lemur

If he was actually the devil, human morality would still be divinely inspired in the sense of being the will of God to discern good from evil and choose good.

The thread title seems ironic to me since "society" refers to organized social relations and "anarchy" refers to disorganization in social relations.

First off, I think you're making this issue of resisting temptation vs. succumbing to it too complex. Just take it on a case-by-case basis. You are tempted to eat only candy and not worry about brushing your teeth. Long term consequences: a hell of dental health. You are tempted to have sex with anyone you're attracted to. Consequence: you lose your health and no one loves you out of jealousy that you'll cheat on them. You are tempted to kill your creditors so you don't have to pay off your debts. Consequence: your employer will kill you to avoid paying your pension. etc. etc. Each sin is tempting for the short-term benefits it affords and creates long-term hell with its consequences. It's that practical. Food waste is usually caused by someone's convenience, so it's another example of short-term temptation causing suffering in the long-term. Because so many people want fresh hot food ready for them on demand, much food gets wasted to keep enough ready for those with the money to spend on it. The result of this food-lifestyle culture is that the wealthier economies create poverty and hunger that gets relegated to other economies. Then, the economic stratification causes conflict and war as some people/parties/governments blame others for global problems and deny responsibility themselves because they have created their own means of buying off their guilt with some ritual charity such as monetary giving, development aid, political lobbying, or just generally shifting blame to some category that doesn't include themselves (the US usually for non-US citizens and the upper-class among US citizens).

Consider if you could compare the same cloud of dust, e.g. a nebula, at different volumes. All the particles are the same distance from each other at any given volume, thus the gravitational attraction for any particle in the direction of any other particle is always the same proportion to its attraction to the other particles surrounding it. So the question is how the volume of the cloud affects developments occurring within it. Do various concentrations form into gravity-wells in the same way they would at other volumes? Would the evolution process occur the same but faster because of the higher density and thus higher gravitational gradations? Would other forces interact differently with gravity because of the tighter proximity of the particles?

Can existing plastics be recycled into more permanent plastic containers whose degradation is so slow that the containers could be sterilized and re-used? If so, I see this as having the double benefit of stopping waste-dumping and providing an impetus to collect current bottles to make those into permanently re-usable ones. I think having a high deposit/refund for the bottles would be sufficient to make sure they get returned to collection stations, no?

I would say you're Beneluxian to the extent that all other Beneluxians would probably unify with you in rejecting that title;) Seriously, though, I try to cut through all the mundane subjective views about what ethnicity means to arrive at a sufficiently general definition to apply to all such phenomena for any human individual. In this sense, I think ethnicity generally refers to any form of cultural identification, whether collectivism/groupism is assumed or not. So, for example, "Wallonian" is an ethnicity to the extent that various cultural practices are identified as "Wallonian" as is "Catholic" or "my personal style of doing laundry." You probably will say this definition is too broad, but why should ethnicity only refer to cultural practices that are engaged in by multiple people? If you would erase an individual's memory and put them in a forest (and if they didn't die), they would develop their own individual cultural practices for living and communicating with themselves, etc. From this level of generality in definition, you can proceed to doing a less biased analysis of what ethnicity is and how it relates to groupism/collectivism, regional territorialism, etc. National territorial discourses are just one facet of constructing one form of ethnicity. A global government could be created tomorrow that eliminates all national institutions and churches, language, and other cultural identities could still function in individuals' processes of ethnic-identity and cultural learning/practice.

I have a vague intuitive sense that nuclear fuel is like a pile of hot coals that doesn't require any air to heat up and also doesn't burn up quickly. Just as spreading out hot coals increases their surface area allowing them to cool faster, I would think the same would work with radioactive fuel. Likewise, just as concentrating hot coals and or pushing them against each other (increasing pressure) causes them to heat up more due to each other's heat, I would expect radioactive fuel to do this too. I have the idea that the graphite is comparable to water in a fire, since it absorbs neutrons without reacting to them the way water absorbs heat without combusting. Do you think this is an inaccurate analogy? Obviously there are an enormous number of other factors that are not comparable sense hot coals are a chemical reaction and nuclear fuel is, well . . . nuclear.

