This has been an eventful couple of weeks for my family. My wife had a sudden, serious flare-up of infection caused by a very painful kidney stone blockage.
The ER MDs pretty quickly discovered the problem (Ambulance to the ER happened on a late Sunday night, of course) and began treatment. In a couple of days, infection had subsided enough for placement of a stent (a two-foot long stent!) and relief. A week later the surgeon was able to remove both the stone (a big one - 6-7mm) and the stent in one fairly short procedure. He was concerned about the possibility of stent replacement and laser surgery, but that didn't have to happen. She was home, very relieved, without pain and resting within an hour after the surgery.
She'll be 82 on Thursday.

This current discussion on Socrates_Cafe is a controversial one.
Generosity is IMHO, generally unselfish.
Charity, on the other hand, may be for selfish reasons; mostly to enhance your self-esteem or social prestige - but for your own personal reasons and not because of some altruistic love or concern for others. Of course there are unselfish and altruistic people but they probably don't make up the majority of chartable contributers.
Generosity - how much of yourself you choose to contribute in your efforts to help others - is a much better mark of unselfishness, particularly if it is done with no expectations of recognition or "payback".
For example, would ,or do, you make charitable monetary contributions even though you don't deduct them from your IRS return?

I tend to be fairly pessimistic about our economy. that's not a new thing with me; twenty five years ago I got worried about the stock market and shifted all my investments to muni bond funds and fixed annuities so missed the big market run-up - somehow or other I still managed to end up ahead, but that's another story.
I see our economy beginning to hiccup itself into a major slide. Even though the stock markets may still occasionally rally, the basic U.S. and World economies seem poised to dive into a major collapse. Our fairly-cheap-energy driven economy no longer has the basic underpinning (cheap oil and coal) it is used to, is showing signs of strain, and things ain't going to get better anytime soon.
Philosophically, we can adopt the attitude of the stoics (cultivate our own garden and don't fret over what you can't change) or we can look for new ways to overcome our personal economic problems. "Living Green" will probably take on a whole new meaning and become synonymous with "living frugally". As we run out of pollutants the world may begin to cleanse itself but many of us whose lifestyles are based on polluting are going to have a hard time of it.
Attitudes will have to change and this change will be forced on the unwilling by harsh reality. Mental attitudes will go a long way toward creating a successful life in hard times. Optimism will get you a lot further than anger.
I'm old enough to actually remember the great depression (1929-39). Nobody I remember had very much, but they seemed to get along better. There was a rather remarkable change in politician's attitudes which we may see again.
What's your attitude toward the impending economic change?

The most dangerous type of question is that which opens the door to doubt and change.
"Why do we live/believe/act/think/do things this way?"
The change and doubt engendered by such a question inevitably leads to an uncertain future. Since questions of this sort are the bedrock of human curiosity and have been asked since the first proto-human picked up a stick and wondered what to do with it; we have been bedeviled by the results.
Wrong decisions can and often do lead to disaster, but quick-thinking humans just as often use change as a road to improvement, sometimes even making a success of the disastrous situations. Indeed, change is the road to improvement.
The more fundamental the question, the more fundamental the change, the more fundamental the improvement (or the more serious the disaster). Once the step toward change has been taken, there is no turning back as the change itself becomes part of the past and colors any retroactive steps we might try to take. That's why the reactionary's plea to return to the "Good Old Days" never succeeds.
What's the best way to avoid the pitfalls of change?

Silence is a popular entry this week on Socrates_Cafe; here's my shout about it.
Silence can be regarded several ways: Physical lack of any sound; Social refusal to comment; Philosophical rejection of an idea; Intellectual lack of understanding; and so on.
As far as physical silence goes, I am personally unable to experience this - for most of my life I have had Meniere's Disease, a peculiar affliction of the inner ear(s) which results in bouts of extreme dizziness, nausea and constant tinnitus in my case a background clamor which sounds like a tree full of cicadas - all the time. Fortunately the dizzy/nausea problem can be controlled by drugs and isn't constant, but the sound goes on... it's what is supposed to have driven Van Gogh to cut his ear off.
Humans very seldom experience total silence - there is almost no place on earth where this occurs and even in such conditions there is enough internal thumping and gurgling to keep us sane. We seem, as with most animals, to be very much bothered by silence. A sudden silence in the woods will alert every animal, as it predicates some kind of possible danger. A sudden silence in a conversation will make most involved hasten to fill the void. A standard technique used in interrogation is simply to remain silent and allow the student... er, prisoner to fill it.
On the other hand, most humans find periods of relative silence to be soothing, refreshing, and desirable. Most of us find it easier to tune out a distraction if we don't have to hear it - even though we still see it - hence mute buttons on TVs.
How much sound can you endure?

At this, the mid-point of a long and tiring political season, I think it might be a good idea to sum up our feelings about the nature and practice of Politics.

Politics is an idea as old as humankind - it is, simply put, The organization and management of the government of any society or group. Those engaged or interested in this practice are politicians and such people have a very important and difficult roll in our society. The politician who has been given political power in America has to attempt to satisfy, or at least not antagonize, many groups of Americans with wildly different opinions about the roll of government, its direction, and its policies. This is not an easy task, and as the politician's world of responsibility gets larger it becomes more and more difficult, if not almost impossible.

The local city councilman has enough trouble satisfying conflicting interests, this problem only increases at the county and state levels and at the national level the President can only govern effectivly if he/she has the support of at least a large minority of the citizens at least part of the time.

