Substance/System/Structure

[Roxanne Appleby]

Hmmm; this doesn't jive with reason.

Evolution states homo sapien evolved from something else. (Thus the nature & characteristics of a thing do change... minorly and majorly.)

Man is Homo Sapien.

Are you saying if we evolve to something that has more of a hive mind... that we are no longer 'man'?

That sounds reasonable to me. Why not? There's a whole lot of things we used to be that we're not anymore, primordial slime-creatures for one. (Most people, anyway.)

It's all academic, though. We are what we are for the forseeable future - ornery individuals, per Ami's formulation. I like a Biblical analogy (which I do not take literally): Man is created in the image of God, but is fallen. We have many sublime qualities, but we are also capable of bickering and even committing murder over a bag of Cheetohs.


On the Fukuyama thing, he's using a rather specific definition of "history," which is the clash of nations or civilizations whose people have broadly different worldviews and goals. Wars over which country gets more Cheetohs, or dictators who rise up and try to take all the Cheetohs, and revolutions against them, don't really meet the definition, so the fact that such things will probably never disappear entirely doesn't falsify the thesis.


(The one liner thread has filled my head with cheetohs.)

 

[Pure]

ami We identify things by their simularities and dis-simularities on a macro or conceptual level, in other words, 'trees', then we go on to identify the specific and unique nature of an individual species of 'tree', and then discover the one thing that basically sets a maple tree apart from a birch. That one thing, is 'THE essential defining characteristic' of that entity.

For the sake of argument, lets suppose there's just one thing.

Let's further suppose that "Man" has as his 'essential characteristic', reason.

The problem with this approach to ethics is that with the trees, the maple is GOING to become a maple. There is no need or effect in 'telling' it what to do.

This "rational" being, supposing he is so, is NOT like the maple; he will NOT necessarily grow into something that causes you to say, "Wow, a man of reason."

He might become a prizefighter.
He might become a ditch digger or a farm hand.
She might have 20 babies and look after the surviving 10.
He might become a sheep shearer.

Of course he might become a history teacher,
or she might be accountant,
or she might be a ballet dancer,
or he, a professor of theoretical mathematics.
or she, an Aristotelian philosopher, like Ms Philippa Foot.

You may make your own list of lives less or more exemplary of reason.

First of all, one notes that 'pushing' and encouragement and money have a huge effect. That's a major diff with the maple tree. IOW you CAN push someone to become a professor, and often succeed.

But let us leave aside the parental roles.

The point is you, another adult, looking at another adult, have no moral or rational basis for telling anyone (assuming s/he does not complain), he or she shouldn't be exactly where they are on the list.

Aristotle himself appreciated this point. He realized that some people lack (much) 'theoretical reason.' which he thought was the highest. He thought women lacked brains, and were for bearing children. IOW he took people more or less as they were then--i.e., as they looked to him--, and probably had LESS sense of possilbity that we have now, when a peanut farmer or a frat boy can become president.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Ah, Pure(I try to be creative here) you are like a cat-fish, a bottom feeder, caught on a hook of reason, but fighting every inch of the way. I suppose that is an admirable trait/characteristic, to some.

"...Men and women are free to choose values, neither God nor Nature dictates them; nor Ayn Rand. One can choose to be a laisser faire atheist, and ascetic monk in a hair shirt or a debauché like Sade. He or she is under no compulsion to exercize the alleged 'higher capacities' or 'essential characteristics', like doing nuclear physics instead of fucking. Or be a saint rather than a garbage man. St. Paul's and your preferences notwithstanding..."

Well, at least you admit 'free will' "free to choose", guess we gotta start somewhere.

Ha - Touche'!

Reminds me of Pure making moral assertions while simultaneously denying the possibility of a common standard on which to base morality. (Without a standard such assertions are mere political opinion, dressed up to look like "morality" - impostors.)

 

[rgraham666]

The basis of my ethics is very simple.

There's enough pain in the universe without me adding to it.

 

[cantdog]

And, yannow, most people are just dumb house apes who can hardly get out of their own way. We all, however brilliant, participate in that miasma. But even then, mankind is clearly distinguishable from other species. I've never mistaken any other animal for a man, for example. One starts with taxonomy and goes forward from there.

