Determinism and Free Will

Free will and determinism, or pre-determinism exist in different paradigms that aren't mutually exclusive in actualization. That is there are theological and cosmological paradigms as well as the practical actualization of will.

  One may plainly think and then act upon the thought on a practical level. One has a few degrees of freedom of motion to act, and some freedom to think (if the boom box isn't too loud and you are trying to make some complex calculation), few degrees of freedom to move if bound and gagged.   If God is omniscient then he knows everything in every possible Universe and configuration, so in that sense it is necessarily pre-determined for God, and the will of people though free is pre-determined or determinate and not free to be other than what it must be.  

Tegmark’s Level 4 or 5 Universe has a different paradigm; every universe that possibly can exist does, and each though any individual has switches his consciousness to the static universe corresponding to the thought he has. The physical Universe don't change in their dimensional configuration, it is the thought that changes corresponding to the right space-time coordinates in each possible Universe. That is the past, present and future of every Universe already exists.

That is something to think about with such great complexity in stellar evolution for example. Maybe the complexity problem can be resolved with quantum computers, or since the foundation of Tegmark’s Universe is pure, abstract math (maybe built up like Leibnitz’s monadology or strings). A pure math Universe is closer to being like a Universe of Universes existing within the mind of God constructed with protocols of spirit.

On Totalization impacting free will.

People already shut down freedom of expression. Corporatism tolerates nothing in conflict with corporate interests preponderantly. The recent China-N.B.A. issue was a case in point; corporatism and communism each repress free speech. The Democrat Party and socialists tend these days to want to force things there way through any means legal or quasi-legal that work. Anyone antipathetic may find a kind of hate speech in any language-perhaps becoming easier with increasing power. Search engine stuff may be downgraded so nobody finds it; or the writer banned from social media platforms, an employee terminated, a web page closed down. Nothing new in the mill town wanting total political control to support its interests. The new thing is that the world is being totalized incidentally through global networking.

Impeachment Recall Campaign and Low Albedo

Democrats are still wasting time trying to impeach President Trump with a Soviet-style in camera secret committee inquisition while people are putting up heat absorbing asphalt parking lots and buildings. The least the fake environmentalist Democrats could do would be to pass a bill with tax breaks for high albedo construction including parking lots and roofs in order to help reduce global warming increase.

People in the north sometimes tear up perfectly good reinforced steel concrete parking lots to replace them with heat absorbing asphalt so they can reduce parking lot snow removal costs. That leads one to wonder- why not just asphalt over Alaska and Siberia too in order to increase heat absorption and make the world a nice room temperature of 90 degrees f (lol)?

https://earthsky.org/earth/atmospheric-co2-record-high-may-2019

A Note on Separation of State and Church

When government controls a religion and has a state religion history shows that it is bad. Because wicked people eventually take over governments, even if only for a while, it is better to have a separation of state and church. Adolph Hitler and Germany of the Reich era had an official church and people like Karl Barth left it, or wouldn't join it. Not even Christians agree on correct doctrine not uncommonly, imagine if President Trump, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders made the theological decisions as leader of the Church of America.

State churches aren't good for either Christians or secular citizens. I would say the Church of England is somewhat poor on theology and discipline. England led the way on homosexual marriage and the Anglican Church of Canada put a heavy price on native Canadian children. With a state church theological pursuit of truth is limited to what the state wants. The U.K. has religious pluralism though it has the Church of England. There are still Catholics and other protestants. I am not a fan of royalty or authoritarianism; some people are. 

The Roman Empire divided with the state church of the Eastern Empire at Constantinople. The schism led to the eventual sacking of Constantinople by crusaders and the later conquest by Turks and more war. I can easily imagine a different course of development for Christian history under different circumstances; the secular and political condition shouldn't really decide how Christians form ecclesiastically. I like a priesthood of believers church structure rather than a patriarchal structure.