Are you saying that territorial inclusion doesn't constitute a form of ethnic bond in and of itself? Ideally, I would agree with you that territories should be regulated from a perspective of ethnic neutrality. However, I'm not sure how possible that is where language, for example, is informally claimed as belonging more naturally to certain citizens because of their ethno-racial identity. E.g. if a certain territory hosts the use of a certain language, one ethnic group is likely to identify the language as ethnic property and ethnic others will be treated as non-natural speakers of the language; their dialects and expression will be treated as incorrect usage, etc. So, yes, ideally a territory could be regulated in a way that all speakers of the same language respect each other's equal legitimacy in using the common language, but it can be very difficult to get people to overcome sub-conscious assumptions of ethnic naturalism and the privileging of some dialects or ways of speaking over others (e.g. how do you remove status-differentiation between "native" and "non-native" speaker where some people have been speaking the language for a year while others have been speaking it for 20? Ideally, you would think that naturalization would ascribe people the same status as birth-right in terms of citizenship, but nationalism is usually ethnicized to the point the birth appears to be a more natural method of acquiring citizenship than naturalization.

Maybe, but that doesn't really account for why elaborate mythologies of ethnic cultural imperativism circulate that prescribe all people with the same national ethnicity should think and do things in similar ways. That is what I would call "monoculturalism" at the level of ethnic sameness. E.g. Everyone who speaks some language could be free to develop their own individual culture by drawing on various resources instead of conforming to mythologies about "this is how we do this in my country." So I don't think the problem with tolerance is that there are certain cultures that don't fit together. It is that there are cultures of anti-difference that prescribe conformity by narrativizing ethnic identity and culture in complex ways along with informal social sanctions for people who resist conformity. Put simply, this is just conformity culture, but it is couched in the logic of ethnic monocultural imperativism - and that is the source of intolerance; not cultural difference itself.

I think people experience various forms of disenfranchisement and they feel bitterness about it because they have the feeling that what happened to them was due to no fault of their own yet it didn't happen to others and those others expect them not to rain on their parade. Eventually, I think they begin to realize that they are better off for going through whatever it was they went through, and other people are more vulnerable for not having been through it yet. The irony is that once you've come to terms with the thing that caused your malevolence, you have a strong inner-peace that tends to bring out the malevolence in others. It's like their problems get amplified for them because they see that you've come to terms with yours. So it that sense, what goes around can come around.

The contemporary political standoff between resource-conservationists and growth-lovers is so annoying because both seem to ignore the fact that science has been and can continue to be used to create more efficient technologies that result in simpler lifestyles with less resource used per capita which facilitates expansion of prosperity and thereby population growth. The problem is that science has been subjugated to the whims of a culture that derives pleasure from using as much energy as possible to save human bodies small amounts of effort and discomfort. Buddhism and other techniques for controlling consciousness are as productive as any material science, only because they involve subjectivity, materialists tend to shy away from them. I think the key to further modernization involves not only technological miniaturization and simplification (although complexification will also occur) but also the means to control consciousness in a way that equips people cognitively-emotionally for the types of radical lifestyle changes that science will continue to make possible. It's disturbing to see so many dystopic scifi representations of potential technologies that would do so much to improve resource-utilization and well-being for so many people. People should realize that the global population is expanding in slums and it is not going to be possible for the poor masses to all live like wealthy westerners. So some technological and medical developments need to focus on maximum livability improvements for masses of people with as little material and energy inefficiency as possible. There might not be money in helping the global poor, but it will ultimately be the salvation of the global middle-class as well since their lifestyle is little more than counting down to extinction (or at least gradual exclusion from an increasingly elite minority).

People are already and always have been "citizens of the world." Who says groupism under various identities, ethnic and otherwise, isn't just another part of global citizenship? I think it's a question of consciousness with regard to self and others. Groupism/ethnicism is not so much about belonging as it is about avoiding social exclusion/isolation. No one wants to be isolated, so they learn to avoid association with those that are. Thus I wonder if what you are meaning to say is that humans are hate/fear animals and everyone needs some "other category" to fear, hate, and dissociate from. I consider that view sad, but it is not entirely unfounded since in practice many many humans behave in this way. "Subcultures" and "Culture," when used as container concepts obscure the basic fact that there is global cultural diversity that extends to the most local level and to the individual level. Each individual has a unique collection of cultural experiences and abilities. The question is why people can't just focus on living and practicing their individual culture as they've acquired it instead of focussing on identifying themselves culturally in terms of relative similarities and differences with others. It's as if people think the point of acquiring culture is not to use it but to showcase it and form social relationships based on cultural identity. This is like saying, "I have a hammer and you have a hammer but instead of using them to build stuff, let's just hang out and have a hammer-guy club and be leisurely." To me, the point of culture is to use it.

