Getting older

govols comments on Jul 30, 2020:

Old age and experience reduces the odds that you'll "throw up in your mouth a little," but it comes with a rather unfortunate side effect... Great.... The things to which we aspire...

aOc ...

govols comments on Jul 30, 2020:

I feel dirty, but.... I now finally viscerally understand cognitive dissonance. It's the psychological reaction one has to the experience trying to think "Oh, HELL no!" while simultaneously laughing your ass off.

Why Is Knowing Your Roots So Important?

govols comments on Jul 30, 2020:

Once upon a time there were these Greek guys who managed, through reason alone, a conclusion that the gods are but stories, but that God is real and exists outside of anything we might ever comprehend within material reality, including any conception of time or space. There was either a first cause, or it's turtles all the way down. I like turtles well enough, but a first cause just feels more realistic to me. If first cause true, if present reality true, ongoing cause is also true. If.

Just reposting the America's First-line Doctors' translated video for Spanish, in case somebody ...

govols comments on Jul 30, 2020:

How confident are you with the transcript? If I'm to help spread it locally, I'll need a linkable version....

Black Lives Matter (blacklivesmatter.

govols comments on Jul 30, 2020:

I'll try to be as generous as possible with the Theory behind this thinking... The basic idea is that because children are formed by the environments in which they're reared, and because those environments are so often NOT the nuclear family structure, many children are put into a disadvantaged identity by a socio-economic structure that relies on the nuclear family to reproduce/regenerate the required number of worker/consumer units on which Western culture relies if it's to perpetuate itself. By disrupting the family unit REQUIRED BY Western culture, we can disrupt the perpetuation of Western culture itself. If a "village" mentality is developed into communities, the children reared in the "village" environment can be more equitably formed. Through a more equitable system of child formation, a more equitable expectation is developed into both the population and the culture itself, thus disrupting the various in-built structures of oppression that actually provide the very definition of Western privilege. Damn. I know far more about this shit than can possibly be healthy.

“The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence ...

govols comments on Jul 29, 2020:

Dammit. I'm beginning to think the purpose of having a canon is that is reduces the freaking readings...

Can morality be objective.

govols comments on Jul 29, 2020:

Okay, about the notion of Christian philosophy...I've actually been thinking a lot about that very thing lately. What I've been pondering is whether, if one took fully from all nearly contemporaneous sources, and recreated a "historical" account of Jesus' deeds, compiled all of his reportedly original teachings, could it all be systematized into a philosophical presentation of the nature of the human condition as within a cultural framework. It isn't a project I've really seen attempted.

Can morality be objective.

govols comments on Jul 29, 2020:

It occurs to me that morality could maybe be objective among a people who agree on the objective.

2007280600 THE INTELLECTUAL BANKRUPTCY OF POSTMODERNISM?

govols comments on Jul 28, 2020:

She was actually sort of calling out "For the New Intellectual" to please manifest in the modern age, for the Men of Reason from day gone by are all gone. The idea is that the "intellectual class" is the army by which Philosophy lead society, but somewhere around Kant, the "intellectual class" gave up on reason. It was somewhere around Kant, intensified by Hegel and the notion that our phenomenal, "experiencial," subjective perceptions of the world makes it impossible to know things about the world as it ACTUALLY exists... She was trying to reassert the idea that objective truths about reality can be reasoned out and made knowable through a return to rational rather than emotive or motivated philosophy. I think that's pretty close.............

You have to read to the end! No cheating.

govols comments on Jul 27, 2020:

Touching.

