Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 October 16

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October 16

Bahá'ís on Sundays?

According to an advertisement in my campus paper, the local Bahá'í center is the location of a worship service (or whatever it's called; my apologies, but I'm very unfamiliar with Bahá'ísm) on Sundays. Is Sunday typically the day of worship for Bahá'ís worldwide, or is it chosen here because Christianity, as the dominant religion in the USA, worships on Sundays? I can't find anything relevant in Bahá'í Faith or in Bahá'í calendar. Nyttend backup (talk) 04:52, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

This would be because of its significance in Christianity. The article Bahá'í calendar says that the day of rest for Baha'is is Friday, and as far as I know, that is the only reference to a specific day of the week of significance in the Faith. Worship is based around the Feasts (an administrative/worhip-based gathering held every 19 days) and the Holy Days (11 per year, with work suspended on nine of these). As a long-term member, I can assure you that much of Baha'i civic life is designed to fit in with mainstream society, since Baha'is have to work, and generally aim to be compatible with the world. It's been emotional (talk) 06:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Patriot act

Enough.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I've read somewhere that it is abuse of the Patriot Act that is killing America and may be preventing economic recovery and job creation. If this is true then did Bin Laden win by means of the American government's reaction to 9/11? --DeeperQA (talk) 07:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC) IF, it's true, than probably, see the terrorists have won. Public awareness (talk) 08:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC) I don't understand your question. It isn't even grammatical. Can you write more clearly? Pfly (talk) 08:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC) Wait, maybe I can parse the question. Are you asking if the Patriot Act caused the Late-2000s recession? If so, it seems unlikely to me, but what do I know? Pfly (talk) 08:31, 16 October 2011 (UTC) Multinational corporations, reassigning the "good" jobs to foreign countries, is a much more likely explanation. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 09:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC) See also Occupy Wall Street. Pfly (talk) 09:27, 16 October 2011 (UTC) This is rapidly going to turn into "insert your political bias here." That doesn't answer the OP's question. I'm guessing that the OP is referring to this piece or something akin to it. There's a specific question they raise about regulations leading to people not holding their money in US banks, which may have had some effect on their ability to lend, and also reducing the influence of the dollar as currency. It's an interesting idea, and it's not one of the usual complaints about the USA PATRIOT Act (there's nothing patriotic about it, it's just a loaded language initialism), though it doesn't address what's usually fingered as the source of the problem, as Greenspan put it "irrational exuberance" and also the loophole in regulations of investment products that allowed banks to create houses of cards predicated on overly optimistic assumptions about housing prices. Did the USA PATRIOT Act contribute? Possible, but it was far from alone. SDY (talk) 10:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC) The most relevant complaint about the Patriot act to the economy that I have heard is that it makes it much more difficult for talented immigrants to come to or stay in the United States. There are some pretty hard facts out there with regards to science, technology, engineering, and medicine that the trend since 2001 has been for talented foreigners to get their educations in the United States and then to immediately go back to their home countries, rather than contributing to the United States. That's not great for the US, on the whole, and is a somewhat stupid side-effect of being overly tough on immigration issues. But it's not the cause of the financial crashes. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:47, 16 October 2011 (UTC) Parsing things through the question of "did Bin Laden win?" is a very foolish mode of analysis. It invites nothing but bias and silliness, and gets emotions up. It's subjective to say the least. There are lots of productive conversations to be had about the effects of 9/11 or the Patriot Act, but whether anyone has "won" or "lost" is the least productive lens to view these events through, and misses the important points. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC) Capitalism is failing at last. →Στc. 20:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC) Please stop trolling. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Pure capitalism is precarious, which is why a social safety net is needed. Etc's alternative, pure communism, contains the seeds of its own guaranteed failure, for the simple reason that "people like to own stuff." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:00, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Not directly the Patriot Act, but many on the left say that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars contributed to the national debt and annual budget deficits, hence causing the present recession. The combined costs of both wars is around $1 trillion to date (Cost of War) while the total national debt is around $15 trillion (United States public debt), so it played a part, but isn't the dominant factor. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Notes: since bin Laden is dead, he didn't win. The same seems to be the fate of his organizations. Working worker ant (talk) 11:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Death is not necessarily a bar to winning symbolic campaigns. Consider Patrick Henry, Che Guevara, and even Jesus Christ. No doubt bin Laden would have been satisfied to sacrifice his life in order to do grave damage to the US, and considering the political, cultural, and economic problems that are all traceable back to our reaction to 9/11, I'd say he probably did succeed. The truly sad thing is that we did most of the work of destroying ourselves for him. That being said, this is a problematic thread. I'm leaving a note on the OP's talk page. --Ludwigs2 17:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC) The OP is apparently a sock of an indef'd user named Inning. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC) You guys are so good at giving your opinions instead of references to material which might lead to the facts. --DeeperQA (talk) 21:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

