[PLUG-TALK] morality in media...

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, anonymous wrote:
> Liberty is not the absence of restrictions, it is what sets you free,
> even if freedom comes from accepting certain restrictions.

A free person can restrict himself, sure.  A free person cannot be
restricted by others, however.  That's an oxymoron.

Liberty without responsibility gives you the libertarians.  Restrictions
without liberty gives you an authoritarian regime (and authoritarianism
without democracy gives you totalitarianism... see your church or any
for-profit corporation for fine examples of brutal totalitarianism).

> I'm not evangelical by the way,

What the fuck is your unsolicited ranting on this list if not evangelism?

> I believe science can and does tell us things if considered in concert
> with faith.

Reverse that and you might have something.

But be careful, you might come out gnostic (like Christ was) and give up
on this idea that "heaven" and "god" are something outside yourself.

> I blame the Democrats for failing to have a moral code a religious
> person can respect and the Republicans for deregulating national
> networks to the point of making them monopolies.

Well, if you still believe there is an actual different agenda between the
Republican and Democratic parties, you're more deeply steeped in
unthinking mainstream culture than I thought.

> We should know better than to believe in the concept of casual loveless
> sex after 30 years of mass societal deterioration.

OK, this cracks my shit up.  Do you really believe that there was any less
sex outside of marriage before the 1970s than there is today?

I recommend you read a little bit.  Right now, I'm reading a book called
"The New Machiavelli" by H.G. Wells.  I believe it was first published in
1911.  It begins with a thinly veiled autobiography of growing up in
Victorian England.  It's more or less a constant examination of the
hypocrisy and absurdity that the popular concept of "decency" had on the
individuals in that society and how sexual desire was expressed as fully
as any other time in history, but everyone lied kept every act "in the
closet".  It's about the frustration and fear and petty-mindedness of that
era and how it manifested itself in outward aggression and possibly was a
cause for the imperialist tendencies of that world power.  The protagonist
of this story looses his virginity to a married woman in a hotel.  She's
unhappy with her aging husband and he's totally unfamiliar with women and
nearly 23 years old and aching with ten years of confusion and
frustration.

> What was the divorce rate in 1960?

And what was the real rate of domestic violence?  Oh, we can't measure
that because it wasn't really reported or even considered noteworthy in
most cases.

And what happened to young girls who got pregnant?  Were they given a
chance to raise their children in a loving home or were they shipped off
to some backwater as a shameful artifact of the world people didn't want
to admit existed?

> What were the STD's in 1960?

Read Voltaire, de Sade, the aforementioned Wells, etc. etc. etc....

STDs have always been with us.  It's estimated that greater than one in
three men in France had "the Italian pox" in 1790 (and one in three men in
Italy had "the French pox" -- same illness, of course).

Al Capone died of syphillis.

> What are they today?

So, now we've got AIDS.  So what?  People don't die from chlamydia
anymore.  You can get a shot for gonorrhea.  Syphillis isn't nearly as
rampant as it was.  And AIDS is harder to get than any of those.

I imagine fewer people in the industrialized world have STDs per capita
now than any time in history.

> What is the pedophile rate among married men today?  What was the rate
> of pedophilia in the 1960s?

Who knows?  It wasn't tracked nearly as closely.  The weaknesses of men
were more likely to be covered up by powerful friends and clergy and the
like (or simply ignored, in the case of poor people, who deserved whatever
shit they got in life).

If you want a really nice story of what happens to gay people in the Ozzy
and Harriet world, I recommend you watch Far From Heaven.  It's a really
good movie and shows what repression does to human beings with real
feelings.

> The argument against sexual immorality hinges on establishing the latter
> questions as defining the deterioration that has happened, perhaps one
> must believe that sexual attitudes can affect whole societies to see how
> damaging social experiments from the 60's on have been.

I am absolutely stunned to consider that you might actually believe sexual
activity among non-married people was somehow NOT a common practice before
the 1960s.  Maybe you don't read about it much in Jane Austen or see it on
Leave It To Beaver, but it's there and doesn't take much more than a tiny
peek behind the veil of censorship and revisionism to see it.

