to suggest that the entire human race would somehow be better of if we ignore this fact and concentrate on only one is foolheardy at best.
It's not at all foolhardy. We now have a world population of almost 6.5 billion. That's a lot. Now to get 1lb of steak, I think a cow eats close to 100lb of grain. That's hugely inefficient.
If everyone in the world ate according to US standards, we'd need a couple more Earths to grow the food.
Aside from that, vegetarians are shown to live longer, suffer less from obesity and just generally have fewer health problems than meat eaters.
Do you not feel that women have used that power anyway in determining the status of a male, hence the need for certain traits of the "alpha" male. Do you not feel males have quested in proving those traits through forms of competition with each other?
Yes, very much. There is evidence to suggest that female selection of mates is responsible not just for superficial male traits, but fundamental ones that have directed the whole species, such as the increase in brain size or walking upright.
Context is everything however, and I was talking about slightly more recent time scales, i.e. the last couple of thousand years, primarily in Eurasia. I was trying to explain why female sexuality was consistently surpressed in Christian and Islamic cultures. In this framework, we see that in order to cement the power structure purely in male hands, a woman's ability to determine status through mate selection must be eliminated. You see the ultimate expression of this in places such as Saudi Arabia where women must be veiled and not speak to men, or some countries that practice removal of the clitoris (female circumcision).
So yes, on the evolutionary scale, women have exerted that influence. On the more immediate cultural scale, we see that there have been many attempts to remove that influence. My comments referred only to the latter case, as the timeframe is to small for it to influence us genetically yet.
Hence how would a liberation of female sexual desires change the male hierachy, if those desires for certain traits have already been recognised by male society?
A very tricky one to guess. Partly you can contrast modern western democracies with the islamic cultures and try and see some differences resulting from female emancipation, but it's very difficult to eliminate other factors such as poverty and the subjugation by invading forces. Alternately you can try to extrapolate from the changes Western society has undergone since the sixties and the advent of reliable birth control for women. However, it's again very difficult (impossible?) to eliminate other factors.
We in Europe, and I feel moreso people in the US, are still in the middle stages of that acknowledgement of female sexual desire. It's effects on human society are still being adjusted to, not least of all by women.
You're not going to see a complete emulation of male sexual behaviour. Women really don't have the same attitude to sex that men do on the whole. That's what millions of years of knowing you're going to have to give up the rest of your life looking after a baby in exchange for a shag will do to your sexual attitudes. But being freed from the binary choice of 'good wife' or 'ruined woman' will force men to take more account of what women want. I think you'll see a society that is better balanced. I loathe sterotyping, but for example, organizations such as CND and Stop the War, or environmental movements often have a majority of female membership, so perhaps as an example, society would become a little less warlike. It's really very hard to say. You'll probably see men start to diet more, but that's as far as I can see.
And if male and female are now competing on the same level, in the same power structure, do you feel that the female's ability to select mates will be lessened due to the fact they are now competing with each other?
That's a very good question that I hadn't thought of. Possibly it might be lessened in that women may not feel able to become involved with someone who they regard as competition. Women tend to take a very supportive role in a relationship you see and it would be setting the man's career ahead of their own. This is often what happens by the way, although partly because men have an easier time of it climbing the career ladder.
However, I'd like to think that couples can form amicable partnerships.
One thing that has happened since women have entered the workforce in greated numbers and in no
Regardless of your stand on morals, yes, it is addicting. The same neurotransmitters are activated, as there are in certain illicit drugs.
Morals are not part of my argument. I'm not a proponent of pornography as I've said in earlier posts, but I am a proponent of good science. The neurotransmitters released by sex (whether self-stimulation or with a partner) represent pleasure and their production can equally be stimulated from meditation, exercise, or cocaine. The neurotransmitters are part of the normal functioning of the human brain. We are supposed to respond this way to sex. That is the gist of most people's objection to this article - it is trying to characterise a natural physical process as something unnatural - i.e. saying that it is a drug addiction when it is clearly not. The same logic could be applied to people who go running. It stimulates the same release and therefore because I enjoy it, I am an addict and (if these people were able to) should be "cured."
But why would they not want to "cure" exercise but would want to "cure" masturbation? Because that is their own value system. Many here do not share that value system and understandably do not want to have to live according to someone elses.