The whole world has gone crazy and we are trapped in the asylum.

govols comments on Jul 27, 2020:

They have a manifesto...we never used to have those when we were getting high.... https://museumofnonvisibleart.com/manifesto/

The whole world has gone crazy and we are trapped in the asylum.

govols comments on Jul 27, 2020:

We used to do that as youths, between coughs and snorts... Dude! What if there was a pasture full of two-legged cows, and one day they realized that they could kick the cowboys' asses and take over the world...and the we'd each take a moment to visualize it...and we'd all be like, "Wow..." Except that one guy with his head on upside down; he was always like, "Mom...."

added an "evidence archive'" forum on the site, it's on the main menu.

govols comments on Jul 24, 2020:

Another thing to do is run links through an internet archive so any pay wall stuff is made more available, and s deletions and rewrites do undo the originals.

added an "evidence archive'" forum on the site, it's on the main menu.

govols comments on Jul 24, 2020:

Good idea.

Fox: Federal officers blinded by rioters using lasers. [foxnews.com]

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

The laser thing pretty much has to be intent to do great bodily harm. Or maybe its a recruitment ploy? The former antagonists might come to identify as differently-visually-abled, and turn away from their oppressive ways?????

What has been the long-term impact of the MeToo movement?

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

Long term impact? A hell of a lot of people no longer believe any accusation unless it comes from somebody we know very personally, and trust to be honest and decent?

About sums it up...

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

Next time I find myself with a blade between my ribs, I'll be largely content if nobody comes along to twist it. Brutal....

What do you profess in public? Where are you, really?

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

What do I profess in public? Doubt.

Have you ever felt oppressed by the towering nature of skyscrapers and thought "wow, these buildings...

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

Yeah, one of the crazier texts I've ever come across... there's always next minute.

I smell a false dichotomy in the making.

govols comments on Jul 23, 2020:

cis-fragility... wow. As much as I know about this stuff, it never ceases to amaze me how much it never ceases to amaze me.

If a baby is born black but is adopted by a white family, does he become white?

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

I can't answer your question, exactly, but I can play with it... If a baby is born of a woman into a social position that leaves her willing to give her child up for adoption, and the child is adopted into an actual functional family, the child will probably wind up integrated into culture pretty well.

OK Professors - We have (more than) 50 laboratories of democracy running the current COVID response ...

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

Not only do we lack a control group, we lack honest data collection. The shit could have provided a lot of fodder for study as it relates to the modern potential for the spread of disease, but.... Politics.

Just ask yourself

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

Ouch...

HONESTY SERVICE COMMUNITY WHAT WESTERN EUROPEANS NEED

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

Honesty, service, community: what western europeans need Did I get that right?

THE END OF THE SUBURBS If you live in a suburban community, and like the environment, make sure ...

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

The problem here is dependency. The "federal aid" is the carrot AND the stick.

Someone challenged my conservative-ness because I'm an Intimacy Specialist.

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

What in the heck is an intimacy specialist?

Just watched this and it explains a lot of what I've been saying.

govols comments on Jul 22, 2020:

That's worth the few minutes....

One of the things I dislike about IDW community - the set up where literally every new post shows ...

govols comments on Jul 21, 2020:

This place has several options for how to view it. I like that an option exists to see all new posts, and to see all new comments to posts, and to see only posts to your own groups. I wish it was possible to see only stuff that's interesting to me, but then I'd miss so much. There are at least a couple of things I wouldn't much miss.....

A new generation challenges the heartland [washingtonpost.com]

govols comments on Jul 21, 2020:

pay wall

Pastor Dana Coverstone shares his prophetic dreams from 6.

govols comments on Jul 21, 2020:

Well, I saved the contact info... I'll either deliver a thanks as possible, or check for a I was wrong video...Time will tell.

Do you think this diagram explains well?

govols comments on Jul 21, 2020:

Honestly, I'm really not well equipped for a formal debate...and I suspect that's true of the vast majority of us. High level debate requires all involved to be actually trained. Most of us can be easily triggered into the sort of emotional condition that disrupts our reasonable levels of thinking. We miss the opportunities that our interlocutors present us to negate their rhetoric because we fall victim to the very goal of rhetoric: emotionalizing the conversation for the purpose of directing it toward a preferred conclusion rather than an honest examination of the ideas under question. Effective debate requires training in logic, argumentation, recognition of fallacy; formal debate requires practice and discipline. Conversation requires little more than good faith and mutual trust. Also very difficult, but not at all impossible among us lower life-forms. Most of us are familiar with the feeling of humiliation; a little humility ought to come easily.

Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse Podcast - Black Intellectual Roundtable - YouTube

govols comments on Jul 21, 2020:

Okay, I've seen it all. I'm still agitated. I have my doubts that Bret is the right moderator for this conversation, though he might remain useful as a participant. Two hour chunks is plenty, but that forum should commit to a number of sessions. The next should be about setting an agenda. They've all had time to "get to know" one another so a free ranging conversation exclusively about priorities ought to be attempted. Bret seems to be the only one at the table who sees an immediate catastrophic threat against which "DO SOMETHING! NOW!!!!" is the clear and present necessity. The others at the table seem more aware of the idea that given many problems, some must be acknowledged but set aside, while others prioritized. I would enjoy watching them attempt a prioritized hit list of critical social, political and economic topics to tackle one at a time. Honestly, though, I'd like to see a rolling round table, one that included some open minded "extreme? illiberal?" right and left sorts of people in the mix. They're not going away, so their takes on identifying priorities are just as important as those within the "conservative/liberal" Overton window of allowable topics.

Open Mouth, Insert ... Gun?

govols comments on Jul 20, 2020:

The Fed has been pondering this sort of trade tax for years, haven't they?

So, if I'm white, I'm automatically a white racist.

govols comments on Jul 19, 2020:

You almost nailed it: If I'm white and support BLM, I'm a white racist pretending not to be a racist ***so I can gain status for pretending to do my anti-racist work,*** but BLM activists will let me join them because they see me as a useful idiot.

Dump him, now. 😂

govols comments on Jul 18, 2020:

Guilty.

Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse Podcast - Black Intellectual Roundtable - YouTube

govols comments on Jul 17, 2020:

Curious. Have you pondered the difference and relationship between and among objective and critical thinking?

Bret Weinstein's DarkHorse Podcast - Black Intellectual Roundtable - YouTube

govols comments on Jul 17, 2020:

53 min in, over several sittings.... I'm agitated.

Fight WOKE Christians?! Critical Race Theory with Dr. Neil Shenvi - YouTube

govols comments on Jul 17, 2020:

Do a search for liberation theology; critical theory hit Catholic seminary at least as far back as the 50s or 60s. Also, ponder the woke left presence in American ivy league;most of those colleges were founded, in part, to produce well educated clergy. The only Christian faith I'm thus far aware of that are currently demonstrating immunity are Orthodox, and some of the"primitive" protestant sects. Shinvi really knows his theory, and seems well connected to and caring of his faith.

As long as you have your guns, you'll be fine. I envy you.

govols comments on Jul 16, 2020:

It isn't gonna be fine.

New Wal-Mart dress code is now in effect.

govols comments on Jul 16, 2020:

Gross..

So, there're a lot of ideas that are taboo, and many of us holds several to many of them as ...

govols comments on Jul 16, 2020:

@wolfhnd **Art, literature, music, architecture are to a large extent byproducts not causative in relation to civilization.** Products of civilization, or culture? I'm trying to picture the overlaid bell curves of artistry and culture, where artistry is the degree of inspirational delivery and sheer master of technique, and where culture is measured by the general physical and emotional well-being of the society. I'm wondering if art lags on the way up, peaks some time later than culture, and leads the trend downward in waves or cycles?

This is from Zmans blog and part of why Styx prediction of an easy Trump victory or landslide seems ...

govols comments on Jul 15, 2020:

I have no feel at all how the vote will turn.

Proud Biden Supporters

govols comments on Jul 15, 2020:

Thanks! (Hey, we all have our..... no.)

That was a quick turn around

govols comments on Jul 15, 2020:

well, there have been a hell of lot of lies and dis- and mis-information from all corners of the information ecology. lots and lots of lies. and also an illness exists.

