So what was the original celebration about? A religion of some sort?  In the catholic sense of the word. 

Regards, - muddled - Hip. H. Hooray

Well, if you held a referendum (British style) among those knocking back the free alcohol and having sex in the fields regarding how many of them actually gave a flying fart if it was on religious grounds or not, then you might have seen Europe's first Shixit by democratic vote (British style).

Muddle on .... (especially thought-wise).

And happy Éarraigh of course! Mind the nettles .... bare bums can be a tad sensitive.

Oh but in the days of 'was' people took their cults very seriously. I take it then that you do not know - why else the bawdy reply.

As for muddling on, I suppose you can't help it on your special day. 

I tend not to observe days beginning with E acute - but each to his own.  If you are suffering in parts try  covering up. This might be a family site. If the day leads to thickening of head/brain tomorrow we will understand - or make further allowances.

nordmann, with your "Féileaidh Éarraigh" I came nowhere. Even the mighty google said no terms found for this word and even adding "english" I came nowhere, but suddenly I saw "ostara" and then I recognized it, yes the equinox...and of course "Earraghaoíochtaigh" didn't gave anything either. Perhaps the English google isn't that Celtic anymore? But now I had something to start with...
And yes those neo-pagans seem to be also odd "creatures"
http://aeternalswirlingfight.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-wheel-of-year-ostara-spring-equinox.html
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/naturessacredjourney/2016/03/a-brief-history-of-ostara/

But at least the last link give some history about the Ostara cults (religions, superstitions). And yes as I already said here or in another thread, religion, superstition seems to be part of the human thinking from the dawn of his ability to think. The only real thing in all this is indeed the equinox. And yes as you and Priscilla said, the guys, who want to "feast" on the occasion of the goddess of fertility in Mesopotamia or today have always that excuse for an orgy...perhaps the only difference is perhaps that they now have preservatives, but I am not sure if that would count in the exuberance of the "feast"...

Regards to both, Paul.

I put 'Féileaidh Éarraigh' in an online translation tool for Irish to English and came up with 'Butterfly Festival'.

LiR - I wouldn't worry about it. When I put my own (Gaelic) name into those things I inevitably end up with variations of "Worm, son of the Lake". Which I quite like, as Tolkien characters go, but it's a little off the "mark" (and needlessly aquatic). The Romans, whose knowledge of Gaelic was probably as weak as modern Anglo-Saxons and Google translation algorithms, at least found a parallel with their own ancestors' behaviour when viewing Éarraighaìochta from a safe distance (especially the bit concerning how Rome acquired its first sizeable population). They preferred "Rites of Spring" as a handle on what was going on - the old peoples' voluntary euthanasia while pissed out of their skulls and the timing of it fitting quite neatly into "Mamuralia" (which by then they viewed as a little primitive and inefficient), and the wanton hedonistic fornication dovetailing nicely with "Mensis Martia" (which by then they still liked to indulge in, even if they'd forgotten whether it was religious or not). Believe me, butterflies were the least of it ....  

Priscilla the Hippy  - I actually welcome your suggestion that we desist from discussing religion because children might be present (a sentiment I have championed now for many years too). Of course that precludes discussion of the possible religious motive behind fornicating freely in the fields, sending the elderly out to voluntarily die of hypothermia ("hippy-thermia"?), getting as sloshed as possible on copious amounts of alcohol before it goes off (why waste preserves?), and even then, when the christians took over and stopped all that mallarkey, carving little statues of young full breasted women spreading their legs and exposing their vaginas to be left in the same fields at the same time of the year and in the same locations as once we enjoyed wild abandoned sexual frenzy.

All in the name of religion, of course. Or at least that's the default view of centuries of historians who tend towards "ritual" as a definition when they can't really work out what the hell was going on.

PS: The Tuatha Dé Dánann were the Shixit folk - not only unilaterally withdrawing from Europe but from the entire human race, having had enough of being bossed about by faceless autocrats. They tended to re-emerge from their "Sí" only when something interesting was going on - like mass fornication and inviting the surplus unproductive people to do the decent thing and get off the planet before a referendum might come around they might screw up (they "adopted" some of these and used them as intermediaries with the potential fornicators for the duration of the "festivities"). Whether they were religious or not, no one really knows. But if there are any children or families present - let's pretend for their sake they weren't.