How for example, would you like to have live according to the lifestyle portrayed in say, Huxley's 'Brave New World,' where a refusal to participate in the sex rituals would be regarded as a psychological disorder. Or if hippies ruled the world and wanted to force you to smoke spliffs all day long?
Happily for you, I don't think anyone here has suggested forcing people to masturbate for their own good. However, the people in the article clearly want to interfere the other way around.
Understand that these people are talking about interfering with the thought processes of the human brain. And they want to do so on the basis of upsetting the very instincts that have preserved our species since the beginning.
I think the rest of the objections to these people and this article are the examples of terrible science in it. Creating new words (erototoxins) to describe established things and portray them in a negative light (they are not toxins in any sense of the word and they are not unique to the sexual process), is gross distortion of language, a lie if you like.
Anyway, just to clarify, I'm not a proponent of pornography, but I do believe it's not my place to condemn. "Thou shalt not judge," and all that.
If we followed your ideas to their logical conclusion...
I always try to reply to people who respond to my posts, but I'm not quite sure if you meant to reply to mine. Could you explain what it is in my ideas contain that you object to? The reason it's not clear to me is that where you say:
The problem with pornography is that it is an activity that focuses an individual on what he (or she) wants and not on what would make others happy.
Well that is actually a neat summation of some of what I've been saying.
I strongly disagree with your closing sentiment however:
Addiction is a fundimentally selfish and self-centered behavior, and without our being concerned for the well-being of those around us, our cherished government(s) will not endure.
What I believe is that it is meaningless to describe pornography addictive. There may be odd individuals how have some compulsive behaviour with it to such an extent that it interferes with their normal life, but basically - it's a normal biological urge. You can't treat people for 'addiction' to pornography, you could only damage them as human beings by trying. It is no more an addiction than the drive for food or shelter is.
Secondly, I don't cherish the government. It's a beats that needs to be whipped back by the people good and proper every generation. To turn your phrase around, government will be neccessary until people are converned with the well-being of those around them.
I think SOMEONE needs to stop reading papers on evolutionary psychology for a bit!
Nah, it's all pretty obvious when you manage to shake off your cultural conditioning.
Seriously, I take your point about generalizing. A human being is unique and never predictable. Human beings however can be generalized about. If they couldn't then we wouldn't be able to define the species. The discussion has been about humans as a whole, predominantly in modern western culture. If you try and treat any individual with these generalisations then you deserve to make an idiot of yourself; but I think we can make useful observations of the group as a whole.
It's only by trying to understand how our culture came to be the way it is, that you can address some of the wrongs in it, or conversely defend it from large-scale manipulation by such people as in the original article. Whichever side you take in the pornography debate, or the religion debate, or any other debate, you don't want your opponent to have greater insight than you do.
Firstly, the context in which I was talking was evolutionary terms. Any developments in the last two-thousand years will be marginal. Now, if you have a social group of humans, be that tribe, hunter-gatherers, town or village, then you have the males striving for a hierarchy.
But the ultimate purpose of it all is sex, reproduction. Now if a woman is free to choose her mate, to say "I want that one," then she will have power in determining status. Really, she has the strongest say in determining that status.
Now in order for a male or group of males to usurp that power and control the social order themselves, they must take away a woman's ability to choose her mates. Otherwise, the other males will not care what the 'powerful' males want. They will have mates and will fight to defend her and their reproductive rights.
Hence in a patriarchal society such as historically the Christian West, or modern day Saudi Arabia, women have no sexual freedom. A woman who expresses sexual desire is damned wholeheartedly. And that is because a sexually free woman would upset the male hierarchy that has its roots in reproductive rights.
THAT is what I meant. Contrary to what you might believe, women will not always choose George Bush (Ewww!) over a ordinary decent man they can call their own. The powerful might be able to "get laid as much as they want," but they can't have most of the women they want. I promise you.
actually I think there are different evolutionary strategies. You can have a high reproduction rate, but you lose time investment in your child, basically its a quantity approach. If you have one wife and a a few kids you can invest all your spare time raising that one child a quality approach. In todays world my money is on the quality approach.
Not only is this more viable, but you'll have better luck in an age of easy contraception. Few women will want to concieve with a one-night stand.
Besides, it's the quick developing, short lived species that usually have the fire and forget approach. Humans, with their seven years or more infancy have always taken a 'quality' approach. It's usually only teenager males and others with no chance to support a pregnant partner who think their best chance is to get in and out fast.
