Comments

  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)


    For me no big difference between democrat politicians and republicans, apart from appearance (republicans dress and look trendier than democrats, democrats are better orators).

    Trump reduced taxes in order to satisfy his voters. Harris says she will give handouts to those in need. Is it not the same thinking, with different targets? Trump targeted businessmen and self-employed people, Harris is targeting those in need, mostly single mothers and minorities (though she uses the word "middle-class" for promotional purposes).

    In contrast with republicans, I believe in government spending and government intervention. But I don't see why there are no other ways of doing it, apart from just giving money to people.

    Trump did that too (he told people "vote me, so you save money" and he kept his word). Most of my friends were happy for saving from their taxes during Trump's presidency, and Biden did something similar in a time of urgency.

    It is not an accident that 2020-2022 coincide with the US cryptocurrency craze. Just from the people I know, I may tell you that many of these relief paychecks ended up in crypto investments (wasted money, which in one or another way our children will have to repay).

    But you should see it that Kamala Harris is doing the same thing with Trump: vote me, so I give you money. I, Kamala, speak about USA and Americans, but in the way and in the moment I do it, I don't care for the future or the role of this nation, I just want you (my potential voter) to know that money is coming for you.

    We have some moral dilemmas now:

    Should the voter consider money and personal benefit as the foremost criterion in casting his vote? Democrats and republicans will say yes. (Truth does not matter to them.)

    Should our generation borrow money that the next generation will have to repay?
    Democrats and republicans will say yes. (The only future they know is from one election to the next.)

    How should we use the money that our children will have to repay?
    Democrats and republicans will say these money should be used in the way that satisfies best those voters which brought us to power. (Again, the only future they know are those periods from one to the next election.)

    To conclude, we are not talking only about debt and sums here. We are talking about the morality of doing politics and spending money in this way. You don't blame your neighbor who takes a loan to upgrade his old house and buy a car, but you will definitely blame you neighbor if he takes loans to pay sex-workers, buy drugs, go to see Dubai, etc. In this country so much money is paid, but the results are poor and some people will always pay the bill (without a detailed receipt). I can't vote republicans when they reject science, but I have lost faith in democrats too. Either they have to be frank with Americans and tell them some big sacrifices are needed to save our country and/or the whole world, or they just will keep satisfying their voters every four years and always will blame their opponents for that never-happening-revolution.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Democrats promised 6 trillion for Green New Deal. So far they have invested less than 20 billion in the green new deal, gave like 3 trillion on covid relief only, increased the US public debt to 35 trillion, plan to give 1.2 billion for student loan forgiveness and I heard Kamala Harris today stating that she is going to give 1.7 trillion in middle-class handouts (though I know very well she wasn't referred to me with "middle-class", but to her potential voters).

    I am wondering who are more stupid now, those who vote for Trump or those who think that the evil in this country may come only from the "far-right", but never from the left?

    I stand for social justice, gun laws and environmental protections (things that Trump never takes into consideration), but if Democrats bankrupt this country the only sure thing is that progressives won't see any of their plans/dreams realized, and they will deserve to be blamed for failures which they often use to charge their opponents with.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13751313/Kamala-Harris-rolls-economic-plan-1-7-TRILLION-handouts-bungles-revealing-ban-grocery-store-price-gouging.html
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    It seems that on the NYS ballot will appear only two names: Trump and Harris.

    Jill Stein will not be on the ballot. RFK Kennedy is still fighting his way, but I don't think the guy has any good qualities. He is in the center of all bizarre stories: he had wombs in his brain, he dumped a dead bear in Central Park, he seems to have a taste for roasted dog meat, and his wife committed suicide (maybe she couldn't bear living with him anymore).

    It has become very hard to find any good politicians nowadays. The more mediocre, weird and stupid one is, the bigger the probability he considers himself the center of the universe and (as a result) he wants to become the next president.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)


    How is Musk's behavior explained?

    The most educated people in this country buy his very expensive Tesla cars, and Elon Musk says now that he is going to give a 42 million check per month to a climate change denier. :vomit:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Any comments on JD Vance's philosophy credentials? :gasp:

    I heard he studied philosophy. Will be be a philosopher king? :rofl:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)


    Funny fact: I met a girl on a dating app and she deleted me after I wrote those things about the Democratic Party lol So, I don't blame you for considering untenable those views.

    I just follow some kind of "economical thought processing".

    Although I know that I was born a prodigy with very high IQ and gifted stature, same as Don the Clown, and if I wanted I could become Schopenhauer, Einstein, Michael Jackson, Leon Messi, Rocky Marciano, Shakespeare, and so on, life taught me that the whole universe (out of jealousy, surely :) ) would conspire against me.

    Hence, though I never doubted myself (for the sake of this debate, you know) I found out that (because the whole universe is jealous about me and about Hillary Clinton) there's a hope that I may achieve a couple of things in this life, but not everything.

    That kind of economical thought processing seems totally absent among Democrats and this thing has started to make me suspicious about their intentions in general. Democrats want growth, equality, peace, free education for all, reforms, gun control, better infrastructure, general welfare, thriving American families, women rights, trans rights, Muslim rights, Natives rights, technological progress, control of the space, etc. etc. and their ever expanding list of "priorities" makes me sometimes ask if these people are serious or they just create as many priorities and needs as they can in order to appeal to all those groups who take these "priorities" seriously.