> When did we come to the notion that pedophilia isn't treatable
> presenting the threat of repeat offenders? Who realizes that the current
> mentality on pedophilia is a new school of thought gaining acceptance
> because this opinion fuels scandal affecting a politically unpopular
> religious body?  Unfortunately, it is probably true that pedophilia is
> incureable.

I know you're really hung up on the pervy priests.  That had to shake your
people to the core.  But I assert that it's been going on for a LONG time
and only now, in this age of open sexuality, is it possible for the abused
children to come forward and have language with which to speak about their
pain and not be so mortified, shamed, and guilt-ridden as to keep it a
life-long secret.

Pedophilia is a psychological syndrome that some people have.  I'm not
going to say whether there's a gene to predispose a person or if they were
taught the wrong thing at the wrong age or that the person is broken
inside or what.  It's just the way some people turn out and maybe someday
we'll have a better idea and maybe we won't.  But mostly I pity those
people and understand the pain they must experience every day knowing that
their psychological satisfaction is simply not acceptable behavior and
probably won't ever be (for lots of REALLY GOOD reasons).

Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures
Underground and Through The Looking-Glass) was very clearly a pedophile.
He writes in his private papers about his desire to be near young girls
and to see them and photograph them.  He writes further about his desires
of the flesh and how he turned to mathematics as something to keep his
mind off more "sinful" things on those long nights when his frustrations
kept him from finding restful sleep.  As far as anybody knows, he was able
to control his behavior (at great personal suffering) and for that he is
an amazing man.  I mean, I know I have a compulsion or two that is
self-destructive, but nothing that really hurts other people and nothing
so strong and deep as a non-viable sexual kink.  I am not without my own
kinds of "sin" (that is to say, I am not always strong enough to control
all of my destructive compulsions in every situation).  But for this man
to endure what he endured and NOT fail is amazing to me and to be
applauded.

I know another adult man who is probably in a very similar situation.  He
is a religious man in his own way (he would probably say Christian, but
his wife would probably bristle if he were to be totally honest about his
views on that matter with her).  He is a good and intelligent man.  He's
an older fellow and he has been married many, many years.  He has children
of his own, all girls.  He, like Dodgson, is an amateur photographer and
likes to take pictures of young girls.  I don't think anyone would call
his pictures tasteless or hurtful in any way.  He likes the attention of
young girls and he gets it by telling stories or jokes or playing tricks.
On the one hand, it's an unhealthy obsession.  But on the other, he has,
as far as anybody knows (including me), never done anything hurtful to a
young person or acted in a way that was not socially appropriate.  (He was
a military man at one point, so I won't say that he hasn't hurt anybody or
done anything wrong... just nothing socially inappropriate for mainstream
culture.)

There are people like this around us now.  Some able to control their
behavior and others not.  It is akin, in my mind, to homosexuality in that
it is a trait some people carry with them as part of who they are and what
satisfies them psychologically (via physical medium or otherwise).  Unlike
homosexuality, however, there are strong practical reasons for these
people to NOT achieve that satisfaction.  The cost to OTHERS is too great.
It is not merely the matter of consenting adults and, therefore, can't
really be condoned.  Anything we can do to help these people would be
wonderful, but, unfortunately, society isn't ready to accept the
inevitability of their existence (even they are HERE NOW) and so they toil
in private and since they must struggle alone, they sometimes fail.  It's
horrible and sad and the aftermath can be so much worse than the act.

The more we repress people, the more we force them to hide their feelings
and work alone through something that is very difficult and might be made
easier by a social network of sympathetic minds.

> Attacks from abroad tend to strengthen this country, it is deterioration
> from within that poses the greatest danger.

Wow.  I don't know what to say.  Near as I see it, the attacks on this
country have caused a very deep division.  They have strengthened the
resolve of the self-righteous xenophobes who would stop the (retaliatory)
attacks by tightening their fist around the rest of the world, sure.  But
they have also strengthened the ideas of those who believe that this
country's influence abroad is a hurtful one and should be diminished in
order to make the world a happier, safer place.  This division is deeper
today than it was five years ago.

Don't let a bunch of "United We Stand" stickers fool you.  I won't stand
united with ANYONE who will have "justice" by the barrell of a gun.