 If government is able to influence religion that works badly for the church and freedom in general-even in the secular world. Sin in the world in Europe and North America would emerge as a certain percent of the population regardless of the relationship of government to the faith community. It was the government-the-US Supreme Court, that forced sin on the nation (homo marriage), reflecting elite desire for sin and populist sales.

Russia May Be Able to Support Kurdish Security

President Trump may have walked a tightrope in switching off support for Kurds, Syrian Christians and Alawi of Syria deftly last week. Americans were alarmed about the abandonment of the Kurds that appeared to occur overnight. 

It may be that Russia's entry into the Syrian ground game in a substantial way may offset Turkish aggression and defeat efforts from various players to make Syria a Sunni kingdom. A vast Sunni kingdom stretching from Africa to Europe would need to crush quite a few bodies to establish and undermine the security of Israel and others.

I have no idea what interest Russia has in Syria. Siberia and the North Shore is probably a much better place aesthetically.

Since Russia is no longer a Trotskyite communist nation aspiring to take over the world it might not be a bad thing to have Russia providing Syrian security at their expense instead of other foreign powers. The Shi'a have a problem with the Sunni now and then, and a secure somewhat neutral multi-religious Syria may  not be a bad thing at all concerning the suppression of sparks of sectarian conflict.

President Trump did not secure a lasting homeland for the Kurds in the region, yet the Syrians and Russians may provide part of one in exchange for the support of Kurds as Sunni themselves to defend against various Sunni elements that would like to destroy the Syrian government and establish a Sunni Syria. If the Kurds become victimized in mass then President Trump should assume responsibility in part and relocate those that care to move, to the U.S.A.

One must wonder what secret diplomacy occurred through unknown channels between Russia and President Putin. Apparently the Democrats hadn't any whistle-blowers listening in to the call.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/15/russian-troops-take-over-key-u-s-outpost-syria-after-withdrawal/3985962002/

Is There a Doomsday Clock for Global Warming?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a doomsday clock for nuclear war for decades. The minute hand has been at two minutes to midnight for several years too, I believe. The trouble with going full-tilt for panic too soon is that one can't get closer without resorting to Eleatic micro and pico-second intervals. If people establish a Doomsday clock for Global Warming it should not be at the panic place initially- give a little space to take note of worsening conditions.

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

Maybe these guys;The Union of Concerned Scientists have published a doomsday clock somewhere.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-warn-nine-climate-tipping-points-now-active-could-threaten-the-existence-of-human-civilization/

https://blog.ucsusa.org/peter-frumhoff/global-warming-fact-co2-emissions-since-1988-764

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/06/29/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-set-new-record/#434893a743a9

Drone Ensemble for I.E.D. Removal

The problem of improvised explosive devices might be addressed with drones able to convey a lightweight ground probe unit quickly to discovered i.e.d.s for detonation or removal. Various locations for central control could be placed with units able to be quickly dispatched and arrive for processing of i.e.d.'s- even with A.I. flight and process controllers when humans are  unavailable,  when provided with a g.p.s. coordinate.

The ground unit robot should be lightweight yet effective and probing or detonating i.e.d.

Because terrorists may use drones to deliver explosives it might be a useful response to develop jagdrones to hunt hostile drones as well.

Advantages include fast response time compared to human operators travelling on the ground.

Why People are Religious

People had fear of the unknown-and rightly so in most cases. Explanations were made to account for things (ref Big Bang theory). Liege lords demanded allegiance from their peasant-serfs. Yet God is different from secular loyalty, fealty and such matters. There were tribal gods of course, and when different tribal gods appeared in different tribes that caused issues. Actually it was challenging to separate the concept of god from tribal approaches to god. The idea of eternal life freed people from the hopelessness of bad political leadership and death.