Say what ???

govols comments on Jul 15, 2020:

Did somebody ask him if he wanted a chocolate, or what?

Oh goodie my mom is reading “White Fragility” and wants me to read it next.

govols comments on Jul 13, 2020:

Tell her Robin is racist as fuck and projecting her racist bent on all whites as well as their social institutions...much like Freud did with his desire to fuck his mother and murder his father

The Psychology of Masks. [youtu.be]

govols comments on Jul 13, 2020:

What masks are doing to me is bottling up rage. Everywhere I go where fun is customary, and masks aren't required, I'm surrounded by many people who are declining to mask up. When I go to where masks are required, I see almost exclusively either rage eyes or fear eyes. I've attended the world of "fuck the virus" as much as possible for the whole of this thing, and mask up only as required. Every time I have to mask up I look around at rage and fear eyes. Every time. And because I'm not afraid, I connect with the rage. And I wind up bottling it.

A NEW VIRUS?!?!?!

govols comments on Jul 13, 2020:

Well, I had an idea that vegans were gaining strength, but didn't realized the carnivores were engaging the pitch.

The Intellectual Dark Web’s “Maverick Free Thinkers” Are Just Defenders of the Status Quo ...

govols comments on Jul 13, 2020:

*Brooks devotes the lion’s share of Against the Web to intellectually satisfying deconstructions of the group’s leading figures and their essentially mythical narratives.... *But Against the Web ultimately pairs this deconstructive project with a prescriptive one — offering, as its subtitle suggests, a cosmopolitan socialist vision alongside its polemic against the intellectual shortcomings of the so-called IDW and its phony renegades. “What we need,” says Brooks in the book’s final chapter: * *is a cosmopolitan socialism premised on real material needs that expresses itself in criticism, art, movement building, and anything else that drives politics … following Gramsci, we need an integral approach that fuses universal desires, aspirations, and material concerns with a recognition that we do in fact live in a globalized, interconnected, and neoliberal world still defined by grotesque inequality, ecological crisis, and resurgent right wing authoritarianism.* So, yet again, a work of mostly deconstruction, followed up with call for utopian global universalism through cosmopolitan socialism...with no fucking idea how accomplish the dream barring revolutionary overturning of the status quo. In the process, the author(s) seem to ignore the dozens and dozens of conversations among people actually trying to figure out how to navigate toward better institutions.

Someone help me out here.

govols comments on Jul 13, 2020:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(1981_film)

So here's a question for the group, are you here because you're gender critical, or because you ...

govols comments on Jul 9, 2020:

I haven't figured out yet what gender critical is...

I was taught to believe that Satan can never be redeemed because he is too full of pride and so will...

govols comments on Jul 9, 2020:

That's a really interesting idea. My understanding is that even were Satan to repent and submit, we'd still be fallen and would still face the justice we deserve absent Christ. I tend to think the pride thing is the separation from God that's the actual hell we face. It doesn't, to me, require a special horrifying cell-space, but only the separation itself.

Why You're Wrong About IQ [youtube.]

govols comments on Jul 9, 2020:

Does this gut write anywhere? His videos are impossible for me to watch; for some reason I get a foul impression of his attitude.

How do you currently identify, politically? I'm a classic liberal.

govols comments on Jul 8, 2020:

I no longer have a reasonably defensible political identity.

Don't forget an apostrophe.

govols comments on Jul 6, 2020:

Since it's for work I go more formal and use, "For the sake of FUCK,....!"

These words: adoration, fondness, liking, attraction, caring, tenderness, compassion, ...

govols comments on Jul 6, 2020:

How about degrees of intensity in loosely associated emotional responses to a variety of differing environmental relationships.

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

govols comments on Jul 6, 2020:

I have a ritual for you that fits perfectly to your post. Tomorrow, as you go about your day, identify one thing that is poorly positioned and fix it. It can be as simple as a candy wrapper on the ground. Also, for fun, try to identify a flaw in your map, an incomplete assumption you couldn't defend for your life. What do you need to learn if you're to know the assumption is true, well enough to defend it, or to adjust it toward a more defensible Truth claim?

