Comments

  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That’s not my impression. I think they state the seriousness of the situation at an appropriate level.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Mostly MSNBC. I find them to be fair in their analysis of Trump.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Okay. I can only infer what’s in his heart from what comes out of his mouth and from his policies. If we don’t infer the same thing based on the evidence, then I don’t find this communication productive. I sincerely hope there is no violence.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    My guess was that he was discharged because he didn’t get violent. He was most likely cooperative.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That’s what I call the “news” you get on social media.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Of course you would. I didn’t think you would acknowledge it. We don’t agree on facts. You have “alternative facts” aka fictions.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The KKK and Nazis are terrorist organizations.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Okay. It seems that you don’t trust CNN. I don’t trust social media that isn’t constrained by FCC regulations. How do we communicate?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Yeah, maybe you’re right. The Nazi youth value PlayStation and Xbox more than they want to get their asses kicked.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)


    I actually have a fear of an upcoming race war if Trump falls, instigated by the Neo-Nazis and other fervent Trump supporters. I am sincere about this, and I think Trump would probably welcome it.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That is very cynical and unChristian. I am not holding my breath, and I don’t think Trump’s chances are good considering the 2018 outcome, but to insinuate that I don’t wish for him to be a better person is to completely miss the point of Christianity.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I think you should stop getting your news from social media. It makes it impossible to communicate when you believe all of the subversive disinformation.
  • Is intellectual validation a necessary motivator to you?
    That is why I believe in a well-balanced portfolio of acquiring very vocational knowledge that is immediately useful along with high-risk knowledge-acquisition projects that will probably never pay off.alcontali

    Agreed. I started my education with high-risk knowledge-acquisition projects (philosophy), but I have spent the last months to years teaching myself trading, specifically on the Foreign Exchange but the skills also transfer to other asset classes including crypto-currencies. It’s not get rich quick stuff but more like calculated risk investing for the long term. I plan on passing this knowledge down to my more gifted of my two sons, and I am actively managing my older boy’s IRA.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I wish somehow that Trump could realize that we are all God’s children and that God loves him. I know I will catch heat for this from the atheists, but you gotta admit that things would go much more civilly, peacefully, and harmoniously if he believed this equally about himself and his so-called enemies, even if only in a figurative sense.
  • Moral Debt
    These are just my opinions. As far as the heat of passion, in a court of law this gets a lesser sentence because of a lesser degree of culpability as seen by most. They should still be prosecuted, but I think the saving of the millions of lives should be considered in the sentencing (in a just world). Just my view, and I’m no authority.
  • Moral Debt
    Well, I don’t conflate the law and morality, I think of the two as distinct from each other, so youre really asking a different question from my point of view.DingoJones

    Some laws coincide with morality. Murder is one.
  • Moral Debt
    Would you feel like you would be entitled to a murder for saving millions of lives?
  • Moral Debt
    That said, there really are people who are above the law. It shouldn’t be that way, but I’m not in charge.
  • Moral Debt
    Let me just ask you this: If someone lived a moral and ethical life for 70 years, then murdered someone in cold blood for joy or revenge or to send a message or whatever corrupt reason, should they not be prosecuted? Do you really want to live in a society where someone is seen as above the law? I don’t.
  • Moral Debt
    To the lives saved, I’m sure they don’t really care if it was in the pursuit of girls. To the God of The Old Testament, I think what was in the guy’s heart matters. To me, it doesn’t really matter.
  • Moral Debt
    If the murder were in the heat of passion, then I would argue that saving 100 million lives somewhat forgives that. If saving 100 million lives is an excuse to kill someone, then that’s not okay.
  • Moral Debt
    To get girls? Well, that’s basically the morality of nearly every teenage boy. I wouldn’t fault him, but I wouldn’t praise him.
  • Moral Debt
    I don’t know. I suppose if he saved 100 million lives by accident, then I wouldn’t call that worthy of praise. I would call that lucky.
  • Zanny Worlds
    No way offended. Sometimes the mind can say "you can do this" but the will really cannot. Sometimes the will says "I can't do this" but the reason knows it can. To each his own compassGregory

    Very well. I will chalk that up to your diagnosis, and I won’t take your judgment personally because I know you have an inferiority complex about my so-called accomplishments, even though it would seem rather ugly to try to sound superior. I know you want recognition for your heroics. I salute you.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    Some men think they worship Allah when they really worship themselves.
  • Zanny Worlds
    To each his own. Not sure if I offended you, but I won’t judge you because I know how our minds can play tricks on us.
  • What should religion do for us today?
    You see, their views are totally contrary to mine. As a man, I do not just pay for myself. I also pay for wife, children, subsidies and allowances to extended family, and charity to neighbours in the wider community. I cannot imagine seeking to ask for freebies from other men. The idea alone is horrifying to me. Other men don't owe me anything. I simply do not want to live in a country with that kind of freebie mentality.alcontali

