I first understood "love" to refer to the magic force in the universe that caused all those Disney style princesses to be so attractive to the various princes who carried them off. And to whatever it was that made all the people in the stories and films I saw on TV to end up fabulously happy no matter what happened to them.

As I entered what I now call my Twenteens (the period from about 14 to about 25), the idea or definition of love took on a lot more complexity, as everyone around me started talking about how they LOVED this person, but that they were IN LOVE with that one, and how that made all the difference (especially in who they would sleep with).

I noticed towards the latter end of that life stage, that peoples' opinions of the SIGNIFICANCE of "love," started to shift. They were beginning to see from direct experience, that unlike all the stories we were slathered in until then, by hollywood especially, that "love" by itself didn't do very much at all, to see to it that life worked out for anyone.

Most people still seemed to be looking for love, but things had shifted noticeably from defining "love" by the warm, gushy sensations that people felt for someone, to being more about what they could expect from each other, what they were willing to do to make each other happy, and the like.

By my age, the definition of "love" that most people seem to go by, is a lot more complex. Often, to the point where so much of their own lives and their sense of the world and of existence itself, is built into it, that they don't really even call it "love" any more.

But I think the essence of what we always INTENDED love to be about, is still very much at the heart of it all. And what I've seen happen in my life and others, isn't so much that "love" stopped being important to them, as that we very logically recognized how complicated it was to find our more complex understanding of it.

I don't know anyone in my age range who is still looking for their Twenteen understanding of love, with all the attendant risk of saddling themselves with someone who "turns them on," but who also often damages the entire rest of their lives. Except maybe as a short term fling, anyway.

I for one, would still LIKE to find that love. I know that it's unlikely at this stage, owing to how complicated it really always was, but I am very much, still looking for it.

I'm just not willing to take a chance on anything LESS than real love now, as I was when I was so young and ignorant of it's real implications.

Actually, nature does NOT "balance" anything. That's a myth, often eagerly adopted and codified by people who want to excuse themselves to continue down a path they already know will be bad for future generations.

It's actually identical to the claim that capitalist economies will "self adjust" and "balance."

That is, specifically, that both nature and unregulated economies WILL react to negative behavior. Just never mindfully, and rarely in a manner that you will enjoy.

There IS no officially correct "balance point" for the "natural world." There's just "the way things are, whatever that is."

If humans become extinct because they cause changes to their own living space that they can't continue living with, that space will NOT naturally return to the way it was before they mucked it up.

Look at small situations we already know about, where human pollution destroyed a given species or made a given location uninhabitable. No extinct species has ever "naturally" sprung back into existence, just because we stopped allowing people to kill it. It stayed extinct, and the rest of the environment "adjusted" to THAT fact, by changing even more in other ways, because that species was gone.

I've thought about this a lot over the years. Early on, I bought in to the idea of supporting my ideals through my actions and inactions, but I rapidly discovered that it's far from easy to do that.

The main thing I ran in to, is that everything in the world is so intertwined. That whole "six degrees of separation" thing, that wasn't expressed using that term until years later, gradually became inescapable to me. I could try to pat myself on the back that I wasn't buying this or that which was connected to something I didn't like, but every time I looked further, I'd find connections between something else in my life, to something I didn't care for.

That, plus the fact that even a protest action doesn't have any use, if the thing or person being protested about doesn't know you're doing it, and have any reason to make whatever change you want.

I also have limits, similar to others expressed here. I still try to avoid buying things shipped here from China, in many instances, because I am upset with lower prices being ONLY because people who live and work in China, aren't allowed to have any say in how much they are paid, or in how cleanly (ecologically) they are made.

I've been interested on a related note, to see that some people (not here) have promoted the idea that I and others SHOULD support child labor elsewhere, on the grounds that that tiny pittance those children get, might be all that's keeping their family alive. I find such reasoning at least short sighted, and mostly dishonest. Moreover, if that reasoning is applied more, then the same thing can (and was in the past) said even here in the US, as an excuse for driving down wages for ANYONE who had to work for a living.