The desire to take on this difficult office usually resides in only the most self-confident and dedicated of those who are involved in the political process. Our process of selecting candidates soon weeds out those without experience or the backing of considerable numbers of supporters. The remaining candidates try to attract financing and less interested voters by stating their ideals and hopes as well as declaring how they will benefit those voters if they are elected. This is all pretty obvious and I'm sure any readers here will have been bombarded with political ads and promises to the point of nausea.

I would think any political candidate worthy of being elected President would be fully experienced in the political process and would be thoroughly aware of both the powers and the limitations of that office. I think that experience and service would be considered as important as goals and ideals, but such is sometimes not the case. Many voters seem to think NOT having experience is desirable and some candidates proudly trumpet their "outsider" status.

While being an inspirational stump speaker is a necessary talent for any politician, it is no more important than a candidate's race, gender, or military background; and none of these is anywhere near as important as a candidate's experience and political ability.

What do you think the most important criteria for selecting a President of the U.S. - or indeed for any political office - should be?

What are the moral and practical implications of the religious aspects of the current U.S. political campaigns?

America has a tradition of religious and political intertwining as old as our country's history. The very first European settlements north of Mexico were those of the French Huguenots in South Carolina and Florida in the early 1560's. They were quickly followed by the Spanish who slaughtered them (in the name of religion and Spanish political authority) after founding the first permanent settlement (at St. Augustine) in 1565.
Most of the original thirteen colonies who revolted against England in 1776 were peopled by religious and political dissenters - some as in the case of Rhode Island and Connecticut, by dissenters from the Puritan dissenters themselves.
These early Americans had two things in common: they were uncommonly religious and they pretty much rejected the idea of a state-sponsored religion. At first the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony governed that colony as a theocracy, but by the time of the revolution, even they had changed their ideas.
Early foreign visitors to the new United States, such as Alexis DeToqueville and Frances Trollop, remarked about American religious fervor and its impact on our way of life. Because we were/are both religious and contentious, the very first amendment to the new constitution starts with the phrase "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
This, along with the later fourteenth amendment (which applied federal law guaranteeing citizen equality to all the states) has been interpreted as strictly separating government and religion - as least officially. Of course this has had little impact on the practical involvement of religious opinion in the government at all levels.
As religious sects and differences proliferated in America, the government has sometimes been called upon to act in the name of religion - but always with some other excuse , as with the political attacks on the Mormons in the 19th century right down to the attack on the Branch Davidians at Waco in 1993. Despite these lapses, Americans have always respected their right to religious freedom (even when overlooking their neighbor's) and have looked askance at direct religious political action. Any such action has been enough to strip that sect from its tax exclusion and this has been enough to keep direct organized church political action at a minimum.
The world-wide movement toward religious fundamentalism which is mostly evidenced here in America by Evangelical sects, had led to demands by the fundamentalists that any political decision be measured by their religious beliefs. We can expect some voters to base their selection on their perception of how the candidate matches their beliefs and how hard the candidate will work to impose those religious standards on all the country.
In a powerful, developed, and populous country this can have serious negative effects both internally and on the world stage.

Do you think suffering improves a person's ethical outlook? How?
This is one of this week's topics at Socrates_Cafe.
"Suffer a little, It's Good for you" is an old idea much admired by many of the world's religions. Suffering does focus the mind, but mostly I think, on how to end your suffering.
Somehow we have gotten the idea that suffering improves people and that those who have suffered are somehow made better by the experience; this in the face of a weight of evidence to the contrary. We even sometimes hold up the sufferers as persons to be venerated or even worshiped. Most religions have a pecular view of the efficacy of suffering - a saint may be made because he/she suffered just a sinners are depicted as suffering eternal torment. If suffering makes you better, why damn the wicked to suffering? Oh, I see, it's to make them better somehow just as suffering punishment in a prison is supposed to somehow improve the criminal. Everyone knows how much most criminal's ethics are improved after incarceration
Perhaps the impact of another's suffering is what's important. To somehow aleviate suffering through help or charitable contribution does make us feel better about ourselves and, if we are public enough about it, admired.
If ethical outlook and action is determined by how strictly we adhere to our moral code, even if we must suffer for it; I suppose the two are related, but it seems to me that a person's ethical outlook is paramount here and is not improved by any discomfort involved. You may suffer for your ethics but I can't see how suffering makes you more ethical.

My wife and I have acted together as sex & relationship counselors in the distant past so I have a little familiarity (not expertise) on this subject.
I have always been at least slightly suspicious of definitions of homosexuality. I think there is a lot of historic and psychological evidence that homosexual behavior is basically learned rather than innate. A simple historic example of this is the juxtaposition of the Hebrew culture along side the ancient Greek culture - the one exclusively hetro and the other widely homo - side by side at the same historic time. I remain unconvinced that if homosexual behavior was caused by genes, such could be the case.
But that's neither here nor there in the practical scheme of things.
I think people look for relationships for emotional reasons - we seem to have an inborn drive to need some kind of companionship, love, and approval quite separate from any biological drive. I think however we meet those needs, as long as they do not harm others, is normal and acceptable. If you, for example, meet and become friends with any other individual and if this friendship grows into true affection and you meet each others need for emotional completeness, that is a very desirable goal. The sex of your partner is really immaterial but there are advantages to having a different-sex partner because then biology adds to the enjoyment.
Unfortunately to many relationships are developed the other way round - biological lust overcoming emotional good sense and many marriages and relationships have foundered horribly when the partners discovered that they didn't really have much in common or even like each other.
In short: look for a like-minded friend first and get into romance later

