loses his participatory autonomy loses his capacity to function as a moral agent. There is no virtue, morality, or personal responsibility merely in doing what a superior governor forces one to do. To destroy a representative republic is to render an ideal of virtue among the general citizenry a mockery. To pursue moral behavior, a person needs to have capacity as an agent of Participatory Will, rather than as a mere pawn of controlling deciders.
Personal autonomy (self actualization) is at the highest level on Maslow's Pyramid of needs. While it is the highest secular goal, it cannot easily be approached without first satisfying the needs from the lower levels (nourishment, security, friends, recognition). Most people at most times and places in history do not much obtain time or means for focusing their participatory wills to pursue their self actualization. Historically, the idea of a self-evident or innate right, under God to pursue one's happiness, as set forth in the American Declaration of Independence, was rarely recognized. It is an ideal that is easily undermined and buried among contending, wannabe, people-farming, self-godding oligarchs and their law-out-the-wazoo stoolies.
Absent a people's assimilation as a representative republic, sustained under an effective system of checks and balances and a common system of values (such as Ten Commandments, Great Commandment, and Golden Rule), a society that celebrates diversity merely for the sake of diversity will tend to unravel. It cannot long stand as a representative republic. Rather, it will be divided and ruled under contending, wannabe, people-farming, self-godding oligarchs and their stoolies
A society that values diversity for the sake of diversity more so than it values empathetic assimilation of shared values and mores --- cannot stand as a representative republic. It will deem "progress" necessitates that rule be transferred to oligarchs, and it will deem that the ideal of self actualization among participating citizens must be sacrificed to more efficient security by rule under an oligarchy.
To grease such transition, it helps to open national borders, to give desperate border jumpers the vote, to pretend Jesus would smile upon such pawn-making transition, to take over mass-media means for public indoctrination, to redefine God (or "Objective Higher Morality"?) as smiling on the destruction of traditional families, thus to turn all republics into puppet organizations under oligarchs. Such a system will naturally select for the most corrupt and devious among oligarchs. Thus, as citizens lose their republics worldwide, global rule will fall under an utterly amoral syndicate of self-godding oligarchs. This is the way for the Iron Law of Oligarchy, per the tactical and technical necessities of organization. This is why Obama, Hillary, and their Oz Monkeys love the "morality of oligarchy" and its "progressive" pretenses of ever more invasive "moral law making."
Assimilation of social values and mores can proceed voluntarily and charitably within a society that already shares and builds on many of the same values. This is generally how the USA was founded. However, as the USA allowed itself to be infiltrated faster than it could assimilate its new immigrants, as its good faith was hijacked by oligarchic trust abusers, it lost means to assimilate values without forcing such assimilation by central and arbitrary governmental stooges. As central government found it necessary or helpful to its own interests to pile regulations upon regulations, power moved from Congress to a gluttonous array of Administrative Agencies. As oligarchs purchased governmental influence to get judges and stoolie bureaucrats appointed to serve their contending interests, all previous traditional institutions became ridiculous --- including the Constitution, Congress, Churches, Marriage, Academia, Hollywood, and Fake News..
Given the diverse swamping against assimilating values, the mass indoctrination and dis-informing of now mostly godless youth, the prioritization of sexual and chemical pleasuring over everything else, the godforsaken agglomerations of governing power and intimidation among central administrative agencies, how can any decent and reasonable person hope to reverse the Iron Law of Oligarchy in order to Make America Great Again? Answer: Only by strong works strengthened with strong faith in miracles.
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SCANDINAVIANS:
I suspect you enjoy a largely homogeneous society, with a small population, that is blessed with abundant raw materials, without sharing a border with a third world nation, and without shouldering much expense for your own defense. If you were to look just at Swedes within the USA, I suspect on average they would be even better off than you are. So maybe you should pat yourself on your back a little less.
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COMMON SENSE: America SHOULD be restricting immigration so it fits America's needs and does not tend to overwhelm reasoned goals of cultural and national assimilation of values that are conducive to the preservation of a decent republic of responsible free thinkers, such as those that appreciate and respect the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The notion of diversity purely for diversity's sake, even when it promotes divide-and-rule for anti-American oligarchs and the unraveling of civic responsibility, is a crap-headed idea.
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OF CHRISTIAN VALUES V. MOBS OF CULTURAL MARXISM AND HUMAN SECULARISM:
When U.S. citizens frequently attended Christian Churches, citizens generally honored the Great Commandment, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments. There were fewer divorces. Parents felt more responsible for their children. Children were more respectful. There was more loyalty between employers and employees. Recipients of charity tended to be grateful, rather than entitlement-minded. More people learned to take personal responsibility for bad decisions.
Now that Churches are generally denigrated and people look more to marrying the government and expecting free stuff, are things really better?
Now we have: Rendering of the Constitution into near meaninglessness; oligarchs buying and selling politicians and political favors at all levels of government; politicization of the judiciary; a declining middle class; grade school children being groomed to accept open bathrooms, esoteric genders, exotic sexuality; civic illiteracy concerning the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights; floods of welfare-entitlement, civic-illiterate, illegal immigrants; opinion scripters indoctrinating irresponsible Americans to trade promises of security for surrendering personal liberty; PC to the point of killing capacity for free thinking; a Catholic Church that has become a child-abusing, gross laughingstock; infestation of every institution by irresponsible, liberty-illiterate, fake virtue-signalers; at least one major political party behaving like a fascist criminal mob.
So, are our new "Americans-in-name-only" leaders delivering us to "Progress" and "Social Justice"? Or, just maybe, was there some better wisdom under the metaphors of the Christian Church?
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Lol. The Bolsheviks were Christians?! Insulting? I thought maybe you were trying to be funny. If you want insulting, look to the now commonplace antics of Lefties.
