Peterkin

Something like that did happen in the west in the mid 20th century. Due to a number of converging factors, after WWII, there was a strong movement toward secularism, liberalism, ecumenicalism and personal freedom. Churches were losing their congregants in droves; so much so, that a great many places of worship had to be decosecrated, sold and repurposed. Young people were experimenting, not only with sex and drugs, but also with philosophies. The Eastern traditions had terrific charisma for my generation - most of whom, of course, had only the most superficial understanding of those philosophies; they just liked the incense and flowing draperies. Most of the lapsed Christians of that period had never been deeply religious, and nor were their families; it was largely lip-service they were rejecting. We were actually headed toward a tolerant, inclusive society... Then came The Backlash. Again, for many and complex reasons, most of them unconcerned with the soul or God or any of those imaginary things: what was actually at stake was far more practical.

It's not 'momentum'; it's a deliberately engineered and driven international rightward push. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/15/far-right-extremism-global-problem-worldwide-solutions/ , and it's not about change, but the consolidation of power in non-democratic agents. See, there are two problems with democracy: people who understand their own self-interest move toward social services and environmental issues (to improve their living conditions) and the most obvious place to get the wherewithal for those improvements is the enormous caches of wealth accumulated by the uber-rich. The easiest way to stop that trend is to keep yelling "The Economy's on fire and your children will all starve to death!" and "Those Others want your stuff!", so the uber-rich can keep raking it in and give none of it back. To this end, they support the fire-bell ringing politicians - as long as they're useful. It doesn't need to be Trump, a Cruz, DeSantis or Rubio will do (I don't think Pence has the requisite bluster; he looks too much like Biden) to keep the yobs and chavs at one another's throats while the overlords gobble up what's left of the planet. That's a whole other basket of fish. Let's not try unpacking it here.

No kidding! It was a fiction then, as it is now. But it's one of the best stick (they have wronged you; they're out to get you) and carrot (reclaim your birthright to former glory, however illusory) strategy never gets used up: there is an infinite well of grievance in the breast of every man who feels inadequate or insecure. Yea... People don't like that. Put the word 'critical' in race theory or mass or anything at all, those same people feel unjustly accused. That was not an accident or coincidence. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-todays-gop-crackup-is-the-final-unraveling-of-nixons-southern-strategy/

...but not that they're the ones being stopped and searched...

The propaganda goes far deeper, wider and is more insidious than 'their way of life will be some how impacted'. There is a whole, interwoven narrative about job-losses, erosion of social services because of increased demand by outsiders, whites becoming a minority "in our own country", large immigrant families displacing their own children in the better schools, or overburdening the schools, or demanding a change the curriculum to include foreign religious teaching, more agile dark-skinned athletes pushing them out of sport teams or getting preference; marrying and/or impregnating their daughters; crime, especially violent crime, such as gangs, gun and drug traffic; escalation of illegal incomers because 'they' will shelter their compatriots. And that's just the immigrant story. The African-Americans pose a separate but overlapping array of threats. And that's before the propaganda-mill even gets started on the gay/feminist/socialist agenda of "the extreme left", which wants to suppress innovation and enterprise, impose exorbitant taxes, take our guns, pick-up trucks, cattle, motherhood and Liberty, the same way they've already stolen Christmas, the Sanctity of the Flag, patriarchal privilege and Family Values (I'm not sure about apple pie).... The fear and loathing never end.

Like Tom Bombadil? Sorry, impossible to resist, especially as you've done it to me with some iconic piece of cultural flotsam with which I was unfamiliar.

Aha! Except what you actually quoted was my response to that. Soooo - Each voter should just write in their own nominee? Do away with government altogether? Or just the election process? Because that last is what Trump and the extreme right are trying to achieve.

I have no idea what this means on either side of the Atlantic, since my reference was to placing a bet in Canadian currency.

It may be 'interesting', but I'm not deeply concerned with what it is you're escaping from, or how that relates to previous discussion. My problem is simply that you have consistently refused, not only to respond to what I have actually written, or the subject to which I was referring, but the very framework of reality in which it exits. Therefore, communication is impossible.

There is no point in pursuing this. You evidently live in a different dimension.

Or $7.71, depending.

That's what I frickin said! And What Marx said! The oppressed do not have enough to eat, or decent shelter, or clothing or health care or sanitation or education or leisure or anydamnthing. This why they are discontent and occasionally chop off the heads of their oppressors. But you and the various priesthoods keep insisting they should be "content" with their lot on Earth, because there is milk and honey and harp music in heaven... Catch 22: trying to get there before the oppressors are ready to let you off the rack is punishable by eternal hellfire. No, it doesn't! Oppressors are hydra. The heads grow back and shield themselves behind another generation of prelates, preaching abstinence and selflessness through one face, gobbling swan's tongue and cognac with the other.

Could have sworn they were the ones I was talking about. Go be oppressed and happy with my blessing!

Listen. There was a subtle hint in the Russian Revolution that all was not hunky-dory with the plebes. Good luck! But first, try living a year in the conditions of the unskilled working class in 19th century England, or 15th century Italy, or 21st century USA. If you are content, congratulations. If others are not, that is their right. Or should be. None of these are guaranteed to the oppressed; they can be snatched away from one minute to the next, even should they have it already earned it. Jesus said so: Matthew 25:26 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Horse Feathers What motivates you to plead for the oppressor?