Which is more important, Liberty or Security?
That's the question this week and it's harder to answer than it seems. The question, as stated, asks for a judgment of the relative importance and there is no doubt that in our western culture, Liberty wins out every time.
New Hampshire has had "Live Free or Die" on its license plates for many years and at least one NewHampshireman got in some trouble because he insisted on the freedom to tape over the message. Apparently the concept doesn't always apply - even in that rock-ribbed state.
Historically, many more people have been willing to give up some of their enforced security for wild and insecure liberty, Including the founders of the United States. Ben Franklin had to warn them that they should at least stick together and not all rush off to do their own thing - hence the United States.
There is a great danger though. In times of stress and uncertainty, citizens are sometimes persuaded to surrender some of their freedom "temporarily" in order to secure a measure of security against some real or imagined danger. There are very few records of any such surrendered liberty being voluntarily restored by government; indeed, more often that surrender more often leads to further demands for "Restrictions necessary for security purposes".
Once that camel has gotten a leg into the tent, it is very difficult to push him out and we now seem to be in that situation.
Any suggestions about how Liberty once lost can be regained?
P.S. Be sure to wear clean sox to the Airport.

1. What factors make something so pleasing that we call it BEAUTIFUL?
That’s Socrates_Cafe's question this week. A topic which has apparently excited humans since (or before) they became human.
Perhaps Will Durant tied it most beautifully to philosophy:
We enter into the heart of the realm and gaze upon Philosophy herself, as she reveals to her lovers the beautiful, the immortal, and the good. For Philosophy has a secret jealousy of Art, and envies her creative passion for beauty; here, and not in science, is her great rival for the possession and loyalty of the noblest men. Wisdom might gracefully yield, admitting that it is wiser to worship Beauty than to seek Truth; for eternal Truth is so proudly elusive that perhaps we shall never be allowed even to touch the hem of her garments, while Beauty, knowing that she must die, welcomes and rewards our adoration. So Philosophy modestly studies Beauty, while Art reveres and re-creates her; Art knows her in the ardent intimacy of love, in the fair strength of architectured temples, and the voluptuous splendor of sculptured forms, and the warmth of color, and the music of words, and the concourse of sweet sounds; but Philosophy, alas, knows only the problems of beauty: whence beauty comes; and what it means, and whether it lies in the form itself or only in the hunger of our hearts. And this is the realm of AEsthetics, made dreary for centuries by scholastic minds, but still full of wonder and delight.
The Pleasures of Philosophy (S&S,1929, p.12-13)

Philosophers since Plato have tried to codify beauty, their comments mostly seem to feature symmetry, proportion of form, organic unity, integrity of performance, harmonious proportion, et al.
“...a sense of harmony in the relations of Faculty and Will and the understanding” (That’s Kant)
“The underlying dynamism of the Universe and perfect combining of Apollonian rationality and Dionysic passion” (That’s Schopenhauer and that’s enough)

A recognition and appreciation of Beauty seems to be both culturally defined and part of our innate admiration of symmetry and harmony in sensory perception. Something triggers our deepest emotional faculties on what Freud called the unconscious level.

Perhaps Kahlil Gibran said it most succinctly:
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

Should schoolchildren be bussed away from community schools in order for the school district to achieve Racial, Ethnic, Intellectual, or Social balance?

Short answer: No.
Forced bussing never was very popular but back in the '60s and '70s it was a fairly common court-ordered solution to the separate and unequal public schooling that was rampant throughout much of the nation due to racial segregation.
In almost all cases, those court orders have long since expired despite the persistence of racially segregated housing patterns. Involuntary bussing, however, still persists.
Under the leadership of President Bush's younger brother, Jeb; Florida has enlarged upon the "No Child Left Behind Act" to base County school budgets, individual school budgets, and teacher pay on the results of yearly tests of students and perceived "improvement" over past results. this has led to some competition between schools for bright students who will raise the school's score. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Florida, a large populous state, has only 67 county school systems. Some of those "local" systems are larger than the entire state system of some states.
In order to "homogenize" the school populations, many Florida counties still bus large groups of students past their local schools to sometimes quite distant destinations. The result, while looking good on paper (for a while at least) doesn't mean the schools are integrated - the students most often are still separated by ability and have little in-class contact with other intellectual groups and at lunch and recess still tend to socially segregate. My observation is that this is not primarily racial segregation, more likely segregation by intellectual and social class.
Other very serious problems are the loss of community and parental support for the schools and the difficulty in scheduling after-school activities. If you stay late, it can be a fifteen or twenty mile walk home. As far as parental and community support goes, last month, here in Tallahassee (a fairly small No. Florida city) one elementary school held a parent's night and got three parents. This lack of interest and support is not particularly uncommon.
This mandated bussing has not improved Florida's educational standing, at least as measured by comparative test scores, it has made teaching unattractive and difficult (What teacher worth his/her salt, wants to spend so much time preparing and drilling for a test?) and loss of community support has made financing schools a real problem.
If bussing schoolchildren is supposed to somehow integrate and equalize communities and our nation and lead to more equality of opportunity, it has, in my opinion, failed.
I think a more practical and certainly less expensive solution would be integrate within community schools. As we've discussed here before, any thoughtful curriculum should include skill subjects - which naturally segregate by ability - and affective subjects - those developing attitudes - such as the Social Studies, which are naturals for intellectual and social integration. If segregated communities are the concern - build larger schools and enlarge the community served.
That's my take. What's yours?

The question of the U.S. relations with Iran is not a simple one. I’ll give a short summary of those relations as I understand them with a little historic background.