https://time.com/5699122/elizabeth-warren-facebook-fake-ad-mark-zuckerberg/

A transcendent god differs quite a bit from the Roman amalgam of gods taken from tribes they conquered. Muhammad’s father was keeper of the Kaaba (spirit house) at Mecca with its pantheon of gods. When Muhammad’s father lost his job and was kicked out Muhammad borrowed Christian and Jewish ideas and scripture to write his own transcending approach to god- Allah. Allah was a tribal god without borders able to lead all of the tribes that joined in. The political  approach to religion or legiance attaches even to secular concepts such as evolution that is an endemic belief of the Democrat party in the U.S.A. Like Allah, secular atheist evolution runs toward a god-without-borders approach politically manifesting in the hatred of traditional American values and border security in favor of globalism.

People do learn religious ideas from culture. In the Bible God does say that everyone knows him and that they just forget who he is, or repress that sense (in the book of Jeremiah). Secular evolutionists like to explain away God through various reductionist straw men associations, and that is good enough to satisfy those that aren’t too philosophically inclined.

There were a number of arguments in support of the necessity of God- such as the ontological argument, or rather the logical probability of God, that can also be improved to support the idea that a Supreme Being is the source of all that exists. Logical studies for-themselves support the plausibility of a Supreme Being whom is spirit and different than the content of creation. That is, one may use logic and reason to look into the idea that a Supreme being created the Universe in some way regardless of disputes that may arise concerning a posteriori hermeneutics or cosmological mechanics in support or opposition.

A philosophical approach to consideration of the likelihood of the existence of a Supreme Being differs significantly from purely tribal approaches to belief in a tribal god.

The Japanese Shinto ideas seems reasonable yet unbelievable to westerners. The Tori and Kami- spirit gates and spirits fluttering about like birds don’t seem better than the Romans and Local deities such as Janus-the door god, whose temple opened only when the Romans went to war.

Christians of course believe in the person that was Jesus Christ as the Son (member of the trinity) of God, and God Himself, equal to the Father. I think Jesus was the real thing too. It was lucky that he appeared in history when he did.

Christianity is also a transcendent faith-without-borders yet it also instructs Christians to obey  secular laws and authorities (that don’t interfere with Christian faith).

So why do some have more religion than others? For the same reasons I would suppose as people believe in anything including science. Personal thought, reliance on authority, prevailing social customs; maybe it is a matter of grace finally. Some people try to treat all religions as the same, and religious belief too, in order to 'solve' them. One might use biology to solve physics or geology equally well.

When James Peebles won the Nobel for physics a couple of days ago that showed how much scientists believe in Big Bang theory. It is part of a secular belief system, yet it could be wrong. That is there are other ideas that could account for the existence of the physical Universe in the same scientific vein such as this Universe could be the froth around a 4 dimensional black hole from a Universe with five dimensions, etc...a white hole as it were.

Thus Spake Zarathustra- What its About

'Thus Spake Zarathustra' is Nietzsche's world view as the philosopher of the eternal recurrence. His philosopher named Zarathustra lived on a hill overlooking a city far below. From that homeless guy's tent (I added that) he viewed and considered the morality and social structure of the people in the village.

Zarathustra considers the hum-drum life of the villagers whom he regards as mindless sheep going about their social conventional lives like meaningless ants. The 19th century was the age of romanticism and idealism- those were points of view that disdained the social order. Nietzsche had a different point of view.

One night walking along the shore of Lake Geneva he had a strong sense of déjà vous. He realized (for-himself) that the life, world and Universe had happened before- an infinite number of times. That ‘enlightenment’ made him superior to others. He believed the right response for superpersons with an eternally recursive point of view was to act like wolves, predators or vampires upon the human species that were not so enlightened living unreflectively and unaware in their lives in the villages and cities.

There are interesting paradoxes in Nietzche’s infinite recursion of everything that exists. For one thing, even the vampire superpersons would be doomed to act as vampire super-persons forever without being able to change anything about their lives.