    Lately I have started believing that it is a leftist tactic (around the world) to imagine as more needs and problems as you can in order to make more and more people feel that they need to be protected by the leftists. So, if I travel to Luxembourg or San Marino and see how different these countries are from the US, I am sure that a 10 mins talk with a Luxembourghian or Sanmarinian leftist would instill in me the feeling that in Luxembourg and San Marino people have the same problems like here in the States. But that feeling, I insist, will not come from what I see and experience there, but from a political discourse that sounds the same among the politicians around the world.

    Though the left traces its history in those workers unions who fought for the working classes in Europe and US, we see how the change in living standards and working ethics has made leftists change priorities as well. It is hard to attain today that leftists care more about EU/US majorities than right wing politicians, for the simple reason that the leftists will keep talking about poverty and working conditions, even though in the 21st century labor has been radically transformed and poverty is not as widespread as it used to be in the beginning of the 20th century. Democrats want to speak about the poor and the rich, forgetting that 70% of people in this country are neither poor nor rich.

    But I think I know why they do it now. Most of the people in this country do not care to vote at all and in these circumstances both Democrats and Republicans have discovered that they may keep power through appealing to the few, not to the many. If they really cared about majorities they would set a couple of priorities that majorities seem to care (like crime, inflation and infrastructure) and they wouldn't invent so many needs and priorities.

    I lost faith in Democrats when they gave people 3 trillion in covid relief, but they could afford only 800 billion for the infrastructure. They put the blame on the Republicans for that too, but this absence of economical thought processing among the Democrats has started to trouble me.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Is anyone considering Jill Stein in this forum?

    A few years ago I was thinking to register with the Green Party, but then listened to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and came with the wrong opinion that democrats will fix this country and the whole world (which would follow the US example of Green New Deal).

    Now, I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words; they just use different vocabularies and do the same exact thing (rewarding whomever supports/votes them, with federal money).

    Should I consider Stein now or is she another traditional politician whose only concern is to get sponsors and to reward only the people who vote for her? Will her name appear on the ballot in NYS?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Roevember is coming! :victory:180 Proof

    This was the most funny part. It sounds like an abortionist revolution being cooked behind the curtail lol

    With regard to the other things you said, the only difference between genders in my view is volume, nothing else.

    Democrats are right in saying gender does not matter, but they are wrong in using gender in order to gain votes (and they are wrong in implying that genes do not matter as well). History and science can verify that only volume divides the genders, but in the case of genes, that's a kind of prohibited debate at this moment. In the future maybe people and scientists will feel more free to discuss genes.

    If my mother is great with numbers and my father great with words, and I am great with numbers too, but weak with words, then there's a big probability that I took after my mom's genes. Schopenhauer, also, loved his dad and hated his mom, but I guess he got his love for the letters from his poetical mom, not from his entrepreneur dad (from the second he inherited enough money to become a great intellectual).

    Women and men long for the same things, but with different volumes. A woman may think about sex 12 times a day, a man 270 times. A woman may want to pull the hair of the woman who takes her husband, a man may want to kill that who touches his wife. There may be many women who have higher IQ than Kant or Einstein, but the reason why these women will not become Kant or Einstein in my view is volume (or call it will). Though these women may have enough brain cells, intelligence and skills to become Einstein, if they don't do so, then they somehow lack that "male volume" or "male will" which enable many men to annihilate their egos in order to achieve their goal/task.

    That's my view and that's what brain science seems to support. Female and male brains work the same, but male brains seems to consume more energy always ;)
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Since we are in the election discussion, I wish to add something.

    I have been surprised with CNN, the Guardian, NY Times and a few liberal outlets that seem to have forgotten what they used to write about Kamala Harris just three or two years ago. Whereas three years ago all these outlets seemed to agree that something is really wrong with Kamala Harris (she had a few scandals in her office, she was eclipsed by Biden, she made gaffes and there were times none knew her whereabouts in the White House), now all these liberal outlets post only positive things on Harris and do not make any references to their own old posts about her.

    Does any democrat here feel good with that? I mean it seems as CNN, The Guardian, NY Times, etc., have forgotten their older articles on Kamala Harris. Is that normal for you guys or is just the way journalists use to do their work?

    (I remember well, by the way, in 2011 when The NY Times ran an article were some Syrians praised ISIS for doing better work in their town than Bashar Al-Asad!!! Just six months or so after that article, I heard again about ISIS. This time isis invaded Iraq and started making videos with human heads being cut. So, I guess that ISIS article in the NY Times, in 2011 or 2012, was a good example of never being enthusiastic about the people these outlets will praise. I better wait to see Kamala in her debates with Trump, before deciding if she deserves my vote.)
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.RogueAI
    ,

    Very interesting. To the best of my knowledge there is one single country in the western world that has accepted that "traditional elementary schools" are failing boys and that country is Finland. Finland, to the best of my knowledge, is thinking seriously to make a few reforms so that elementary schools will stop failing boys.

    So, I think right from the start, boys sort of know the education system is biased against them. But before I go any further, I want to see if you agree with me that support for someone like Trump is an aberration that needs to be explained. That to a "normal" person (however we define that) someone like Trump is loathsome and reviled.RogueAI

    I see your point here. Although a leftist, I do not agree with all the ways democrats have chosen to keep power and I have seen so many times that they shift priorities after they come in office. I am a green-new-deal supporter (in general, not in every detail), but I saw how Biden administration did nothing in that direction, I saw how black lives did not improve within four years, and I saw that gun violence did not fade. So, I support some democrats, but I consider it really weird when some young women ask me what I think about Trump, before they make any other questions. That really makes me ask if I am living in George Orwell's 1984, where everyone uses newspeak and is brainwashed time after time :) And Orwell, to the best of my knowledge, was a leftist too, but he was courageous enough to see how ideology may take a turn towards the darkest sides.