Persia, or Iran as it now is called, was once the mightiest empire in the World but for the past several centuries has fallen on hard times. Oil was discovered there one hundred years ago and it was for some time dominated by a British oil company. It was considered to be under the British sphere of influence until after WW2. Other areas of British and French control in the Middle East had shown rising Arab Nationalism unrest but Iran was not an Arab nation . Iran had rather been part of a centuries-old struggle between the Ottoman Empire based in Turkey, Russia, and Britain for hegemony over the area. The collapse of the Ottomans after WW1, rise of modern Turkey, and the communist takeover of Russia left Britain with a (fairly) clear field and they fully backed the army strong man who declared himself Shah and gave the British full control of the enormous oil fields of Iran.

Iran had since the turn of the sixteenth century,been the major area of Shi’ia
Moslem belief. This “non-orthodox” part of Islam may be roughly equated to Protestantism in the Western world but has never been as numerous. The Shi’ia are surrounded by the Sunni who make up the vast majority of Moslems. This has been a factor in the recent trouble in both Iraq and Iran.
In the 1950s, a popular leader, Dr. Mohammed Mussaddiq, led an attempt to overthrow the Shah, which the CIA was active in preventing. This led to extensive anti-American feeling among Iranians, who saw the Shah as a western puppet of the big oil companies. His repressive rule and expulsion of some popular religious figures led to further unrest in the country.
During this period, an acquaintance of mine worked in Iran with UNESCO and CARE. He told me unrest was so widespread that the shah’s government hd to keep the Army in constant movement from one part of the country to another and allow even them only limited supplies.

In 1978 the Shah was overthrown by a popular uprising inspired by the return of the exiled cleric Ayahatolla Khomeini (whose son is currently the reigning cleric in Iran). The following year “students” stormed and seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held Americans hostage until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981

Saddam Hussian, dictator of Iraq saw and took the opportunity to attack Iran during this period . His unsuccessful war with Iran lasted from 1980 until 1988 and resulted in enormous loss of life on both sides. Saddam was generally supported by the other Arab states, the U.S. and other European powers. they saw Iran as a tool of Soviet expansion .

Recent events in the Middle East have left Iran as a fairly stable country surrounded by the instability of the Afghan and Iraq wars and eager to assert its own influence and dominate the area. In this it is opposed by its Arab neighbors, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia who are deeply suspicious of spreading Shi’ia religious influence.

The world currently has eight openly declared nuclear bomb-holding powers: The U.S. Russia, Britain, France, China, India, and Pakistan. The U.S. as well as the UN is very nervous over any further proliferation of nuclear war capability. This was one excuse for the U.S. attack and occupation of Iraq.
Domestic American politics seem to be driving the present discussions of the possibility of a “preemptive attack” on Iran despite the fact that UN inspectors have found no evidence of nuclear bomb making.

The present President of Iran, the avowed anti-american Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly denounced Sunni fundamentalism and its terrorist activities. He, is certainly not an al Qaeda sympathizer - but then neither was Saddam. The last time Iran launched an aggressive war against a neighbor was in 1785.

Recommendation 11 of the Iraq Study Group states:
“Diplomatic efforts within the Support Group should seek to persuade Iran that it should take specific steps to improve the situation in Iraq” and suggests specific steps Iran could take. The U.S. government has so far ignored this suggestion (as it has mst of the recommendations of this blue ribbon panel) and taken no steps to involve Iran in any peace process. Rather it has actively opposed any attempts to reconcile its differences with Iran.
In my opinion, the U.S. government is no more justified in its attempts to “demonize” Iran than it was in its like actions against Iraq in 2002.

It is, in my opinion, not in the best interests of the U.S. to engage in any aggressive military action against Iran. It seems that the present administration is using Iran to further scare Americans into supporting its ill-thought-out “war on terror” and give up more of our civil liberties in the name of “National Security”

What’s your opinion?

The "New World Order" seems to have an economic component.
The world's median standard of living seems to be tending more toward equality between the wealthy and the poor countries while at the same time there seems to be a movement toward greater separation between the very rich and the working classes within these countries; that is "richer rich" and "more and poorer poor".
What's your opinion of these trends?

That's one of the Socrates_Cafe topics this time.
The problem, if there is one, seems to be one of world and national politics. Presumably if the "playing field" was level, labor costs should even out and the main variables would be things like transportation and natural resource availability.
Classic Marxian economics used to insist that labor was the major component of manufacturing and economics and that politics mostly existed to exploit labor. Later economists have amply demonstrated how over-simplistic this analysis was.
(See W.W. Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-Communist Manifesto for a good clear and short exposition of later thinking.)
The economic world has been moving rapidly toward unlimited free trade but international politics have lagged far behind and there is little the world economic community can do to keep undemocratic countries from exploiting their work force and pursuing dangerous and polluting industrial techniques - as a matter of fact the competition of world trade encourages them toward these practices.
Even in democratic countries, those with strong capitalistic and individual values have trouble regulating their industries.
Those same values seem to encourage the entrepreneurial class to strive for as much individual wealth as possible and to use that wealth to influence politicians toward their goals.
Here in the U.S. the political climate has, for some years, encouraged the growth and collection of individual wealth among the top one percent of the population, while discouraging union membership and distracting the voting public with non-economic controversies. As a result the present gap between the wealth of the top one percent and that of the bottom fifty percent of the working population is the greatest it has been since the 1920's. Partly this is due to the free trade agreements which allow the entrepreneurs to lower their labor costs by "out-sourcing" to countries with lower living standards and wage levels of workers.
Effective world labor, pollution, and resource depletion standards would go a long way toward ending this disparity but Nationalism and basic cultural beliefs make world-wide agreement almost impossible.