My thought is that Nietzche’s strong mental states were a little traumatizing and introverting. His syphilis may have made him view the Universe as recurrent. If life is tough it may be that déjà vous occurs naturally in some circumstances. It could be a kind of self-reflecting cognition of the present that makes it seem infinitely recurring, like when a tv camera is pointed at a camera giving the illusion of infinite recurrence.

Nietzsche put his point of view in his book 'Thus Spake Zarathustra'. Perhaps he envisioned himself as being like Zarathustra himself as a great man founding a religion. Certainly there are a lot of syphilitic drug addict followers of Nietzsche today.

Physicalism, Information and Soul

 Physicalism is itself a philosophical point of view about the mass and energy in which humans exist and of which the Universe is made. It used to be called materialism. People exist within the field that is the Universe as it is generally understood. People tend to believe it is made of particles and waves that are energy. The entire structure from largest to smallest isn't fully known, though a lot of the things within it are. Some believe God created and sustains the energy field-as it could all be within his thought, others think it might be a hologram or even pure mathematics at its core, yet one thing can be certain; people experience the Universe.

Physicalism is also known as material monism. Some people use the concept to distinguishing if from Ryle kinds of ghost-in-the-machine theories about spirit. Personally I believe God needs no extra substance for a soul to be immortal. If a soul is information God as an omniscient being has no loss of information as if Shannon entropy destroyed His data.  Actually information is thought never to be lost from the Universe-even at a black hole. So with the right information God can sustain or clone a soul (though each is unique in theology) and give it whatever span he chooses. What is information to absolute Spirit one might wonder?

Physicalists tend to be monists exclusively, though lacking an overall account of everything that is falsifiable (obviously and perhaps necessarily)

The Universe could as well be an idea, or a super-computer simulation.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/ Berkeley’s ideaism
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_quantum.html
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/111 The Higgs Field
https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 The Mathematical Universe

About Dying for Your Country and Living for Others

I think it might be easier to understand in a primitive situation. For example if a family of humans with small children were walking on the savanna and a lion attacked- should the father not defend his family, or just run and let the kids be devoured (and the woman)? patriotism depends on the circumstances and the reasons.

 Some ideals are probably worth defending to the death and others not. It would be better to keep a free society and people free than to fall into slavery. That is a reason why democracy sometimes needs to be defended against oligarchs, plutocrats and communists. 

Wouldn't one rather live in freedom than slavery? On the living for others principle; the Lord pointed out that service for others is a good idea. This world is temporal and the kingdom of God eternal. If one has faith in that it makes sense. If one has no faith then it is altruism which is o.k., or servility or slavishness that is bad. 

One last point; some whit said it is better to let the enemy die for your country.

About Jesus and Judgment

When Jesus said judge not lest ye be judged I had a sense that he was referring to the judiciary or something like it. That is one could make judgments about people back in the day and act on one's judgment that could be wrong with lynch mobs or stonings, and do harm to innocent people. The Lord was then trying to save people rather than someone sitting in judgment over them. Jesus said in John 12:48 "He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." That is, on Judgment day when the living and the dead are brought before God. It is about eternal life, and who goes with the Lord when this mortal experience is at an end. That is an amazing statement.

 Remember that the Lord's prophecies applied at several levels simultaneously, the least of which was not that he would have saved those living in Jerusalem that would reject him, and that not a stone would be left standing in the city, and in 70 A.D. Jerusalem was totally destroyed by the Romans with a million Jews killed, Keep in mind the Lord's mission. He said in the book of Luke "35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. 36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
(ref Matthew 7:1-6; Romans 14:1-12)

37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: 38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Von Trump Policy Enabled Turkey to Shell U.S. Special Forces

Treacherous policy changes done with no public debate and carried out like a burglary make one wonder if the President is having his strings pulled by foreign puppeteers. President Trump may have essential airhead blonde syndrome with inflated, narcissistic self-opinion of his I.Q. and intelligence. It doesn't seem alright to cut the throat of good Kurdish allies and move on as if nothing happened.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7566595/Syrian-Kurds-military-leader-tells-U-S-diplomat-leaving-slaughtered.html