I'm no defender for Tom Cruise or anyone else I don't personally know, but I've learned to be very cautious about reports that someone famous is a "jerk" or whatever.

It's VERY common for famous people to be resented, just because they ARE famous, for one thing. And for another, it's VERY common when big films are being made, using actual non-film people as significant players, for misunderstandings about processes to arise.

Although I do have the general impression that Tom Cruise is "not like you and me" in many ways, based on the MANY news stories surrounding his religious affiliations and associated behaviors, I wont assume that these reports are accurate until more information comes out.

Especially the idea that all the people on the ship were told "not to look at him."

If someone is making a film about how this character is on a ship, and isn't a movie star in the story, it's very logical to tell the EXTRAS on the set, not to stare at the character as though he's a famous film actor, while he's playing a guy who they've already known for years (in the story).

So this COULD well be another example of how someone's previous "odd" reputation is acting like a catalyst to inflame current misunderstandings and activities and resentments, into being a horrifying scandal, that really shouldn't exist.

We'll see. Maybe.

Like I wasn't already.

I don't know about everyone else, but I think I'm going to die early, just because of how insanely idiotic the modern internet-based market system is.

I keep trying to buy what I think should be simple things to find, and being thwarted by a world where no vendors have a rational website.

Such as, I want to overhaul my bathroom, and to do that, I need a wall's worth of regular size (4 1/4) inch black tiles.

First off, the only color tile that anyone in the DC area keeps in stock, is white. That, or a few edge pieces in other colors.

When I look online, it gets even worse. Home Depot says I can buy black tiles from them, but they have to be special ordered, and the description of the tiles is "Black 4-1/4 in. x 4-1/4 in. x 7.3 mm Ceramic Wall Field Tile features a striking, glossy sheen accentuating the neutral white color for an easy complement to any decor. "

I can't tell what color the tiles are.

When I tried Amazon, that wondrous new imperial buying site, they offer to sell me a SINGLE tile (so far as I can tell) for $395.

I run into this kind of abject insanity constantly these days. None of the vendors seem to care that their websites are thus riddled with nonsense. Apparently Target's upper officers have held meetings (without inviting customers) trying to figure out why they aren't selling as much online as they expect. They too, haven't noticed that when a real person looks something up on their site, they are led to an entirely different product than sought.

Am I the only person who wishes people with internet sites, would be required by law to have their CEO regularly try to buy things that way, so they'd MAYBE figure out their sites are nuts?

Your thread title is entirely false.

Nothing in your post supports even a HINT of a "coup," and doesn't even support your claim that the "plot" was originated by "rogue FBI agents."


According to your own post, this was a discussion of an entirely legal action, by members of Trump's own cabinet.

Why the false labeling of the post?

I also get private yuks from the periodic amusing effort by some company to tell me I can get laid by buying their product.

The funniest are the ones where sex has nothing to do with the product at all. A couple of years back, McDonalds actually ran some commercials that showed guys buying McDonalds food, and by carrying it home to their apartment, managed to gain the favor of their hot neighbor.

Actually, now that you specify it like that (actually conversing with myself), I don't think I do.

If you'd just described it as "talking inside my own head," I would have said I do it all the time. I certainly REHEARSE things all the time; I write songs and poetry in my head first; I sometimes even imagine extended conversations or debates over things that way.

I just don't CONVERSE with myself, as though I am two people.

Throughout my life, I've known that people do die. As a child, I (as is quite common) didn't really appreciate what it really means that people and others die. Pets would die, usually out of sight, and I would hear of various famous people dying, and of course, there were millions of entirely fictional deaths on TV and in films. Those especially, seemed meaningless, because I would see the same actors in another part, shortly after they "died" elsewhere.

More recently, I have had to finally begin to face much more meaningful deaths. Much more real. My mother died a year ago, my sister died suddenly of undiagnosed heart disease a few months after, and a month ago, my father went into a spiral of failing internal systems. One of my brothers was diagnosed with an incurable early-life-debilitating disease.

