Philosophy

I have, actually. That's why I made the point.
You are right that many (mental) problems haunt modern societies that don't actually exist or that exist among some and are imagined among whole throngs of others. These follow trends and are best ignored for they will pass; the danger of this is that the disorders they are based upon do really exist so ignoring it completely could cause people to miss the few that are truly ill.

Anyway, we agree on that.

Yes. Dave however was talking about tribes, which the Romans and Greeks definitely were not. That is why I used the distinction of sedentary peoples in my reply.

 

yeh n wots wrong with praising them i have a great respect for these ppl n the way they survive, i kno u may not have the same opinion but this is the way i feel about this matter.

 

My proposition is that people nowadays are losing the ability to love and care for others.
We are increasingly egoists. One-man armies.

Is it true? If so - why?
Is it the reason why there are fewer children than ever and populations in developed countries shrink?

For the first time in written history Man in developed countries does not think much of G-d. What is the reason and what - the consequencies?

Can we at all live without religious faith? Or are we bound for extinction?
Just look at birth statistics.....

 

The reason for birth rates going down is the same as the reason for people not thinking about gods much anymore - secularization. Without social pressure to breed many children into a certain religion, the urge to do so drops away. There is also a strong tendency in the modern world to have many children when you're poor (to take care of you later) and few when you're rich (they only divide up your precious time/collected savings/inheritance). I think it has little to do with loving or not, since throughout history the size of families has been largely due to economic and social reasons and not to emotional ones.

Secularization, IMHO, is a great thing. It increases the rationality of human behaviour, in business (asking interest on loans was discouraged in Christianity, for example), state affairs and public life. It also means that people think about things themselves, independent of other influences, and thus have more sophisticated opinions as a result. It means that society makes sense, that people believe what is true, and that no religion is forced upon anyone. However many people here on the forum will disagree with me on this so I'll leave it open for debate.

On losing the ability to care and love for others - maybe you've been meeting the wrong people.

 

scattered thoughts

i belive in g*d but have little use for churchs. man has ruined religion by making it benfit the shamans.

good works count

DNA does mutate, thats why we differ in looks, color, and so on

evil exists just as good does and we have a duty to fight evil when we can

time wounds all heels

if you want peace prepare for war is a bedrock truth

you are your brother's keeper

because evil exists there are evil people. not misguided, not misunderstood, evil and evil to the bone. they are the common threat and must be delt with

sh*t happens to everybody- deal with it and move on

everybody gets insulted every so often. get over it, its not a capitol crime to insult you

the wiccians say what ever you do comes back threefold, would be that they are right.

shooting for blood is serious and should be treated so and with respect

if my end of the boat leaks you are going to get wet too, it just may take longer.

change always comes, how you deal with it says a lot about you

entophry always wins the best you can hope for is to delay it a bit

i'm sorry can be the biggest lie or a most important truth. telling the difference is tough

to quote mr. l. long " never try to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig"

weapons may well have made us human

it may take two to tango but it only takes one to start a fight

if gandi had tried his tricks with hitler nobody would even remember him. passive restance only works with nice people.

sometimes you need to shoot first

 

lynn1212, I´m blinded with your wisdom of life. Although it is not the first time I´ve read these advices(?), I am amused every time.

ROEL !

I do not tend to seem to be in agreement with YOU(!!!!)
Too bad. (for me of course)
Dear Roel, secularization – isn´t it a …slogan? People still believe somehow, very privately, at the bottom of their “rational” brains in a Something or Someone. It´s definitely out of fashion to go to church, though.
I agree about the link wealth-few children (generally), but in Israel many well to do people choose to have many kids. Maybe due to religious reasons. In Denmark, AFAIRemember, many well educated and richer people also have more kids than poorer folks. So – it´s not a rule.

Prevention works here too, and women doing careers competing with men. It´s bad. There should be separate categories, like in sports.

Judaism also orbids to take interests on loans (between Jews only – nice, isn´t it?).

If you don´t have more to say about egoism……. Well, I don´t complain myself. I was lucky, maybe.

 

Just caught up with this thread, wow, philosophy on a tankers forum!

I think the generally low birth rates in industrialised countries are, at least partially because childhood mortality is low and has been for many years. In developing countries children not only work for the family but are also old age insurance for the parents. In countires where infant mortality is high it would be risky to only have one or two children as they would be unlikely to survive to adulthood. This is admitedly simplistic because there are many traditional and cultural factors involved but I think it's basically true.
As to the existance of God, someone once wrote something along the lines of, 'If God is omnipotent then could He make a rock that was too heavy for Him to move?' Hmmm, ponder.

 

Secularization is fact, possibly not in the minds of most people who do indeed believe in Something or Someone (I don't), but definitely in that religion is no longer a part of government affairs or of public authority in general.

People are inclined to hold on to some sort of religion to explain their world and give them something of a support in life; if not religion itself, then they take on science as a religion. People could consider me of the last persuasion but I really don't have any religion at all.

 

Which is precisely the kind of circular question that is (for me) a lot that is bad/annoying about philosophy...

 

Can't get Ricky's quotes right today, should have read:

Ah but philosophy is a great tool for using metaphors to explore difficult concepts. Shrodinger and his cat springs to mind.

 

It springs to my mind as a pointlessly abstract and circular theory, that anybody doing any kind of practical work would laugh at.

Sorry, it's nothing personal, I just really dislike the practice of taking lines of thought to their illogical conclusion.

 

Obviously you haven´t read anything by Leibniz.

 

Nope.
Should I?

 

Well, at least he shows that taking lines of thought to their illogical conclusion can be fun.

P.S. Check out the 'Monads'.

 

Btw, the monads was a very advanced line of thought.

Ricky, isn´t it true that it is not necessarily only practical work but also our ability to think abstract that makes us men vs. animals?
And the absolute peak of abstract thinking is actually philosophy (imho).

I know I am provoking, Ricky. I am just interested to hear your answer.

 

No answer from Ricky......

I must have been right!!! No news is good news.

 

Busy weekend!

Sure, 'higher thought' seperates us from animals, but higher thought is not necessarily thought that becomes so abstract that it is meaningless...

 

But surely you grasp the importance of abstract thoughts in developing such modern concepts as "progress" or "freedom"? These things could never have been developed without philosophy, people thinking in lines so abstract to contemporaries that they must've also thought it led nowhere.

 

You never know where an idea will lead you, unless you follow it.
And the very understanding that an idea is meaningless and leads nowhere is also a sort of achievement, isn´t it?