In pursuing his own family economic interests and land holdings overseas he threw American Kurdish allies to imperial wolves. He should donate Mar a Lago to charity to show his contempt for land-owning that he finds a fault with the Kurds since they actually want a homeland to live in. Turks shelled U.S. special forces in their rush to bump off Kurds. Hopefully it won't become another Armenian style genocide.

https://www.newsweek.com/us-troops-syria-turkey-1464727

Short-sighted and reversible policy like abandoning the Kurds may be of financial value to the President, yet it is harmful to American interests. Imagine what U.S. Middle east policy would have been if the Kurds hadn't aligned their interests with those of the United States. The President cannot be so ignorant of the history of Germany and Turkey/Ottoman Empire as to want the Turks to swell back into those spaces. 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/9/1891413/-The-Kurds-did-help-the-Allies-in-WWII

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/465494-furious-republicans-prepare-to-rebuke-trump-on-syria

It is unfortunate that the U.S.A. has presidential leadership choices between corrupt, decadent evil party cadre at war on half of the people of the United States through other means,  seeking to flood it with illegal aliens, and a golden blonde narcissist. Hair color doesn't make one instance of a human brighter than another.

The bottom of the barrel defaults to lead because intelligent folks may not want the responsibility for 23 trillion dollars of public debt. 

Turkey Had No Troops in Combat in W.W. 2

Turkey had no combat troops in the Second World War. Because they were on the German side in the First World War and lost much of their empire as a result, they had to be neutral for most of the Second Great War. President Trump was silly enough to criticize Kurdish neutrality in the Second War as a premise for betraying their trust and allow the Kurds to attack them yesterday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/trump-defends-allowing-turkish-offensive-on-kurds-in-syria-they-didnt-help-us-in-ww2.html

President Trump should not use such bad history dissimulations flippantly to justify international treachery and potentially war crimes by the Turks- they are the people that perpetrated an Armenian genocide after all. It is unfortunate that President Trump is so d__n rich and stands to make a profit off the Presidency like the Democrats. If there was anyone electable besides  who was running that wasn't a Democrat the President would probably lose the 2020 election in a landslide.

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/10/11/schweizer-mcleod-hunter-biden-helped-china-acquire-strategically-sensitive-assets/

Kurds apparently were on the allied side during World War Two. They had people under British command in Iraq.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/9/1891413/-The-Kurds-did-help-the-Allies-in-WWII

Treacherous policy changes done with no public debate and carried out like a burglary make one wonder if the President is having his strings pulled by foreign puppeteers. President Trump may have essential airhead blonde syndrome with  inflated. narcissistic self-opinion of his I.Q. and intelligence. In pursuing his own family economic interests and land holdings overseas he threw American Kurdish allies to imperial wolves. He should donate Mar a Lago to charity to show his contempt for land-owning that he finds a fault with the Kurds since they actual want a homeland to live upon. 

https://www.newsweek.com/us-troops-syria-turkey-1464727

Short-sighted an reversible policy like abandoning the Kurds may be of financial value to the President, yet it is harmful to American interests. Imagine what U.S. Middle east policy would have been if the Kurds hadn't aligned their interests with those of the United States. The President cannot be so ignorant of the history of Germany and Turkey/Ottoman Empire as to want the Turks to swell back into those spaces. 

It is unfortunate that the U.S.A. has leadership choices between corrupt, decadent evil party cadre at war on half of the people of the United States through other means,  seeking to flood it with illegal aliens, and a golden blonde narcissist. Hair color doesn't make one instance of a human brighter than another.

The bottom of the barrel defaults to lead because intelligent folks may not want the responsibility for 21 trillion dollars of public debt. 