I know. It is a bad thing that people polarize into pro-rationality/anti-emotional vs. pro-emotional/anti-rationality. Emotions and rationality are things all people have and should recognize the value of. I consider emotionalism very dangerous, though, because people naturally cater to each other's emotional needs, so it is subtly coercive to elevate emotions to the level of worship. I suppose people could say something similar about rationality, though, if they had less control over it. And I agree that people should alienate themselves so much from science, which they often do because of emotional dissociation with scientists, because they see them as socially inept "nerds." People need to realize that science isn't about "being a scientist," but about understanding more about things and being more empowered economically/technically. Maybe not, but I think people do tend to ignore what's impressive about things like trees and animals in nature because they have been programmed to fetishize artificial objects instead. I could just as easily say that I feel no need to have a conversation with an ipod or a new pair of shoes, "holding them by the laces and confessing my feelings while looking into their intricate designs and lovely colors" but people do that, don't they? Trees are impressive living wooden structures that merit more appreciation than they usually get. Go look at a pile of wood after a tree is cut and compare the volume of the pile with the volume of the uncut tree. Then think about how much labor and engineering it would take to build a structure of similar volume from the remnants of the cut tree. Don't forget to minimize the area of the base to maximize the amount of open-air space under the canopy. It's amazing that trees do all that on their own.

The lie lies in the assumption that a population count can be lied about or not. Population counts are estimates based on methodologies with lots of parameters to decide who to count and who not to. Do you realize how many people live sometimes in Europe and sometimes elsewhere? Are these people permanent European residents who should be counted as part of the population while living elsewhere or should they only be counted if they're in Europe during the census, etc.? What about people ascribed visitor-status? Should tourists be counted? Should denizens? What about people who have been living for generations in Europe but are still viewed and treated as foreigners because of their ethnic identity/ies? Finally, what if you count all the people globally who contribute to European life economically? I.e. when labor is "out-sourced" "offshore" is it not similar to incorporating more people into the economy, albeit at a distance? Should this be treated as an expansion of the European working class or excluded on the basis of geographical location?

Well, many people are working relentlessly to achieve their political will regarding these matters. I think the rational approach is to identify a sustainable long-term approach and formulate policy and action initiatives that usher the future in smoothly. Plus, it is a topic that tends to cause bickering and ruin forums. You'd think scientific neutrality would help, and it does to some extent, but there are always those who are only scientific in their technical knowledge while their personal/political attitude is to fight insistently for their ethnic dominance, territorial control, etc. It occurred to me one day that there's such a gap between the attitude people have toward school-learned languages and languages whose learning is viewed as more 'organic.' While there are certain nuances that come with each method, it is an egoistic game to focus on the distinction instead of just using language to communicate. The purpose of language is to use it in practice, so that leads to the issue of ensuring that speakers of a given language, regardless of how they learned that language get the opportunity to use it in practice on a daily basis. Since migration is so strictly controlled and there are so many economic factors involves, etc., it makes sense for governments globally to come up with policies that promote multiple language venues in cities, but somehow people find it more rational to tolerate popular ethnocentrism that insists on repressing minority languages as much as possible. Like I said, I think language should be disconnected from both ethnicity and statism by having multiple non-ethnic language venues in cities globally. However, the issue still remains whether people shouldn't have access to refuge in an "ethnic homeland." This issue is always cited with regard to Israel's existence in the wake of the European 20th century holocaust. It makes sense if you've ever experienced what it's like to be treated constantly as an anomaly on the basis of ideologies of regional (non)belonging. Obviously the problem is when you provide a state for people to seek refuge as the dominant ethnicity, it has the side-effect of making minority ethnicities "subaltern." So the question is really how to prevent discrimination for everyone anywhere, while still allowing cultural freedom. Because these are such tough issues, I think people keep defaulting to whatever they can formulate as a status-quo, but the problem with that is that it keeps leading to the same problems over and over.