    Since I vote democrats (sometimes) for a few causes I consider good (not for all the causes democrats say are good), I personally would never mock a person for voting Trump (cause I don't know all the reasons why he makes Trump important, as he doesn't know all my reasons for voting some democrats).

    But we are living in strange times and the strangest of all things is having so many young people to believe that other people will love and educate them better than their own families.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)


    Good point Rogue Al, but I think is true for certain countries. In the US the suicide rate for men is four times greater than for women (biggest difference in the whole world I think). In Asia and Africa there are countries where the suicide rates between men and women are different and there may be a few countries where female suicides slightly surpass those of men (maybe Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, but I am not sure on this).

    Lately, I have started thinking that something might be really rotten with schools and social media. It seems that females and males are targeted differently by education, models, ads, electoral campaigns, policies, etc., to come to this outcome where a brother may be "far-right" and his sister "anti-fascist".

    I respect people's choices, but someone needs to convince me that gender should play a role in this. From history books I know that certain cultures had different rules for women and different rules for men, but I also know that communist and fascist regimes (and all religions) had equal support among women and men, insofar as both women and men were "educated" properly by these regimes.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I saw some "far-right" protests in the UK today and their "anti-fascists" responders, and it was like here in the US: the "far-right" protesters were 97% white males, and the "anti-fascists" a mix from all the rest, with white females included.

    I read in The Hill a few years ago that 65% of girls in US high schools and colleges declare to be "progressive", whereas only 28% of boys do that.

    This thing has started to trouble me a little, since in my family I know that we share similar opinions regardless of gender. We are all leftists and once upon a time I was the only theist/religious in my family, till that day when I became a copy of my parents: another proud agnostic.

    So I guess I need to go back to high school in order to find out how come gender will have a saying on one's probability to be a democrat or a republican, a theist or an agnostic, etc.

    Do schools nowadays (and/or social media) have more impact on young people than their own parents? I don't know how kids are brought up in other parts of this planet, but in Europe and US (which I know enough) I thought parents do not tell sons different stories from those they tell their daughters.

    So it is a big puzzle to me how sisters and brothers do not think the same anymore. Are parents the real educators of their kids nowadays? I really can't imagine a mom telling her daughter Kamala is great and then telling her son Donald is great.
  • Fear of death in our modern world
    I made these thoughts when for a couple of days I didn't use the cell-phone and pc at all. I was walking around the town, in parks, etc., and I started bringing memories and thought there are things I will miss one day and I won't be in this place with these surroundings forever.

    It was a strange feeling of melancholy and spontaneity that I am not used to. But I do remember that when I was a little kid and teenager in Albania and Greece, I had these thoughts hunting me constantly. These fears, as hints, made me religious.

    When I gave up all religions in my twenties, some of these thoughts and fears resurfaced. Now in my forties, I don't care at all and I should be very very sick in order to think seriously of death. I mean I can't think of death for more than 5 mins anymore, whereas as a little kid I was terrified of death.

    Three things may explain this change:

    1) I have changed with the years (it might be some kind of psychological or physical transformation in me).

    2) In my forties I have gotten used so much with the idea of my mortality that it doesn't shock me anymore.

    3) I have changed environment. Living in the US now has made me care more about daily routine tasks and care less about death. I mean, I know very well how much melancholy I feel when I visit places I've lived in Greece and Albania. The last time I went there, three years ago, I wanted to cry and I was asking myself how so many years had passed so fast.

    On the one hand, (1) I know that I can't generalize things from my personal experiences. On the other hand, (2) I am starting thinking that maybe my new lifestyle in the US has changed me a lot and I might have become a person who cares less about death because in the US I am busy all the time, I don't have that love for life and people I used to in Greece and Albania, and so on.

    If I am right about (2) then maybe this modern American life has a lot of saying on the way I perceive death, life, love, spontaneity, etc.

    Truth be told, , religious fervor is in decline in the US and the western world. So, it is not only about me, you, and X person. It looks like a western trend of abandoning religions (don't focus on political debates and the use of religion for political reasons, but look the attendance numbers in US, UK and EU churches). The only path I can imagine back to religiosity in these countries is through replacement, i.e. if these nations and cultures are replaced by people/cultures who will bring new religious fervor.
  • Is multiculturalism compatible with democracy?
    Not quite sure what you mean here. Well, many countries don't look like the US. But what is surprising is just how similar to the US the whole of Latin America is. You have these interesting subtle differences between American countries and European countries.ssu

    I meant that I have come to believe that apart from the oppressed nations (i.e. dictatorships and theocracies where everything can be fabricated, and you may know a couple of identities/ethnicities/religions in these countries, but you never can be sure about the degree of social disintegration in dictatorships till the day that a war happens and you may find out that your spouse or your neighbor is not the person you previously thought to be), there are two kind of countries: 1) those countries which grand personal freedoms, but are multicultural or cosmopolitan (like the USA, France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, etc.), and 2) countries that are free also, but due to their size, geography, history, etc., have not reached the diversity or multiculturalism of the first group (of USA, UK, Australia, etc.).

    It is my belief, also, that although both groups are called democracies, group 2 may behave much better in cases of hardship (like natural disaster, poverty, war or some other crisis). Culture, identity and compassion may really play a role in these small democratic nations when they will face hardships.