Sartre, Camus, Existentialism and Marxism

Sartre's major works haven't communism in them. It is a fact that he wrote part of The Critique of Dialectical Reason in the Soviet Union- in 1958 I believe it was, yet that work isn't about communism. It is existentialism in a social context. It is a brilliant work. He blew out an eye while writing the 700+ pages…a dedicated writer.

In the Critique Sartre described the way people interact as a bunch of individuals with an existential framework. Later, in the 1960s or 70s he was interviewed in a book titled; Between Existentialism and Marxism. In my opinion Sartre realistically analyzed the continental location of France between the Soviet Union and N.A.T.O. forces to the west (he had been a prisoner of war in the Second World War) philosophically. Maybe he wasn't for Armageddon on the Seine. He considered the phenomenal and existential situation of France phenomenally, as an existential circumstance. In my opinion Sartre was the earliest transitional intellectual figure leading post-Stalinist Russia in a new, synthetic direction.

Sartre never joined the communist party yet he certainly was in bed with them sometimes. He seemed to want to keep his partisan red street creds yet I wonder if that wasn’t a bit of a Trojan horse that would let him influence east and west alike toward existentialism, phenomenalism and social self-reflection by the masses such that they would be conscientious and aware they could make society for-themselves, better.

The split with Camus seems by consensus to have been one about means to revolt to socialism- violent or non-violent. Interesting since Sartre himself was probably the last guy to practice violence. 

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-camus-and-sartre-split-up-over-the-question-of-how-to-be-free

My Opinion of Karl Marx's Work

I read a couple of Marx's books a long time ago; Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. The material was also covered briefly in a Sociology course (101). Karl Marx was a brilliant sociologist- of that there is no question. His analysis and description of the problems England had in his day were on the mark. He understood the problems that England experienced during the Industrial revolution when so many 'peasants' were forced off rural land and migrated into London and other cities to work in the factories.

The factories had bad working conditions generally. Nowadays in the U.S.A. there is the federal Office of Safety and Health and several other ways that work conditions are not allowed to be too oppressive and unhealthy. England had nothing like that and people worked very long hours including children and sometimes women. That was what Marx saw and described when he was working at a library in London.

Marx like American revolutionaries had no care for aristocracy. There were still a lot of royal governments in Europe so his wish to revolt was unwelcome in the nations he had been kicked out of. Marx was also Jewish and Jews had an identity crisis in Europe in that era and hoped for a nation of their own to live in since they were victimized by pogroms in Russia and other countries. Marx had a bifurcated political motive for revolt. I think some Jews like Trotsky and some of the Jews that were leaders in the German revolution near the end of the First World War had a desire to revolt as a substitute for having a Jewish state to move to. Some Jews sought to establish a Jewish state in Europe. Perhaps one can compare their troubles to that of the Kurds. President Trump recently dropped them cold and was of no help in establishing a Kurdish state. It is a good time to do that and Turkey and Syria could have been incentivized to give Kurds land and recognition in exchange for 2x the land they give Kurds from annexations of Syrian land that few would be heartbroken about the Assad government losing some land.

As I understood Marx, he was a great analyst yet ironically a fairly uncreative economist. When he associates the capitalists with the aristocracy as their lap dogs, he might have been a modern talking about the relationship of the broadcast media to the 1% that owns the media. Marx felt that capitalists were the next phase in rich powerful minorities oppressing the majority. He was right about that it turned out.

Plainly Marx was not a good designer of a new economic system to replace the aristocracy and capitalism. That is a problem the Democrat party has today; they just aren’t good at reforming capitalism to make it more egalitarian and to pay off public debt and restore the ecosphere to health. A democracy works best with robust free enterprise enabled through all of the people having adequate start-up capital normally.The Communist manifesto was written by Marx for a fee, yet it was more of a work for hire than a free exposition of his own thought. He wrote it for some Communist group- I don’t recall the name, and it became popular. So Marx was a good analyst, historian and sociologist with a misapplication of Hegelian metaphysics and a non-functional economic program.

