Once upon a time there was an ethos that employers, which were at that time called lords, had a duty and responsibility for the good of their employees, who were called serfs or peasants, and vice versa.
While nobody is advocating a return to that particular social structure, would it not be out of the realm of possibility for a similar ethos to be cultivated among leaders and employers?
If you're looking for personal value out of attending funerals, there's good evidence for psychological benefits to doing so. Grieving is hard. Humans are evolved to process negative emotions through complex rituals. Funerals are one of the most important rituals because death is extraordinarily traumatic and universal to all humans.
Funerals aren't about saying goodbye to corpses. They're collective, complex rituals that aid the grieving process.
For me it boils down to this: the Catholic Church exists as a body of members who are all sinners- laymen and women, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope included. The clergy are simply functionaries within the church who serve very important roles, but are not sinless, perfect humans by any stretch of the imagination.
The way of life the Church offers along with its teachings, are what you might be able to consider the "good bits".
The "bad bits" are the members, who are sometimes clergy, who sin against God and against their neighbor.
HN is so narrow-minded because of its implicit and irrational committment to atheism.
Every major world religion asserts that it is evident that humans have an afterlife. There is abundant evidence of some kind of life after death.
Sure, the exact nature of that life has been debated throughout human history; but the idea that life and consciousness terminates into the void is truly a modern invention, and I'd argue is caused by first-world humans being more incredibly alienated from the experience of being human than it has ever been in history.
I am not sure if there’s evidence. But reading more about physics and the cosmos and the events of the universe happening 13.8 billion years ago only increases my faith that there is more to our “random” existence.
Too little science leads away from God, while too much science leads back to Him". So said Louis Pasteur.
> Every major world religion asserts that it is evident that humans have an afterlife. There is abundant evidence of some kind of life after death.
I'm sorry but I can't see how the first sentence supports the second in any meaningful way. It's easy and pointless to shit on religion and I'm not doing that here, but "evidence" is something other than common stories.
Consider that the evidence for a non-evolutionary origin of humanity is equally abundant, in religious traditions. Would you say that evolution is still dubious because so many traditional beliefs exist that don't include it? Would you hold up "we're molded from clay, because a lot of people said so" next to centuries of living and fossil evidence for an evolutionary origin of humanity and say, "Well, they both have a lot of evidence."?
I believe the source of your confusion is that death is such a black box. But the failure of current science to pierce that veil doesn't make non-evidence-based theories any more valid. It only means, "this is still unknown." Could there be an afterlife? Sure, it's possible, but there's not yet any significant evidence for one.
> I'm sorry but I can't see how the first sentence supports the second in any meaningful way. It's easy and pointless to shit on religion and I'm not doing that here, but "evidence" is something other than common stories.
> Could there be an afterlife? Sure, it's possible, but there's not yet any significant evidence for one.
First off, you can discount "common stories" all you want, but even science operates on "common stories", i.e. we use a "common" method, record our observations, and make educated guesses about what those observations imply, and share our results. When we begin to come to a "common" consensus, we say the stories line up and that therefore we've likely hit upon some truth.
It's so easy to find the evidence I didn't think I'd have to mention them. Off the top of my head, we can observe the numerous accounts of near-death experiences across cultures and religions which share striking commonalities.
Then you can also point to paranormal phenomena also universal across cultures and religions.
Another line of thought would be to read some Plato, particularly the Phaedo which gives several very convincing arguments for the immortality of the soul.
> First off, you can discount "common stories" all you want, but even science operates on "common stories"
These are different definitions of common, and that's on me for not being precise. "Common stories" refers to "stories you hear often, albeit with different forms/origins/meanings." Ideas such that they're easily repeated, but they're also easy to independently invent, because they don't rely on verifiable evidence. The "common" methods and stories of science are "common" as in "shared." Science operates on the intentional sharing of knowledge to build a shared understanding of the world. Two different religious concepts of the afterlife are not a shared idea, they're just convergent ideas.
(Your argument seems to be that they actually are shared via a shared seed - an actual afterlife, but we don't have direct evidence of that being true. If it were true, how would living people know about it? The assertion that "an afterlife exists, because so many cultures talk about it" requires additional assumptions about some mechanism of transmitting information from the dead to the living, and such mechanisms are even less universal than the simple existence of an afterlife. Is it angels? Is it ancestral memory? Is it astral projection? etc.)
> It's so easy to find the evidence I didn't think I'd have to mention them. Off the top of my head, we can observe the numerous accounts of near-death experiences across cultures and religions which share striking commonalities.
Then you can also point to paranormal phenomena also universal across cultures and religions.
Neither of these are evidence of an afterlife. Near-death experiences are not the experiences of immortal souls that have exited a dead body, they're experiences of living people. Even if you count the experiences of people who literally died for a brief period of time, which is what I assume you're actually referring to, we can't say that anything they remember experiencing is certainly a supernatural experience generated by a soul, instead of a chemical process of their brain. Is it possible? Sure, but where is the evidence that those experiences aren't just physical processes?
> Another line of thought would be to read some Plato, particularly the Phaedo which gives several very convincing arguments for the immortality of the soul.