Bicycles, hybrid autos, computers, Lear jets, Shock and Awe attacks on defenseless thousands-- there are lots of things only we do. But most of us would be helpless to make even a traffic light, let alone a computer. These things are built and invented by a rare few, and largely used by clueless myriads. Reason has indeed done more to alleviate suffering than eons of churchly piety. It is capable, even now, of doing much more in this regard. We could feed the millions, we could get them clean water. We have the resources, in every way. No more shacks! says Habitat. Everyone could be in decent housing. But should they?

Part and only part of the discussion here is about reason. It is not lack of reason which prevents us from acting. We divide ourselves from one another in so many ways, and some of the walls are high indeed. What we don't need is another philosophical wall declaring that we owe nothing to the rest of us, elevating egoism to the greatest height of virtue. The life well lived is physical, is intellectual, is social, is moral, is spiritual. Sex, improvisation, compassion, mastery, thought, music, poems, brotherhood. Knowledge and history, manipulation and appreciation. Much of it is individual, but the individual is not the all.

Moral choices, ethics, are an everyday thing. The sense of what is in the common interest is an integral part of each of us. So is the drive to dominance. So is the simple desire to be left the hell alone and the need for acknowledgement from others. A lot is happening and not all of it is consistent. Much that seems to need doing requires that we act together, and there are different ways to do that. People will generally act cooperatively if they feel the regime is basically sound and the goal worthy of their time, but sometimes it seems better to merely coerce participation, as one has to do with young children.

People are pretty darn contrary and independent. They'll act like that whatever you philosophize, and they do it enough to make it seem certain that it is a basic part of our nature. You don't need a philosophy celebrating self-abnegation to a common community, very much, either, since people are also sheeplike quite a bit of the time. The major part of us seems to crave direction, both in order to alleviate confusion and to duck responsibility.

Rob points out that all sorts of rationalist individuals seem to have ducked responsibility in order to place it on a system of morality derived from somewhere else, and that's true enough. "It's the bottom line," say the men in the meeting which decides to displace and starve two thousand tribesmen in Amazon Peru to get the oil beneath their feet. "I have no choice in this matter."

Hardly individualism, but surely a response of complicity in a rationally derived system. Is there no moral idea which can impose a feeling that it maight be wrong to extract the oil so ruthlessly?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The basis of my ethics is very simple.

There's enough pain in the universe without me adding to it.

I'll endorse that.

Sounds almost like a universal standard, even.

 

[rgraham666]

I'll endorse that.

Sounds almost like a universal standard, even.

It's not all that rational either, although I've certainly done enough thinking about it.

But I also draw from empathy, from memory, from imagination. None of which are rational.