If anybody in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, Nevada, Utah or Wyoming start with the whole ...

govols comments on Jul 6, 2020:

I've just decided to go with "Conquered. Not stolen, conquered. Read history."

It's OK to be pro-white.

govols comments on Jul 6, 2020:

See? Take an inch, take a mile...

One of the armies of Civil War 2?

govols comments on Jul 5, 2020:

Chittom?

Someone is bound to complain, good to see Aston Martin have a sense of humor

govols comments on Jul 5, 2020:

Somebody has to remind us here that a flashy newer model is sometimes a trade down if your current ride is reliable, cost effective, and well suited to your habits.

What is the "thing" that keeps relationships going for decades?

govols comments on Jul 4, 2020:

The price one pays for divorce?

So in the past we assumed that with youthful optimism and liberal idealism would give way to wisdom ...

govols comments on Jul 1, 2020:

Part of the problem that's directly related to your post is the political/professional managerial class, as well as the academic class who trains them, and the fact that so many of them never experience the real world. The phrase "flyover states" didn't exist in my childhood; it's an attitude that only a cosmopolitan universalist could embrace. In the minds of the glorious visionaries of the modern ruling class, the only way to fix society is to expose the ignorant masses in the lands of wealth and privilege to the ignorant masses from oppressed populations, thereby lifting all boats on the rising tide of a common global humanity. The regard cultural traditionalists as stuck in a rut that only their multi-cult can fill. Most of them grew up in silks, and the texture associated with many vastly differing human societies and cultural traditions irritates their sensitive, well groomed skin-suits. The masses and their cultures irritate them, but very well stirred the blend sips well in a cocktail. Top-shelf, mind you...none of that well brand shit that the _ folk swill....

Welfare Checks Turn Deadly – The Future of Freedom Foundation

govols comments on Jul 1, 2020:

Okay, I'm gonna just go ahead and admit it. I was like, "How in the hell are we going to link deaths by cops to benefit payments?"

😂 Russia Wants Bulgarians to Stop Painting Soviet Monuments To Look Like American Superheroes - ...

govols comments on Jul 1, 2020:

That's about as funny as anything I've seen in 2020.

Why is there an unwashed low-life Mexican-residing Mexican trying to motivate you to use your big ...

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

The average American hasn't savings enough to pay next week's bills. Most of us are one poorly considered public comment away from homelessness. We do have some really cool shit, though.

It all depends on the spices you use...

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

That's just...well...a whole new way of spreading...happiness.

Is "Race Realism" a message of love or hate?

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

I really don't think it's all that important or interesting a question. The far more important and interesting issue is pointed out in a post below: whether based on race or ethnicity or NOT, the bell curves of intelligence. personality, and social behaviors are as real as those of upper-body strength, physical stamina, height, "natural" body weight, bone density or thickness, body hair, etc. The fact is, every society needs to think about meaningful and productive ways to help the tails of the curves fit into the structures and institutions that every civilization requires if it's to remain civilized. A large part of that has been in the (semi-modern) past a much broader distribution of wealth than exists within the globalist capitalist economics of today, AND a broader distribution of the actual means and locations of all of the various manners of productive endeavor. Every community "enjoys" about 20% fuck-ups. If any community is to meaningfully and gainfully "exploit" its fuck-ups, it needs 10 or 15 % of the other "tail" to sponsor them, mentor them, manage them, CARE about them, and value their efforts--no matter how lowly--with a decent regard for their well-being and livelihood. And, to make matter worse, we really have to find something for the geniuses to do besides evil and disruption. I don't think our problems are race nearly so much as they revolve around the idea--shared among mostly the left leaning, anti-social, and deviants--that societies can exist without functional norms.