Sure, I love me some Plato. Perhaps I'll get to Phaedo eventually. In what way is that evidence for the existence of an afterlife? I feel you're quite confused about what evidence means.
Let me clarify about science: It does operate on a degree of faith. I haven't derived special relativity myself, yet I believe it is true. But that's because I'm trusting the authority of experts who have done the math. The likelihood of them all lying to me, and to the other expert opinions I internalize, is vanishingly low. Every bit of math and science and logic I do know, agrees with the parts I am taking on faith. It is clear at a high level to me how the entire story of special relativity comes together logically and explains all the evidence those experts have used to support it. It's the most likely explanation for how everything works, and it's been tested by experts to an insane level of precision. None of that is true of claims that an afterlife exists. It is only speculative.
10 year fountain pen user. Nobody seems to have mentioned what are, in my opinion, the most compelling and practical reasons for fountain pen usage: their ergonomics.
Fountain pens are supposed to be held lightly, so much so that someone should be able to pull it right out of your hand without friction (apparently schoolteachers once did this to test students' proper grip). Additionally, because of the water-based ink and capillary action of the pen, very little pressure is needed to mark the paper. Fountain pens are also able to be held at a greater angle than most other pens allowing a grip where the pen lightly rests on the back of the hand. This provides the ability to write for long periods without fatigue.
This is in contrast with ballpoints which require a significant amount of pressure to mark and which also cannot mark at the greater angle required which would allow the pen to rest comfortably on the back of the hand. This leads to all kinds of awkward hand positions that people learn to write with (a teacher or student will be able to attest to the numerous hideous and painful hand contortions some students employ) and more rapid hand fatigue because of the pressure required. It is not uncommon for carpal tunnel syndrome to develop in writers of ballpoints, and for doctors to subsequently recommend the switch to fountain pens. I also find that it is considerably more difficult to produce good handwriting using a ballpoint rather than a fountain pen. The hand positioning and technique really makes all the difference.
Provided we're all talking about our own preferences, the ergonomic argument is I think pushed too far and kinda idealized.
For instance looking at the Lamy 2000 mentionned in the article, it's 25g for the plastic version, 54g for the metal version [0].
A Pilot G2 weights 11g, that's half to a quarter of matter to move around. [1]
From personal experience the G2 is also extremely smooth, and while I never bothered buying premium fountain pens, it was way lighter and smoother than any fountain pen I've used as a student.
Then when we try to go further on the form factor, needing an ink cartridge limits the minimal size of a fountain pen. I recently switched to much thinner triangular shaped pens, they were more comfortable for my current writing style (and I almost don't write much anymore), but it's just not an option outside of ballpoint.
So yes fountain pen can be great, but if ergonomics is the primary concern, there will be many other (potentially way better) choices out there on the market.
The ergonomics generally are not about the weight of the pen, but about how hard you must grip it to press it to the paper so friction can melt the ink when you roll the little ball across the page. You also have to write at a higher angle to keep the ball on the page.
Gel pens are great. I keep my wife supplied with them, because she thinks fountain pens are too fancy. But the difference is still night and day. I let her use my Lamy 2000 once. She picked it up and started making a snarky comment, "See I don't need a fancy... Oh!" The moment it hit the page and she started writing it literally shut her up. She never made a comment about "fancy pens" again after that. We had a good laugh about it.
This is exactly it- the required pressure to write. Fountain pens are effortless in marking, and flow. This leads also naturally to flowing cursive text. While I love fine liners, ball points or gel pens, few write like a fountain pen (and the ones that do are called fountain pen like).
The ideal version of capitalism with zero barriers to entry isn’t a zero sum game. The actual reality that is our current economy doesn’t reach that ideal and there are definitely situations where groups lose out form the benefit of others
Caring parents aren't in an impossible situation. The problem is that we have given up on the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child. Corporations have, intentionally or not, contributed heavily to the destruction of our villages, physical and online. I think with just five sets of parents sharing a similar worldview, it would very practical for them to curate enough good educational content for all their kids. Having four other families on the same program in their own community will reinforce to the kids that the parents aren't antagonists, but that this is what their mini-"society" just does regularly, and so mitigate resentment.
One may wonder whether the repetitive attacks against Linus on the tone he’s using, until he had to take a break, isn’t a way to cut down Linux’ ability to perform by cutting its head, which would be absolutely excellent for closed-source companies and Amazon.
Imagine: If Linux loses its agility, we may have to either “Use Windows because it has continued upgrades” or “purchase Amazon’s version of Linux” which would be the only ones properly maintained and thus certified for, say, government purpose or GDPR purpose.
(I’m paying Debian but I’m afraid that might not be enough).
There are always the BSDs if something happens. Not quite as popular, but the major ones are good enough that to take over completely. (as in if you thought someone would kill you for using Linux you can replace all your linux with some BSD by the end of the day and in a month forget about it) Don't take that as better - that is a different discussion, but they are good enough to substitute and move on for the most part.
While nobody is advocating a return to that particular social structure, would it not be out of the realm of possibility for a similar ethos to be cultivated among leaders and employers?