Well, the high temp here today was 57, the leaves are peaking, and we're running out of firewood, so I guess the time has come to trek back to Florida.
We will be driving across ME to NH, than down past Mt Washington (23 up there this morning), across the Kakamangus Highway (Two lanes, as are most NH "highways") and down the Connecticut River to Brattleburo VT. The next day down to the Mass Pike, across to NY and the Taconik Parkway (no trucks) and across the Hudson into PA. Down through the Hills to Winchester VA. Next day down the Shenandoah Vally and Blue Ridge Parkway to Sylvia NC.
Last day the length of central GA, being careful to miss any cities or towns of more than 5000. We live about 20 miles south of the GA border and should be home by Friday evening.
As you can see we go the scenic route.

Should school children be segregated by intelligence levels? In all subjects/areas? If not all, in which?

That's one of Socrates_cafe's discussion question this week.
My answer is basically yes, and no.
If we define intelligence as the ability to reason, relate, and learn and we measure the speed and accuracy of these abilities we can pretty well determine the differences between children (and adults for that matter) in their ability.
There are several different areas of talent where this difference can be measured (musical, artistic intellectual, et al) and in some of them children naturally segregate themselves.
Curriculum subjects taught in school generally come in two "Flavors": Skills and Attitudes.
While both skill and attitude are found in all subjects, skill is more important in math, science, language, and such while the attitude developed is more important in the Social Studies, and perhaps in Art and Music. You don't have to know the exact date of the signing of the treaty ending the Civil War (April 9, 1865) to be a good American Citizen; but you surely have to know the periodic table of elements to be a chemist and calculus to be an engineer.
In the skill subjects, separation by intelligence/ability levels makes both teaching and learning much easier for all concerned.
A the goals of Social Studies should be primarily affective (Why study Civics, if you don't want to develop good citizenship?), it is more appropriate to have a non-selective, totally integrated group of students in the basic required classes such as American History and Civics. That does pt more of a load on the teacher, but it's not all that hard.

Are there Universal Moral Values? What are they and why are they universal?

Let's start by giving "universal" a fairly wide definition - something along the lines of "Almost all societies we know of have included some form of this moral value".
Even with that permissive start, I think the list is still pretty short.
The first universal value seems to be:
1. Respect for the culture's moral rules and traditions
This is an obvious one, without it the culture would not really be a culture, just a random collection of individuals with little in common.
2. Protection and nurturing of the culture's children
The idea that children need to be cared for seems to be instinctive in animals and this includes humans. What's curious is how differently cultures have interpreted this value down through the ages. This nurturing includes passing on the culture's value system and teaching the child to be a productive member of society depending on that culture's concept of what such a person should be.
3. Prohibition of murder
This is a shaky one, probably because of the wide definition of "Murder"
4. Prohibition of incest
Sure, there are notable exceptions to this universal moral value - the Ancient Egyptian culture is the most well-known. The exceptions seem mostly to be because of the way the rulers were viewed (As super-human or God-like), but incest was and is prohibited in almost all cultures - of course incest itself is subject to pretty wide cultural definition.
This is a pretty short list. what have I forgotten?

Is Religion a necessary component of moral and ethical behavior?

Morals and Ethics are culturally determined, and what different societies call moral and ethical varies widely, both from each other and through time. Historically, much or the animosity between the ancient Greeks and the Persians was due to their widely varying definitions of ethical behavior. The Greeks admired deception and cunning while the Persians saw absolute honesty as a cardinal virtue. Remember in the West, we admire the Greeks, but while they were the ones who wrote our first histories. they really were often not very nice by our modern standards, and much of our present moral behavior has very different roots.

Religion is most often the Institutional framework for exposition and control of moral and ethical behavior, but in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society such as ours with often conflicting views of what's moral and ethical, other social institutional frameworks must be the determining guides. When the United States was founded, the several states wisely demanded that religion be separated from laws so that all might worship freely without restraint, but that also meant that religion could not influence lawmaking (at least not directly).

Instead, moral and ethical values were to be determined by consensus. When such consensus is lacking, other Social Institutions, such as Family, Education, and Government take over and attempt to re-define moral values so as to regain it. This puts a strain on them and as a result we often have widely varying definitions of "what's right", as we have seen in this era of rather dramatic social change. Some of us demand a more central role for religion while others reject all religious influence, but through this conflict, there does seem to be a core of consensus which includes:
Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Individual rights, Individual worth, Democracy, The work ethic, Private property, et al.

While, some of these values can be traced to religious roots, most are not. They do, however, form the basis for our moral and ethical behavior. Our morals and ethics are perhaps more situational most of us admit, but they are based on pretty solid consensus and are pretty well universally understood and accepted.

1. Many modern Religions attempt to control all or most of the aspects of member's lives and often attempt to impinge on the lives of non-members using obscure parts of their Dogma as justification.
Is this phenomena growing? Why? What is the moral justification for this?