    With regard now group 1, I think if the countries of this group face some kind of hardship, their people will show all kinds of negative behavior just because they were taught that civilization means living well and calling the police every time you have issues with your neighbor. From the moment you don't live well in group 1 and you cannot rely on the police, you either run away or you should watch your neighbor 24 hours a day.

    It is a paradox, in my view, to include group 1 and group 2, in the same club, the "democracy club".
  • Is multiculturalism compatible with democracy?


    You made some good points, like that one about a new "global" culture.

    However, as a person who in the US has discovered his love for European Cinema (when I lived in Europe as a teenager I detested French movies, but after living in the US for many years I came to love French movies and to detest contemporary American movies... with the exception of some comedies, where beforehand I tell myself I'll have some fun with American bullshit).

    This experience of detesting contemporary American movies makes me ask the same question all the time: why in the hell people in other countries spend so much money and energies in order to see, advertise and idolize (contemporary) American cinema?

    The only logical answer I come up with is "mass control". For some reasons, US culture industry has a big leverage on the rest of the world. Remove that leverage and you might see "global culture" trashed for good or becoming very limited in scope. This 'control factor' explains also why music and cinema in Europe nowadays are much more pluralistic/diverse than in the US. Here you see actors of various skin colors, but you "know" beforehand who are the great guys. In Europe you get surprised every day with actors and musicians of all kinds of genres, from all kinds of languages.

    In conclusion, I tend to believe that materialism and policing may have a greater saying in our modern western world than "the global culture" which I see it as being imposed on us (and easily replaceable). We could happily live in a western world where Rammstein are more famous than Swift and Beyonce, in a world where Italian curses are more widespread than the English ones, or in a world without Microsoft Office Suite and Chat GPT. But I fail to see how the western world would look if well-being shrinks and if the policing/surveillance agencies fail to do their work.

    I can't imagine a scenario with economies and surveillance performing very poorly and with people in USA or France being in "peace" due to their "democratic/egalitarian/cosmopolitan" values and "compassion". Till, I can imagine that scenario as plausible for some smaller nations which have been lucky enough to not look like France or USA today (though I guess there must be only a handful of such nations in the western world).
  • Is multiculturalism compatible with democracy?


    You might be right, but theocratists know what they want and they definitely have visions of woman, family, kids, behavior, duties, education, rites, and so on. They may be dead wrong, but they really know what they want (everything comes clear like crystal to their "blind" eyes).

    And then you have nations and civilizations which at a point do not know anymore what they want (apart from economic growth). Who do you think will prevail? The crazy theocratists who have some definite goals or the moderate guys whose only daily dilemma is to live a pleasant life (only) or to suicide?
  • Nietzsche is the Only Important Philosopher


    You are funny. I probably said that 5 years ago (so now I have been 7 years reading philosophy lol)

    Here in the USA, I know they teach Nietzsche at Fordham only, cause Fordham Theologians should know what an atheist said about them. Maybe there are a few, but most of the philosophy programs I have searched do not teach Nietzsche (I don't blame them).

    I do like Nietzsche like a writer, but I have serious doubts on his contributions on aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and whatever branches of philosophy are taught in schools nowadays. The reason why Nietzsche might be the most popular "philosopher" in Europe I think is his writing ability, not his philosophy. People love great writers and they think they are enlightened by the books that entertain them the most.
  • Nietzsche is the Only Important Philosopher
    In Philosophy I hardly can remember any Nietzschean contribution. In psychology (especially the psychology of the "pious/religious person") I did find Nietzsche very convincing.

    His aphorisms are masterpieces of world literature, but nothing great happens in Nietzsche's "philosophy". This is what I came to believe :)
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    Maybe I didn't give a good reason to limit the speeches of BUND and Co, but BUND and other similar cases may provide some clues about American democracy. Although when you speak with Liberals they will imply that "democracy", freedoms, and their liberal values, etc., are the most rational things in this universe, in practice we see that things we are taught to be self-evident, rational, etc., are just power. (Many groups in the USA have won their rights in that way, by exercising more power than other groups.) 

    The BUND rally in Madison square shows that 80 years ago it was okay to disregard Jews because they were not strong enough. Now, I assume, in the US and some other countries is okay to disregard Palestinians and Muslims insofar as they are weak in numbers and money.

    It is more correct to think of Clintons, Bidens, and co, as people who count on donors, money, voters, etc., than as people who really care about justice and American interests in the Middle East. However hard someone tries to find the rationality of the US policy in the Middle East, he/she will fail.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/11/israel-hamas-gaza-war-us-middle-east-policy-saudi-biden/

    There are two routes for the US policy in the Middle East to change: 1 (the most probable) repetitive failures and loss of public interest in foreign affairs, i.e. American isolationism, and 2 (the less probable) pro-Palestine people in US overcome in numbers and money the pro-Israeli people (this is the case in EU right now, where you have 25 million Muslims and EU is much more reluctant than the US to endorse the Netanyahus).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    We were just surprised how such an event was allowed to take place in Manhattan (when many Jews, US leftists and anti-Hitler Germans had opposed it and had warned authorities against BUND).

    In 2014, when all people in EU and UK were rallying in support of Palestine, Hillary Clinton was organizing a rally in support of Netanyahu and against the Intifada.

