Philosophy Now Forum

For the past few months, I have noticed, and I have been noticing continually the complete low morality among many people that I encounter every day. I've been consciously aware of this a lot more, ever since when I was in a period of depression and alienation among other peoples (which took place last Winter). Even though I have known this, ever since I've began to tangle myself out that depressive state that I've been in for some time in Winter and before that, and so started to improve on myself; it is because of this turn in my life that I just became most aware of this society's waste.

The people in this society known as the "masses", do not care about deeper matters; whether something about Politics, about Philosophy, or about Spirituality. They all care too much more about sports, lust, food, sex, and cheap entertainment that comes from the monstrous machine known as Consumerism. It is obvious that this mentality that's being promoted in this society, in conjunction with the education system and government, is horribly indoctrinating children into slavish passive surfs who don't know things outside of this junk culture.

Here's one example. A few days ago, I found a post on Huffington Post, where children in various schools were making wrong answers but still got an A for effort. The fact that this post was encouraging it shows the sheer idiocy of what we've become.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/2 ... 14168.html

Has anyone been noticing or articulating the same problems that I have? Or is it just me?

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You had me until the example.



...but in short, you are correct.


...only, I would perhaps expand the title to, No One Has Ever Had Any Morality...Throughout The History of Earth.



We all seek the lowest, most self-centered base. Period.






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I wouldn't say that there's never been such thing as morality or moral people. There was indeed immorality then, but back then it was not as justified as it is today, with the advent of nihilism, materialism, consumerism, etc. There may be some good people out there today, even in times of chaos.

I must ask, though - what's your objective to the example that I've presented?

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I read the Huffington Post Article that you linked.


Found it quite amusing and creative. I think that is what the article was intended to be.


Your thread and posts here have a lot of merit...if not morality.




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The people in this society known as the "masses", do not care about deeper matters; whether something about Politics, about Philosophy, or about Spirituality. They all care too much more about sports, lust, food, sex, and cheap entertainment that comes from the monstrous machine known as Consumerism.

We might be wary of placing intellectual pursuits such as politics, philosophy and spirituality etc on a pedestal, as if they were higher and more noble than truly essential things like food and sex.

It may be more accurate to say that such intellectual pursuits are the junk food entertainment for a particular flavor of the human mind.

Typically we think of such people as being more intelligent than "the masses" but I think it's more a case of their minds being stuck on the big picture channel, with a built in preference for abstractions. Such a focus is not better or worse than the person who enjoys sports, it's just different. And it takes all kinds to make the world go around.

Be wary of mistaking one's personal taste and preferences for some kind of universal truth.

Bill Wiltrack wrote:.



I read the Huffington Post Article that you linked.


Found it quite amusing and creative. I think that is what the article was intended to be.


Your thread and posts here have a lot of merit...if not morality.

.

I thank you for the consideration of this post. I wouldn't really agree with what you said about that article, though, as those kids who made those answers did'nt seem all too creative, or really that serious or disciplined enough to be educated. It's an unfortunate example of this society collapsing.

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.......................................I understand you.



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Local problem. Don't use the word "society" if you just mean your own society. I see a lot of people who are happy all the time, and some people who are not, but it's completely random and not very useful as a measure for any statistic.

The Voice of Time wrote:Local problem. Don't use the word "society" if you just mean your own society. I see a lot of people who are happy all the time, and some people who are not, but it's completely random and not very useful as a measure for any statistic.

It is definitely not a local problem, especially where I'm at in the United States. None of these problems are random, but are in fact the result of brainwashing and indoctrination from the educational institutions, and from the mass media that promotes consumerism as a way of happiness. They party all the time, do drugs and drink alchohol, listen to crap music, watch crap TV, and consume crap things. They have no real concept of morals or anything that is deeper beyond what they've been brought up in. This is something that obviously anyone can observe, and that anyone can research; it is easy to see that this society - the global society, is crumbling, and it's what the elites want in order to build their global empire.

No. That's just a bunch of paranoia and nothing you can "know" with any certainty what so ever, your thoughts are pure speculation and not worth consideration without solid statistical proof that strongly correlates your assumption with your conclusion.

People's moral is local to their lives, and depends upon a variety of factors. How much do they like and are able to enjoy their job? In Norway a strong labour union have for many years fought and been victorious in instituting policies, and for many years the business arena have worked, and that's not just in Norway, it has worked on building good business cultures and human resources management which is not just about the effectiveness of the business but also the welfare of the employee.