This is one of the discussion topics for Socrates_Cafe this week.
Religion is a basic human social institution and has existed in every human culture known. It is the framework for giving humans a feeling of security in a dangerous world as well as some assurance that they are not alone, that some one or some thing with more power than they have is watching over them, and that force (often called God) understands the incomprehensible. Religion takes many forms but an almost universal belief is that my culture's religion is a better more correct religion than any other.
In modern times the Mediterranean religions based on ancient Hebrew beliefs have dominated the world. The big three, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree on basic Dogma: that there is One God who controls the universe.
They disagree rather violently on the details of the nature of the God and the God's relationship to humans; most particularly on the revelation of the God's plan.
Since this is such a basic human cultural understanding, the religious leaders; priests, rabbis, mullahs, shamans, whatever, have often been the most important and controlling forces in the cultures; and often that power has been used for political purposes having little to do with the basic purposes of their religion.
In almost every religion at some time or other the prophetic teachings refer to other competing religions and warn members about their dangers as well as the dangers of heresy and apostasy. In modern times, religion and religious leaders have lost much of their political power, especially in Western Culture, but some of them have seized on partial or obscure interpretations of basic dogma to whip their followers into violent action or to enforce compliance with the modern leader's political ideas and whims.
As there is more evidence of strict regulation and competition in the Old Testament, some modern Christian leaders have gone there to find justification for their preachings. In Islam the urgency of struggle against the infidels is more obvious, the Ninth Surah of the Koran can be interpreted to provide ample justification for just about any action against non-believers the Radical Islamist desires.
A few years ago it seemed that the world had moved beyond the rather primitive struggles and competition of various religions. Their influence seemed to be restricted to moral behavior, but as the world grows smaller, there has been more and more culture clash and this basic human value system conflict is once again dominating the world's politics.

The Earth is a dynamic planet. Compared to the dead worlds that are closest to us and only change with an occasional meteor impact or volcanic eruption, we are amazingly active. The life that abounds on this planet is probably very rare, perhaps even unique.
A planet with such frantic activity is never the same from one second to the next, and keeping up with your environment is a challenge to all life here. As the environment changes, life forms either adapt themselves, try to adapt their environment, or perish.
Fortunately, geologic changes happen slowly enough so that many life forms can adapt, but the dominate life form on the dry 28% of this planet (us), seems to be altering the environment at too fast a rate for many of the other life forms in addition to preying on them at such high levels that many have become extinct. Either they were all eaten, their environment was destroyed, or human activity in one area has altered their area beyond their ability to adapt.
It's been only in the past couple of hundred years that we have become aware of the potential impact of our activities and we humans have found great difficulty in altering our behavior so as to make the Earth a more habitable place for life. We seem to be waking up to our "fouling our own (and only) nest" problem; but the jury is still out on whether we'll actually be able to alter our "natural" behavior to avoid becoming extinct ourselves.
I'm optimistic about our chances, but realistic about how hard the problem is to solve. Remember, almost all of our national, political, and cultural activity directly impinges on this problem. I think our first step is to recognize, accept, and understand the problem. The next steps will be the hardest, they will probably require a major adjustment in our attitudes and in our very basic nature.

This Socrates_cafe question is an interesting one and I'm surprised that more haven't commented on it.
Group wisdom generally says childhood is our happiest time but I'm not sure I agree. It seems to me that time of your life just before decrepitude sets in is probably the happiest. By then you have achieved your place in life and the world, you have probably become satisfied, or at least reconciled to your lot, and you have time to enjoy life. Hopefully you have a partner to share your leisure and the ability to do those things and visit those places you dreamed about during your working career.
I know I've sort of predicated the ideal situation, but even if your life is less than ideal, or you are not satisfied with your lot, at that age you should have the wisdom to make the best of what you've got and the time to enjoy life. You should have learned to concern yourself with those things you can influence - mainly your attitude toward life - and accept those you cannot.
The Roman philosopher Epictitus is perhaps the best expression of this. In more modern times, Abraham Maslow's concept of Self Actualization carries the idea to its natural conclusion.

When I was in school studying the trivium and quadrivium, I fell to pondering the question of why kids got summers off from school. A little research revealed that this idea went back at least as far as classical times, and no, it wasn't so the students could help out with the summer farm work.
The classical scholar and educator Quintilian declared that students should be given summers off because they needed time to play and would return to their studies recharged and more alert. He also claimed that was true of teachers.
Here in America, we seem to provide ourselves with the least amount of vacation time of any industrialized nation - certainly much less than Europeans get - ask anyone whose been to Paris in August.
The last figures I saw said that Americans took less than two weeks a year on average, and that's not enough.
I've been vacationing steadily for the past twenty-two years and I can assure you that free time is a Good Thing.

Speaking of adult toys, I've just managed to get my satellite broadband installed and am still testing it out. So far it is about 10-20 times faster than my dial-up was but was a real pain to get connected to. The dish and horn look like something out of star wars but the modem seems to be just an augmented two-way cable modem. More Later.

Later - I have discovered that this satellite doesn't work in a rainstorm, but it's sunny today so I'm back.
Being a glutton or punishment, I just upgraded to their fastest speed (1.5Mbps). It seems to be comparable to DSL, but is slower than the cable broadband I have in FL. It's much superior to the slow dial-up I have to use in the rain.
Getting the dish installed and up and running is somewhat more complicated (and expensive) than anything I've done before.