So all very quickly, my immediate family appears to be shrinking from six down to two.

How that has all affected me, has been difficult to measure in detail. My patience with others in fear seems to be increasing. My patience with people who insult others, or who indulge in prejudicial treatment of others has decreased even more.

I have no doubt that it will change how I relate to others, but how that will affect my search for a mate, I've yet to discover.

I'm posting this, just to share with others here who might be dealing with a similar life stage or experience. Mainly, I find that as with so many things, there was no way to prepare ahead of time for the effect of this.

This kind of thing goes to the heart of a much larger concern that we are having to struggle with more and more, in the international corporatist world that we now have to live in.

The basic question is, I think, whether or not we should demand morality from corporations and other organizations set up to gather in business profits or not.

Should profits alone, be what decides what is right and wrong in the world? Should the recognition of differing cultural concepts, mean that people from OUR OWN culture, should be allowed by us to remain in our culture (with whatever benefits and profits come from that), while at the same time, behaving actively within another culture, who's values we may find abhorrent?

Thus we have networking and social platform providers who, in order to be allowed to draw profits from various places (China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia (and other religion-based nations) that use the applications or products to do things that we consider reprehensible, even traitorous to us. China in particular demands that internet businesses that want to profit there, have to assist them in their political monitoring and spying on their own people.

In centuries past, when mechanical industries were the more important, there were many instances of large business concerns who wanted to profit at home, and profit overseas, would be found to selling products that increased the power of potential enemies.

If we do call for morality from American based businesses, where is the line to be drawn?

A more general observation:

when I find that I am forced to deal with something that I never wanted to have to deal with, and when I am plagued in my own mind by the challenge, that the main thing to STOP doing, is staring at it in frustration or upset. Stop making my life about what is undesired, and make it about something, anything forward going at all.

In other words, instead of focusing on what I don't or can't have, I work actively on getting something or accomplishing something else. I think that's the essence of what most people are saying here. The thing is, whatever I do instead, has to be something I actively want to do. If it's JUST a distraction, all I'll be able to see, is that I am playing games with myself, and so I wont stop staring into the abyss.

Humor can help a lot of people. A lot of the best comedians of the world, have been people who were very sad or fearful or frustrated within their own lives, who decided to make the most absurd jokes about it all that they could, in order to thumb their noses at the insanity or absurdity of it all.

Actually, I disagree a bit.

What I've been seeing, particularly from the Trump administration, isn't fear mongering.

It's more like "anger herding."

Trump appealed to as many angry people as he could find, and did present them with a pretend fear for them to use as a cover story.

Almost no one is ACTUALLY afraid of Mexicans rushing across the border like an invading hoard, and assaulting Americans at random. But plenty of Americans are ANGRY (and have been told for years that what they are angry about, can be blamed on foreigners), and are eager to use "fear of Mexicans" as an excuse to vent that anger.

So I agree that Trump and others are appealing to emotions rather than logic, I just think the emotion in question is anger, not fear.

Just finished "A Man and His Ship," which is a history of the S.S. United States passenger liner and it's designer. Naturally, the history of passenger travel by sea was included.

Well into "Newton's Football," an analysis of American football, from a physics point of view.

Always have one going.

Bollocks and nonsense. Economics arrangements do NOT "bring technological advancements." Nor can they do anything else you list as accomplishments by capitalism.

If one pretends they do, then the thousands of years of accomplishments that preceded and provided the entire technological foundation that your capitalist accomplishments were built on, would be proof that everything BUT capitalism has been VASTLY more productive and inventive than capitalism ever has.

I have hated Valentines Day for my entire life.

From the time I was a very young child, Valentines Day has meant only tremendous obligations, confusing and nonspecific expectations, and expansive social anxiety. Never anything else.

The ONLY thing I like about not having a mate, is that I no longer have to deal with Valentines day, or other obligatory "holidays."

Mmm. Well, from what I've seen, I think it would be most accurate to say a few things.

One, that a persons experiences do very much shape what they are capable of being aware of, and what they are likely to be prepared to deal with.