Good one by the way, cant.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

But most of us would be helpless to make even a traffic light, let alone a computer.

~~~

Is there no moral idea which can impose a feeling that it might be wrong to extract the oil so ruthlessly?

". . . most of us would be helpless to make a traffic light . . ."

Or a pencil. And it's all of us, not most of us. Ain't capitalism grand?

Of course it's immoral to displace 2,000 people to get their oil. "Property rights" are a misnomer - it's a human right, and theirs has been violated. There's no moral conundrum here.

Why is it that every injustice that takes place within a capitalistic system is held up to be an example of the immorality of capitalism, rather than the immorality of particular individuals and the corruption of governments? Theft and injustice are if anything more common under non-capitalist systems, and yet are never held up there as examples of the immorality of the system.

Humans will seek short cuts, and some will be willing to run over their fellow man to get them. It doesn't matter what social/economic system is. I don't mean to keep riding my same hobby horse, but without some common standard on which to base a definition of right and wrong, why should you expect people to do anything other than shrug with cynical acceptance at such things?

Good post, BTW.

 

[rgraham666]

Because Roxanne, capitalism is held up as an ethical standard. Ask amicus.

To many people making a profit is good, end of statement. To these people if others get hurt turning a profit, hey, it's just the way things work. Can't be helped.

And they have all kinds of rational people backing them up.

To me, capitalism is just a tool. And like all tools can only do what the users direct it to do. It has no ethical qualities whatsoever. I won't blame a system for what the people who use the system do.

But capitalism has been reduced to an ideology. Which means its users let the system take the blame. They don't take responsibility because the system tells them they must do something in a particular way.

Which is, unfortunately, what happens to every system.

 

[cantdog]

Ha - Touche'!

Reminds me of Pure making moral assertions while simultaneously denying the possibility of a common standard on which to base morality. (Without a standard such assertions are mere political opinion, dressed up to look like "morality" - impostors.)

Yeah, because I, as an individual, am an imposter if I develop my own morality without consulting a rational system. Brilliant.

My claim is, if you merely receive your so-called morality from some system, you are a sheep. No morality is genuine if you haven't done the work to set it up for yourself. It's just peer pressure that makes people take on some other morality than their own.

 

[cantdog]

". . . most of us would be helpless to make a traffic light . . ."

Or a pencil. And it's all of us, not most of us. Ain't capitalism grand?

Of course it's immoral to displace 2,000 people to get their oil. "Property rights" are a misnomer - it's a human right, and theirs has been violated. There's no moral conundrum here.

Why is it that every injustice that takes place within a capitalistic system is held up to be an example of the immorality of capitalism, rather than the immorality of particular individuals and the corruption of governments?

Because capitalism contains no limit. The bottom line IS the standard.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Yeah, because I, as an individual, am an imposter if I develop my own morality without consulting a rational system. Brilliant.

My claim is, if you merely receive your so-called morality from some system, you are a sheep. No morality is genuine if you haven't done the work to set it up for yourself. It's just peer pressure that makes people take on some other morality than their own.

Yes and no. "Recieved" morality - "thou shalt nots" - are as you describe. As you know I have sought to propose some standard we all can agree on so that moral assertions can be something more than just unigue opinions with no applicability beyond your own self. As I (annoyingly) demonstrated in the Pope thread, that approach is vulnerable to the PC/relativist's, "Who are you to say jailing women who complain when they are raped is wrong, you cultural imperialist!"

Having a common standard is not the same as "recieved morality." After that, you're correct that it don't mean a thing if you "haven't done the work to set it up for yourself."


Edited to add: You know, it's a shame that with only two exceptions everybody here is so all fired absolutist in their determination to resist any challenge to their professions of moral relativism, which I don't beleive most even believe, really, and to resist the suggestion that there might be some common moral standard based on what humans have in common. It's a shame because I think we could do some useful work here in defining a possible standard. Yet when I tried to do so a year ago, every single person rose up in righteous outrage.

Why don't I believe you really believe in moral relativism? The inherent contradictions, the fact that you must relinquish your liberal values to believe it. You can't believe in freedom of speech and simultaneously believe people are justified to riot because of cartoons. You can't simultaneously believe that all humans are created equal and simultaneously believe that it is perfectly acceptable for a particular society to condemn half the humans to second class citizen status because they don't have a dick.

 

[cantdog]

You need some other damn thing besides capitalism to demonstrate that screwing 2000 people is wrong if oil is extracted and profit made.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Because capitalism contains no limit. The bottom line IS the standard.