I suppose a toy could be described as a possession or tool that is associated with a person's recreational interests.
If that's the case, I clearly have had toys my whole life - most of them boats. Some I have owned and some I just got to play with.
My first boat was at age ten - a rowboat that leaked so badly that it required constant bailing, but the water sloshing around my feet was a handy place to throw the fish I caught. I rowed it in Biscayne Bay - sometimes blister-making distances.
My next was a Bahama Dingy (an open sailboat - Winslow Homer painted some famous pictures of them) I managed to turn it over the first time I sailed it.
At age 16, I was a deck-hand on a 100' yacht for a while. I got to steer, maneuver, and dock it after the owner got too drunk to navigate - which was about every voyage. This yacht also required an engineer - fortunately he didn't drink).
During this time my father had a 62' schooner which took a crew of at least three to sail properly - he didn't take it out nearly often enough to satisfy me.
I was merchant seaman for a while - sailed all over the world in cargo ships.
I joined the Army and promptly ended up teaching navigation and seamanship. The toys the army provided included 65' tugs, 180' FS vessels and 48" landing craft. I got to play with all these and teach others how to also.
I've always leaned toward sailing and far and away my favorite toy was the one I use as an icon.
That's Tyche - a Cape Cod Catboat - That's a small tubby boat with a single huge sail. I owned her for many years.
My last boat was a sailing dory which I kept on the lake where I spend my summers.
Ill health has left me (currently) boat-less and frustrated -but I still have dreams.

I'm packing this thing up and getting ready or our annual trek:
Tallahassee - Sylva - Winchester - Keene - Ellsworth; where we hope to be by the 4th
I'm going to try satellite broadband this year, if I can get it set up. I'll keep you posted

It's been a while since we took a serious look at Philosophy itself.

A disclaimer: I'm not a philosopher, or even a student of philosophy; I'm a student of Social and Technical History.
Part of this has necessarily been a study of the development of Philosophy including a casual look at the modern Epistemologs and their ilk.
For those who might not be familiar with the realms of Philosophy; classically they are:
Logic - The key to rationality
Epistemology - How do we say and understand what we rationally know. This is far-and-away the over-riding concern of modern scholastic philosophers.
Metaphysics - Not a description of the Cosmos, rather the study of the Meaning of the Cosmos.
History - The study of the past and its records,
Politics - The philosophies of politics have probably led to the misery and death of more people than any area of philosophy except Religion.
Aesthetics - What is beauty? One of the most fascinating and understudied realms of philosophy.
Ethics - What is moral and morally right? Why?
Theology - Religion from the philosophic viewpoint, the most dangerous of the realms.
You will note that almost all of our Socrates Cafe discussions fall into one or another of these realms. Personally, I think it is a mistake to spend too much time "defining our terms" instead of discussing how we feel about them and the impact on our lives.
Which of these realms do you find most fascinating? Which do you think is most important? Why?

What do you want out of life? Do most people achieve their life goals?
This is one of the discussions at socrates_cafe this week.
Fortuitously, Penelope Trunk, columnist for the Boston Globe has a comment on this - as a matter of fact she has written a book which touches on this subject.
According to Ms. Trunk, Our current American working generation - Gen Xers and Gen Y have somewhat different life goals than their Baby-boomer parents. The BBs have set up a workplace that uses financial bribes to get people to give up their time "Give us sixty hours a week and we'll pay you a six-figure salary" is an extreme (well, maybe not so extreme) example of this and the new working generation isn't buying it.
Generation X values family more than money, which may account for the fact that for the first time in decades, this generation will not be financially better off than its parents. (I'll print her entire article below, if you're interested).
While I an neither a baby boomer or a member of a later generation - I was born in 1930, I find myself more in tune with the X's and Y's.
My life's goals have always been focused on enjoyment of life and avoidance of "suffer a little. it's good for you".
I have always thought that Love, Joy, and Happiness were pretty good goals and have strived my whole life to "Walk in beauty" as the Navahos say. That has meant doing a job I loved, even when offered a lot more money to "move up", taking every opportunity to experience new interests, and enjoying each day as much as possible.
What do you think of my hedonistic attitude?
Here's Ms Trunk's article:
----------
TIME TO LIVE
Gens X and Y choose new priorities
By Penelope Trunk

A group of think tanks, led by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that, for the first time, men in their 30s are earning less than their parents. For the first time ever,rnernbers of this generation will not be more well-off financially than their parents.

What should we make of this new finding? Does this mean the American' Dream is no longer attainable?

Probably not. Because this statistic is just a magnified section of a much larger picture - the great generational shift taking place in America since Generation X'ers became adults.

The shift is in the definition of the American Dream. Our dream is about time, not money. No generation wants to live with financial instability. And we are no exception. But finances alone do not define someone's American Dream. Especially when our dream is about how we spend our time.

Those who are magnifying a different part of the picture of this generational shift will tell you that what defines it is the inability of corporate American to keep Generation Y workers from quitting their jobs.

The best of Generation X and Y are slow to move into the work force and quick to leave it. According to the Department of Labor, people in their 20s change jobs, on average, every two years. And Generation X is shifting in and out of the workplace in order to spend more time with kids. It's costing companies a lot of money, and they're paying millions of dollars a year in consulting fees to figure out how to decrease turnover.

There are many reasons for high turnover, but the most fundamental one is that baby boomers have set up a workplace that uses financial bribes to get people to give up their time: Work 60 hours a week and we'll pay you six figures. Generation Y will not have this. To hold out money as a carrot is insulting to a generation raised to think personal development is the Holy Grail of time spent well.

Baby boomers are also baffled by women who grow large careers in their 20s and then dump them in order to spend time with kids. News flash:

Generation X values family more than money. Our American Dream is not about buying a big house; our dream is about keeping 'a family together. You can tell a lot about values by 'the terms that are coined. When baby boomers were raising kids, they invented the terms "latchkey kid" and "yuppie"; we invented the terms "shared care" and "stay-at-home-dad." The divorce rate for baby boomers was higher than for any other generation. We can afford to have less money, because most of us don't need to fund two separate households.