buddhi

I see the definition of "buddhi" in Wiktionary. Can you give me a sentence or two with this usage of A transpersonal faculty of mind higher than the rational mind that might be translated as ‘intuitive intelligence’ or simply ‘higher mind’?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 11:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

This word isn't generally used by English speakers - most will use the Chan Buddhist equivalent 'Buddha nature'. Buddhi would translate directly as something like 'wakefulness', and you'd say something like: proper understanding and discrimination in the world can only be achieved by buddhi; lower faculties of the mind are bound to their limited perspectives". --Ludwigs2 13:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I haven't heard of "Buddha nature" being used, but I have come across "higher self" - the self which is subconsciously in tune with the spiritual world. One translation of "namaste" I have seen is "My higher self recognises and salutes your higher self". But to be honest I've never come across "buddhi" either! "Higher Self" is more in my experience. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:22, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I am getting a good understanding on this now.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 23:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I've never heard the term Buddhi in english before. I think in sanskrit it means something like intelect or intuition in non-buddhist contexts, but something like wakefulness in Buddhist ones, but don't quote me on that as I have no idea where I read that. Rabuve (talk) 01:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, buddhi certainly isn't intellect, which is a lower faculty. If I remember correctly, Hindus would say something like 'Buddhi is the state of experiencing atman/brahman' (universal consciousness in its personal or general form). When you are buddhi (in contact with universal consciousness) your perspective is universal, when you are not, then your perspective is intellectual, emotional, physical… each of which is a progressively more narrow and limited worldview. --Ludwigs2 04:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Good stuff! Thanks.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 12:49, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

See universal consciousness. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 01:33, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks...Doug Coldwell ^talk 14:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

British government or British military opinion on the various loyalist paramilitaries

Where can I find a paper by the British government or the British military about the loyalist paramilitaries? --Belchman (talk) 14:02, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Here unclassified from the HOC The Last Angry Man (talk) 14:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

National archives are also good The Last Angry Man (talk) 14:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant, thank you. --Belchman (talk) 14:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Amerigo Vespucci

Is it true that America is named after Amerigo, because he was the first to actually realize that America was a completely new continent and not India? Or was it because he spread the word to Europeans that this land was a new continent and not India? Or neither? ScienceApe (talk) 16:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

See Americas#Etymology and naming. It is unclear whether Vespucci realized that South America was a separate continent. Lesgles (talk) 17:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, they thought they were in the "Indies" -- i.e. parts of Indonesia, or islands to the east of China -- not India itself. AnonMoos (talk) 18:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

According to East Indies, it seems like "Indies" was just a term they used back then for the entire Indian Subcontinent. ScienceApe (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but India itself was fairly clearly known to Europeans as early as Hellenistic times (e.g. the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Ptolemy's maps, etc.), and Columbus never had any delusions that he was off the coast of India -- rather he thought he was finding indeterminate islands east of China, hopefully not all that far off from either the Chinese mainland or islands where exportable spices grew... AnonMoos (talk) 01:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The technical answer is "no" because the question implies that Amerigo did know he discovered a new continent. It was named after Amerigo because others thought that he knew he discovered a new continent. I've seen it suggested in multiple places that Amerigo's descriptions of topless natives made his writings very popular compared to the writings of other explorers, so his descriptions had a better chance of being accepted as the definitive descriptions of the new world. I've seen just as many objections to that claim. -- kainaw™ 01:38, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