I don't think this is the place to go into it in depth, but that is not really correct. We haven't specified any definitions, so let's not put too fine a point on things, but a proper free market system does not permit fraud or coercion. Those contraints mean that the bottom line IS NOT the standard. You could spit back some definition of "capitalism" that does not include those constraints, but don't bother - it would be an irrelevent straw man, because it won't have any defenders: not me, not Ami, not any sincere, serious person anywhere.


BTW, see the substantive edit/addition to my last post.

 

[cantdog]

I don't think this is the place to go into it in depth, but that is not really correct. We haven't specified any definitions, so let's not put too fine a point on things, but a proper free market system does not permit fraud or coercion. Those contraints mean that the bottom line IS NOT the standard. You could spit back some definition of "capitalism" that does not include those constraints, but don't bother - it would be an irrelevent straw man, because it won't have any defenders: not me, not Ami, not any sincere, serious person anywhere.


BTW, see the substantive edit/addition to my last post.

A proper free market system does not permit it?

How does it prevent it?

how does it militate against it?

Every time any such limits occur historically, they are imposed, and not by "Capitalism in a proper free markket system" but by legislation and prosecution, outrage and riot, organizing of labor, other such forces not generally considered a portion of the package which is capitalism. Presently, so long as they do this shit where the population consists of brown people, they are rewarded for it, and not the contrary. So it has been for the last century. Capitalism in a proper free market system had better damn well get on the stick, because people are dying.

I've been to the third world, and I am NOT joking or theorizing. People are dying and the boardrooms celebrate.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

A proper free market system does not permit it?

How does it prevent it?

how does it militate against it?

Every time any such limits occur historically, they are imposed, and not by "Capitalism in a proper free markket system" but by legislation and prosecution, outrage and riot, organizing of labor, other such forces not generally considered a portion of the package which is capitalism. Presently, so long as they do this shit where the population consists of brown people, they are rewarded for it, and not the contrary. So it has been for the last century. Capitalism in a proper free market system had better damn well get on the stick, because people are dying.

I've been to the third world, and I am NOT joking or theorizing. People are dying and the boardrooms celebrate.

That is far too cynical. A "proper free market system" only thrives where the rule of law holds. Under the rule of law fraud and coercion are illegal, and the laws against them are enforced. This is the norm in liberal democracies. It is not the norm in nations where the rule of law does not hold, and in those places there is not a "proper free market system," but more often some form of 'crony capitalism,' which is really not capitalism at all, but some kind of bastard fuedalism. Those are the places where the outrages you justifiably rail against happen.

Of course injustices happen in all societies, we haven't acheived utopia, and in fact utopia is not an option. We do the best we can, and we actually do pretty well in liberal democracies. This is the point at which Pure or maybe yourself comes in swinging, blasting me for opposing more government involvement in economic affairs, and ascribing to such involvement credit for my "we do pretty well" statement. He (or you) are wrong, though. It's not government activism, but a social concensus in favor of the rule of law, property rights, honoring contracts, competition, personal responsibility, and probably a few I've forgotten that are responsible for us doing pretty well.

 

[amicus]

cantdog]A proper free market system does not permit it?

How does it prevent it?

how does it militate against it?

Every time any such limits occur historically, they are imposed, and not by "Capitalism in a proper free markket system" but by legislation and prosecution, outrage and riot, organizing of labor, other such forces not generally considered a portion of the package which is capitalism. Presently, so long as they do this shit where the population consists of brown people, they are rewarded for it, and not the contrary. So it has been for the last century. Capitalism in a proper free market system had better damn well get on the stick, because people are dying.

I've been to the third world, and I am NOT joking or theorizing. People are dying and the boardrooms celebrate.

[/I]

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cantdog's new avatar reminds me of Geraldo Rivera(whom I cannot stand) on a good day!

Free market laizzez-faire capitalism is the only economic system than can claim and support to engender ethics and morality. No other system would even dare to make that claim, not the socialists, not the fascists, not a dictatorship nor a theocracy, and certainly not an African warlord or tribal chieftan.

But the free market does not function in a vacuum. It must have accompanying property rights and individual rights constitutionally guaranteed and protected by law.

The free market place rewards creativity and efficiency and penalizes non productive endeavors. Capitalism welcomes and embraces innovation and improvement and discards waste and inefficiency.

The market place is not and has never been in the main, a 'fly by night' operation; which means it has repeat customers who must be satisfied with the best product at the lowest price or the free consumer will simply go elsewhere.

A monopoly cannot exist in a free market system, monopolies only exist under a command economy, those supported by a strong central government. In a free market if someone corners a market and begins to charge higher prices, another enterprise will arise, almost overnight, to satisfy the demand.