    It seems that in this country none really cares about international causes, but just for money and voters.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    There is a case against US administration in the US courts as well. Sunak, Biden and AIPAC people are saying that the suit does not make sense, but I do think that the judges may find the Leahy Law applicable against US military support for Israel.

    Let's see what will happen with this case:

    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/16/ccr_genocide


    Now, a few days ago I was seeing with a friend a PBS documentary about German American Bund rally in Madison Square in 1939, where these "good Americans" could bring their swastikas and totally ignore the Jewish protesters. However weird it might sound, I recalled what is going on right now in the USA, where the protesters are not the Jews, but the Palestinians.

    My friend asked me: how was it possible that back then NY authorities allowed a Nazi rally in Madison Square and they disregarded the Jewish protesters?

    Well, I answered, this is American capitalism. Back in the 30ies in this country lived millions of Germans and the Jews were hundred thousands, but less in numbers than Pro-Hitler Americans (BUND Germans included). Hence, I guess Jewish protests were not enough to outlaw BUND rallies. Now, we have more pro-Israel people than pro-Palestine people in this country, and numbers (and money) are more important than justice for the US democracy.

    Maybe numbers (not justice) are important in EU countries as well, where 25 million of Muslim residents have made Europe more sensitive towards the Palestinian Cause (in stark contrast with the US, where we have only 3 million Muslim residents).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden
  • Regarding the antisemitic label
    I was seeing an old movie about Algeria a few days ago and just recalled that 60 years ago the most despicable nation for the Muslim world was probably France, not Israel.

    The reason: somehow millions of Muslims had come to believe that France was a Muslim murdering machine and they were reading more bad news from Maghreb countries, than from Palestine.

    Right now, Israel and US are killing more Muslims than France and this is a reason why many people in the Muslim world have forgotten the hatred of their grandparents against the French and other European (colonizing) nations.

    My conclusion in a few words: for the Muslims it does not matter too much whether "their killer" is a Jew or a Catholic, but it matters a lot to Europeans when the killer is a Jew. The comparisons and graffiti of Jewish soldiers with Nazi symbols most probably are made in Europe, not made in Middle East. For the Middle-Easterners all non-Muslim enemies are equal (they, unfortunately, have a blind spot about their own despots). But for many Europeans the crimes of the US, UK and France most probably are not equal with the crimes of Israel.

    If I am right in these beliefs, then the use of the antisemitic label should be confined to Europeans and Christians, whereas other labels should be valid for the rest of the world (who on their right have stopped believing that Europe and Bethlehem are the center of our Universe).
  • All that matters in society is appearance


    Liberals and communists will hate you now.

    They teach kids that beauty does not exist. What
    do they care the most are political & electoral correctness. Aesthetics is their biggest enemy. There are communist and liberal "aesthetics" being spread all over the world now. Either you accept that everything should be considered beautiful, or you are banned from the "respectful" world.

    I was thinking one day that the reason why portrait-painting developed in Europe more than in other parts of the globe might be (to some degree) that a European face has more expressions & colors than Non-European faces. Do I dare to say this in public?

    Maybe I am totally wrong. But the problem today is that I am afraid to learn. We live in a world where we are taught to suppress all thoughts that are not politically correct.
  • Regarding the antisemitic label
    Why? Nigerians are not semitic. It seems you just want to reserve a special word for a certain group in order to demonise them, specifically Europeans and Christians.Lionino

    When you call someone antisemitic, I guess you somehow imply that either Jews do good things to that person or they do bad things to that person he still blames them, because this is what he was taught to believe all his life, he always despises them.

    I hardly understand how people who do not know Jews at all (were taught nothing about them) can be labeled antisemitic just because for them Israel has come to mean: "Muslim murdering machine".

    Calling people of different backgrounds antisemitic sounds to me like applying Western criteria to them. Since in the West it is hard to find people who hate Israel without quoting some far-right politician/author, we rightly confuse anti-Israel with antisemitic feelings in Western countries. But it is hard for me to call a Nigerian Muslim, to take an example, antisemitic, even if that person dreams the end of Israel. Insofar as the latter was taught to see the history of Israel from the Palestinian/Arab perspective, not from the European far right perspective, he better be called Anti-Israeli or even Jewish-hater, but not antisemitic.
  • Literary writing process
    Besides, aren't all philosophers and would-be philosophers also smart-asses?Vera Mont

    Go and try some forum with creative writers and you will see a different culture from this forum ;) I have been lucky to get to know (virtually and in person) both creative writers and philosophy professors/students and have come up with the conclusion that the second are a much better company.

    Why is that so?

    When I lacked any knowledge of philosophy, I tended to believe that philosophy and creative writing have many things in common. When I started studying philosophy (in my thirties), I came to see that creative writing and philosophy have very few things in common.

    Though many writers tend to philosophize and psychologize, they do it poorly. They always miss many details, or if they go to the details they become bad writers... since the purpose of creative writing is to beautify things, not to analyze and defend this or that proposition.

    Insofar as by their nature creative writing and philosophizing are two different processes, then very different is the writer from the philosopher. The writer starts always with some "finding", the philosopher starts with a question. The writer has always an "answer", the philosopher has a puzzle. Since the first is in the mood of "I know already", and the second in the mood of "I am not sure", then the writer tends to be egoistical, self-assured, eccentric, etc., the second diligent, hard working, honest, very focused, very detailed, etc.

    In short, I think Plato was right in assuming that writers are gifted people (I say: with niceties, good memory, good vocabulary and imagination), but if you are looking for really intelligent people you better look for a profession where honesty, focusing and diligence are a must. If writers have an answer (due the nature of their profession) on anything, they tend to be witty and egoistical, but not honest, self-sacrificing, etc.

