I'm lusting after the trunk. That thing is beauteous.

The one thing that I don't like about the One Ring explanation:

It turns you invisible, unless you are the one person for whom it was actually designed (Sauron).

To me, it seems like the rings of power and especially the one ring should grant a more consistent actual power than that. The three elven rings made by Celebrimbor outside the influence of the one are much better examples.

Narya is the "ring of fire", and in the timeline of LoTR it is held by Gandalf. Which makes sense, because he does a lot of fire-related stuff with his magic. Nenya is the "ring of water" held by Galadriel, and Vilya the "ring of air" held by Elrond. These are used less consistently in the books (or movies), but one movie example is the flood that helped save Frodo and get him to Rivendell. In the movie, the flood is shown as being made of water with horse shapes surging through it, which suggest the magical influence of both Nenya and Vilya (water and air) working together. Anyway, those 3 rings have a consistent and fairly well established list of powers associated with their "elemental" attachments, fire, water, and air.

But the one ring lacks that consistency. It is supposed to help Sauron with his urge to dominate, but it doesn't really explain how that works. It doesn't make him invisible; only others who wear it. Also, it helps him to control or at least influence the wearers of the other rings. That is probably the best, most established power of the one ring, but it is also a bit shaky because wearers other than Sauron don't get those abilities. It seems to make other wearers just more susceptible to corruption, greed, and lust for power.

To me, I think it would be more interesting if the one ring actually granted a more specific power, unique to the psychological state of the wearer. The consistently presented thing about the one ring is that it corrupts, and nothing corrupts more than power. So basically, I think that the one ring should be analyzing whoever wears it, and granting them a unique power that is specifically designed to provide them with their greatest source of temptation to abuse that power.

The invisibility power actually makes a lot of sense for hobbits. As presented in the video here, they generally aren't very ambitious. BUT, hobbits are established as being stealthy beings by default, so granting them invisibility is a good source of temptation to turn that stealthiness into more nefarious purpose. So, I don't mind that the three main hobbit (or hobbit-like) wearers (Gollum/Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo) all consistently get the invisibility power out of the ring.

Human wearers like Isildur would have less consistent powers granted by the rings, because they have more diverse motivations than hobbits. Just as an example, I'd think that Isildur would be motivated by martial prowess and leadership after watching his father killed by Sauron and the human/elven armies decimated at the end of the second age. So, the ring could perceive that about him and grant him physical power and charisma to lead -- both of which would be very easily turned to corruption. Invisibility just doesn't logically provide the same level of temptation for someone like Isildur.

Finally we come to Sauron himself. He is already an exception to the "ring grants invisibility" concept. But for him, the ring should (and arguably does) represent power and control. Sauron had to put on a false face and play the role of deceiver to get Celebrimbor and the other elves to accept him and create the other rings. Having to stoop to that rather than simply crushing them made him despise that sort of approach; after creating the one ring he cast that aside and became all about sheer power and domination, rather than trickery and deception. So, I see the ring's powers granted to Sauron himself as being sort of a conversion of those cunning/deceptive abilities into might, self preservation, and overwhelming mental dominance that allows him to control his orc armies.


Sorry for the length of that -- I have just always felt that the established powers of the one ring would be a bit more interesting if they led to corruption through real power granted to the wearers, rather than "it makes them invisible, but not Sauron, and in general corrupts them, just because".

People like you should be amongst those who are discussing decision making. With any luck, it will soon be a time for young, fresh ideas.. i'm just glad to find out there are people studying the subject with the same rigour as a scientist treats their subject.

I feel exasperated at the current political climate - as though the corruption between it and those who lust for power and money is complete and can't be redeemed. It was a breath of fresh air to hear Varoufakis lay down the problem in simple terms; something nobody in the democratic process in the UK has done in my entire lifetime.

I sometimes wonder if we need something radical and new, some kind of new "Magna Carta" to ensure that this situation we find ourselves is reversed and doesn't naturally happen again over time.