This is all brought about by that oft mentioned 'invisible hand', driven by the individuals own self interest to provide for himself and those who depend on him. Quite the same holds true for the labor market. In a socialist or fascist 'command' society, people are told where to work, how much they can earn, where they can live, what they can buy and sell. In a free market an individual is free to offer his services to any employer he can reach a mutual agreement with in terms of compensation for his labor.

Freedom...individual human freedom, is part and parcel of the concept of capitalism and the free market place. The 'Capital' part of capitalism, the money, in a free system, flows to the areas of greatest return on the investment, as it should. It not only finances the building of new enterprise, business and homes, it also provides the investor with and income for the use of that venture capital.

Cantdog and many others moan and whine about capital investments by large and small corporations in third world nations. They forget that the powers that be in those nations welcome and invite foreign investment and technology. They also forget that those investments enrich the population(to the degree the local dictator permits) and builds infra-structure, roads, communications systems, water systems which eventually translates into homes and schools for the indigenous population and eventually a rise in the living standard of the entire region.

The investment capital and the corporations are there to produce a profit and a return on investment. They are not altruistic(nor should they be) in nature, but they wish to meet market demands for quality goods and low prices. If, in doing so, they hire foreign labor at lower than labor prices paid in more developed nations, it is still the highest wage those laborers have ever known, and is an overfall benefit to the third world nation.

Most important of all in Cantdog's dilemma, is that the free market place, capitalism permits the existence of human dignity in the form of a days work for a days pay based on performance and excellence. It allows an individual and a family to exchange meaningful labor for sustenance, rather than begging or accepting handouts from the benevolent dictator at large.

Long live the free market system and human dignity.


amicus...

 

[past_perfect]

Dear past_perfect:

I posted the below, and have not seen your response. You did say it was late just before I wrote it, so maybe you missed it. Understandable, so here it is again. Would you please comment on it if you would -- or not -- but would appreciate if you do. Thank you.

I am very sorry for the delayed response - I did see your first thread - I just didn't have enough time to respond as I was trying to answer some before going to work, and a few others just before I left to spend the weekend at a friend's place.

Yes, Rombach is regarded as a member of the "Freiburger Schule" (Freiburger School) - the founder of "phenomenology" is considered to be Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938), his successor Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) and Rombach being the last of that line. However, Rombach used the tools of phenomenology, but digressed from Heidegger's approach to a great extent - how and why will hopefully become a little clearer once I progress with my introduction to his work.
The psychological schools using the structural approaches would be "Psychodrama", "Interactive Psychology" and "Integrative Therapy".
I am not familiar with the authors you mentioned, but will look them up when I find the time - I am really pressed for time at the moment, which annoys me, because some really interesting discussions started here, and I can't participate. But again, I hope you accept my apologies.

EDIT to add: Rombach's work had a huge impact on sociology and there a quite a few secondaries now who explore the "Mensch and Umwelt" approach inspired by some of his later work.

 

[past_perfect]

I'm very pleased that people find here find these rambling philosphical topics as much fun as I do.

I've spent years reading (and occasionally writing) philosophy, which was my Masters degree at university. I had to read a lot of stuff, much of which I (and most of you, I suspect) would cheerfully dismiss as confused, obfuscated crap.

I have a feeling from what I've read on this thread about Rombach, that I guess he would fall into the "crap" school of philosphy. (But by all means, past_perfect, write that wikipedia article. I've seen biographies in wikipedia of people who no doubt contributed less to culture than he did).

Good Philosophers have a preoccupation with the meaning of words to an extent verging on pedantry -- because their preoccupation also happens to be their occupation.

I now present a shortlist of Good Philosophy to Read Before You Die: (And don't come back until you've read some of them)

Plato -- "The Line And The Cave" -- the heart and soul of Dualism

Ludwig Wittgenstein -- "Philosophical Investigations" -- What can and can't be known, what it means to draw a picture

Gertrude Anscombe -- "Actions" -- A little book about doing things, which simply explains the concepts of Freedom and Responsibility

Dan Dennett -- "Consciousness Explained" -- The title is not a boast

John Austin -- Performative/Constantive-- A transcript of a BBC broadcast, where he explains where language comes from and what it is.

Aside from Plato, All these people are 20th century philosphers, modern people living in the modern world. They worked hard to shake off the myth-eaten ideas of their predecessors, and on the whole they did a great job.

Interesting list. I am not familiar with John Austin and Dan Dannet, that's quite a bold statement though, but I am always hopeful that someone actually does have an approach that covers most of my questions.
Plato, of course, Wittgenstein, certainly, although I was more interested in his later work. Gertrude Anscombe's work is a must, I agree - but seeing her in a debate was even more fascinating.
Hm, was Oxford your alma mater by any chance?

 

[NoJo]

Ah yes, I detected the strains of Heidegger in Rombach.