How well are their social lives outside of work? Friends, family, close friends, romantic relations? Do they have some, and are they able to capitalize on those relations, with sharing their experiences, sharing their dreams, sharing confidences, sharing joys and getting and giving good experiences from them?

Do they have goals in life that they are able to and wants to pursue? Are they facing severe resistance in those goals? Are they able to progress and feel progress towards their goals? Do they have certainty in themselves and the value of their goal?

Do they experience a nourishing daily life? Is it balanced and dependable? Do they have comforts (ergonomics, emotional, psychological, health-based, beauty, etc.) to elevate their immediate presence in the world?

I think you'll find that most people are quite mixed, and it totally depends upon the time of their life, and the community they live in. I live in the next wealthiest country in the world with access to plenty of the above, with lots of work being done towards all of it to better people's lives... but maybe I'm part of "the elite"?

The Voice of Time wrote:No. That's just a bunch of paranoia and nothing you can "know" with any certainty what so ever, your thoughts are pure speculation and not worth consideration without solid statistical proof that strongly correlates your assumption with your conclusion.

If we cannot trust our thoughts, then how would we be able to determine what's right and true from what's wrong and what's lies? Also, why just trust statistics when you can, and should also, read and research on the deeper side of things and why people act the way they do in this era?

The Voice of Time wrote: People's moral is local to their lives, and depends upon a variety of factors. How much do they like and are able to enjoy their job? In Norway a strong labour union have for many years fought and been victorious in instituting policies, and for many years the business arena have worked, and that's not just in Norway, it has worked on building good business cultures and human resources management which is not just about the effectiveness of the business but also the welfare of the employee.

[*] Unemployment rate is as high as around 20 to 25% percent in America: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_da ... ent-charts
[*] Corporations today have a major stronghold on products and economic resources. Now only are they dominating the market as the smaller businesses are often struggling now days, but they also have power as Multinational corporations.
[*] The Middle Class is declining, with the income of being less than 46% and labor unions in America are as low as 11.6%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 48543.html

The Voice of Time wrote: How well are their social lives outside of work? Friends, family, close friends, romantic relations? Do they have some, and are they able to capitalize on those relations, with sharing their experiences, sharing their dreams, sharing confidences, sharing joys and getting and giving good experiences from them?

[*] The divorce rate is more than 50% in America. http://dailyinfographic.com/divorce-in- ... nfographic
[*] The young people in America are attracted to pop culture; listening to Eminem, Lil Wayne; watching American Idol and watching sports. Many of them are on Twitter and Facebook, where there's that much drama as there is in school, with the fighting, the teasing, the low mentality and morality in America with the youth. They care more about that than they care about actually learning things in Science, History, Math, and Literature; let alone learn philosophy.

The Voice of Time wrote: Do they have goals in life that they are able to and wants to pursue? Are they facing severe resistance in those goals? Are they able to progress and feel progress towards their goals? Do they have certainty in themselves and the value of their goal?

[*] Everyone has goals; but not all of them are dedicated to learning or dedicated to reaching goals. Many of them, are uninterested in learning deeper things; they'd rather live the life of consumerism than to actually strive for things.

The Voice of Time wrote: Do they experience a nourishing daily life? Is it balanced and dependable? Do they have comforts (ergonomics, emotional, psychological, health-based, beauty, etc.) to elevate their immediate presence in the world?

[*] The Mass Media is controlled by as few as 4 corporations (back in 2004): Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Bertelsmann, and Viacom.
[*] The food supply in America is tainted by GMOs and other harsh chemicals; the water is contaminated with more than 8,000 toxins (as I have read from a 2010 issue of Scientific American bought years back), including sodium fluoride. I'd go on and on about this, but then again, I'm repeating myself.

WanderingLands wrote:If we cannot trust our thoughts, then how would we be able to determine what's right and true from what's wrong and what's lies?

Thoughts are complexes, and some parts of the complexes you can trust and some you can't. That's why we have logic, morality, epistemology, and so forth... to challenge our thinking into taking on a more reliable content and deal with waste.

WanderingLands wrote:Also, why just trust statistics when you can, and should also, read and research on the deeper side of things and why people act the way they do in this era?