    I am not sure what kind of intelligence it takes to be a writer nowadays. Some people have the gift to amaze and surprise you all the time and because of that they think that they are entitled to "educating" and "revolutionizing" you.

    Anyway, I may get many things wrong, but we live in times when people will keep writing even if they have nothing to say (nothing new, nothing their own). It is hard to see that in philosophy. If a philosopher has said something and there's nothing for him to ad, then he will stop writing philosophy. With creative writers it doesn't work that way. That's the reason, I guess, why there is so much hallucinatory crap in the book stores :)
  • Literary writing process
    I have tried all kind of writings but movie scripts.

    I translated Kant in my language (it's going to be published next month), I have translated pieces from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy. I translated myself also :( I have written opinions, reports, papers, essays, thesis, poems, aphorisms, literary reviews, two novels, two plays and many short stories ugh All these in three languages, not in one lol

    Till now I have been praised for my novels mostly. What interests me is a main motive, the rest is just music for me. Hence, when I work for the government I like music that relaxes me (Jazz, Reggae, Classical), but when I write I listen only to music with tension (Rock, House, some Classical also).

    I don't like novelists who try to philosophize and educate you, with very few exceptions (like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Orwell). That's for the simple reason that I don't like to confuse genres, though many philosophers do that often (Plato and Nietzsche for example).

    Either you are a good artist, or you are a good philosopher. If you are both: you better try your hand in two different genres, instead of having professors praise your artworks for philosophical and psychological "achievements" bla bla bla Tolstoy, like a philosopher (in his work What is Art, let's say) was a total failure, but like a writer (let's say in his novella The Death of Ivan Illych) he is unbeatable.

    Today, you have these writers who try to educate you though they lack the credentials to do so. I am sure that 90% of writers I have personally met will fail in a Logic Exam, but that does not stop them from being "smart asses". This is a reason, also, why I do not bother to join forums for writers (but I do like forums for philosophers/thinkers). Just because they can imagine (like Hesiod, Ezekiel, and co did three millennia ago), they think that they are entitled to educate you and sell to you all that trendy/liberal/libertine/creepy/scary crap that comes in abundance nowadays.... since that's the trend and that makes a writer popular to a multicultural/global audience.

    To conclude, do not bother to try what other writers advise you. Most of them are products of the times we are living in (they are more mortal than my pets, since I am sure that my pets will be remembered by me and my kids :)

    Find a beautiful story to tell. If it is not beautiful by itself, you better read some good philosopher instead of wasting your time with writing. Put some tension and acts, cause only those things will make you a writer (I don't remember any novelist who became immortal through nice talking, but only those who put some great acts and great/believable characters in their novels). If your piece has no tension, no beauty, no acting, no humanism, you better try some other genre.... like philosophy let's say. Even if you fail with philosophy, you at least will know that you learned many things. But with literature, you may live in total ignorance and stupidity and at the same time cultivate all kinds of illusions in your brain lol

    I repeat it, though I love arts, I have come to the conclusion that philosophy can enlighten me much more. Literature has more audience, philosophy has more depth. Good luck to you!
  • Dilbert sez: Stay Away from Blacks
    I have been 15 years in the US and I don't remember a single day when liberal media did not provide some info about black people. You can search CNN at the time you read my comment, if you don't trust me. There definitely will be something about black people somewhere (it has been like that the last 15 years, and the odds are too small that it will not be the same at the time you read my comment). It's like they are trying to educate people all the time about accepting blacks, and definitely they keep making it a major political/social issue.

    Whereas this happens, you see how fast Asian community is growing in the US and you might learn that the biggest minority in the USA are not blacks, but Hispanics (who prefer to identify mostly as "other" or "mixed" race).

    Blacks, like whites, I think will see their numbers shrinking. While all this happens in this country, you keep hearing about white and black all the time, just because Republicans and Democrats want to play the political game in that way.

    If you go and ask Hispanics and Asians how they feel, they will probably tell you that they are discriminated by both whites and blacks. Nonetheless, liberal media will not bother to educate you on daily basis about Hispanics and Asians. They will educate you only when something really bad happens on Asians or when there is some election going on.

    Some of the reasons why this happens might be that Hispanics and Asians are considered newcomers, Hispanics might be considered a threat to American culture as well (for blacks you can't say that), and also Hispanics and Asians seems to be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, whereas blacks are predominantly Democrats (they are definitely an electoral power to consider).

    To conclude, much of the racial debate in the US is politically motivated. In 2016 this country spent 6 billions for electoral campaigns only, and a lot of that money went to conservative and liberal media. The obsession of liberals with identity politics is not going to be beneficial in the future. Hispanics and Asians are not buying that (they don't seem to want to be labelled as minorities). Blacks are buying it and you have blacks leaders and Democrats behaving like advocacy groups, instead of pushing for other things: like better elementary education for all, better mental care, war on political corruption, etc. If people keep going on with the mentality that they should be treated specially because of their identity and they should be protected by Democrats and advocacy groups, it is a matter of time when they see their position getting even worse, since demographics are working against whites and blacks in this country. The 35% of people born in CA and NY have immigrant mothers and when these children will grow up, I guess they will not care too much about the colonial past of the US or about civil rights movement. They will have so many other things to worry about in the near future and they will mostly focus on having things done than on protecting all kinds of identities, histories and cultures.
  • Aesthetical realism:

    I might be more a fan of Chekhov than of Shakespeare. Chekhov is far from perfect, but I love his naturalism. Whenever I finish writing my second play, I might read Stanislavski as well (and Moliere's Misanthrope). I don't know anything about Stanislavski (I just have heard his name).