I'd heard of elderly Eskimo people being turfed out of the igloo in former times.  When times were tough I suppose it literally was survival of the fittest.  Thinking of the recent "last survivors" thread prisoners at Auchwitz and other concentration camps who were considered unproductive were killed off immediately while those who were capable of doing work were put in the factories on site to work until they had been weakened terribly and then they were killed off also.

I remember the Strindberg film Rite of Spring - right singular and nothing to do with Celtic festivals.  It was a depressing and somewhat violent film I remember though the Max Von Sydow character did say he was going to build a church during the part of the film when it was drawing to a close.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I'd heard of elderly Eskimo people being turfed out of the igloo in former times.  

Are you sure? Any anthropological mention of this practice I've read has always suggested it was something regarded within the prevailing mores as a voluntary (probably "semi-voluntary" being closer to actuality), selfless act, and therefore extremely altruistic in a cultural sense.

Language is a tricky thing in these matters. "The young men in their thousands laid down their lives for their country" has a lovely warm cuddly self-sacrificial altruistic feel to it. "The country, through coercion and encouragement, sent thousands of young men to their certain death", while strictly speaking also equally true of exactly the same phenomenon, is a little creepier, more cynical, and even potentially sinister.

Maybe the terminology I used was not the most appropriate, nordmann.  The Eskimo custom was told to me orally rather than me studying it in a reference book.

LIR, thank you for your research - I  read little further after enchantment with the thought of nord, celebrating Butterfly Day...…. of whom also. surely a Worm of the Lake denotes caddis larva - such an interesting little beastie that covers its sensitive self with a hard case of whatever dross it can find for protection. But this is a chosen name and not hand picked for which he is not to blame. Children  love them.... the little dears.
Regards, Hype.

Priscilla wrote:

... But this is a chosen name and not hand picked for which he is not to blame....

I deleted your double post, Hype.

When you say "chosen" above I assume you realise (but choose to hop over the fact) that it is one "chosen" by a Google algorithm with a distinct Anglo-Saxon bent. Which sort of invalidates your pursuance of the false analogy ...

Mind you, the actual etymological construct would be "Warrior son of the People of the Lowlands", which admittedly takes me out of Tolkien but then lumps me straight into Game of Thrones. So I'm not sure if I actually don't prefer to stay a hardcase with a nice soft centre, as loved by kids of all ages.

How you got your first name I have no idea...…. surely not from some bent Anglo Saxon called Google? Believe me I have no interest whatsoever in chasing any sort of analogy - especially if they are invalids.

Double posting has happened before with my new computer which needs taking aside for a good talking to. I fight my own battles - whether or not that is a benefit of religion is unlikely. I digress.

Well, the first name of "worm" I only got since Google started pretending to translate things.

The impetus and capability to fight one's own battles and avoid dependence on vicarious attempts to claim victory on your behalf is often cited in fact as a benefit of "losing" religion. Mind you, it's possible to be realistic about one's own self-responsibility and delusional in every other aspect of your character, so I don't go along with that one completely, either.

Invalid analogies have as much right to exist as the fully able ones, you know. Don't be such an analagous invalidist! Tut, tut (as they used to say in Egypt)!

Meanwhile, MM's little cat goes unbaptised and is in danger of going to Moggy Limbo.

(Or did Henry VIII abolish Limbo - or was is a recent Pope - really can't remember.)

In typical London tradition, Henry VIII's edict has always been thankfully totally ignored in the capital ...

nordmann, I mentioned yesterday "Ostara", because I remembered it from earlier research of some years ago about the German Ostern and indeed the English "Easter" for our Pasen, Pâques...and by reading in a hurry the link that I mentioned:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/naturessacredjourney/2016/03/a-brief-history-of-ostara/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/naturessacredjourney/about/
I see now that the link between Ishtar from Babylonia and the Germanic Eostre is not true. Although if neo pagans believe in it and celebrate along this belief it becomes of course nowadays reality.
Although it says the same as the next site I find the following one more convincing:
https://historyforatheists.com/about-history-for-atheists/
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/
nordmann, is that you?

Conclusion: all these nowadays neo-pagan Ishtar fertility rites, orgies...fake? At least historically? Or are they "feasting" according to the Babylonian rites?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre

Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

nordmann, I mentioned yesterday "Ostara", because I remembered it from earlier research of some years ago about the German Ostern and indeed the English "Easter"...
nordmann, is that you?

