The number of people living with chronic and long-term illnesses has risen more than exponentially, well here anyway, with diabetes, cancer, hypertension, heart disease, obesity, autism, OCD, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, asthma, autoimmune diseases, etc etc etc.
It wasn’t so when I was a kid and teen, so overall health has been steadily declining, but we’re being kept alive, so that the conglomerates can make money off our weak and dieing carcasses via the medium of mass-consumerism.
I wouldn’t call what the pharmaceutical industry are churning out these days medicine… my medicine is plants and herbs and homeopathy. Remember when Monsanto wanted the rights to all the plant seeds in the world… now it’s becoming clearer as to why?
The issue has become synthetic, everyone wants to buy in
No one really wants to abate a simulation of well being. Very few nowedays opts for assisted suicide . it may become known as a passing fancy.
Big pharm realizing this, is on charm offensive to sell it. Why not?
It really is invaluable to live off the half hearted cures of the suffering.
[b]'The coronavirus has killed so many people in Iran that the country has resorted to mass burials, but in neighboring Iraq, the body count is fewer than 100.
The Dominican Republic has reported nearly 7,600 cases of the virus. Just across the border, Haiti has recorded about 85.
In Indonesia, thousands are believed to have died of the coronavirus. In nearby Malaysia, a strict lockdown has kept fatalities to about 100.
The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.'[/b]
Then it explores the various faxctors that might be involved:
“the power of youth”
“cultural distance”
“heat and light”
“early and strict lockdowns”
“luck”
But in each context there are many exceptions. No one explanation seems to suffice.
[b]'…most experts agree that there may be no single reason for some countries to be hit and others missed. The answer is likely to be some combination of the above factors, as well as one other mentioned by researchers: sheer luck.
'Countries with the same culture and climate could have vastly different outcomes if one infected person attends a crowded social occasion, turning it into what researchers call a super-spreader event.
'That happened when a passenger infected 634 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Japan, when an infected guest attended a large funeral in Albany, Ga., and when a 61-year-old woman went to church in Daegu, South Korea, spreading the disease to hundreds of congregants and then to thousands of other Koreans.
'Because an infected person may not experience symptoms for a week or more, if at all, the disease spreads under the radar, exponentially and seemingly at random. Had the woman in Daegu stayed home that Sunday in February, the outbreak in South Korea might have been less than half of what it is.
‘Some countries that should have been inundated are not, leaving researchers scratching their heads.’[/b]
So, isn’t that what those on either side of the political spectrum are really dealing with: the great unknowns. Can those once infected become infected again? Will there be “waves”? Will it mutate?
Not that any of this won’t stop the rabid objectivists among us from just shrugging it off. They already factored that [and every other possible variables there are] into consideration. And if you don’t share their point of view, you’re still an idiotic liberal.
Fitting right in with my own speculation that some of the reactions to the coronavirus here are attached to one or another rabid, dogmatic political agenda in which something like this is merely construed to be part and parcel of one or another rendition of the “deep state”.
So, these folks will use the pandemic merely in order to spread their own reactionary political beliefs about the Jews and the colored people and the foreigners and the homosexuals and the feminists and the globalists and all the people who do not think exactly like they do.
Meaning, in other words, that, in seeing the world around them only as a reflection of what they already believe, it is a complete waste of time trying to actually engage them in intelligent conversation. They spit on that sort of thing. You are either one of us or the enemy.
And, for sure, the last thing they wish to explore is my own take on the objectivist mind. Here for example: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Wow, even the Trump administration itself is now in on the hoax:
[b]'Headline: The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.
As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.
The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.
The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.'[/b]
Yes, yes, yes, as more doctors label any and every death as due to covid 19, the number of deaths will keep rising until they stop lying about the cause of death, ya know, until when the deep state pulls the plug on this hoax and moves back to the end of the world hoax due to climate change or initiates another needless war.
[b]'A research paper from scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, not yet peer-reviewed, reports that one strain of the novel coronavirus has emerged in Europe and become dominant around the planet, leading the researchers to believe the virus has mutated to become more contagious.
'The mutation affects the structure of a protein, called the spike protein, that is critical to the virus’s ability to infect human cells. The researchers believe this structural change enhances infectivity.
‘“The mutation Spike D614G is of urgent concern; it began spreading in Europe in early February, and when introduced to new regions it rapidly becomes the dominant form,” the authors write. They describe the mutation “increasing in frequency at an alarming rate, indicating a fitness advantage relative to the original Wuhan strain that enables more rapid spread.”’[/b]
For the love of Christ, shut down everything! Before it’s too late!!
[b]'WASHINGTON — As the nation confronts unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, Congress and the Trump administration face a pivotal choice: Continue spending trillions trying to shore up businesses and workers, or bet that state reopenings will jump-start the United States economy.