    I like Ibsen a lot. I simply don't know what he got in his mind when he wrote Peer Gynt (he probably knew cinema and opera would take over theater :) I used Peer Gynt like a famous example of the limits in plays. I didn't mean anything bad about Ibsen. The Enemy of the People and Hedda Gabler are masterpieces by all standards (whereas I found A Doll's House to be too forced, because Nora waits till the end of the play to wake up and I don't like that at all.... though I totally agree with the message of Ibsen).

    I had a book with four plays of Ionesco. There was a nice comedy in, but I gave up reading the rest. I thought I was wasting my time (I was 35.000 feet above the sea when I was reading Ionesco, and that might have been a reason he didn't impress me, though I found him funny). You can say also that comedies differ from other plays in their form and features. There is also some difference between seeing and reading a play.


    Though Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, De La Barca, Ibsen, Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello, Beckett, and Miller (to mention a few) wrote in different times/perspectives, I do find motives, puzzles and character developments in most of their plays. If I don't find these three elements in plays, then some funny stuff is taking place or I don't see play at all.
  • Aesthetical realism:
    But when you start to appreciate Rothko, you develop a new standard.

    In other words the work has priority, and the standard is just the current theory and standard - a post hoc justification and teaching aid.
    unenlightened

    I don't have a strict opinion on these things. But I have reasons to disagree here. I might rather say that for all artistic genres there are still possibilities that wait to be discovered, not that we are waiting for idols who will make new standards for everyone.

    From the moment you invent a camera, let's say, there are certain things you can do with it. Most of the directors think that with a camera you can take to the big screen great performances and great actors, but then you have Victor Fleming who thinks that with a camera you can do those things but you can also add more pleasure (in Fleming's hands a camera starts to act on its own).

    Now I can't say that Victor Fleming created the new film or that cameras in other directors' hands did not add pleasure to a movie. What I can say is that Fleming was such a genius who has a clear idea on how to use a camera. Other directors before him could convey a lot of pleasure to spectators, but they were not very clear in the way they used a camera. Now, all directors know the possibilities a camera brings to production, but that is not because Fleming did that, it is because cameras do have these possibilities (if Fleming were not the first to know, then most probably Sergio Leone would be the first :) and after 90 years what Fleming what the first to do has become like a common/public knowledge.

    If I adopted your view, then I should lack any arguments against Yoko Ono if she tells me that a time (maybe after 200 years) will come when everyone will understand that she was the greatest poet and painter in UK of the 21st century :)

    I am not an expert in painting, to tell you my opinion on Rothko. But Beckett is a great playwright, and Waiting for Godot has all the elements I mentioned in my previous post.

    Motive: (Nietzschean) Vanity
    Puzzles: what is Godot bringing to them? Why Estragon and Pozzo forget things all the time? Why did Lucky become slavish and dull?
    Character development: In the second act all protagonists look different (Estragon has forgotten many things, Pozzo looks old and tired, etc.)
  • Aesthetical realism:


    It's good to have a @Moliere in this forum, so I can talk about plays :)

    There may be great plays, boring plays, but there are many texts playwrights will tell you: sorry fella, go try your hand in novels and scripts, cause this piece can be anything but a play.

    If you don't have puzzles, character development and a motive, you definitely do not have a play. I can say, for example, that Jean Racine is a poor playwright (for my taste), but he has all those three features in his works, and I do not deny that he writes plays. But for some works of Eugene Ionesco, I doubt whether those should be called plays, as I might say also that Ibsen's Peer Gynt comes closer to novels and movie scripts, than to plays.

    Hence, I do think in arts there must be some kind of standard/criteria on what consists of an artwork (poem, novel, song, etc.). But then I see in the USA a few activists (of social justice) called as the greatest contemporary poets, though what I read in them do not look like poetry to me (in form and expression).

    In short, there is some kind of development and individual trait in all arts. But I think some people are trying to make us believe that everything in arts should be subjective, though to the best of my knowledge that statement is wrong. Plays, as I said, should have certain features in order to not become scripts, novels or something else.
  • Aesthetical realism:


    The issue it's little complicated. I have come to believe that there must be properties in beauty. There are some Roman and Greek Poets who are taught in school and do not please me at all, but I am still pleased by Catullus and Sophocles, though they wrote more than twenty centuries ago.

    On the other hand you see there's a difference in quality/appreciation of arts. All nations have some kind of music and painting. You can see also that many animals enjoy music (snakes, parrots, etc.). But then you have theater, movies, opera, and some other stuff, that most of nations either do not have an appreciation at all or are unable to contribute with any worth-standing pieces. It is impossible, at the same time, to persuade some people in developed countries that theater, opera and cinema are less universal/pleasing than painting and music and that's the reason why some civilizations never came to contribute in theater, opera and cinema.

    To conclude, I probably tend to believe that there are real properties in Aesthetics, but at the same time I tend to believe that society can construct/alienate people's intelligence and tastes somehow. Other answers I don't find with regard to the question "why in all arts and sciences there is a "golden era" (and then lots of dark age)?".
  • Aesthetical realism:


    There has been always involvement of governments in aesthetics. In communist and fascist countries the involvement has been very harsh. In liberal countries it has been through soft means. A good example is Germany, which has seen all kinds of involvements: nazi, communist and liberal.