"Although some intolerance, bigotry, and lust for persecution is still left in religious matters, it is unlikely that religious passion will kindle wars in the near future. The aggressive spirit of our age stems from another source, from endeavors to make the state totalitarian and to deprive the individual of autonomy."
- Ludwig von Mises
(Theory and History, p. 64)

Man, the effects of Horny Goat Weed are Crazy!
He's mad with lust!

http://health.howstuffworks.com/sexual-health/sexual-dysfunction/horny-goat-weed-more-than-just-a-name.htm

But what if the 'holy spirit' tells me clearly that I don't need to believe in any supernatural insanity to be a good person (which is the most important, and often missed lesson of religion)? Or that my 'heavenly reward' is in life, in knowing I'm a decent person to others, no afterlife required?
It seems that should be just fine, according to some scripture (not that I care about or believe in scripture) and should be enough to get proselytizers to let me be, but it's not.

It depends on what you mean when you use the word good. I'll venture that you are using a relative standard of good, but that isn't the standard that God uses. Usually, when we call ourselves good it is in comparison to other people. You might think, I've never raped or murdered, and I am certainly no Adolf Hitler or Ted Bundy, so I am good by basis of comparison. Yet, what God calls good is moral perfection, and everything that falls short of that He calls evil. His standard is an absolute standard, not a relative one, and so our relative standard of good is not good enough.

When people call themselves good, generally, what they really mean is that they have good intentions. In our hearts we want to do right and think good things about people, yet the reality is usually starkly different. If you examine yourself in the light of the 10 commandments, even just four of them such as do not lie, do not steal, do not covet, do not take the Lords name is vain, you probably find them that you've broken them hundreds if not thousands of times in your life. Jesus took the standard even higher and said that if we hate anyone, we've murdered them in our hearts, and if we look at a woman with lust we have committed adultery with them in our hearts. If our lives were an open book and people could see not only what we've done but also what was going on in our hearts, would anyone call us good? I can say for myself it would be an open and shut case.

This is why we need a Savior; we will be judged for what we do in this life and our goodness isn't good enough. That is why Jesus came; to pay the price that we cannot pay so that we can be forgiven for our sins and have eternal life. Whether you care about the scripture, think about whether you would ever jump out of a plane without a parachute. That's exactly what you are prepared to do by entering into eternity without Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

It's the epitome of ignorance to jump to the conclusion that because one sees one side being far worse than the other, that person must be promoting the 'lesser evil'.
It's just as ignorant to jump to the conclusion that empathy for the Palestinian civilians trapped in the giant concentration camp that is Gaza is tantamount to all out support for Hamas and it's tactics. That's a total straw man argument made by those that can't answer the actual issues of an expansionist Israel flexing it's significant military muscles against a trapped, helpless, completely defenseless population that has already been ghettoized into the stone age without qualm, using the blatantly ridiculous excuse of 'defense' for a purely offensive military campaign against a civilian 'quasi-refugee' population. It seems to me that people who make that argument have made the ignant (a stubborn kind of ignorance that can't be cured by education) decision to buy into the (quite well produced, I must admit) Israeli propaganda machine and ignore the indisputable facts.
Both sides are at fault, wrong, bloodthirsty, and bad, one side IS FAR MORE at fault, wrong, bad, and bloodthirsty...or if not more bloodthirsty then at least far better at blood lust sating without conscience.

Not entirely cut and dry.
+ Gun suicide fell
+ Mass shootings fell.
- Gun homicide in general didn't fall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Measuring_the_effects_of_firearms_laws_in_Australia

"Some researchers have found a significant change in the rate of firearm suicides after the legislative changes. For example, Ozanne-Smith et al. (2004)[33] in the journal Injury Prevention found a reduction in firearm suicides in Victoria, however this study did not consider non-firearm suicide rates. Others have argued that alternative methods of suicide have been substituted. De Leo, Dwyer, Firman & Neulinger,[34] studied suicide methods in men from 1979 to 1998 and found a rise in hanging suicides that started slightly before the fall in gun suicides. As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.[35]

In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[36] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence. Professor Simon Chapman, former co-convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".[37] Weatherburn responded, "The fact is that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility. It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."[38]"

-scheherazade

Oh fuck man, those are some of my favourite vices, but you forgot lust, you sexy dumbass.

The people aren't innocent. We have brought this on ourselves. At least I recognise that. Unlike your holier than thou stance, I recognise that I am a part of the problem, I recognise that there is a problem, and I recognise that the solution is going to be incredibly hard work either way.

Like @newtboy, I try to do my own small part, I grow some of my own food and I try to source what I can't as locally and sustainably as I can. I don't have kids, and I have plenty of trees on my property.

But I also like to snowboard and camp and lots of other things where I need a 4wd. I hate the fact that I drive it to work everyday, but it's really my only option (I don't have room for a second car, I live 15kms from work and there's no shower at my office, otherwise I'd bike.).