No, it's very badly written.

There is a lot of really stupid "theory" (such as silly guesswork based on mere "similarity of sounds") floating around these days regarding how, when and why Christianity as an institutionalised religion absorbed rites, rituals and beliefs from the other popular superstitions that preceded it. Easter is a case in point, but really you can point to just about any ritual ordained as orthodox within Christianity and see how it historically emerged from not just one, but often quite a few disparate and wildly divergent core faiths and the practices they engendered, sometimes even combining stuff that was flat-out contradictory (the combination essentially of a death cult and a fertility cult when "adopting" the various "Brid/Brigid/Brigd/Brut/Braeghad" spiritual adherences from various North and West European cultures is a good example - leaving devout Irish Catholics these days with one "go-to" saint both for helping bring babies safely into the world and also quite usefully helping ensure one's enemies meet a premature and even a violent end). The exciting aspect to the study is how a giant pan-cultural organisation assimilated influences from such diverse sources and cobbled a lot of them into "global" doctrine. Trying to trace linear evolution of that doctrine from a supposed primeval version that matches it is quite missing the whole point of the exercise (and profoundly misunderstanding how people think and behave anyway).

nordmann, thank you very much for your immediate reply and for a to the point explanation. And BTW, excuses for my clumsy: "nordmann, is that you?" and I hope that GG (Gil) has not taken offence at my so-called socialist point of view preferring the Bishop above Charles II for the honour of the restauration of the Lichfield cathedral...
Kind regards, Paul.

nordmann wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

nordmann, I mentioned yesterday "Ostara", because I remembered it from earlier research of some years ago about the German Ostern and indeed the English "Easter"...
nordmann, is that you?

No, it's very badly written.

There is a lot of really stupid "theory" (such as silly guesswork based on mere "similarity of sounds") floating around these days regarding how, when and why Christianity as an institutionalised religion absorbed rites, rituals and beliefs from the other popular superstitions that preceded it. Easter is a case in point...

Gosh - "very badly written"? Okay. I'm a published freelance writer with a Masters Degree in English, but I suppose I can take on board your writing tips if they are valid. How exactly is my article "badly written"?

And my "badly written" article says ... exactly what you say above. So what exactly is so "bad" about it? Details please.

Hi, Tim. My "badly written" comment was itself "badly written" - it was phrased in haste to accommodate the comprehension of someone for whom English is not their first language. So my apologies for the confusion, and nice of you to drop in to solicit clarification. Great attention to detail!

If I have a criticism of your blog, which in the main upholds two principles to which I also strongly adhere regarding both historicity and "faith" (in every sense that it may offend epistemological reason), it would be to parrot that excellent observation by Gertrude in ACT III, Scene 2 of Hamlet (I won't insult the bearer of a Masters Degree in English by spelling it out).

Mind you, you would of course be equally justified in replying to the observation exactly as Hamlet did to Gertie!

But that's nit-picking on my part - which I suppose is at least a welcome change from cherry-picking, the dubious and self-serving activity that you have chosen to nobly engage and eruditely oppose. Keep up the good work liberating those cherries!  

nordmann wrote:

Hi, Tim. My "badly written" comment was itself "badly written" - it was phrased in haste to accommodate the comprehension of someone for whom English is not their first language. So my apologies for the confusion, and nice of you to drop in to solicit clarification. Great attention to detail!

If I have a criticism of your blog, which in the main upholds two principles to which I also strongly adhere regarding both historicity and "faith" (in every sense that it may offend epistemological reason), it would be to parrot that excellent observation by Gertrude in ACT III, Scene 2 of Hamlet (I won't insult the bearer of a Masters Degree in English by spelling it out).

Mind you, you would of course be equally justified in replying to the observation exactly as Hamlet did to Gertie!

But that's nit-picking on my part - which I suppose is at least a welcome change from cherry-picking, the dubious and self-serving activity that you have chosen to nobly engage and eruditely oppose. Keep up the good work liberating those cherries!  

That was all rather ... obscure. I get the reference, I just have no idea what you think I "protest too much". I also don't get the reference to "cherry-picking". What exactly am I supposedly being selective about, given that's what cherry-picking is? I've always found clarity and simplicity makes for the best writing and arch hand-waving and obscurity ... doesn't. So maybe you could give that a try.

