Monkeysphere

[pieces o nine]

... SNIP ...
The challenge, I think, is how to handle the [need] addressed by activities that so easily turn into Religion or Orthodox State: marking life milestones; encouraging and honoring reflection and introspection (ok - not that one so much in Western religion!); and perceiving a [value] to life beyond cold, heartless bean counting.

I agree with your conclusions in your earlier bits, no need to repeat.  I'd like to comment on your last paragraph a bit.

According to the materialists I've read, the universe is exactly what you said, which I've put in red for emphasis above.

The Universe has no sentience (as far as we can perceive or measure), and indeed doesn't care if we lowly humans even exist, let alone survive.   Or so it appears, even upon close (and far) inspection.
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I'm glad you responded, Bob, as I didn't mean that the Cosmos / Mulitverse / Whatever is too cold for my tastes -- I'm quite happy with it being that way!

I meant cold, heartless *human* bean counters dissociatively calculating: 'collateral damage' in wars and 'police actions'; acceptable loss of [human, let alone any other!] life due to air/water/food poisoning so that some corporate executives are exempt from any responsibility as long as they make a profit; and carefully resisting any awareness of 'outsiders' from a given, privileged monkeysphere.

Naturally, religion doesn't curb any of these impulses, but it often pretends  to. I find it disheartening to hear religious people who earnestly claim that they would just run amok, man, if they didn't have True Religion holding them in check. Sometimes I think we should believe them, and try to shape their religions *for* them, in order to help them control themselves.  Bleah - that would be an even a worse kettle of fish[es and loaves]!

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

As some obscure American writer of the last century put it

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
   
  H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Indeed-- that does put it even better perspective.  All religion's gods are pretty anthropomorphic, with humans playing a center-stage role.   Lovecraft recognized that, I suspect, and wrote about things that were so indifferent to humans, that were humans to manage to comprehend even a little bit, they'd go insane.

What would an ant's brain do, if forcibly exposed to the complexities of how a modern computer functions?   Likely, you'd damage the ant's mind beyond repair.

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But here, we [at toadfish] still manage to come up with new and interesting things to talk about.

I've been mulling this over again. I wonder if it is because we have such splendid topic drift? Or partly that. Discussions can evolve without being hemmed in by sticking to one central core topic.


^ what Swato quoted.

Yes.  Topic drift seems to be encouraged here, rather than Moderated (as in elsewhere).    I think that's a good thing, myself.

About the only rule I chafe under, is the single-post one, requiring one to re-edit their last post, to fit in replies to subsequent postings.    But I manage to suffer through it anyhow...

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I'm glad you responded, Bob, as I didn't mean that the Cosmos / Mulitverse / Whatever is too cold for my tastes -- I'm quite happy with it being that way!

I meant cold, heartless *human* bean counters dissociatively calculating: 'collateral damage' in wars and 'police actions'; acceptable loss of [human, let alone any other!] life due to air/water/food poisoning so that some corporate executives are exempt from any responsibility as long as they make a profit; and carefully resisting any awareness of 'outsiders' from a given, privileged monkeysphere.

Naturally, religion doesn't curb any of these impulses, but it often pretends  to. I find it disheartening to hear religious people who earnestly claim that they would just run amok, man, if they didn't have True Religion holding them in check. Sometimes I think we should believe them, and try to shape their religions *for* them, in order to help them control themselves.  Bleah - that would be an even a worse kettle of fish[es and loaves]!

Aaah, that does fit well-- and you are correct, Capitalism in it's "pure" (unfettered) state does create such heartlessness in it's advocates.   

One of my favorite examples of such heartlessness, came in a talk about risk factors:  the speaker mentioned a series of risks that a potential product (to be sold) would create.  I.e., a list of annual deaths from simple use and distribution of said product, and so forth.

One of the audience said that was too high, and the product should be curtailed or restricted.

The speaker went on to state that the actual risk was 10 times as high as what was stated, and that the product was already on the market-- and literally plumbed into most homes:  natural gas.

The problem with natural gas, is that it's distribution grew too quickly, and under very lax rules, before anyone really realized it's potential for disaster.  And now, we are pretty much stuck with it-- we do the best we can to mitigate it's potential for disaster, but not as much as we could.

However, if we as a society suddenly decided to stop producing & distributing it?   Millions of the marginal-living households would suddenly be without cooking and heat, and without the means to go to an alternative.

Part of the blame is profit-- for certain.  But part of the blame is also a problem of too many folk's decisions have to be changed, over a huge swath of our society--including many different government bureaus, and many different areas of our culture, some for-profit, some not.

So we continue to live with a product that destroys lives (and property) by the thousands annually.   And we make slow, but steady progress at mitigating it's worst effects:  a modern natural gas furnace is at least 100 times safer than one even made 20 years ago, do to some fundamental changes in it's operation.

Can we force people to replace old, but functional furnaces?  Not really-- those that can, do so.   But many folk are strictly dependent on what they have already, and cannot afford to fix the issue.

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One single example among millions of similar examples, I suspect.

Cold, heartless bean-counters?  Yes-- these exist aplenty, unfortunately.  And having a culture that is greed-centric (capitalism) keeps creating these people in droves.

Do I have an example of an alternative (to greed-based) system that would actually work?  No.   

But I do thing we needn't go crazy either:  limited capitalism (i.e. one with strict regulations in place to limit the effects of the heartless bean-counters) seems to be a good compromise over an unlimited one.

What makes me sad, though? 

Is the deeply religious idiots who don't know the basic premises of their own faith!    I'm speaking of the strongly religious right-wing in America:   who speak the word "capitalism" with the same reverence they reserve for the names of their holy figures.

As if they do not understand that their hero-god, Jesus, was rather the opposite of a capitalist! 

*sigh*

[Bruder Cuzzen]

I remember this article . Qwerty posted this over there some time ago . From a columnist of Cracked Magazine online I think .