At least 20 million Americans are unemployed and a large share of the nation’s small businesses are shut and facing possible insolvency. Policy errors in the coming weeks could turn the 18 million temporary layoffs recorded in April into permanent job losses that could plunge the United States into a deep and protracted recession unrivaled in recent history.'[/b]
And while 1] some conservatives here aim to convince us the whole thing really is just a liberal plot to create a global government under the thumb of Big Brother and/or the United Nations, while 2] some liberals here aim to convince us this is all just a stepping stone to the Fourth Reich, out in the real world the actual existential tug of war is all too real.
For millions and millions of us. Go too far in the direction of sustaining the lockdown and countless lives will be destroyed economically. Go to far in opening the economy up and the pandemic can explode to even greater heights. And this is all before what is deemed by many to be an inevitable, even bigger wave in the Fall and Winter.
So, in my view, if the objectivists from either end of the political spectrum prevail, it will truly be a calamity of epic proportions. Especially here in America where the overwhelming prepondeance of infections and deaths continue to prevail.
[b]'Are we inherently gullible? Research says no: Most adults have well-functioning machinery for detecting baloney, but there’s a common bug in the machine. Faced with a novel idea or new circumstances, we gravitate to information that fits our already existing beliefs. As Sherlock Holmes put the problem: “Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” This bug has always been exploited by people seeking money, power — or both. But with the rise of social media, the world’s propagandists, con artists and grifters find their search for suckers easier than ever.
'Witness the grubby exercise known as “#Plandemic.” The risible video is the work of an opportunistic Internet filmmaker whose projects include a clip about his 5-year-old son’s discovery of “the truth” about the wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In his latest film, he advances the conspiracy theory that Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, billionaire Bill Gates and various other malefactors are spreading a manmade novel coronavirus because they enjoy making people sick and hope to profit on an eventual vaccine. Or some similar nonsense along those lines. And there’s more: Beaches were closed to keep Americans away from the “microbes” in seawater that protect against covid-19.
'A coronavirus conspiracy is mild B.S. compared with the great conspiracy theory of 2016, the weapons-grade hooey known as #Pizzagate. In that viral sensation, important political figures supposedly ran a child-abuse ring out of the basement of a pizzeria that, by the way, doesn’t have a basement.
People believe in a “#Plandemic” because it fits into existing convictions. A lot of people already believe — not without reason — that pharmaceutical companies cash in on suffering. Many people have heard that government labs do research on biological weapons. All true. Government has hemorrhaged credibility in recent years — even with regard to veteran public servants such as Fauci. All of these mind-sets are potential vectors for the viral #plandemic.'[/b]
Bottom line [his and for the most part mine]:
‘Some want your money. Some want your mind. Citizenship in the Internet era demands a heightened commitment to mental hygiene and skepticism. We have to learn that the information that fits neatly into our preconceptions is precisely the information we must be wary of. And even in these wild times, we must heed the late Carl Sagan, who preached that “extraordinary claims” — like grand conspiracies and healing microbes — “require extraordinary proof.”’
He just leaves out the part about objectivism and dasein.
It is objectivist to consider it a calamity. That’s a word with a built in negative evaluation. You are saying that if either of these groups manages to win the debates and swing things too far, bad things will happen. That’s an objectivist evaluation of the consequences. Doesn’t mean it’s bad for you to be making an objectivist evaluation, but it’s an implicit objectivist appeal. You’re a part of the club.
On the contrary, I never exclude my own point of view here from my own point of view. Me calling anything a calamity [in the is/ought world] is no less a function of “I” as an existential fabrication/contraption.
After all, that’s where the part about “I” – my own – being “fractured and fragmented” is derived. Meanwhile, your own still incomprehensible rendition of pragmatism [from my point of view] is just not something “I” am able to grasp.
Just as you clearly do not grasp my own perspective yet. Instead, you only insist that you do. And then proceed [in about as close to an objectivist frame of mind as I have come to understand it] to preach the gospel to the choir.
Note to Phyllo:
I’m coming closer and closer to making you Moe here. Alas, KT becomes less challenging with each post.
Duh, I have commented on your disclaimers and position hundreds of times and also explained the problems with your cake and eat it too version.
Here we have a person who believes that people with objectivist positions make the world a worse place according to your values, which you do not consider objective.
So, how does he work with his values, in order to make things where people are more likely to use compromise and negotiation.
He blames people for causing the problems in the world, labels them as a group (here objectivists) and then sometimes adds in his disclaimer that he might be wrong. Above he did not, but readers are presumed to know his position. I do, others won’t.
What does this non-objectivist do, often, after? He then implies that he is better than them because he doesn’t claim to know whereas they do. So, first he labels them, blames the problems on them, then claims a superior ground because he does not actually claim to know. Or rather, he writes exactly the same types of sentences and then often adds in that post a disclaimer.
This miraculously leads to more compromise and negotiation. But wait…give a shot at demonstrating that.
But even more important…you don’t need to write down your values and then add disclaimers.