I didn't say you "engage in" cherry-picking, I said you "engage" it. Very different ...

Thanks for your own literary criticism though, I will probably take it on board. But at my age, probably not actually.

Priscilla, is Trump a benefit of religion as his Secretary of State, Pompeo, says God "may"! have sent Trump to save Israel from Iran?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47670717
Lucky that God seems to have a "brede rug" a broad back (they translate this Dutch expression in my dictionary by "having a broad back"? MM, nord and others?)
PS. And it seems that Pompeo was head of the CIA???...

PR

What I did on my hols - I read Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I know Peterson has his critics, but I think he is an interesting commentator, as does Amol Rajan who, in The New Statesman, said of the book: "Masterful...He's filling the hole out of which my generation has just clambered."


Rule 7: Pursue What is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient)  - this chapter made me think of this thread. It's too long and complicated to explain in any detail, but, if I may, I should like to offer an extract:


Nietzsche claimed, first, that it was precisely the sense of truth developed to the highest sense by Christianity itself that ultimately came to question and then to undermine the fundamental presuppositions of the faith...Nietzsche believed that the long tradition of "unfreedom" characterizing dogmatic Christianity - its insistence that everything be explained within the confines of a single, coherent metaphysical theory - was a necessary precondition for the emergence of the disciplined but free modern mind...


...For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky alike, freedom - even the ability to act - requires constraint. For this reason, they both recognised the vital necessity of the dogma of the Church. The individual must be constrained, moulded - even brought close to destruction - by a restrictive, coherent disciplinary structure, before he or she can act freely and competently...


...If a father disciplines his son properly, he obviously interferes with his freedom, particularly in the here- and -now: he puts limits on the voluntary expression of his child's Being, forcing him to take his place as a socialised member of the world. Such a father requires that all that childish potential be funneled down a single pathway. In placing such limitations on his son, he might be considered a destructive force, acting as he does to replace the miraculous plurality of childhood with a single narrow actuality. But if the father does not take such action, he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the Eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland. That is not a morally acceptable alternative...


...The dogma of the Church was undermined by the spirit of truth strongly developed by the Church itself. That undermining culminated in the death of God. But the dogmatic structure of the Church was a necessary disciplinary structure. A long period of unfreedom - adherence to a singular interpretive structure - is necessary for the development of a free mind. Christian dogma provided that unfreedom. But the dogma is dead, at least to the modern Western mind. It perished along with God. What has emerged from behind its corpse, however - and this is an issue of central importance - is something even more dead; something that was never alive, even in the past; nihilism, as well as an equally dangerous susceptibility to new, totalizing utopian ideas. It was in the aftermath of God's death that the great collective horrors of Communism and Fascism sprang forth (as both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky predicted they would). Nietzsche, for his part, posited that individual human beings would have to invent their own values in the aftermath of God's death. But this is the element of his thinking that is that appears weakest, psychologically: we cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our own souls.




Wasn't that Carl Jung's great discovery - made in no little part because of his intense study of the problems posed by Nietzsche? And wasn't it something that, centuries before, Luther, because of his study of the problems - and solutions - posed by Saint Paul, had put to Erasmus?

Apologies for the great long quote, but my head is spinning with all this, and I wanted to share it. If we have killed God, perhaps it would be for all our benefit that we think again? We do have that freedom I suppose. Should we revive the corpse - in the interest of the Western love of the pursuit of truth -  that supreme benefit we have all inherited thanks to the marriage of Greek and Jewish thought - a benefit that we are now in danger of losing/throwing away?  Now there's a thought - possibly a daft one, but one worth pondering?

Dear Temperance,

as always too late to start an "elaborated"   reply..
But I started to read and immediately there sprang several question marks in my eyes...

"Rule 7: Pursue What is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient)"
Who stipulates what is "meaningful"?

"...For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky alike, freedom - even the ability to act - requires constraint. For this reason, they both recognised the vital necessity of the dogma of the Church. The individual must be constrained, moulded - even brought close to destruction - by a restrictive, coherent disciplinary structure, before he or she can act freely and competently..."
 
Why does an individual has to be constraint...a human mind is always free...even in the most incarcerated environment and under the greatest confining by others my human mind is free to decide what I want to do or what I have to think...of course if as in the old SSSR one is emprisoned in a mental clinic and they give you drugs...but then there is no human mind anymore too...