This has no meaning. You are talking cryptically.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] Unemployment rate is as high as around 20 to 25% percent in America: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_da ... ent-charts

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... yment-rate

This one disagrees with you. Why should I believe your first one instead? And how likely do you really think it is that every fourth American is unemployed? That's a ridiculously high amount, and pretty unimaginable. I don't live in the US, but I'd much sooner believe my own link that your link.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] Corporations today have a major stronghold on products and economic resources. Now only are they dominating the market as the smaller businesses are often struggling now days, but they also have power as Multinational corporations.

Small businesses are struggling? Which world are you living in? There's new companies spawning all the time with success all the time, and plenty of small companies thrive. In Norway, the last 20 years for instance has seen a huge surge of new telecom companies that are quite small and still manage to thrive. Some sectors consolidate into a few actors because they are less profitable and therefore require more central control, some others however thrive because they are profitable and manage to generate and work well as small companies.

Norway, Germany, and so forth, are countries that consist hugely of small companies running and keeping the economy stable. If you make a company in a profitable sector or manage to make working in a sector more profitable, you should be able to fully endure as a small company, and even thrive. Your perspective seems again very local to your life and your community, and maybe your country, although the US is a diverse country and I would be sceptical to treat it all as one and the same.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] The Middle Class is declining, with the income of being less than 46% and labor unions in America are as low as 11.6%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/1 ... 48543.html

Middle class in Norway is richer than ever and quite big with yearly growth. The problem is not one that my own country experiences a lot of.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] The divorce rate is more than 50% in America. http://dailyinfographic.com/divorce-in- ... nfographic

But divorcing doesn't mean people live a worse off life ^^ People usually divorce because their lives sucks, and they want to get a new one. I would presume they manage to get a better one in the long run and that it's a good sign and not a bad one.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] The young people in America are attracted to pop culture; listening to Eminem, Lil Wayne; watching American Idol and watching sports.

People have always been like that. Pop culture is just a variation of whatever was big 30, 50 or 100 years ago. American Idol is entertainment and I don't see why we wouldn't want to watch people growing and becoming artists? Not that I like "Idol" (which it's called in Norway), but I can understand why other people do (and it was quite amazing to watch when in the first and only world idol a Norwegian plumber infamous for his not-so-good looks won because of an amazing voice).

WanderingLands wrote:Many of them are on Twitter and Facebook

So am I. Most people on Facebook I know don't really care to do that much drama and usually use Facebook to spread happiness and show how happy they are (but also often to link political stuff that they share to say their opinion, facebook is a very good democratic tool), so again, a local problem.

WanderingLands wrote:where there's that much drama as there is in school, with the fighting, the teasing, the low mentality and morality in America with the youth. They care more about that than they care about actually learning things in Science, History, Math, and Literature; let alone learn philosophy.

People are different, we can't all be school geniuses x) For fucks sake most of the school geniuses are dead boring people! Now about most of what you are saying, that's again a local problem, which might be big in one city, and then the next city doesn't really have it as a very problem.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] Everyone has goals; but not all of them are dedicated to learning or dedicated to reaching goals. Many of them, are uninterested in learning deeper things; they'd rather live the life of consumerism than to actually strive for things.

"Many" is relative, and I can't really determine what you think "many" is supposed to mean. I also think "deeper things" is relative because to one person something can have much more depth than to another person. I'd frown on the depth of a lot of things, because I consider them silly imaginary constructs, and their "depth" nothing more than wishful thinking. But to another person, that "depth" might feel very real. Some people make really deep loving relations for instance, that I'm not intelligent enough to fathom. BUT, they might be stupid as rocks on the finer things of natural science and humaniora... so... who am I to judge?

WanderingLands wrote: [*] The Mass Media is controlled by as few as 4 corporations (back in 2004): Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Bertelsmann, and Viacom.

Controlled? The culture of different countries differ on this matter. Some have a problem where there's a strong suspicion of influence. But I don't really think the influence is that big in my own country. Ownership is more about generating revenue, and for that matter, different parts of the organization will get different funding to do stuff that churns out money. But the journalists, they come from all over the place, and with the internet I can get news in hundreds of different channels and news bureaus, and I do get that. In Norway we have plenty of news sites, and if I want a more international cover I just go Al-Jazeera, or Russia Today (removed that one recently though because of the propaganda war Russia is fighting against Ukraine which makes the channel kind-of filled with garbage), I also use All-Africa once in a while... if I wanted to I could also use The Guardian, Der Spiegel (english version) and so forth. But Al-Jazeera is really the best because they have a lot of very relevant and diversified content on YouTube, and are very good at investigative journalism and giving you a picture of stuff related to human welfare and the world at large. If I wanted local news, there's news bureaus for all sorts of local places (pretty much every place around or above 10 000 people have some kind of newspaper). I really don't see how you can be worried about "control" when there's so much from so many varied places to choose from.