If you have a symptom called 'pessimism', stay away. I don't want to catch it. 😝😂

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

Well, I do at least *try* to be non-destructive in my pessimism, and *mostly* avoid being hateful. A friend of mine used to say to me "Damn! you'll say anything!" The first time he said it I told him "you should hear what I *don't* say..."

Engineer humor

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

boo, hiss....

Has anyone else's red-pilling been fairly recent?

govols comments on Jun 30, 2020:

I read the US constitution in the 80s, in my late teens/early 20s, and I've been doing maintenance doses of red-pills ever since; they hold the black-pill at bay.

I fuggin love these people, quite aware there will be a shitstorm but much respect

govols comments on Jun 29, 2020:

I just realized this is a story, in which "Ken and Karen" are said to be "heavily armed" with an "arsenal?"

I fuggin love these people, quite aware there will be a shitstorm but much respect

govols comments on Jun 29, 2020:

Is that a PPK?

Florida reports massive single-day increase of 9,000 coronavirus cases [axios.com]

govols comments on Jun 26, 2020:

No, not an increase of 9000. That's not what it says.

Biden Criticized For Appearing In Hennessy Ads - YouTube

govols comments on Jun 25, 2020:

I wouldn't sip Hennessy with someone else's lips, but that was funny.

Need Your Help: Racist Politicians and Policies I'm actually wanting some help.

govols comments on Jun 25, 2020:

Look toward addresses to the NAACP, and other black organizations. Some reveal staggering levels of condescension.

Have you taken the White Fragility Self-Test?

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

They're using clinical psychology and psychoanalysis as weapons, intentionally manipulating basic human insecurities as buttons and levers to trigger emotional and/or behavioral responses. They're psychopaths and sociopaths.

What are your best recommendations for politically incorrect literature?

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance.

Could'a been me!

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

Plot twist...

This cultural war has been created by PR and that is the way you can fight back in a non-violent ...

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

A difficulty is that art is fucking hard, and those for whom it comes easy tend toward openness to exotic experience and emotional intuition--often a trait mistaken for care, but also an aspect of the manipulative. You, as poor Mexican, seeing us as rich and more subject to our lizard brains for preservation rather than exploration, might very well be in the better position to inspire us through art than we, you. We're in a rut. We need "the blues" of the aspirant, maybe, to help push and pull us back onto a visionary path. The Library of Alexandria didn't burn; the esteem for wisdom and her keepers shifted. Art follows wisdom, pursues it. Enlightens the path forward. Civilizations fall, in part, because they become pragmatic rather than creative. Art doesn't rise from the rot, but from the fertility of soil not yet overly cultivated. Show us what ya got..........

What happened to the Intellectual Dark Web's influence?

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

Its "influence" was consumed by its success. It created a reality for a few million people, a reality that didn't previously exist, one in which alternative ideas could be explored in spaces other than those controlled by authoritarian progressives. Rebel Wisdom has as a project, "How do we do sense-making now that all prior "received-wisdom" systems have been shattered by a reality that's too complex for any of them to grasp hold of now that their faith component has been rejected by the modern age?" Eric Weinstein is playing with "Escaping the institutional structure that work to suppress heterodox ideas about science, economics, the human condition, etc." There are quite a lot of very small movements that have taken root since the IDW (not this site) blazed a trail into the weeds that sprout among the institutional;y structured garden of human thinking and ideas.

ANARCHISM ISN’T ABOUT HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM. ANARCHISM IS ABOUT COMMUNITY AND COOPERATION

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

To be fair to the contributor--if not the author of the article presented--outstanding post! Good stuff...