You could simply challenge objectivists to demonstate theirs. That would be role modeling and would not be the double insult approach you take. Give a shot at demonstrating that your choice to insult, then say, gosh for all I know my insult is wrong, is a better approach than just challenging them on their objectivism. Good luck with that.
And, as I wrote, I believe years ago, no rational person would fall for this crap on the interpersonal level.
You fucked up the kids with your sick capitalist values.
Hej, fuck you, that’s not what’s happening. Well, as I often say, I can’t be sure. However it’s fucked up that you think the values you give them simply are right.
You seem sure of that.
Given the simple option of NOT presenting your damning judgments of people that you think you can’t know anyway are the case, you decide to dump and disclaim. It makes no sense at all.
But cake and eat it too makes a lot of emotional sense. You like that don’t you.
Now am I sure that’s what you are doing: being passive aggressive? No, I’m not sure.
But you go ahead and demonstrate how your method actually leads to your values being taken up or even being considered.
I know, it’s hard for you. I have preferences, as other do. I try to make it so that things are more like I like them to be and less like I don’t like them to be. Calling it pragmatism is a fancy ass way of describing it. Call it practical instead. Does that help?
People are like this at work or with a hobby. What do I want? I want a ship in that bottle. Hm. How do I get that to happen? What skills do I need what actions do I need to take? Perhaps I realize it will take time from something I prioritize higher (because I like it more) so I drop the hobby of trying to get little ships in a bottle.
Someone attacks my wife in the street. I try to stop that.
Empathy is also a factor. and not just for those closest to me.
This is hard stuff, I know.
I see this in other people, all of them, though some seem to lack empathy or have talked themselves out of it. Being practical may be hidden underneath a moral system, but it’s there. I tend to think it is what really underlies and drives the moral system.
It’s not easy, because life presents a lot of problems, obstacles, suffering. I am heartily challenged, like everyone else. Life isn’t easy regardless. I don’t have the objectivist goal of putting my preferences in objective morals. Being objectivist leads to F&F because generally people then have to live up to their objective morals, and parts of them will not want to. So they get splits.
I also don’t share your project of finding out ‘how one ought to live’ or of trying to find unresistable moral arguments that will convince all humans.’ I think those lead to F & F, but sure, I could be wrong. I think it is setting you up to judge your preferences since you can’t know they are the preferences all rational people should have. That’s a split right there, it seems to me. You can’t choose an approach to improve things for yourself based on your preferences, it has to be one everyone would follow.
But hey, You could be more F &F than me because of trauma - I’ve gone through trauma both as a child and as an adult, but it was likely different traumas from yours, or perhaps I got lucky in the support I chose or had available - or perhaps your F and F is based on long term disappointment or any of a number of things. Where your dna met your experience led to more F & F than where my DNA met my experiences. Could be a simple as me having the right friend at the right time, where you didn’t get that. Could be a genetic tendency to brooding over certain things. Could be that following one’s intuition regarding an approach to feeling better, rather than taking a universal up in the clouds 'everyone should be convinced it is the right approach way of choosing things is a better approach to helping oneself. But it’s certainly not like I know what might make you feel less F & F. I don’t really know what causes that in you. I do understand what you think causes it, but people are notoriously poor, in many instances, when it comes to self-evaluation.
You are also practical. You choose to do things out of likes and dislikes. In this sense any human, or even mammal/animal, is practical. Humans can add all sorts of things to being practical and striving for what they want and trying to minimize what they wish there was less of (around them, in the world). But at root, they do what I do in many facets of their lives.
A hornet is flying around in their car while they are on the highway. They open the windows, they pull over and try to force it out.
They are hungry, they go get a meal.
Since we are humans these ‘projects’ can be incredibly complicated and involve things a goat could not consider. But it’s the same practicalness in essense. There’s a wolf over there, get in a tight pack with the others. I want that ewe, going to have to challenge Bruno for her.
I know you must do this - not with the ewes but you know what I mean. So it’s like that. Trying to get things better using those resources one has.
You keep mulling over it. I think you’ll get it. Unless you have some agenda that makes it unpleasant to want to understand it, say. For example. Or perhaps something else will get in the way and does now. Who knows?
Fortunately you’re not being able to understand something is just your not being able to understand something.
And just so it is clear, like most mammals, I seem to like expressing myself, engaging passionately in certain activities, being close to people (other mammals of my species and even other species’ members). It is not problem solving from waking to sleeping. There is an expressive set of likes. There are, not as often as I would like, moments where spontanaity works. Or where I can simply express, rather than try to change things. I don’t have an overriding philosophy name for this or the combination of enjoying expressing being part of certain ‘things’ and also the problem solving facet of life.
A long time ago in a post I called it a pragmatism. You ran with this for a long time and here you bring it back. It was a best shot in that moment at a shorthand name for what we all do. I then took many posts explaining that it was not a philosophy and you could stop trying to make it one. It’s simply something all creatures do only I don’t have what many humans add on to this, which both you and the objectivists do.