WanderingLands wrote: [*] The food supply in America is tainted by GMOs and other harsh chemicals;

You don't grow anything else than GMOs in a 318 million ppl country? Again, local problem, Norway virtually have no GMOs. Europe also has a very strict regime when it comes to GMO food.

WanderingLands wrote:the water is contaminated with more than 8,000 toxins (as I have read from a 2010 issue of Scientific American bought years back), including sodium fluoride.

You are one of the world's biggest countries and you talk as if there's only one water supply? Norway has dozens if not hundreds of different main water supplies, not to mention all the people who have their own well... so how can America... one of the biggest countries in the world both by population and land size... have 1 water supply?

WanderingLands wrote:I'd go on and on about this, but then again, I'm repeating myself.

Yeah, you are repeating information about America! So my initial criticism still holds... you shouldn't say "society" if you just mean America, or just a limited selection of countries.

The Voice of Time wrote: Thoughts are complexes, and some parts of the complexes you can trust and some you can't. That's why we have logic, morality, epistemology, and so forth... to challenge our thinking into taking on a more reliable content and deal with waste.

The things that you've listed: Logic, Morality, Epistemology, etc., are indeed helpful; but without using intuition or reflecting and examining on them, then how would you know that they're true?

The Voice of Time wrote:

WanderingLands wrote:Also, why just trust statistics when you can, and should also, read and research on the deeper side of things and why people act the way they do in this era?

This has no meaning. You are talking cryptically.

How did my statement regarding statistics have no meaning? Why do you need to rely on statistics to know about the state of this world?

The Voice of Time wrote: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united- ... yment-rate

This one disagrees with you. Why should I believe your first one instead? And how likely do you really think it is that every fourth American is unemployed? That's a ridiculously high amount, and pretty unimaginable. I don't live in the US, but I'd much sooner believe my own link that your link.

Your link is obviously different from mine, but mine is actually more in line in reality when we start to get deeper into the poverty and unemployment rate in America. Here are some statistics gathered from the Feeding America website, regarding the poverty rate back in 2012.

Poverty

In 2012, 46.5 million people (15.0 percent) were in poverty.
In 2012, 26.5 million (13.7 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.
In 2012, 16.1 million (21.8 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
In 2012, 3.9 million (9.1 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.
The overall poverty rate according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure is 16.1%, as compared with the official poverty rate of 15.1%.
Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 49.7 million people living in poverty, 3.1 million more than are represented by the official poverty measure (46.5 million).

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-ame ... stics.aspx#

Seeing that more than 46.5 million people are in poverty, it would make a lot more since that the overall unemployment rate (impoverished or temporarily unemployed) would be at around 25%, and not at around 6% that your link proposes.

The Voice of Time wrote: Small businesses are struggling? Which world are you living in? There's new companies spawning all the time with success all the time, and plenty of small companies thrive. In Norway, the last 20 years for instance has seen a huge surge of new telecom companies that are quite small and still manage to thrive. Some sectors consolidate into a few actors because they are less profitable and therefore require more central control, some others however thrive because they are profitable and manage to generate and work well as small companies.

Norway, Germany, and so forth, are countries that consist hugely of small companies running and keeping the economy stable. If you make a company in a profitable sector or manage to make working in a sector more profitable, you should be able to fully endure as a small company, and even thrive. Your perspective seems again very local to your life and your community, and maybe your country, although the US is a diverse country and I would be sceptical to treat it all as one and the same.

[...]

You are one of the world's biggest countries and you talk as if there's only one water supply? Norway has dozens if not hundreds of different main water supplies, not to mention all the people who have their own well... so how can America... one of the biggest countries in the world both by population and land size... have 1 water supply?

[...]

Middle class in Norway is richer than ever and quite big with yearly growth. The problem is not one that my own country experiences a lot of.