ANARCHISM ISN’T ABOUT HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM. ANARCHISM IS ABOUT COMMUNITY AND COOPERATION

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

The author's idea of anarchism--and even the early presenters of the 1800s--is actually communism formed up locale by locale by voluntary association rather than through Marx's prediction that it would be achieved through revolutionary socialist take-over of the State--followed eventually by the passage of ownership into the dustbin of progress by way of a top down distribution of the elements of production and distribution once consolidated into the State from the Capitalists. It's basically the bottom-up version through consensus community organization v the top down version that never descends from the perch of the Revolutionary "People's" Managerial State. It's a vision that ignores the fact that some locales are more equal than others, some people are more equal than others, and some sociopaths are more equal than the populations over whom they find sway. A unitarian universalist blank slate humanist globalism is impossible to construct, whether through a groundswell, idealist avalanche, or a progressive or revolutionary bending of the arc of history. The very idea ignores the human condition.

ANARCHISM ISN’T ABOUT HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM. ANARCHISM IS ABOUT COMMUNITY AND COOPERATION

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

I didn't read the article you linked because it's part of a series, and thus doesn't stand alone without at least some foundational notion of the ideas it being presented in support of. I went to the preceding text and was confronted with a misrepresentation of Madison's Federalist 10, AND the context itself. It also becomes evident that he seems to be defining anarchism within the small local context, but intermingling its application to both vastly larger bodies politic, and vastly larger territories than are generally thought of when one ponders the merits of "leaderless" consensus driven decision making. He's writing off Madison's justification for why republics are more suited than democracies to restrain the forces of faction, without engaging the causes of faction and its danger to broad liberty among individuals and minorities that will occur where no restraint against it set in place to look out both for the minority and for the general welfare of the whole of the body of society.

Remember two weeks ago when everyone agreed the cops were out of control and the right-wing ...

govols comments on Jun 24, 2020:

What do you think of when you use the word right-wing?

Mike Pence 2024 question??

govols comments on Jun 23, 2020:

I doubt he'll put his name in the ring. Too much bullshit.

forward to voting? [twitter.]

govols comments on Jun 23, 2020:

No, not really. I'm one of those who voted in every election, but never for either a Dem or Rep where federal elections are concerned. I usually found alternative candidate that I could vote positively FOR, or would leave a race blank. I'm one of the millions who helped Clinton win in 1992 by voting for Perot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl8SaNvcK7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPIVI0CbCmg

Parking problems

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

You're an asshole. Genius super villain, but asshole none the less.

Long, wrong, poorly written, and reposting to a smaller forum, but in part my view of what got us ...

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

Well, above I went astray, and want to revisit "How in the actual fuck can mere men systematize God's Law? Examine how it plays out in the Laws of Nature." Having moved into Christendom, through references to the ancient past of the Greeks and Hebrews, how can this be tied back to God's Law and the benefit of studying nature as a means toward The City of God? (BTW, I'm utterly unqualified for the task.) The Ancients of our decidedly blended up culture(s) generally practiced being in cultures of received knowledge and wisdom. It is as is because it always has been. Innovation was normal and natural, but was built up from, and founded upon, tradition. Socrates (the horrifying prick) can't possibly have been the first to question the credibility of the keepers of tradition, but he might very well have been the first to get away with doing it for almost the entire span of a human life before finally being escorted toward his unsavory encounter with the madness of crowds and the influence of "authority" upon the masses. Socrates was the child who pointed out that the "king" walks about clothed in an authority he isn't competent to defend. And the gnarley prick managed to pass on to us a disciple. Aristotle, it seems, managed to systematize a method of inquiry that us mere mortals might use to pretend toward the genius of his master. This system of categorizing, of organizing reason into manners of constructing frameworks and processes for systematic inquiry, wound up imposed upon any and every metaphysical exploration. Everywhere I explore theology as captured by textual history after Aristotle, every attempt to elevate received tradition toward reasoned out knowledge was conducted through the sorts of argumentation that the Greeks bestowed on the world as we received it. It almost seems as if the Hebrew authorities circa year zero were sophists. They were authoritative for no other reason than that they were largely unchallenged. It almost seem like "historical" Jesus, steeped in a Hellenistic Roman culture, absorbed some Socrates and Aristotle. It almost seems as though he drank deeply from the texts of his culture(s), absorbed them both, and brought one to bear against the other in an attempt to find all of the richness within. And he did it in public, to the humiliation of the authorities. And he was introduced to Socrates face to face. (More to come, foolish as it might be...)