But momentum through spacetime curvature produces acceleration, no? they don't follow the same path as light because they curve more than light does. Light only orbits where escape velocity is C. That seems as impossible to me as the possibility that light contains infinite energy and infinite speed (instantaneity). I agree except in terms of negative gravitation. What's so implausible about repellant gravity, especially considering how electrons behave around the nucleus? And how exactly is that "precise location" determined then? I had that with you since a few posts back:) We respond where we deem our response relevant enough to share, no?

it blows my mind before I have a chance to laugh.

the rules are a challenge like rhyming but with meter form transcends content needless to say, I find the poetic phrasing of discussion distracting. I will bracket my distaste to appreciate your poetry though, if you like. If you want critique, I don't understand how the protons are "the face of time" though the electrons being the pendulum makes more sense to me.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that lions ARE scientists, since they base decisions on empirical logic instead of thinking something like, "if I lie in the shade and take a nap at noon instead of staying active in the sun, people will think I'm lazy so I better get to work and look busy, wear long pants and a tie, etc. because I might lose my job." Lions deal with direct reality instead of social-behavioral rewards, which is more scientific and value-neutral, imo. That's because you reject any science that could a priori. Depending on what you mean by it, it might be. How is wasting air to "sit there relaxing" when you could be "laying down instead?" They both require about the same level of consumption, don't they? It can be emotionally nurturing, but it can also become a dependency that makes you more susceptible to social control (for bad purposes). This is not a direct relationship. They could or not, but that's not the problem with illusions. It is that they mystify existence and disempower people by widening the gap between them and their direct access to a functioning reality. I think you're confusing science with the egoism of modernity. Science develops knowledge and technologies. Politicians, historians, etc. are the ones who claim the progress of science for the egoism of "the west vs. the rest" etc. There could be a politician or writer romanticizing science because it makes them wealthy and thus forgetting that they don't have the first clue how anything works. All they know is that it does because other people make it happen. Their show of appreciation is an ego-massage to divert from their own scientific ignorance.

Is that a haiku? way too many syllables still poetry though

To take the side of the OP, I think his point is that science can be very complex and may obfuscate the value of incredibly simple technologies and techniques in some cases. I have found, for example, that everything I know about energy, power, heat, etc. make me appreciate the simplicity of being able to sit in the sun on a cold morning to warm up as an incredibly efficient solar-heating technology that requires no materials or effort except moving my body into the sun (and maybe a dark-colored jacket). I consider this applied science, but maybe the OP would just consider it common sense that is obfuscated by scientific complexity. I guess only the OP can really say for himself, though.

But I think you should look at what "tainted" means in this context. I think it is like having developed a "taste for blood." I think this is just semantics. However, I think it becomes more than that when you break it down to the level of comparative levels of power, presence, knowledge, authority, etc. When using appeals to these things to appeal the power/authority of another living person, the claim to authority that supercedes all others is called "God." For example, if the king tells you he has the right to rule you because it was given him by God, you would have to appeal to the authority of God to disagree with him. You could say that you prayed earnestly and God revealed to you that you shouldn't submit to his rule as king. What basis would the king then have to override your authority except his own interpretation of divine revelation - or he could accuse you of having misinterpreted your interpretation of God's revelation to you and thus bring your faith into doubt. I wish you'd read my previous post to see that sin has a specific logic of being destructive. You make it like these are arbitrary rules with arbitrary punishments. Drinking is destructive in the specific ways that it harms people, just as killing is. The damnation of drinking is a direct consequence of drinking, as is the death caused by killing. Both seem to have little consequence in the short term, but in the longer term (or bigger picture), they have terrible consequences. Soul-strength isn't a status to be proud of or ashamed. It is a means of resisting temptation. Doesn't any sin erode your will to resist other sins? Isn't it easier to rape or kill when drunk? Isn't rape more common in the aftermath of killing, e.g. during war? Doesn't stealing cause people to lose respect for others and themselves and thus more likely to relativize other sins? Likewise, doesn't each successful act of resistance make one feel spiritually stronger? When you give up drinking or smoking or sweets, doesn't it make you feel like you overcame a barrier and thus stronger and more capable of overcoming subsequent adversity?