The positive psychology movement has taken a large hold among those in Generations X and Y. We are convinced that money does not buy happiness, and this conviction is rooted in hard science. More than 150 universities offer courses in positive psychology. It's the most popular class among Harvard undergrads.

Our dreams are tied to time. So it's no surprise that many of the most popular blogs offer tips for, time management. And topics such as productivity are favorites among hipsters who know that "getting things done" (GTD in blog-speak) is the key to having a fulfilling life. And believe me, GTD doesn't take money, it takes massive respect for one's time.

The new American dream is that we will have' fulfilling work that leaves plenty of time for the other things in life we love. In this respect, we in Generation X are doing better than our parents: We are spending more time with our kids, and we are keeping our marriages together more than twice as effectively as our parents did. And those in Generation Y are doing better than their parents, too.

The new American dream is about time. It's not a race to earn the most to buy the biggest. It's a dream of personal growth and quality relationships. And, despite the declarations coming from Pew about unreachable dreams, our dream is not about accumulating money to do what we love at the end. We are hellbent on doing what we love the whole way. That's our dream, and we're doing it better than the baby boomers ever did.

-~ • Penelope Trunk is the author of the book "Brazen Careerist;.The New Rules for Success"~She is a columnist at the Boston Globe who writes about careers. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy.
Before that she played professional beach volleyball.
Contact her at penelope@penelopetrunk.com.

This is one of Socrates_Cafe's current questions for discussion.
The word "Maturity" is often used to describe a person as adult, thoughtful, and composed; but it doesn't really mean this. Its true meaning is to "Be complete of natural growth or development" or to be "Finished" or "Fully developed" - which is not necessarily a desirable state for a human in my mind.

Maturity is, after all pretty much a dead end - any further and you're "over-ripe". I especially don't like the idea that being mature means you have completed your growth - spiritual, intellectual or social. Sometimes acting mature is another way of expressing the idea of repressing feelings, which can sometimes have bad consequences. I think humans should continue to grow for their entire lives. Your job, or your family, or your life, should never be the same over time; the person who has the same job for twenty years should not have the same job for one year repeated twenty times.

Perhaps true intellectual maturity among humans should include the idea that there is a horizon of fresh ideas and experiences that you have not reached always before you. I think it's a good idea to think that the future always holds experiences that you will not experience, that the world will continue and that new wonders always await.

Of course, that includes the idea that progress and "progressing" are good things and that said progress will mostly be in a positive direction. Do you think this is true?

How can we bring ourselves to feel secure and positive if we have the attitude that we live in an ever-changing universe with no solid foundation and no dependable way to "Go home again"?

This is a curious question but I suppose it will give us some insight into minds, opinions, and taste:
When I was a college student I had lots of posters on the walls- everything from French Impressionists to Aeroflot travel posters to bad repros of cave art. At one time I had old map repros and repros of paintings of sailing ships as well as a couple of sailing ship models.
Now on the walls, I have seventeen of my own paintings, one by my sister-in-law, a slab of limestone with two fish fossils, an Army Officer's dress sword, and two Mandarin civil rank panels (3rd and 5th grade - antiques - embroidered silk, silver and gold bullion). One of the afore-mentioned ship models is on the mantle and there are a number of sculptures and curiosities laying around. It all sort of resembles that mess that opens PBS's Masterpiece Theatre.
This is just the stuff that's out - someday I'm going to have an e-bay garage sale, but not before my artistic talent is recognized

When discussing this topic, I have to guard against getting too involved in technical details - both in regard to the place of Art in any Culture, and in the technical considerations of "What makes a good painting".
There is one generality about Art that is to me self-evident:
Art mirrors the culture of the artist. The best art is always a really good distillation of the artist's culture and is recognized as such by viewers later in time. That's why artists unappreciated during their own life (van Gogh sold only one of his paintings) are now among the most recognized symbols of their time.
Van Gogh painted or only five or ten years and died only 117 years ago, a fairly young man; but his few paintings generate in most of us an instant recognition of the "feeling" of his world. He influenced the Symbolists, Fauvists, Expressionists, the Abstract painters, the Surrealists and the Abstract Expressionists. He was easily one of the most important painters of all time.
People, even most serious art critics, have trouble recognizing the essence of their culture and tend to prefer the art they are familiar with - generally that which is "tried and true". Artists know this and in our time tend to "do their own thing" which depending on their cultural attunment, may or may not "Live".
I could go on about Modern Art and whether or not sloppy silk-screens of Marilyn Monroe or giant murals of strips of bacon or different colored super-imposed squares were mirrors of our culture of the last half of the Twentieth Century, but we are still too close to that era to tell, so I'll point out what lived and died a hundred years ago.
During the mid and late nineteenth century, the most popular paintings were "Academic" adhering to rigid rules of composition, technique and content. This type of painting required little original talent and was easy to crank out. To me those paintings show little or no vibrancy or "soul". They don't say very much.
Most of the dusty paintings and sculptures you find in antique shops are this sort of thing. Come to think of it, there is still a strong demand for this type of decorative "flower" art - see any commercial art gallery.
While Victorian homes were filling up with reproductions of David and other Neoclassical and Baroque painters; van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Gauguin, (to name just the French impressionists) were all "starving in drafty garrets".
Picasso, the artist who dominated the twentieth century, painted long enough to be recognized (He was painting in 1901 and when he died in 1973 was still painting and world famous). In my opinion his Art ranged from very very good to really really awful, but in all of his art there is no doubt that he is saying something.
Having said all this, I'll name my three very favorite artists: J.M.W. Turner, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. Who are yours?