Since you've repeatedly mentioned Norway, I shall lump your statements about it and put it in one big quote..

Though I acknowledge that your country is indeed in many aspects richer than that of America, I would like to point out that Norway's foreign debt is $657 billion; the Norwegian oil money is, according to financial analyst Michael Hudson, "invested mainly in the unstable economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, or in volatile real estate in the West".

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... il-wealth/

This may be a big problem, with the fact that prices for things are very expensive in Norway, and also the fact that there are less hours put into working, it may actually lead to Norway eating into their savings.

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/ ... =3cd3-a75a

The Voice of Time wrote: But divorcing doesn't mean people live a worse off life ^^ People usually divorce because their lives sucks, and they want to get a new one. I would presume they manage to get a better one in the long run and that it's a good sign and not a bad one.

That is not true when you look more into the article that I have shown you on divorce. Children brought up in a divorced family are twice more likely to drop out of school, become more alienated from their families, and are more likely to have social problems in the long run. It should also be noted that:

* 41% of 1st marriages end up in divorce
* 60% of 2nd marriages end up in divorce
* 73% of 3rd marriages end up in divorce

This means that the more times you're divorced, the worse your marriages are and the more likely you will end up in divorce for each marriage. This means that your statement that "they manage to get a better one in the long run and that it's a good sign and not a bad one" is false.

WanderingLands wrote: People have always been like that. Pop culture is just a variation of whatever was big 30, 50 or 100 years ago. American Idol is entertainment and I don't see why we wouldn't want to watch people growing and becoming artists? Not that I like "Idol" (which it's called in Norway), but I can understand why other people do (and it was quite amazing to watch when in the first and only world idol a Norwegian plumber infamous for his not-so-good looks won because of an amazing voice).

Pop culture and Pop music has absolutely no merit and no creativity, whatsoever. Pop songs, with their short minutes of unoriginal and repetitious melodies, unoriginal lyrics about partying and such, and it's repetitive rhythms are pale in comparison with the more adventurous and more creative music styles of European Classical Music, American Jazz, and other music from around the world.

Popular culture is influenced and promoted by the use of psychological manipulation, disguised in as consumerism and also government propaganda, to control people into believing the libertine world view that is promoted from the Capitalist ideology. This goes back to psychologists like Sigmund Freud, and his distant nephew Edward Bernays, who was the founder of Public Relations and laid the groundwork of how the consumerist ideology exemplified in America would operate.

A good film on this, for starters, would be watching a film called, Century of the Self.

http://vimeo.com/67977038

Another interesting documentary called, Human Resources: Social Engineering In The 20th Century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp1hi2lHoRU

The Voice of Time wrote: So am I. Most people on Facebook I know don't really care to do that much drama and usually use Facebook to spread happiness and show how happy they are (but also often to link political stuff that they share to say their opinion, facebook is a very good democratic tool), so again, a local problem.

Facebook is nothing more than a tool to spy on people, as you can view these articles.

https://www.google.com/#q=facebook+spying+on+people

The Voice of Time wrote: People are different, we can't all be school geniuses x) For fucks sake most of the school geniuses are dead boring people! Now about most of what you are saying, that's again a local problem, which might be big in one city, and then the next city doesn't really have it as a very problem.

So how are school geniuses "dead boring people"? Without the urge to want to learn about philosophy, math, science, writing, and history, people end up dumbed down, just like the current situation we're in. That link on the first post of this thread (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/2 ... 14168.html) is just one example of the deliberate dumbing down of people in compulsory school institutions. The United States has low test scores, which is very reflective of how dumb people have become.

https://www.google.com/#q=low+test+scor ... ted+states

The Voice of Time wrote: Controlled? The culture of different countries differ on this matter. Some have a problem where there's a strong suspicion of influence. But I don't really think the influence is that big in my own country. Ownership is more about generating revenue, and for that matter, different parts of the organization will get different funding to do stuff that churns out money. But the journalists, they come from all over the place, and with the internet I can get news in hundreds of different channels and news bureaus, and I do get that. In Norway we have plenty of news sites, and if I want a more international cover I just go Al-Jazeera, or Russia Today (removed that one recently though because of the propaganda war Russia is fighting against Ukraine which makes the channel kind-of filled with garbage), I also use All-Africa once in a while... if I wanted to I could also use The Guardian, Der Spiegel (english version) and so forth. But Al-Jazeera is really the best because they have a lot of very relevant and diversified content on YouTube, and are very good at investigative journalism and giving you a picture of stuff related to human welfare and the world at large. If I wanted local news, there's news bureaus for all sorts of local places (pretty much every place around or above 10 000 people have some kind of newspaper). I really don't see how you can be worried about "control" when there's so much from so many varied places to choose from.