    Before Hitler came to power Germany had one of the greatest cinemas in the world. Seeing German movies from 1920s is really amazing (some of these movies made a trend called German Expressionism). Today German cinema is inferior to Italian, French, American, British and Japanese cinemas. One of the reasons, I believe, German cinema is inferior it has to do with its tendency to correct German history and politics. Italians had a fascist government and many communist directors. Though there are some politics in Italian and French movies, you will not see it in the same degree and intensity as in German movies. I have come to believe that the obsession of German directors with their country's past have made them less appealing (than Americans and Italians let's say) to the rest of the world. If someone asked me about a German director (after World War II) whom I should suggest, I might say Rainer Werner Fassbinder and two or three more. If someone, however, asks me about Italian, British and French directors who should be seen, I might suggest more than 20. This is what happens in US universities, also. If you go to learn about films in US universities, I guess you will hear more Italian and French directors, than Germans --just because in my view Italians and French tend to be less political than Germans of postwar era.

    With regard to your question, being irrelevant is not the worst thing. Shakespeare might be irrelevant to me, but I see that his plays are filled with wit and tension (though his messages do not touch me at all -- I might find Euripides and Calderon de La Barca more touching than Shakespeare, though I can't say that the first are more artsy than the second). The worst thing is to change people's tastes and intelligence in order to correct their social/political behavior. This has happened in many communist countries. Some of these countries produce more movies and artworks than Europe and UK, but their movies and artworks do not appeal to anyone abroad. And then you have some small countries like Sweden and Finland, with movie-makers and musicians appealing to the whole world. The question now for Sweden, Finland and the rest of EU is to what extent they are willing to accept political intrusion into aesthetics? Are they going to follow the Soviet, the German or the Italian example? The first being the most harsh, the second middle and the Italian the most free in my view.

    To conclude, we can leave aside all the debate about politics and we can raise more general questions: Is the way to taste beauty based on real properties or is it a human/social convention? If there are real properties in Aesthetics, should we alienate those in order to settle political/social disputes? Are these aesthetical tastes somehow related to my intelligence and the way I appreciate myself, the whole world and humankind?

    These were a few questions that I don't have clear-cut answers. But I do think that they are important for me.
  • Taxing people for using the social media:


    good to know there are books on this thing :)
  • Taxing people for using the social media:


    You can roll your cigarettes and within two minutes you can think what were you doing before rolling the cigarettes.

    With internet and social media it does not work that way. You go there to relax a couple of minutes and you find out you have spent there a couple of hours and have forgotten what were you working on.

    Social media and internet control your mind. You think you have your own control, but most probably you don't.
  • Taxing people for using the social media:


    Thank you for mentioning the economic cost of all these hours spent on cell phones and social media. I guess small employers and gov jobs are the most affected.

    It would be interesting to see any studies which give a picture of the economic cost & economic gains of the social media. We hear mostly about the jobs & opportunities created by the social media and Silicon Valley companies. But I think you are right to emphasize the cost of these activities.
  • Why is monogamy an ideal?
    That undermines your argument that human monogamy is somehow exceptional. We're animals too.T Clark


    I think you didn't read what I was saying.

    We may want to be monogamous because we aim to be exceptional, birds may not have that goal at all.

    When I am loyal to a woman for my whole life I make a choice. I don't know what's the purpose of monogamy in birds or whether it is a free choice.
  • Why is monogamy an ideal?


    I agree with you, but T Clark was complaining why I said that birds do not count. I said birds do not count because in my previous post I mentioned mammals, not all possible animals.

    Let it be clear here also that stating: 1) we turn monogamy into ideal because we are not mammals and 2) we turn monogamy into ideal because we want to show that we can differ from other mammals, are two different things.

    I was arguing for 2, not for 1. I don't know what T Clark understood.

    I also believe that at the core of Abrahamic religions and those moral codes I've heard about (Kantian ethics included) the idea of making humans different from animals was very important. This might be one explanation why Abraham saved Isaac, but not the ram.

    People who in our eyes (depending on how we are taught to see) look or behave like animals are really repulsive to this day.
  • Why is monogamy an ideal?


    Read it again and you will find it.

    Two people may do the same thing for two different reasons. What's wrong with that argument?

    By the way, birds are not mammals. I don't know how they feel about sex... when I see a naked woman I am closer to a dog than to a bird, I guess. And polygamous men and women (especially orgies) to many of us bring in mind dogs in the parks, not seagulls.

    The more you search world literature the more you find animal names used with offensive meaning for human behavior.
  • Why is monogamy an ideal?


    You are wrong to believe that those mammals (only meerkats I know to be monogamous, snakes and birds do not count) have other choices.

    We humans know that we were not always monogamous, we know we have choices as well. Nonetheless we may come to disdain many things which make us look like other animals (dogs, cows, and so on).

    It is not only about sex. There are so many things which make us nauseous just because they show some animalistic qualities in our eyes. We know we are animals, but to a certain degree we refuse to behave as such.

    That's something different from snakes and birds which may not know at all that they have a polygamy option.
  • Why is monogamy an ideal?
    By the way, women shortage (some members are mentioning here) must be a phenomenon of the 20th century related to birth/gender controls (China, communist countries and Middle East) and massive emigration of male workers to Europe and US.

    When the institution of marriage was invented I'm quite sure that there was big shortage of males, not of females.
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