    Well, consider yourself blessed that you weren’t a failed abortion attempt with parents that cycled between abuse and neglect, and that you were taught and learned all the right things before you were thrown out into the world. Some people need freebies because they didn’t have the foundation you had and weren’t ready or prepared to face the world. Also, consider yourself blessed for your good genes. Not everyone is as awesome and holy as you.
  • Zanny Worlds
    Yeah, I don’t know. I probably spend way too much time focusing on a certain interest for hours a day while neglecting other things. I have never been good at balance.
  • Moral Debt
    I think we can all forgive the occasional kick in the nuts for the saving of 100 million people. That’s my take.

    Now if the person saved the planet from extinction, but she was also a serial killer? Tricky.

    I think one has to make a concerted effort to reform oneself. I don’t think you just earn points and demerits like spending on a debit card that gets regular deposits. That seems just wrong.
  • Zanny Worlds
    I don't know how to compare that kind of work to like my lawyer cousin, for example.Gregory

    I dropped out of law school second semester. I had a nervous breakdown, and I haven’t really fully recovered. I think some lawyers are ethical, moral, and just; and others are truly reprehensible creatures. I don’t think it’s so much what kind of job you have or don’t have, but rather how you behave that matters. This is something I just recently discovered.
  • Zanny Worlds
    A bad philosophy, though? Better to play video games.
  • Zanny Worlds
    I also wonder if doing philosophy is really a more brainy activity than say being really good at video gamesGregory

    A good philosophy is better for your soul (whether proverbial or literal) than video games.
  • Zanny Worlds
    I put away and coordinate what to order from our trucking team at a local McDonalds.Gregory

    I don’t know what you mean by this.
  • Zanny Worlds
    Welcome, brother. Me too, although I’m not functional enough most days to work. My parents have said that some days you wouldn’t know that I’m ill, but on other days you’d better tread carefully. I wish I had the drive to work.
  • Moral Debt
    I think a terrible person can be reformed and even redeemed. I don’t think this is the case for everyone, though. As examples, Ghengis Khan and Adolf Hitler. They could never “erase” the harm they did. It is up to others to make a better world in spite of their evil.

    Mike Tyson was convicted of rape. A horrible crime. I believe he can be reformed and redeemed. I don’t know enough about his life to say whether or not he has been, though.
  • Zanny Worlds
    Though with my so-called illness I do sometimes appear to at times take certain things literally. The point is that certain religious tenets can be lived in an either-or way as long as your heart is in the right place. For example, take Christ. One can believe that Christ was literally God come to Earth to share in the humanity that He loves, or one can take it as a beautiful story of how a proverbial God humbled himself to experience life as a human to show us the right way to live, believing it to be merely a nice story. If you live by the Golden Rule and Christ’s law to ask for forgiveness of those you’ve wronged and to forgive your enemies even more readily (lofty morals I at least think), then it doesn’t matter if you believe the story as literal truth or allegorical.
  • Zanny Worlds
    I wouldn’t lump all religious folk together as all being “superstitious”. What you say makes sense to me and fits in perfectly well with everything I’ve studied about the world’s religions.
  • Life Isn't Meaningless
    I agree and would go a step further than to say that existence is not only significant but that life doesn’t make any sense in the sense of how is it even possible(?) To me, life is miraculous.
  • Is intellectual validation a necessary motivator to you?
    I think you’re mostly correct about the vast majority of intellectuals. After taking my first philosophy course my senior year of high school at the local college, I had a romantic dream of getting my philosophy degree in Chicago and after graduation living a life of asceticism, working as a dishwasher by day and retiring to my studio apartment filled with books that I would spend the rest of my life studying to gain a godlike knowledge. I never attained such lofty ideals, and I would argue that this would actually have been MORE selfish than seeking intellectual validation. It may be somewhat selfish to seek validation, but the exchange of ideas is actually necessary to the functioning of a healthy community.

    It turned out that I do want validation, but I also want to learn from others. The moral thing to do (which I must admit isn’t always easy) is to share your ideas humbly and take criticism constructively. This is the ideal that I and most people I have encountered fail so miserably at on a daily basis.