* Al-Jazeera is obvious propaganda. It was chief in promoting fake Osama bin Laden tapes; has supported the United States invasion of Libya, and has supported U.S. intervention in Syria.
* Russia Today is also propaganda (promoting Alex Jones, Max Kaiser, and also supporting Occupy Wall Street which was a hack movement), although I am indeed critical about the situation going on between Russia and the Ukraine, and I must say that the United States is using this to spark more conflict for more control of resources.

Overall, though, I do use news sources when it comes to current events. But I am very critical about the stuff that they put out, and so that's why I look into other things (PDF books online and looking into historical backgrounds, mainly, to see how it's reflecting today).

WanderingLands wrote: The things that you've listed: Logic, Morality, Epistemology, etc., are indeed helpful; but without using intuition or reflecting and examining on them, then how would you know that they're true?

By using them x) And there's no particular reason to doubt them just out of spite, that's reserved for the segment of the population that can best use their time philosophizing. Like me. The rest just have to trust that it works, and try it out, and if it doesn't work, they can file a complain and get philosopher service support xD

Basically. We know that something is true, because it serves a function, and that functions plays out well. Anything else is speculation. The way our minds work with associations, we often use speculation though to make it easier to progress, by speculating on things we find fairly reliable. Like if we have a parent, and the parent is very reliable, we would rather do something new with that parent, although we don't know how the parent is going to react, because the parent we find to be generally reliable, and better to use than for instance a total stranger on the street, which might be better in that situation, but parent is a more predictable source of reliability, and so we are careful with our experimentations and speculations about the world.

WanderingLands wrote:How did my statement regarding statistics have no meaning? Why do you need to rely on statistics to know about the state of this world?

Uhm, because I don't see the world all at once, and neither have the time, so a bureau of statisticians are better capable at doing than little me? It's kind of obvious. The sentence has no meaning because, as I said, you were cryptic.

Part 1: "deeper side of things", part 2 "and why people act the way they do in this era".

Both parts have no definitions. What's "people act the way the do in this era?" An era is a long time-span... which era? The modern era? The computer era? The internet era? The auto-mobile era? We are in all those at the same time, but they start at different times... the modern era starts in the 18th century for instance and quite different from the internet era which starts mid 90ies.

Part 1 I have absolutely no idea what is supposed to mean... what are "deeper side of things"? You mean just more information? You mean some information you consider more deep than other... in which case, what information?

WanderingLands wrote:Your link is obviously different from mine, but mine is actually more in line in reality when we start to get deeper into the poverty and unemployment rate in America. Here are some statistics gathered from the Feeding America website, regarding the poverty rate back in 2012.

Poverty

In 2012, 46.5 million people (15.0 percent) were in poverty.
In 2012, 26.5 million (13.7 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.
In 2012, 16.1 million (21.8 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
In 2012, 3.9 million (9.1 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.
The overall poverty rate according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure is 16.1%, as compared with the official poverty rate of 15.1%.
Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 49.7 million people living in poverty, 3.1 million more than are represented by the official poverty measure (46.5 million).

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-ame ... stics.aspx#

Seeing that more than 46.5 million people are in poverty, it would make a lot more since that the overall unemployment rate (impoverished or temporarily unemployed) would be at around 25%, and not at around 6% that your link proposes.

That's not unemployment, so you were deceptive about that. About poverty I have nothing to say except poor Americans... still local.

WanderingLands wrote:Since you've repeatedly mentioned Norway, I shall lump your statements about it and put it in one big quote..

Though I acknowledge that your country is indeed in many aspects richer than that of America, I would like to point out that Norway's foreign debt is $657 billion; the Norwegian oil money is, according to financial analyst Michael Hudson, "invested mainly in the unstable economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, or in volatile real estate in the West".