I got that about the tides, but this is a clearer explanation. As for the different sources of gravity balancing to net zero, this is what I was thinking about when I started saying all that stuff about inertia/momentum and gravity being the same. Just think about a point of net zero gravity? If you have an object at that point, that object is not being pulled in any direction by gravity, correct? So is it completely still? Probably not. If not, how is its motion/momentum different from gravitational force? I.e. think of Einstein's example of the acceleration of an elevator contributing to the net gravity inside the elevator. That elevator's momentum is thus, in effect, a contributor to net gravity no different than the planetary gravity it intersects with. Still, there is an intuitive difference to me between momentum/acceleration force and gravitation generated by mass. But if the curvature is the "net product" of all intersecting forces, gravitational as well as motion-acceleration, can you not "dissect" the situation for constituent gravities derived from multiple sources? This seems a bit like using a prism to separate out different colors of light from sunlight. I thought "geodesic" just referred to any path taken by an object or particle purely due to its own inertia. Here's a quote from wikipedia: Ok, I get it. You're basically describing the shape of a spacetime 'dent' in geometric terms I can't completely interpret because of my limited math skills. 1/r^2 is basically the weakening of a gravitational field or photon emission as you move away from the source, right? 1/r^3 would be the nuclear force, right? (at first I thought it was a magnet but you said that is 1/r). But you're just talking about a singularity where force can approach infinity as the radius becomes infinitely small. Could the negative mass-energy density refer to repulsion instead of attraction? Could that be responsible for the erratic tunneling behaviors, etc. of electrons? Sorry if I'm making no sense. I'm barely able to make sense of what you're saying and why. Right, but what is "mass" as a cause for field-force? I mean, the atom contains the protons, which supposedly have mass but do they have volume? Is it possible to measure the volume/size of the nucleus of an atom? What's more, since the protons can basically not exist as mass without the electrons, do you call the volume of the atom as a whole a "uniform mass" that causes gravity? If so, why do you define the gravitational field in relation to the electrostatic field? Aren't they both just fields of force that emerge from the constituent particles? The negative charge of the electrons of a stable atom/molecule extends slightly beyond the positive charge of the nucleus, right? Why would that electrostatic field define its boundary as a particle more so than its gravitational field, however far or close that extends in isolation from other atoms/molecules? Right, but it's an arbitrary boundary chosen for subjective reasons, like focussing a camera lens. Reality doesn't depend on how it is observed. Our knowledge/perception of reality depends on how we perceive and know it. This discussion, to me, is about the ontology of boundaries. What constitutes a boundary and why? Is it ultimately adequate, however pragmatically useful, to define the boundaries of objects in terms of apparent surfaces visible due to light reaching a certain level of reflection or refraction/diffraction? When an object is immersed in another in a different phase, it is easy to claim that the surface of the object is its boundary, even though that may not be the case at the atomic level, right? At that level, it's the energetic motion of the particles that define them in terms of how close they can get to each other before being deflected, right? Two repellant magnets can get closer to each other before deflecting if they are moving more forcefully toward each other than if they have very little force. But yet it's the distance of deflection that defines the boundary of the repellant fields, no?

lol That is an astute observation, but don't assume that it's a necessary or causal link. It probably wouldn't help you to hear a theological conspiracy theory that neo-pagans are trying to control eco-consciousness to drive away good Christians, either, would it? Generally, I see eco-consciousness as a further step in modernization since it ultimately increases industrial efficiency to utilize natural processes as efficiently as possible. Technically, mining loads of fossil fuel, cutting down lots of trees, and building up cities as much as possible is harnessing natural processes, such as those that created the fuels and the natural traits of the materials used to build with, etc. However, whereas log cabins use solid wood walls, saw mills cut the wood into planks that can make more wall-area per log, which is more efficient use of wood. Computers are more efficient for managing documents with less paper, and make less travel necessary along with telephones. I think as energy conservation continues to become more important to more people, the value of tree-shade for cooling is going to become less negligible because air-conditioning is going to grow increasingly costly. When you are acclimated to living without air-conditioning, the shade of a tree feels a LOT cooler than being in direct sunlight. This doesn't mean you should hug trees, but you would probably want to if it was your best means of getting out of the heat. Plus unlike an air-conditioner, a tree doesn't require any metallurgy, replacement parts, shipping, repairs, etc. Plus, maintaining it provides you with wood that can be burnt for heat in the winter. Trees are high efficiency climate control systems that mostly self-regulate.

I'm disappointed with the speculative spelling of "y'all" (contraction for "you all") in this thread.