Democracy has all of the tools it needs to raise taxes to a high enough level that wealth and power wouldn’t be over-concentrated to the diminution of democracy. It could reform capitalism with some regulation to make it serve the people and restore the ecosphere. The trouble is that Democrats aren’t too well informed about ecological economics and actually just want to be like republicans themselves with lots of wealth and adequate decadence and immorality.

In a democracy the people are sovereign rather than a tiny minority as in aristocracy or plutocracy.. The people need to actually use their power to prevent concentration of wealth and power if they want to be sovereign. Certainly royals were not reluctant to rule and benefit themselves more than the people.

Taxation is a part of a government. The people cannot expect government to provide free services. I would look around and see original sin as responsible for social ills, rather than forced redistribution incidentally. Redistribution is something of an obsolete concept anyway since capital in many ways isn’t easy to redistribute. I am more for changing the way capitalism works and to regulate it so it serves everyone equally well as citizens, rather than special interests and those destroying global and national ecospheric health.

Communism had to fail, it hadn't a functional economic system for progress. Marx had theories like value added and alienation of labor obviously, yet those phenomena don't require communism for correction. Marx saw everything that was bad and leaped to the conclusion that it could all be fixed in the communist system. Communism works directly against individual initiative and creativity- it doesn't really evolve well so much as keep everything more like ancient Egypt- unchanging for thousands of years with a few pyramid projects and ruling elites over-seeing everything. Capitalism without intelligent regulation is like a plague of locusts consuming the ecospheric health. No system of economics can replace intelligent leadership with good ideas in a democracy. If capitalism is failing now (concentrating wealth and destroying ecosphere health) it is because government hasn't good leaders and is unaware of how to lead to reform.

Shouldn't Some Auto Insurance Be Pay-Per-Mile?

Shouldn't some auto insurance be pay-per-mile or for when the vehicle is used rather than monthly? If there are people that would buy an electric car or jeep if they could afford it some people might not want to pay for insurance every month on a vehicle used just a few times a month or year? Some people would not be willing to shell out $100 a month for auto insurance when they just might only use the vehicle a day or two for transport of supplies, and ride a bike to work, or boat, the rest of the time.

Retired people might be a prime group to benefit from pay per mile auto insurance that might be more like a credit card's structure- even some with no annual fees. I wonder if pay per mile auto insurance presently exists?

About the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Analytic truths are self-consistent without reliance on something besides the internal logic for truth. Synthetic propositions involve something outside the statement. They are somewhat more like algebra with variables that can make a statement true or false depending on what they are. So the logic of math may be implicitly true (if it isn't false), yet mathematical statements may be analytically false. True math statements require verification, or something beyond themselves- for axioms or whatever, at some point need to be accepted as true for the rest of the math to follow. That premise is why Quine thought the synthetic-analytic distinction wasn't valid, so far as I get from reading the article on the analytic-synthetic distinction. A synthetic proposition that everyone knows is true such as "the Earth has been around a long time" is like a math axiom in just being accepted as true with some verification from experience. The epistemological criterion of the analytic-synthetic distinction is unavoidably challenging like Descartes' paradigm from the Meditations on a Method- verification of anything including experience originates inwardly and is an association of ideas and percepts with thought. Self-standing truth is God- everything else requires verification through association. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/

Matthew 27:22-25 and Moral Responsibility

 Matthew 27:22-25 seems like an assumption (a claim) of legal and moral responsibility for the execution of Jesus. Though they were a necessary enabling act for the worldly execution, since Pilate was agreeable to letting Jesus go, the Jews had no right to take responsibility for it was pre-destined by God. God knew people are doomed to work evil because of original sin. The history of the Jews in the books of the prophets is a great exercise in futility as well as faith. The consequences of the execution could have been said to be the destruction of Jerusalem with a million deaths that followed in an apocalypse, yet also the Lord's victory over death and actualization of the other prophecies. The Lord was the greatest prophet of the Bible as well as the Son of God. God can sort out the issues of free will and responsibility better than mankind. The end of the old covenant and transition to the new was costly. Redemption of those of faith in the Lord from the criterion of original sin through his atoning sacrifice is the greatest, or most meaningful event in history concerning human destiny.