".If a father disciplines his son properly"
And why not the mother? But yes 150 years ago...and it is still Theresa May instead of Theresa Brasier...


But to come back to the subject of our parents. There was not that much discipline in our household, as father came only once a week to greatmother's house and mother was many times also away, but I have always deep in my heart judged if the measurements of the parents were "fair" or not...even a child is free to rebel if some measurements are not "fair" or try to come to a compromis after discussion...

"Wasn't that Carl Jung's great discovery - made in no little part because of his intense study of the problems posed by Nietzsche? And wasn't it something that, centuries before, Luther, because of his study of the problems - and solutions - posed by Saint Paul, had put to Erasmus?

"Apologies for the great long quote, but my head is spinning with all this, and I wanted to share it. If we have killed God, perhaps it would be for all our benefit that we think again? We do have that freedom I suppose. Should we revive the corpse - in the interest of the Western love of the pursuit of truth -  that supreme benefit we have all inherited thanks to the marriage of Greek and Jewish thought - a benefit that we are now in danger of losing/throwing away?  Now there's a thought - possibly a daft one, but one worth pondering?"


Excuses, dear Temperance but that pondering will be for tomorrow...


Kind regards from Paul.

You have misunderstood me, Paul, but that is my fault entirely, as I did not take the time or trouble to explain in any coherent detail what had fascinated me about Peterson's argument. Your question, "Who stipulates what is 'meaningful'?" gets to the heart of the matter. Your choice of the word "stipulate" is interesting.

I think Peterson is of the same kidney as Jens Zimmermann: both thinkers are worried lest we throw away our heritage - our debt to the past - and that, ironically, includes our debt to the Church (corrupt as it became):


Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture


But I too have lost the will to "elaborate": we are all perhaps tired of such debate.

Temperance for the second time I lost my message

and it has to be the site itself...while now with Chrome I have a window and do the work in another window and insert it then with copy and paste...hence not the same as in the past...

it is as if I say something controversial and someone as on the old BBC read it and say that it is controversial to the house rules..
There is a round turning with 102503 under it or the message in Dutch This site is not accesible, it don't work temporarly or it can be moved to another website...

Temperance I give the websites again without my controversial "comments"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Rules_for_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Zimmermann
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697755.001.0001/acprof-9780199697755
http://geopolitique.passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1218&sid=3d6695678062c4502a00573da600662d&start=110
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48825090

If indeed there is some kind of immediate control and I do all the work. On the old BBC they sent back at least your "contorversial" message and you could correct it until it wasn't controversial anymore...

Kind regards from Paul.

Addendum:

I said for instance:
The Twelve Rules of Jordan Peterson, the new Bible, Koran? and all such...

Regards, Paul.

And I forgot:
"stipulate" the same meaning as in Dutch
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stipulate
Who says exactly what "meaningful" has to be.

Kind regards, Paul.

Since moving to a new town where I don't know anyone much, I have found at least one benefit of religion. It allows you to meet new people easily. Because I have no religious beliefs it would feel a bit hypocritical of me to go to church just to get to know people, but a strongly believing person I know seemed to think it would be all right. (But I won't.)

And at least in small districts religious people seem to have the best interests of their congregation at heart. In our last small town one of the women got a form of early dementia which she never recognised. Her husband had to watch as she gradually deteriorated and now is feeling very guilty and distraught because she has gone into a dementia unit in a home. I very much admire how members of the church (not even his church) went and stayed with her to give him some relief.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Addendum:

I said for instance:
The Twelve Rules of Jordan Peterson, the new Bible, Koran? and all such...

Regards, Paul.

Well, not exactly. Peterson's Rule One is not about loving the Lord Thy God, but is all about posture: "Stand up straight with your shoulders back" - excellent advice, especially when doing ballet or being a lobster. Chapter One is not so much of mice and men, but of lobsters and men. The Guardian is not impressed:

The Guardian Is Predictably Beastly Horrid About Peterson

From the Guardian article:

1 Stand up straight with your shoulders straight
Most lobsters are complete bastards left to their own devices. Most humans are complete bastards left to their own devices. This proves there is a God who wants us to have Order. Order is Masculine and Chaos is Feminine. Therefore to move towards Order, we all need to man up. Happiness is pointless. We are all on this Earth to suffer. So learn to suffer like a man. Not everyone can be as rich and successful as me, but try to be less of a failure than you already are.