According to these bureaus that's not really a concern:

Standard & Poor's:
AAA (Domestic)
AAA (Foreign)
AAA (T&C Assessment)
Outlook: Stable

Moody's:
Aaa
Outlook: Stable

Fitch:
AAA
Outlook: Stable

You mistake debt for a bad thing, when in fact debt is the allocation of capital, which means Norway is receiving money from other countries, because those countries won't invest in their own countries. Norway has no deficit, it has one of the world's biggest surpluses, especially per capita income surplus. Unlike many other countries, which uses debt to finance deficits, Norway uses it for this reason: http://www.norges-bank.no/en/price-stab ... ment-debt/

WanderingLands wrote:Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... il-wealth/

This may be a big problem, with the fact that prices for things are very expensive in Norway, and also the fact that there are less hours put into working, it may actually lead to Norway eating into their savings.

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/ ... =3cd3-a75a

That's speculation. It's not based on any reasonable presumption. The forecasts for the Norwegian economy is that it's going to remain stable, and largely unaffected by crisis... for instance the financial crisis only saw Norway strengthened while its southern and western cousins failed. As a Norwegian I don't really think things are that expensive as foreigners perceive them to be, except perhaps petrol and McDonalds... but I don't really see why expensive McDonalds or petrol is a bad thing? The first is shitty food, the second destroys my local environment. The high prices is doesn't really affect the ability to live good lives, so it's hard to see how it can be much of a bad thing? I mean, I'm unemployed, no parents, and I have quite a lot of luxuries in my life. If I hadn't spent so much on expensive flight tickets (putting me in a lot of debt) I might even had afforded to buy my own dream pc!

WanderingLands wrote: That is not true when you look more into the article that I have shown you on divorce. Children brought up in a divorced family are twice more likely to drop out of school, become more alienated from their families, and are more likely to have social problems in the long run. It should also be noted that:

* 41% of 1st marriages end up in divorce
* 60% of 2nd marriages end up in divorce
* 73% of 3rd marriages end up in divorce

This means that the more times you're divorced, the worse your marriages are and the more likely you will end up in divorce for each marriage. This means that your statement that "they manage to get a better one in the long run and that it's a good sign and not a bad one" is false.

Good arguments, and I want to believe you, but after you gave me a four-times wrong answer the last time, I have a hard time believing you, either because of blank wrongness or because of deceptive misrepresentation of data. That said, even if your statistics are true, what I do not believe is that divorce is the source of the drop-out. I rather think it is the fact that the people in the marriage are having serious problems, that causes everything to go to hell. People who marry jackasses for instance, and then they get a baby and the baby gets a jackass father who ruins the baby's life with his behaviour, and so forth.

As for 3rd marriages, when you get that many marriages I think you are addicted to marriage, and maybe should start considering not to marry until you find somebody really special. The person is likely not taking marriage very seriously. So I'll rephrase myself, to saying that it depends upon the frequency and nature of the divorce, but I can't take back all of it because the idea that some person should stay with a bad person is so unthinkable that they'll certainly will have to divorce and get rid of that bad person. But again, if it's a trivializing of marriage, that's not a good thing.

WanderingLands wrote:Pop culture and Pop music has absolutely no merit and no creativity, whatsoever. Pop songs, with their short minutes of unoriginal and repetitious melodies, unoriginal lyrics about partying and such, and it's repetitive rhythms are pale in comparison with the more adventurous and more creative music styles of European Classical Music, American Jazz, and other music from around the world.

That's completely your opinion. Songs are about giving people a good feeling, whether it's comfort, or encouragement, or happiness, or just "adding the spice" to something you already feel. When people listen to stuff, it's to give them a good feeling. If it gives them a good feeling, it has merits, definitely. Party music has merit when it encourages people to participate in a party... and I tell you, it works splendidly, I know by experience. Personally a strong fan of Lady Gaga and Shakira and danced a lot to both of them. As for creativity, I experience new forms of music all the time, so I have no idea what you are talking about. There might be a lot of similar music, but then again there is a lot of music out there, and not difficult to find a new thing if you want to, there's a lot of talent and diversity which has been encouraged by the development of the internet. Facebook helps me to find that music for instance, another great thing about Facebook. You seem completely out of touch with your time... maybe you should try taking a greater interest in it, so you can learn to enjoy its finesse?

WanderingLands wrote:Popular culture is influenced and promoted by the use of psychological manipulation, disguised in as consumerism and also government propaganda, to control people into believing the libertine world view that is promoted from the Capitalist ideology. This goes back to psychologists like Sigmund Freud, and his distant nephew Edward Bernays, who was the founder of Public Relations and laid the groundwork of how the consumerist ideology exemplified in America would operate.