If I may get a little ad hominem for a moment, I'd like to quote this letter from Herbert Marcuse which was written to Heidegger in 1947, in reference to the latter's Nazism:


Dear Mr. Heidegger,
I have thought for a long time about what you told me during my visit to Todtnauberg, and I would like to write to you about it quite openly.

You told me that you fully dissociated yourself from the Nazi regime as of 1934, that in your lectures you made extremely critical remarks, and that you were observed by the Gestapo. I will not doubt your word. But the fact remains that in 1933 you identified yourself so strongly with the regime that today in the eyes of many you are considered as one of its strongest intellectual proponents. Your own speeches, writings and treatises from this period are proof thereof. You have never publicly retracted them - not even after 1945. You have never publicly explained that you have arrived at judgments other than those which you expressed in 1933-34 and articulated in your writings. You remained in Germany after 1934, although you could have found a position abroad practically anywhere. You never publicly denounced any of the actions or ideologies of the regime. Because of these circumstances you are still today identified with the Nazi regime. Many us have long awaited a statement from you, a statement that would clearly and finally free you from such identification, a statement that would clearly and finally free you from such identification, a statement that honestly expresses your current attitude about the events that have occurred. But you have never uttered such a statement at least it has never emerged from the private sphere. I - and very many others - have admired you as a philosopher; from you we have learned an infinite amount. But we cannot make the separation between Heidegger the philosopher and Heidegger the man, for it contradicts your own philosophy. A philosopher can be deceived regarding political matters; in which case he will openly acknowledge his error. But he cannot he deceived about a regime that has killed millions of Jews - merely because they were Jews - that made terror into an everyday phenomenon, and that turned everything that pertains to the ideas of spirit, freedom and truth into its bloody opposite. A regime that in every respect imaginable was the deadly caricature of the western tradition that you yourself so forcefully explicated and justified. And if that regime was not the caricature of that tradition but its actual culmination - in this case, too, there could be no deception, for then you would have to indict and disavow this entire tradition.

...

Is this really the way you would like to be remembered in the history of ideas? Every attempt to combat this cosmic misunderstanding founders on the generally shared resistance to taking seriously a Nazi ideologue. Common sense (also among intellectuals), which bears witness to such resistance, refuses to view you as a philosopher, because philosophy and Nazism are irreconcilable. In this conviction common sense is justified. Once again: you (and we) can only combat the identification of your person and your work with Nazism (and thereby the dissolution of your philosophy) if you make a public avowal of your changed views.



This week I will send off a package to you. My friends have recommended strongly against it and have accused me of helping a man who identified with a regime that sent millions of my co-religionists to the gas chambers (in order to forestall misunderstandings, I would like to observe that I was not only an anti-Nazi because I was a Jew, but also would have been one from the very beginning on political, social and intellectual grounds, even had I been "100 per cent aryan"). Nothing can counter this argument. I excuse myself in the eyes of my own conscience, by saying that I am sending a package to a man from whom I learned philosophy from 1928 to 1932. I am myself aware that that is a poor excuse. The philosopher of 1933-34 cannot be completely different than the one prior to 1933; all the less so, insofar as you expressed and grounded your enthusiastic justification of the Nazi state in philosophical terms.

 

[gauchecritic]

Hm, was Oxford your alma mater by any chance?

Joe was at LSE with Mick, the rest is history

 

[past_perfect]

That was actually what piqued my interest in Heidegger - I started off with a biography, as I found it really disconcerting that someone of that intellectual stature could be seduced and used by something as vile as the Nazi regime. I read more or less his entire work - he was a broken man after WWII though, I always toyed with the idea of using his character for a novel or play.

 

[NoJo]

Interesting list. I am not familiar with John Austin and Dan Dannet, that's quite a bold statement though, but I am always hopeful that someone actually does have an approach that covers most of my questions.
Plato, of course, Wittgenstein, certainly, although I was more interested in his later work. Gertrude Anscombe's work is a must, I agree - but seeing her in a debate was even more fascinating.
Hm, was Oxford your alma mater by any chance?

"Philosphical Investigations" was Wittgenstein's last work, I believe. No, I wasn't at Oxford, but I guess that was the school of philosophy that resonated with me. I'd have liked to have been a spy like many of them, but I rather muffed my debonair exams.

 

[NoJo]

That was actually what piqued my interest in Heidegger - I started off with a biography, as I found it really disconcerting that someone of that intellectual stature could seduced and used by something as vile as the Nazi regime. I read more or less his entire work - he was a broken man after WWII though, I always toyed with the idea of using his character for a novel or play.

I agree. A while back I started a thread on writers I admired whose politics was vile:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=390395

 

[NoJo]

Joe was at LSE with Mick, the rest is history

Yes, we took LSE together. And then something else happened, I think.