> Someone pointed out that children watch the actions of the spectators of
> violence.  Can the spectators of pornography or events leading to it
> say, "sex is not a performance, it is an act that should be reserved for
> marriage?"  Children shouldn't see porn, what they should see are
> wholesome relationships starting with their parents and including others
> in society.

We have very different ideas of what "porn" is.  I don't think this broad
kind of statement can be addressed when such divisions exist.  If you want
to get at the ideas in a more meaningful way, pick an example with which
we all have experience and analyze it publicly.

> Love without commitment, loyalty, and the search for companionship, is
> love without friendship.

I think lots of people confuse love with infatuation or limmerance.  No
big deal, really.  Just confusion of terms.

> Sex that is not open to life is not open to it's ultimate purpose.

Uh, sex that is not open to procreation is not open to its original,
evolutionary purpose.  But we're way beyond that, now.  We've developed a
whole set of feelings and psychological mechanisms that incorporate our
sexual desires and needs for intimacy that have as much to do with social
bonding as with procreation.

Hell, male macaque monkeys will have sexual relations with each other as a
sign of dominance.  There's sex that's not about procreation at all in a
non-human species.

Sex has an original purpose and one for which there is no real substitute
at the moment, but it is also a part of the fabric of human psychology and
sociology.  It is something we have incorporated into our beings and our
civilization (which, in turn, has changed our psychology) until its
reproductive origins were functional but secondary of not tertiary or
further in most instances.

> I believe that happily married couples are more intimate than any
> pornstar with any client because they have love, a deeper form of the
> deepest friendship.

I don't think even the most avid porn-watcher has made the false
assumption that the actors are more "intimate" than a loving couple.

> The two genders are made to complement each other, this is clearly
> visible in couples that have nurtured a strong friendship.

I would amend that to read something like, "Companionship produces better
individuals, this is clearly visible in couples that have nurtured a
strong friendship."  I've seen it in couples that were of different or the
same gender.

> Violence for the sake of violence, like in Bad Boys II, is just as
> pointless as sex meant for showmanship.

Except, of course, that sex actually has a time and place where it is good
and loving and violence is always evil and hateful.

But there is no power to be gained over others by forgiving and turning
the other cheek, so it is not supported by the authoritarians.

> One serious concern is that the adult entertainment industry sees the
> Internet as a ticket to go anywhere, anytime, and expand without limit.
> Do we want to survive as a nation or not?

Your nationalism is totally misplaced, sir.  I don't give a shit about
surviving "as a nation".  If the nation must be destroyed or dismantled or
subverted or undermined to bring us together as civilized humans, sign me
up.

> The problem isn't that people might be curious about pornography, it's
> the capable to make people addicts and the fact that woman are pushing
> this that is so bad.

Nobody has to "push" pornography.  That shit sells itself.  It isn't, to
borrow from Chris Rock, vaccuum cleaners or encyclopedias.  You don't need
pushers.  You don't even need salesmen.  You just need clerks.

And furthermore, I would argue that the problem of "pornography addiction"
is a problem rooted more in a person feeling disconnected from any
community and objectifying people because they feel objectified
themselves.  Your so-called addiction is just people trying to relate to
other people in the only way they know how.  Taking away that option isn't
going to make it any easier for these people to relate to one another,
it's just going to remove the one outlet they have in their sad, pathetic
lives.

The appropriate response, to my mind, is to work for positive models of
human behavior (ever take a stranger to lunch and let them talk about
whatever they want?  It's really easy to do downtown... there are lots of
people out there who have nobody and don't know the first thing about
relating to others.  You can show them pretty easily, actually.) than to
just fight against whatever negative models you come across.

Negativity just pushes people into corners and causes more frustration and
problems.  And harsh standards of "decency" just further compounds the
problem by driving the symptoms under the surface and below the radar of
public discourse.

Think about making positive change by increasing the positive rather than
trying to take away the negative.

> There is nothing like having to block web sites to avoid visiting them
> in a moment of weakness.

Are you saying you block websites so that you won't visit them in your
moments of weakness?  Isn't that kind of pointless if you know how to
unblock them?

> Worse still is running into more similar ones doing legitimate research
> say on an ad-aware warning about Alexa.

Well, just don't run non-unix systems and you won't have that problem.

J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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