Ouch. What a crusty old crustacean that John Crace is!

I found the lobster stuff fascinating and funny: I think Crace has missed the point rather, but then perhaps I have - you never can tell, as Chuck Berry in his wisdom once reminded us.

Temperance,

first of all: you made my day...
that John Crace man...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/28/12-rules-for-life-an-antidote-to-chaos-by-jordan-b-peterson-digested-read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crace_(writer)
He said it all that much better, than I ever could yesterday...

"The Twelve Rules of Jordan Peterson, the new Bible, Koran? and all such..."

I know you know Temperance  that I pointed to the Ten Commandments...I am not that familiarized with the Koran and the Islam...the haddits? ...for fear of losing my post again...if a Muslim is reading this page don't blame me...had not the time to look at the internet...


And for that Zimmerman man...
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697755.001.0001/acprof-9780199697755

He seems to be a bit the one that I described in the French thread from yesterday.
The link between old church and old "national"! culture, the nostalgy of the marriage of Church and State from before, a real right wing nationalist theme...?
Or the Born again Christians
https://www.allaboutreligion.org/born-again-christian.htm

Here in Belgium there is discussion if it is a sect or a religion, as with the Opus Dei and the Scientology Church ("sect" as a juridic term and "religion" offical recognized by the state, but in fact as I see it: an "official" religion was once also a "sect"?)

Kind regards from Paul.

Caro wrote:

Since moving to a new town where I don't know anyone much, I have found at least one benefit of religion. It allows you to meet new people easily. Because I have no religious beliefs it would feel a bit hypocritical of me to go to church just to get to know people, but a strongly believing person I know seemed to think it would be all right. (But I won't.)

And at least in small districts religious people seem to have the best interests of their congregation at heart. In our last small town one of the women got a form of early dementia which she never recognised. Her husband had to watch as she gradually deteriorated and now is feeling very guilty and distraught because she has gone into a dementia unit in a home. I very much admire how members of the church (not even his church) went and stayed with her to give him some relief.

Caro,

"And at least in small districts religious people seem to have the best interests of their congregation at heart. In our last small town one of the women got a form of early dementia which she never recognised. Her husband had to watch as she gradually deteriorated and now is feeling very guilty and distraught because she has gone into a dementia unit in a home. I very much admire how members of the church (not even his church) went and stayed with her to give him some relief."


I fully agree, Caro, that being in a community is also better than staying alone...and even the first Homo Sapiens understood it already or perhaps even the Homo Ergaster to call but one...
But in my opinion that community has not to be "per se" a religious one, it can as well be an humanist community the nordmann way...?

The 68' ones seems to be long forgotten, at least here in Belgium, again families with children as before, partners with children, partners with two kinds of children from former marriages and even with this two kinds and new children from both...nearly a community...but not the one of 68...

The new trend seems to be to stay single and in one's own appartement..prediction of more singles than partners living together in 2050... The grandchildren are following also this trend...

But I guess this will again be a mode trend, because one as an individual still, in our modern society with all the modern comfort, needs a partner to share happy but especially difficult situations, which, when one encounters them alone, are more difficult to tackle. And of course, with two there have to made compromisses, but perhaps when alone, one has to make compromisses with oneself ?
But I still think, with two one is stronger than alone. For instance in my case, if I weren't there, she couldn't I guess stay alone...

And there are also, at least overhere, households that buy a common big house, with common facilities as a kindergarten and all that...perhaps a new thrend again? or marginal?

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, I am afraid your post to me (above) immediately made me think of a quotation from Sydney Smith:

"I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so."

Temperance,

I can't read all the books, if I found on the internet the general trend that is enough for me. Only if I am really interested, I can be overturned to spent the money as the two books that I mentioned in the Merovingian thread, as I want to use them in a 7 year long thread on the French forum
http://passion-histoire.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=32998
about the so called decline of the Roman society in the West of Europe in the 5th and 6th century.

Temperance for the moment I stick to the UN human rights declaration
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

OOPS and I now see that there are 30...three times the Ten Commandments...and that much more than the 12 of Peterson...
And also to the real liberal ideas
https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism
Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary evil.” Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual’s life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.
 