There is an alternative suggestion that America was named after a Bristol merchant of Welsh origins, Richard Amerike (or ap Merrick) - more here and here - not Vespucci at all, though I think it's fair to say that most non-Bristolians reject the theory. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:40, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course, the two continents could have been named after two different men, with coincidentally similar names. 148.197.81.179 (talk) 08:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

need to find an old saying

There is an old quote that begins with the danger of committing murder because it then leads to a list of other, lesser crimes and eventually ending with something like foul language. Anyone remember this? Thanks. 76.116.92.205 (talk) 20:14, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thomas de Quincy. See http://quotationsbook.com/quote/27548/ . --Trovatore (talk) 02:13, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The quote is from the (appropriately named) essay On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts. The entire essay (along with all of de Quincy's works) can be found at Project Gutenberg. Buddy431 (talk) 04:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Similar to a maxim 750 of Publilius Syrus Invitat culpam qui peccatum praeterit Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.
Sleigh (talk) 08:39, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

There's an old Jewish joke, in lots of versions, that the reason the rabbis forbade orgies is that it might lead to dancing. --Dweller (talk) 09:42, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. I hear it told as a Christian joke about Baptists (specifically the sort of teetotal, no musical instruments Baptists that inspire the children's parody song, "On Jordan's bank the Baptists cry/If I were one then so would I." I don't know what sub-category they place themselves under). 86.163.1.168 (talk) 11:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks.03:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.116.92.205 (talk)

Positive pessimism

is there any philosophical ideas or any philosopher that has a view of positive pessimism?

I described positive pessismism as expecting the worst out of things to be happy to whatever the outcome is. Does it make sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.112.82.128 (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Somehow yes, that seems to be something in the direction of Buddhism or stoicism. Wikiweek (talk) 00:10, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Some might say that approaches fatalism... AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you should take a look at Raymond Smullyan's This Book Needs No Title. In it he describes optimists, incurable optimists, and pessimistic optimists. An optimist thinks everything that happens is for the best, mankind will survive. An incurable optimist believes that even if mankind doesn't survive, it's still for the best. A pessimistic optimist sadly shakes his head and says "I'm very much afraid everything is for the best." Whereas Arthur Schopenhauer was an optimistic pessimist. He was happy to say "See, everything is for the worst." Furthermore, he was optimistic that everything would continue going as bad as he predicted.Greg Bard (talk) 01:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Some interesting reads in this area may be Candide (especially the character of Pangloss), as well as the real person upon whom Pangloss is based, see Gottfried Leibniz#Theodicy and optimism and Best of all possible worlds. --Jayron32 02:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Stoicism? I prefer utilitarianism, because it lets me smile more often. Dualus (talk) 02:48, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

This is not an answer to the question. Working worker ant (talk) 11:37, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Why not? If you were going to suggest Cynicism you have to realize that Cynicism (contemporary) is a different meaning today, and more of an attitude than a philosophy. The cynic philosophy is completely different, and while it may be more fun than utilitarianism in the short run, it's not in the long run. Dualus (talk) 16:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Who is talking about cynicism?!? Do utilitarians expect the worst?!? That is what I mean by not answering the question...... Working worker ant (talk) 16:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

So do you think it is a wrong answer, or just not an answer? And what were you expecting? Dualus (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The first is not an answer, but could be right. The second is also not an answer, but more far away from the thread. Working worker ant (talk) 21:49, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Amor fati might be a lead on the topic. I often take this approach to things, although it can be hard to avoid the "expecting the worst while hoping for the best" trap. A quick google says that Mets fans "hope for the best but expect the worst", heh. Pfly (talk) 08:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps some environmental philosophers are positive pessimists. Also: psychological resilience. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 01:31, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Not exactly philosophical but we want to beware of the "Pitfalls of Positive Thinking" Bus stop (talk) 01:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)