I get it. You don't care about the Constitution or the Republic. You care about the worldwide socialistic plantation, to be farmed by experts promoted by oligarchs --- regardless of whether or not most responsible adults within any particular borders want it. And you want to call that kind of nation-destroying "Christian!" But it sounds pretty sub-humanizing brownshirty to me. It's hardly fanaticism to notice that. It's historical literacy. Have you not read anything by Solzhenitsyn?
You want open borders, but you claim not to know much about Soros or his Open Society and his funding of Lefties. Aren't Lefties supposed to be educated? As if it were possible to argue some of your points with a straight face without having been influenced by Soros. Not buying it.
IAE, I and my parents are native born. Regardless, your argument pretending moral standards as a basis for erasing all national borders leads directly to absurdity. Try making that argument to the Japanese, Chinese, or Russians and see if you get any laughs.
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Admit it -- you want open borders because desperate immigrants will pander for the socialistic/left. You claim our economy needs them, but you do not take into account: The corrosion of law and order; the cost of welfare; the tendency to fail to assimilate even after becoming voters; the compelling of bad behavior by employers that want cheap labor to remain competitive.
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I think, in your case, you deserve open borders. Please begin by advertising how you keep your home unlocked and doors open.
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You already told me you favor open borders. I appreciate your honesty, btw. That you favor that tells me some other things. It tells me you think the population has been softened enough by Leftist bombast to support such an idea. It tells me you align with Soros' elitist ideas --- as opposed to the ideal of a representative republic of individually responsible, free thinking citizens. Which is hardly surprising for anyone who looks at the crude tactics of the anti-liberty Left --- now and historically.
Actually, for many people and cultures, I think socialism under oligarchic deceit may be their ticket. More or less what they merit. Especially if they are used to being ruled, lack practice thinking or taking responsibility for themselves, and want to "marry the government". After all, a people that can support a free-thinking republic is a rarity in human history. Which is why I think it madness to try to force one-world government.
I suspect you actually believe Soros' ideals are "scientifically moral". That may be why so many Lefties are so strident that virtue and truth, if not God, are on their side. Forward! (Sarc.) To me, that is weak and history-illiterate thinking. The question is: Have enough sub-humanizing, liberty-illiterates been indoctrinated and imported to overcome ordinary Americans and the American Ideal, as Lincoln described in his Gettysburg Address.
That is the gamble that lying, crying, infantile Lefties (reference Kavanaugh hearings) are making, as they essentially declare war on ordinary Americans. So, it has come to pass that we are engaged with a great deceit by oligarchs and stooges, to test whether the representative republic can long endure against the push towards a worldwide, open-bordered, mad-house plantation. For evidence, just look at the shrill and infantile tactics now, as ever, commonplace among Lefties. Or just carry on, with blinders on.
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I think there needs to be an investigation to find out if anyone in the Obama-Hillary Administration had ties to America.
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Unfolding of Moral Based Civilization:
If math-based space-time is potentially infinite, then the varieties of feedback that may be appreciated in potential respect of the system of Beingness will also be infinite among perspectives of Consciousness. To the extent perspectives of Consciousness base their unfolding commitments on unfolding feedback, there will always come into manifestation new surprises concerning subsequent or future values and choices. Thus, there would be no scientifically or godly pre-determined series of unfoldments that must be provably, objectively "best" for all time.
Every apparently new choice is, while being implemented, at first judged best by its chooser. But the duration of such judgment will depend on feedback. So long as members of an assimilative civilization deem the consequences of their choices to be good, they will tend to deem such choices good (or moral). As feedback modifies their appreciations, their assimilating judgments concerning what remains moral will likewise be modified.
Basic moral empathy remains constantly innate. Specific appreciations of moral values will flux in response to feedback. Perspectives of Consciousness proceed along their various paths of moral interests. Such paths will tend to assimilate as nurtured empathies tend to become shared. Thus, a civilization may tend more in common to judge what is morally worthwhile versus what is not.
Thus, lasting morality, like happiness, is often more to be pursued than to be manifested. Thus, moral order assimilates out of otherwise chaos. Habits of good faith and good will facilitate the process. In participating in respect of the system that defines and nurtures them, children, to become responsible adults, need to be availed to think about morality for themselves.
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EVIL: Evil by a person may be conceptualized as being expressed when he chooses to harm another for no reason other than to try to dull his own capacity for empathy. It may be ambiguously expressed, as where he needs to dull his empathy so he can commit emotionally to battle in order to defend his family, kin, or nation.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING:
A society filled with budding socialists that are addicted to thinking gov is an inexhaustible source for ever more free bennies is not a society that is well positioned to lecture street addicts and all the people they groom. Prison cannot be the answer to addiction when so many people have become addicted to a pipe dream based on socialistic, hedonistic, pagan fairies.
Somehow, natural consequences from making bad choices need to be respected and restored. Addicts should not be prevented from finding their way back to decent society. But neither should decent society be expected to encourage addicts to believe their addictions are admirable.
Social approval and disapproval are powerful incentives. When misdirected, such incentives produce basket case societies. A society that splurges resources trying to salvage incorrigibles will easily destroy itself. What is the virtue of that?
Consequences of shame and disapproval need to be intelligently restored. Problem is, where can a basket case society find leaders wise and virtuous enough to restore intelligent incentives? Not likely in foresight. But raw nature, once sufficiently insulted, may provide some hard redirection.
Meantime, perhaps good people should fight against PC, unearned self-esteem, presumptuous knowitallism, entitlement mindedness, quick offendedness, snowflakiness, identity politics, and stupid notions of justice as entailing equal distribution of outcomes.
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