It is not expressed that well overhere, but I read it elsewhere...here: to protect individuals from being harmed by others. But it is also prohibiting the individual to harm another individual, as that individual invades then in the freedom of living of the other individual...is that so far from : don't do someone others, what you don't want to have done to yourself...or something in that sense...I don't remember exactly where I learned that...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48825090

Kind regards from Paul.

Using dead hard words from theology can be useful for baffling journalists. Asked about his relations with Tusk, and the European Council president’s comment that those who promoted Brexit without a plan had a “special place in hell”, Johnson joked with reporters that he didn't want to get into "post-Brexit eschatology with the president of the Council.”


Robert Peston was the only one who appeared to understand...


Sorry, but Boris really does make me laugh - which is a dreadful and alarming admission, I know.

Oh, I've sometimes found him amusing.  When he likened the costumes that some ladies wear that just have a slit for their eyes (but otherwise cover them) to pillar boxes I did chuckle a bit privately.  It's his suitability to lead a parliament that gives me cause for concern.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Oh, I've sometimes found him amusing.  When he likened the costumes that some ladies wear that just have a slit for their eyes (but otherwise cover them) to pillar boxes I did chuckle a bit privately.

A more succinct cancelling out of Temp's "benefit" in the context of the thread title I could not imagine.

The Lord giveth ...

LiR, were it not that I believe you to be entirely free of all malice, I should now suspect you to be plotting - conspiring indeed - with nordmann to nullify all I say here.  

Temperance wrote:

LiR, were it not that I believe you to be entirely free of all malice, I should now suspect you to be plotting - conspiring indeed - with nordmann to nullify all I say here.  

Temperance,

I stay garant for LiR, she is indeed "entirely free of all malice"...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Oh I may have been known to harbour annoyance occasionally, folks.  No, I haven't been conspiring with nordmann "off-list".  I may have been known to put my foot* in it metaphorically speaking - nothing to do with religion but thinking of feet I mentioned the rumour of Sesquatch or Bigfoot (is Bigfoot thinking about it now a "conspiracy theory" or more of a legend or rumour?) and Gilgamesh linked a video of Fats Waller singing about being unable to love someone because said someone had "feets" which were too big.

* Though I may have put my foot in it here when alluding to Bo-Jo's likening of a certain type of dress to a postbox.

A place of quiet retreat - even for moggies.


 https://twitter.com/i/status/1265291406941323265

Temperance wrote:

A place of quiet retreat - even for moggies.


 https://twitter.com/i/status/1265291406941323265

Temp, yes that's it. As the person is holy...his cassock is holy...hence the place is holy...and as it are all God's creatures, even a cat has a benefit from religion by this place of quiet retreat...in that specific occasion...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Temp, yes that's it. As the person is holy...his cassock is holy...hence the place is holy...and as it are all God's creatures, even a cat has a benefit from religion by this place of quiet retreat...in that specific occasion...

Oh, Paul - I just thought it was funny!!!    

I should really have put it on the Moggy Thread, not here. That said, the Dean handled the situation with appropriate Anglican (old-school) aplomb, I thought.

This would fill up the churches:


Ancient Israelites used cannabis during worship

A further Benefit of Religions is the use of  large religious Assembly places for - in our area, any way - food parcels, collection points for tools to send to Africa  and jabs (assorted.) 

Cathedral naves  - with pews - make ideal places for really long queues. But no wine and bikky at the end, of course - just a shot in the arm.

Apparently this is also the benefit of economic recession in some parts of the UK where warehouses have no other logical application anymore. In Milton Keynes, where the building of a cathedral has apparently been overlooked (probably because of the number of pagans living there), it is a benefit of football - though not a welcome one for Wimbledon supporters.

Mmmmm? Perhaps, nordmann, you ought open a new thread called Empty Warehouses: The Benefits. You seem to manage to drag all manner of unrelated baggage around into your contributions. 

Or how about the  popular one for open forums these days  Slagging Off: The Benefits

Not slagging off anything. In fact I agreed with you. Having large vacant buildings already in situ when you're looking to set up vaccination centres is extremely beneficial to society. God bless football and businesses bankrupt by Brexit, is what I say!

You come very close to trolling in your own site. I ought move to impeach but impear might be enough.

You can't impear someone who's already been impruned.