Matthew 27-

22-Pilate said to them, “What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”

They all said to him, “Let Him be crucified!”

23-Then the governor said, “Why, what evil has He done?”

But they cried out all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!”

24-When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.”

25-And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

A Method for Learning Philosophy

Reading western philosophy is a life-long project (that one can complete generally by about age 40 with a lot of reading. Start with Plato's books where he narrates the dialogues and conversations of Socrates. Then proceed up along an historical timeline all the way to the 21st century. There are numerous books summarizing Western philosophy such as those by Will and Ariel Durant, Betrand Russell and Frederick  Copleston.. Read primary books by famous western philosophers and learn for yourself what ideas they developed, and how those ideas built upon one another's ideas constructively;each philosopher had a place in history. Some such as Socrates, Kant, Hegel and Hume, Berkeley, J.S. Mill and Jeremy Betham are essential reading. One may read people like Schopenhauer and Nitzsche for more depth, and eventually move into the Vienna circle era and with those associated with it developing formal logic. Sartre was a novel expositor of French rationalism continuing in the tradition of Rene' Descartes. Aristotle , Liebnitz and Frege developed logic. 

Linguistic philosophy is based on logic and the structure of words and meaning, and that is great stuff and useful in numerous areas today with such obvious applications as in computational logic. The twentieth century was something of a renaissance for philosophy with epistemogical inquires using formal logic, inward and outward meanings of words and objects shedding light. Classical ideas about nominalism and pluralism, knower and known and so forth were informed with ideas from modern physics and logic. 

William James and John Dewey continued practical applications of philosophy. America had people like R.W. Emerson and C.S. Pierce yet Saul Kripke, P.F. Strawson and W.V.O. Quine wrote informatively about the mind/language/external reality interface with logical analysis. Eventually while reading philosophy one should read a few of the works by great historians such as Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) and then read in a third thread the major works of Eastern philosophers (Nakamura's 'Ways of Thinking of Eastern People' is good) such as Confucius, Lao Tzu, Sakyamuni Buddha, and histories of the founders of the major and minor religions such as Mani and Manichaeanism, Zoroaster and Muhammad. 

One would do well to keep a King James version of the Bible around and read that forever, here and there as the spirit moves one. There are innumerable stops on the way of reading history and philosophy together, such as the history and life of St. Augustine, neo-Platonism such as Plotinus (with the Enneads), Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Empedocles and so forth. There are even pre-Socratic philosophers with great ideas; for example, Parmenides and Heraclitus. It is necessary to learn a scientific history of cosmology and quantum mechanics as well. Philosophy does exist in a real Universe with quite a bit to consider. 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNmENSiview

If Turkey Attacks Kurds Many Americans Won't Like It

President Trump's Kurd policy regarding Turky reminds one of major General Rosecrans misunderestimating the situation of the line at the Battle of Chickamauga. Rosecrans thought there was a gap in the line so he misdirected troops to go fill it creating a gap through which General Longstreet broke through with eight brigades. Throwing the Kurds to the mercies of the Turkish military armed with U.S. weapons will make some move toward support for impeachment of the President.

President Trump could have used the opportune time to negotiate creation of a Kurdish state instead of letting Turks move ahead to slaughter Kurds. President Trump in pursuit of just money may have no heart in that monetary mercenary brain. Kurds have fought well as allies more than twenty years and it was wrong to abandon them cold.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/turkey-invades-syria-turkish-president-erdogan-announces-military-operation-today-2019-10-09/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chickamauga