Despite your pathetic little insinuation to the contrary, I went to university, and I'm a highly paid professional. That means that as someone who's better off than most people in the first world country I live in, I am probably among the worst in the world in terms of resource consumption. Unless you're dirt poor and living in the third world, you are too.

I've travelled in Europe, Asia, Oceania and a small part of North America. The carbon footprint of that is massive, but I still want to see more of the world.

These are all my contributions to fucking up the environment. I recognise them, and I do what I can to mitigate them, but if I'm honest with myself, I know I'm having a net negative effect. The fact that it's less of a net negative effect than others in my socio-economic bracket is irrelevant.

But the fundamental difference between us is that I believe that if the problem can be solved (and at this stage, I'm dubious that it can) it will be solved by working together, not individually. If we are going to fix this, it will only be fixed by efficiencies of scale.

And the only way that we encourage clean industry is to level the playing field with regulation. Until there's no competitive advantage to polluting the environment (and it's always cheaper not to clean up after yourself), business will continue a race to the bottom.

But hey, you know what will fix this? Go downvote a bunch of completely unrelated videos because the nasty man was mean to you.

I'm kinda torn on these. On the one hand, that's some pretty *skilful surfing.

On the other, it's kinda sad that surfing videos with women all seem to spend half their time gazing lustfully at girls in bikinis (see the rozy ad for how bad this can get *related=http://videosift.com/video/New-Roxy-Ad-Sexploitation-or-Not-You-Decide)

First off, I want to say @artician, thanks for such an insightful comment, and enoch as well. I've not been participating in this community much for the past few years because of being busy with figuring myself out and trying to figure out how I feel about the mess we're in. Interesting conversations like this were what drew me to the sift initially.

Ultimately, I've come to a similar conclusion as you. While, as JustSaying noted, we do tend to be tribal creatures, the nature of the interaction between ingroups and outgroups is a learned one (for the most part) just like violence as an acceptable outlet is a learned habit (for the most part; children who are abused and grow up surrounded by violence are more likely to perpetuate abuse, etc). Because people naturally learn to be more tolerant and empathetic as they grow to understand each other and see how much their similarities outweigh their differences, this tribal nature shifts in more interconnected societies to things like political parties, sports fanships, cliques, etc. as the increased understanding/empathy between us decrease the potential for dehumanization of the "other" and violence.

We are living in more peaceful times than ever before in most ways. We are learning to be more accepting of religion, sexuality, and other differences more than ever before in terms of the global average. We have a system that promotes dehumanization and exploitation, selfishness and secrecy rather than compassion and empathy, sharing and oppenness, but such a system need not always be. There are no easy answers, and none of us can do anything alone to change things, but the majority of us are tired of the wars and killing, throwing away the lives of our youth instead of seeing what new art and science and wonder they could bring to our world. Those who lust after power enough to exercise it over their fellow men the way it has been are the few and very sick who need some help and removal from temptation, like a "recovering" alcoholic at a Christmas party.

Lustful combat. Oh, I think you just made my week.

Then again, http://videosift.com/video/Absurd-Method-To-Stabilize-a-Downed-Fighter

You sayin' when you're not here lurkin' about yer watching porn or you wouldn't know porn if you happened to watch a couple of dudes in their skivvies locked in lustful combat??

uhm, I just wanted to post a cool video of a station wagon (admittedly, an Audi RS6, yes, I have gearhead lust) zipping by a motorcycle already going at insane rates of speed.

Hope everyone can still see the beauty and marvel in that...

Shows what you know about the rapist mentality -- it isn't (always) about sex, my friend.

80 year old nuns have been raped. Downs syndrome and disabled men and women have been raped. Fat women have been raped. The whole rape culture in prison, nary a slender woman in a miniskirt in sight. It can be about control and power and anger.

Besides, even for those men motivated by lust, what are the odds that zero percent of them are attracted to women of size? Women are shamed about being large, men are shamed about finding large women attractive, so you may not even be aware that there are men out there who like large women.

I don't think you are a horrible person -- I think you are uninformed of the complexities of the subject.

I know you are just making an offhand, presumably mildly funny?, remark and here I am, getting all complicated. However, this comment is the seed from which the mighty oak "she was asking for it" grows. Just thought I'd take the opportunity to point that out.