Where we live, in Ontario, we not only track through the day, but can tilt the array from fully horizontal in case of high wind to fully vertical to shed snow. Those adaptations become increasingly important as we have more and wilder weather events. There is a growing advantage, too, in distributed, small, stand-alone array/battery/controller sets, since above-ground grids are extremely vulnerable to breakdown (in addition to the loss in transmission, c. 5%) and difficult to repair in bad weather, which means a great many homes are left in the dark, maybe for days, when a component breaks down or there's a big storm. In the UK, some power lines are underground, but over the kind of distances we have in the US and Canada, that's not practical. You're much more secure with your own home system, even if it's not optimally efficient.

I'm with the missiles, rather than the missionaries, on this one.

Yes, so? That's true, and religion is usually one of the mechanisms by which that oppression is perpetuated. However, in the present context, I was explaining the Marx reference, as it pertained to the society he was writing about: the same one Dickens was writing about, the world of Oliver Twist. Not a contented pastoral idyll. Twaddle! They're never "in balance". Some landlords are less oppressive than others and a few don't even force themselves on the parlour-maids, then throw them out on the street and prostitution, like the righteous Christians do, when those sinful women get pregnant. There's philosophy, and theory, and doctrine and canon... and then there is institutional practice. If you don't want to deal with that, fine; if you have a big enough rug to sweep it under, fine. But your pink-lensed POV does not invalidate my yellow-tinted one.

... and doesn't fit on the roof too comfortably...

Can't speak to that. The practical aspect depends on where you live, and that's what the tables are supposed to tell you.

You didn't live in the 'content' society he was writing about, and evidently you're not having to live in any of the religion-dominated societies of today - or at least, you don't have to be at the bottom tier of one. The point is, tenant farmers, servants and slum-dwellers, miners and mill-workers were not content. They were, and millions still are, miserable, oppressed, repressed, poor, guilt-ridden and abused. You don't need to understand any of that, it's okay for you to see the positive side of religion, but when you call institutionalized exploitation, coercion and emotional blackmail "contentment", I take exception to that. This is very much the point you seem to be deliberately missing The sin question wasn't in response to you. I know what original sin is, and what's wrong with the concept, but don't really want to get mired in those philosophical or anthropological questions. As presented in the bible, 'original' sin is an obscene idea. On a personal level, the sense of soul and damage through breaches of integrity, OTH, is a legitimate psychological issue.

Is it a math question or a practical one? In practical terms, tilted is better. Ideally, you should be able to adjust the tilt, for time of day, season and weather conditions. But even if it has to be fixed, there is plenty of advice on how to find the best angle. https://news.energysage.com/solar-panel-performance-orientation-angle/

No, it's what Marx thought. And others, since, in various contexts. The reference is : The article is worth reading.

No, that's not what it means. It means stupefied compliance, because they're unable to think or respond. No culture starts with an idea, any more religion starts with a design. Human culture grows out of chimpanzee culture and then branches out into whatever kinds of human culture best adapts a troop to its changing environment. Along the way, people generate and borrow all kinds of ideas, try out all kinds of organization; keep the ones that work for them, discard the ones that fail; tribes die out through natural calamity or aggression, are subsumed by bigger tribes, intermarry, mingle, form alliances and carry on feuds, converge and divide, explode and implode. What kinds of human each group contains depend on what traits the group values, whom they allow to live, what kinds of person thrives and multiplies and what kind is cast out or subjugated, and what world-view they impart to the young. We know some of where it leads; it's not quite done yet. But that wasn't a "starting condition"; it was a stage in the history of several cultures, each of which brought its own set of attitudes and beliefs from previous tradition. We can each designate arbitrary beginnings and ends to a period we wish to examine or count on, but they're unlikely to be the same lines for any two of us, and they will all be arbitrary. (Even the final one that none of us will be there to draw.) What are "sins"? Why do you want to be "free" from them? How would repentance cure them? It's all quite nebulous and unreal, unless you build a conceptual framework to give those words meaning. Yes. Each religion provides a different framework. So does every philosophy. So does a nation's constitutions or a corporation's "mission statement" (there's a silly name!) a political party's platform or the agenda of a meeting. Each one satisfies a need to communicate the purpose of a shared undertaking. Meaning, it provides you with a framework to lean on. Yes, that's what it's supposed to do. For some people, that's the best support structure, for others, it doesn't work, so they must find a different one. That's what atheists do.

And I forgot to mention the marginal, but growing, right-ass holity faction - the pseudo Christians who hope to transport us back to the clean, bright family values of 12th century Europe. https://www.bchumanist.ca/the_rise_of_the_christian_right_in_canada They're not a political force yet, except in that they push the Catholics and Anglicans toward their ... less tolerant side.

Mine? I'm in Canada. We have agitators, "guest speakers", new extremist political parties forming, the existing conservatives shuffling relentlessly rightward and being ever less guarded in their rhetoric and affiliations, open, unfounded attacks on elected representatives, anti-vaxxers and other lunatic fringes not only making noise, but death threats against legitimate public figures, attempting to stifle the press, intimidating and physically attacking health-care personnel, and self-avowed Trumpists.