Toughest Philosophical Questions

How can we change the world from being dominantly controlled by Psychopaths to being more empathetically led ?

Not exactly how I see it but it is a view point.

Any old man who defends his interests, saying he is defending his principles, by sending young men off to die in war is a functional, if not clinical, psychopath.

Any old man who defends his interests, saying he is defending his principles, by sending young men off to die in war is a functional, if not clinical, psychopath.

Right you are, jl.

Obama increased the US soldiers in Afghanistan by 50,000. Is he one of those psychopaths?

Isn't this also inclusive of what we try to learn from philosophical questions and answers about our politics and politicians?

As far as his role as president is concerned, functional psychopathy is required at times. He is clearly NOT a clinical psychopath like Cheney.
But I'll bet you and I would not want to be president if only for that reason.

You're right; I've never had any desire to be a politician at any level, but I've stayed engaged with my representatives and the president by my letters and emails.

Here's one from Senator Seymour in 1992.

I would suggest that all your empiricism is based upon the axiom of cause and effect, that one thing leads to another just as one deduction follows from another... The problem is that even of the subjects we know the most of, we know quite little... Our forms, even of the physical world, are only anlogies; though they are the knowledge we have, which is to say: judgments.... The real problem with all true forms is that they do not work when we move from the finite world to the infinite....What I would call moral forms, and some one like Kant may call transendent concepts, which are not concepts at all, because they do not represent real knowledge or valid judgment are useless for anything other than reflecting our reflections back onto ourselves, like earthshine seen on the dark side of the moon...

Materialism, like idealism is a philosophical issue of human existence... When we consider how idealistic have been the war horses and mass murderers of modern times; we can see what a danger it is to thought, and to life...Materialism as we are most familier with it, as communism has not in the least been free of idealism... It is only so much horsehit people believe, that the ideal economy will result in the ideal human being... Economies have always been a reflection of the people who made them, and not much more... Certainly, an economy that considers the value of nothing and the price of everything is ideal as well, and all the more foolish when it is allowed to determine the course of government in the belief that virtue will flow out of the free expression of life's greatest vice: Greed...

Principals are ideals, and in our society, self interest is the highest principal just as the individual self is the highest ideal... No one can exist apart from their society, but we elevate to the status of gods all who act as though humanity were only fiction, and only their lives were real... If they alone were psychopaths we might easily squash them... It is because we have bought into the same nonsense that our nonsense is together feasable...

Certainly; if you do what is right in front of the very people who have elected you to do wrong in their names, then your days in office are numbered... You cannot divide the immorallity of leaders from the demoralization of the people. and it is nearly impossible to arrive at a moral and free society out of the wreakage of an immoral society...

I agree; trying to rationalize decisions made by our president that ends up killing innocent men, women, and children is immoral no matter how one wishes to justify it. It seems only to matter when we are personally affected by such decisions; when another nation attacks us, and kills tens of thousands of our family and friends.

You do realise the president is a puppet. Almost all leaders in today's world are. They're addicted to where the money is and have been for quite some time. Follow the money trail and see for yourself...

If we were a true nation, then it would be quite natural for all the people to feel all the pain and every slight from foreigners that only a few experience first hand... We do not war for such insignificance... We war for economic interests, and always have, usually blundering into it... We have won our last major conflict... If it ever again comes to an outright war we will have to resort to thermonuclear weapons because our economy has exhausted us, and many peoples of the world, and broken us financially... And where has the money gone??? When our rich got rich enough that they did not want to work they sold out for shares in international capitalism... We still have a lot of bankers and clerks, but the hands on capitalists of a hundred years ago have left with our capital, or control only so much intellectual property... When we pay interest; to whom do we pay it??? Interest is bleeding this place and even the whole government which should be able to exist on revenue... They lend at low rates to bankers and bankers loan to them at high rates, and we have shipped so much of our capital and production abroad and run trade deficits for so long that foreign countries now have the very money we have given them to loan here, and further bleed us...Wht ever happened to pay as you go??? Well; what happened is, if joe workingman does not have enough to pay his bills, and cannot support himself on wages, then he must have credit... And the same is true of the government; that if it cannot find the political will to tax the people with the money, it must borrow from those who have everbody's money...In the whole period of capitalism we can count on one hand those who could consistently think rationally and act rationally; and yet these are the power behind the political parties and the government... They cannot even act in their own best interest, and yet they are allowed to run the whole of society into the toilet, and to decide for what we will war...The people are immoral because they ape the immorality at the top... We war for nothing more than the fact that war is a fantastic method of exchanging public debt for private wealth; and when it is said and done our soldiers lie dead and unmourned, and those who have borne the worst of violence are left alone, unsupported to suffer it and deal with it... Our enemies are not half way around the world... Our enemies are the rich and the richwannabees... The madmen are in charge of the asylum...

It does not matter what people say... First came the act... We stole this land from natives and king... Should we now feel surpised to find it stolen from us??? The democracy, the equality, the liberty, and the justice that was promised to this people to make them fight their king was put forever beyond their reach with the constitution, and it has only grown worse with time... Most of those who made the constitution would have welcomed the direct influence of wealth and wealthy in our elections... Count your votes as you will; but money does not talk so much as it swears, and it really curses the political process... Money buys deafness for the politician, so he can no longer hear the cries of poverty, desparation, and frustration from the voters... What is good for general motors or the bank is what is thought good for America... This sublime situation for the rich is but a short step to the ridiculous; and most of us recognize in some way or another, that that step is past, and there is no going back... The rich own the government... The rich own the world... They will soon destroy the meaning of wealth as honor; and t print infamy on every dollar bill..

What do you all think of Perter Joseph's ideas about fixing society's problems?
I think that many of his views are good but I am sure that I would not agree with all of them.

I like what your saying Fido... It reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister about money. I was trying to think of something that would replace value on materials but I kept going around in circles. There may be more people with more things than those with less things etc.. So what I'm asking is can humans really devoid themselves of value on materials, can anyone be happy working for nothing? (I know that sounds stupid, but can such a system work?)

I do not know that such a shociety can be recreated in modern times though there are many honor societies still alive in the world where people work for honor rather than money; but where money is dear, honor is cheap... Where honor is dear, money is rare, and people must be able to trust... From my experience, even when people are relatively well paid; if they are not working for something other than money the money is never enough... Most people do well what they enjoy, and enjoy what they do well and to this they give the chief of all their days...A lot of elements of modern society make the alienation of labor value possible... When you restrict a person to a part of a process that is meaningless, it is nothing for the person to sell their meaningless labor time for little... If a person had a part of the whole process, they could easier see the value of the whole and demand a fair portion... We do meaningless repetative tasks knowing we could be replaced by trained monkeys, and end up working for peanuts; and worse, our meaningless tasks rob meaning from our own lives... Life is time, and time is all we have; but when eight hours or more of our every day is spent in denial of our selves, our desires and dreams; that is time we spend wishing away life until after so many years we have nothing to show for it but pitiful old age... Our lives are spent giving value we never see, and because we do not see the value in what we do, we hurry on our hours that are all we will ever know of life... We work harder and longer than savages ever did with little more to show for it, less happiness, and more worries... We have traded danger, adventure, and community for insanity... Can we ever go back???

There's an interesting article in this morning's newspaper about factories rehiring workers, but a much lower wage - $10 to $15/hour. They say it's necessary to compete with lower labor cost countries such as China, and still keep their products competitive in the world marketplace.

I think this trend is here to stay for several decades, because we're far from full employment.

i am god and your cry out to me in horrar WHY GOD WHY when all i wanted was for you to be and love to be as i do but in your creation being has become.