Our experiences also do something many people don't readily recognize: even as they shape what we CAN be aware of, they can also prevent us from perceiving or believing in all sorts of things, at the same time.

Some disciplines can result directly in misperceptions of people, in comparative ways. For example, most military people are directly trained to behave decisively. That's regardless of whether or not they are actually personally certain of everything they are reacting to or not. This is due to the inherent danger their occupation has to deal with.

Historians, by comparison, are taught to do the opposite. When an historian makes an instant choice, they are seen to be jumping to unsupported conclusions, before taking in all pertinent information.

Someone who is looking for decisiveness, will therefore often tend to think badly of historians, and think very positively of military trained and experienced people, even though objectively, both are doing what they do, entirely for the best.

One caution related to this, to keep in mind, is that whether someone behaves confidently and forthrightly, or behaves cautiously and carefully, has NOTHING AT ALL to do with whether or not they will turn out to have been correct.

Well said, as usual.

A couple of cautions to suggest:

* it can be hard to discern a difference between "seeking alternate source confirmation," and "looking for excuses to believe what we already do." Sometimes even people who intend to develop serious and accurate visions of the world, make that error.

* it's also easy to read all sorts of alternate viewpoints, but only really do it in order to prepare "clever" refutations, rather than do so in an honest effort to understand that another legitimate point of view does exist.

Basically, something I recognized long ago, still holds true: it takes a HUGE amount of very conscious effort and work, to genuinely seek truth. If you find you aren't having any trouble trying to get a hold on life, that probably means you've inserted yourself inside a cocoon of delusion.

I agree with the spirit, and general sense that's behind what you've said here. But I think you've got things a bit backwards.

Look at WHY mass media corporations look for ratings, and solve that search for ratings the way that they do. They never CAUSED the American people to want quick, short answers, they just catered to it, because that's what works. We can certainly criticize them for failing to see the better duty to report what people NEED to understand, but as long as capitalist profit motive is what drives everything, that's likely to remain a rare choice.

I myself blame this particular era of near pure profit motives, on the shift I directly witnessed that took place back in the late 1960's or so, when the people who took over the then Big Three broadcast companies, bought firmly into the Business Science approach to everything, and switched from using News reporting ONLY to fulfill their FCC obligations, and demanded instead that all news programs make profits independent of the rest of the controlling corporation. We can't go back now, because the structure of the world was so changed by the internet, that we have to way for corporate America to be held to account for access to media, as we once could.

And overall, humans have ALWAYS sought the short and the simple answer to everything. This is why it has so often been easy to appeal to the simplest motivations in people: short term greed, a sense of being "absolutely right," and pretty much anything that a person can say to themselves "I don't even have to think for so much as a MOMENT!!! Because I KNOW!!" has always been common.

I suspect THAT goes back to the nature of childhood. A small child's motivations are usually limited to "I get the candy if I do that." Or "I don't get yelled at if I do this." Frankly, from what I've seen, it's actually rare for humans to develop a much more subtle or complex approach to their later lives, than that. They add lots of verbiage, and often build a list of imaginary authorities and clever sayings to say WHY they should get the candy, but at the base of it all, it's still just candy cravings that drive them. And sound bites and snappy sayings, are the equivalent of intellectual candy.

Hmm. Well, now that you mention it, although I have known a couple of people who suffered identity struggles, I've never had that experience myself.

I don't think it has anything to do with my being tough or anything affirmative like that. More that I just never thought of myself in "identity" terms. When my marriage finally ground tom an end, I was depressed and exhausted, not "lost for my sense of place."

I think that the entirely accidental cleverness of the MAGA meme, is precisely that it IS impossible to pin down.

Supporters can advocate all manner of good or bad ideas in the name of MAGA, and declare all opponents to those ideas to be OPPOSED to America being "great", accordingly.

By refusing to define MAGA goals specifically, advocates can call for self-blinded support for all manner of things, including moves that will assuredly serve to make the United States subservient to or dependent on other nations...on the grounds that greatness is a mysterious ideal.