Warning - a groaner! 😂

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

So...It IS her first child?

Everybody Hurts

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

Song at around 1:48.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8yD3-HWTg

Timely quote.

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymI5Uv5cGU4&t=432s

Just reflecting on how lazy people have become.

govols comments on Jun 22, 2020:

Curious what a few hours on a route earns...

What are your early predictions for election 2020?

govols comments on Jun 21, 2020:

We're well aware of the crazed establishment and the hatred for Trump and any who don't share their hatred, but it's really hard to figure the number and intensity of the people who are simmering in loathing of the establishment, media, left, sjw, etc. Turnout will tell, as always.

I have covered this before but with many people wondering why civilization seems to be unraveling ...

govols comments on Jun 21, 2020:

Very good presentation of the ideas you're exploring.

It's kind of concerning when top contributors have become inactive.

govols comments on Jun 21, 2020:

Part of it is that if the topics become too topical the forum doesn't provide the escape some people use it for. Another thing is if the topics become either repetitive (GUILTY!) or the responses indicate that typical posters are unwilling to play with nuance or tolerate adapting to demonstrated mistakes in their ideological perspectives. If it's too current, too "real," too repetitive, or too dogmatic, it loses the spirit of thoughtful AND interesting AND fun.

This article is about privilege, which is a hot topic, no doubt.

govols comments on Jun 21, 2020:

Okay, this might be a steaming pile that I'm about to step into... So, one of the reasons I often say that life is suffering (I had it before I ever heard or read about from others; maybe it slipped in through Church or depression ere religious grandparents) is that we ALL experience being screwed, over and over, from an early age, even by on own friends and family. Betrayal is one of the most hurtful experiences of the human condition. Life IS suffering. Well, what if you, as the article points out, have special heritable advantages based on the status of your parents? Hm. You have still been screwed over and over throughout life, but you overcame it. One can, based on personality and "raising," incline toward either thinking other "disadvantaged" people JUST LIKE YOU haven't worked hard enough, or have been held down by people better positioned always having the privilege of nepotism. One of the screwed up parts of anti-discrimination motivated reparations programs like affirmative action is that people who are under-represented in regard to high-status parents gain opportunities for earning education certifications and social networks that LOOK like those enjoyed by people with high status parents. Because they don't enjoy the support structures enjoyed by most in their new almost artificial cohort, they don't achieve to the degree that their "peers" do. All of them are well educated AND NOW NETWORKED, and smart enough to see the disparity; but they're not wise enough to see the actual cause that Murray is proposing. They can only find systemic bigotry, because that's the cause that the modern university experience has fed them. The funny thing is, the "right" is now finding "Marx's" class oppression as a line of defense against the SJW message about group identity oppression matrices. This is the source of the horse-shoe theory, I suppose. The focus on identity politics is forcing conservative to open up to the idea of class oppression and privilege in self-defense against ideas promoting Identity Politics. The right is actually becoming the defenders of the working classes against the sometimes over-educate, over-indebted, SJW leftist intelligencia who teaches a message of tearing down the very institutions the working classes rely on for any hope for sustenance. It really rather amusing to watch.

This article is about privilege, which is a hot topic, no doubt.

govols comments on Jun 19, 2020:

Thanks. I only scanned it but will read again. I tend to think he and I would find a lot of common ground, though I'm probably pretty far to his right.

Trump's judicial appointments

govols comments on Jun 18, 2020:

Younger historical?

What does the word ,traditional mean in philosophy?

govols comments on Jun 18, 2020:

Context for question? On some level it's cultural: Greek, Western, Eastern, etc. On some level it's classical canon v modern or contemporary. Wisdom of the ages v critiques thereof. Metaphysics v analytics. It depends.