A good film on this, for starters, would be watching a film called, Century of the Self.

http://vimeo.com/67977038

Another interesting documentary called, Human Resources: Social Engineering In The 20th Century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp1hi2lHoRU

Lots of lots of paranoia. If I didn't enjoy consuming popular culture... I wouldn't had done so. No government or company is gonna change that.

WanderingLands wrote:Facebook is nothing more than a tool to spy on people, as you can view these articles.

https://www.google.com/#q=facebook+spying+on+people

Fine by me, I have nothing to hide, so I don't care x)

WanderingLands wrote:So how are school geniuses "dead boring people"? Without the urge to want to learn about philosophy, math, science, writing, and history, people end up dumbed down, just like the current situation we're in. That link on the first post of this thread (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/2 ... 14168.html) is just one example of the deliberate dumbing down of people in compulsory school institutions. The United States has low test scores, which is very reflective of how dumb people have become.

https://www.google.com/#q=low+test+scor ... ted+states

Localized problem (and not very reflective of human welfare, as one of the best ranked countries in the world, South Korea, suffers heavily from stress-related problems in children because of it). Also, are you saying that tests is the measure of a human's worth? Because I don't like tests, neither does my political party in Norway (The Socialist Left Party), we are very against reducing people to a mere number. Humans are complex beings which require individual treatment and situations where they can get the best out of their own abilities. Somebody who is totally bad at math, can still become a genius scientist. So too with somebody who is really bad at history, can still become a genius mathematician... one should treat humans as humans, and not as numbers.

WanderingLands wrote: * Al-Jazeera is obvious propaganda. It was chief in promoting fake Osama bin Laden tapes; has supported the United States invasion of Libya, and has supported U.S. intervention in Syria.

Al Jazeera English doesn't "support" anyone, it shows the news. And what does "promote" fake Osama bin Laden tapes mean? A news network doesn't have to be right in every instance. If you mean they "showed" the tapes, that's not promoting, that's showing the news, which is the job of a news corporation.

WanderingLands wrote: * Russia Today is also propaganda (promoting Alex Jones, Max Kaiser, and also supporting Occupy Wall Street which was a hack movement), although I am indeed critical about the situation going on between Russia and the Ukraine, and I must say that the United States is using this to spark more conflict for more control of resources.

The thing about Russia Today is that it's (was) great as a tool to find alternative views on subjects, somebody who can challenge western perspectives, we need that, we need somebody who really tries. The problem with the Ukrainian crisis was that it simply became too much.

WanderingLands wrote:Overall, though, I do use news sources when it comes to current events. But I am very critical about the stuff that they put out, and so that's why I look into other things (PDF books online and looking into historical backgrounds, mainly, to see how it's reflecting today).

Okay, you still seem to be overly eager to believe or support the alternative though, so I'm very suspicious that you're just not having a bias and looking for self-confirmation on your bias.

WanderingLands wrote:For the past few months, I have noticed, and I have been noticing continually the complete low morality among many people that I encounter every day. I've been consciously aware of this a lot more, ever since when I was in a period of depression and alienation among other peoples (which took place last Winter). Even though I have known this, ever since I've began to tangle myself out that depressive state that I've been in for some time in Winter and before that, and so started to improve on myself; it is because of this turn in my life that I just became most aware of this society's waste.

The people in this society known as the "masses", do not care about deeper matters; whether something about Politics, about Philosophy, or about Spirituality. They all care too much more about sports, lust, food, sex, and cheap entertainment that comes from the monstrous machine known as Consumerism. It is obvious that this mentality that's being promoted in this society, in conjunction with the education system and government, is horribly indoctrinating children into slavish passive surfs who don't know things outside of this junk culture.

Here's one example. A few days ago, I found a post on Huffington Post, where children in various schools were making wrong answers but still got an A for effort. The fact that this post was encouraging it shows the sheer idiocy of what we've become.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/2 ... 14168.html

Has anyone been noticing or articulating the same problems that I have? Or is it just me?

Its not you, count me in. Your pain has led you to make changes in your life.
God allows pain for that purpose.
I went through hell and it took that to save me from my self destructive ways
I am glad you came to that realization too.