You shift your ground faster than an avalanche. Quote One:
And is it any wonder men don't initiate divorce? A male divorcee is a dead man walking.
Quote Two (from your first reply to me):
Now that this sense of ownership is gone (and has been replaced by a new breed of woman who have all the privileges and none of the responsiblites of marriage), men are leaving in droves.
Droves? I'm sorry that things ain't going well for you, really I am. But that doesn't make all women soulless gold-diggers and it doesn't mean Love isn't real.
You said earlier that Love is a social construct and that men are happiest running around grabbing as many partners as they can and fleeing. I think that is true for some men, and it tends to be younger men (teenagers?) that couldn't support a family and just have the urge to sneak a cuckoo into someone else's nest. But when a man is a little older, or simply matures earlier as many do, then the urge to care for someone becomes stronger.
You think that love isn't real. Despite many self-deprecating comments from 'geeks' on/. , I think that pretty much everyone here has felt it. Many will go back to partners later and tell them that they love them. Others are still looking for that person. But most of us have felt love and know that whether we believe it is a spiritual thing, an amazing beautiful complex chemical process or just possibly both, that it is most certainly real.
I hope you find a somewhat nicer girl who can show you that women aren't that much different to men. And I hope when you do, you're not so blinkered that you don't give her a chance and treat her well.
As always, education and information are the keys. The more the populace is educated and informed, the less we need government.
I sometimes think the holy grail of state education is to be able to produce people who can function intelligently in a work environment but don't apply their brains to anything else. Orwellian double-think basically. Looking at the way the school system works, it certainly looks that way.
That's an interesting observation, except for the fact that homosexuality is more openly practiced in cultures that, in general, tend to have fewer children.
Societies that have fewer children are those where people are more affluent and have greater freedom and education. I can debate this point if you want, but it seems pretty obvious to me.
Homosexuality is perhaps more commonly expressed openly in societies that have greater freedom and education. Quel surpris!
A common cause is blatently different to cause and effect.
And the point is that homosexuals may well be able to lend a supporting hand to their relatives, given that they are likely to have fewer progeny of their own. Homosexuality is extra manpower for no extra demands on breeding. Big plus and easily enough justification in and of itself to perpetuate homosexuality, and that aside from any social pluses.
Grasping at the idea that it must be something we just don't know yet is no better than, for example, attributing something unknown to magic.
Disagree and I'll explain why. We have an observed phenonmenon - homosexuality perpetuated in our species for all of recorded history. If we cannot see a reason for this observed phenonmenon, is it more reasonable to "grasp at the idea that it must be something we don't know yet," or as you have been arguing, to say that it's a freak blip that will go away?
I would say that we have had more than enough time with this phenonemon to say that if it were counter-productive to our survival it would have been eliminated by now.
As a possible suggestion of why it might be advantageous to have a proportion of the population be homosexual, consider this. In social animals, we see many examples behaviour that is not good for the individual (in evolutionary terms) but is good for the group. This ranges from dogs looking after another's young to soldiers going out to die. This behaviour can and is perpetuated through the process of group selection, an important factor in evolutionary theory.
My proposed advantage of homosexuality? It's good for the group. Gay men / gay women, may provide a number of services. One might be that they will tend to contribute to the group (extra manpower) without being likely to (a) produce excessive young and (b) introduce more destructive competition. Also, just the fact of having intercourse with others of their own gender may introduce greater bonding, social cohesion - sex without competition with rival males/females, a release for those without a mate, a bridge between genders, possibly just introducing for males a gentler component that makes things run more smoothly or a few women that will not want or be tied to a male and thus serve the women in the group as a bulwark against male control.
Who knows? I can propose a lot of plausible reasons, but I think it's fair to say that we've had homosexuality for long enough that we can say their is a probable reason for it, even if it's difficult to prove any of them for certain. So yes, I think this is better than "attributing something unknown to magic."
the assertion that porn that depicts sex within a loving relationship doesn't exist or is hard to find is simply untrue.
I'll grant you that I haven't gone looking for it, but I am aware that there is a massive quantity of the other sort of porn - the mysoginistic, souless porn. Is it not the case that this sort of porn has swamped awareness of an alternative.
I'm curious. Where would I find the sort of porn that I would like?
Oh and I'm sorry to reply to my own post, but one last thing to add to that list....
Women. Women are the key, they give or withold sex, they choose or reject the mate. At least that's the way it was in evolutionary terms. If you want an explanation about why the powerful subjugate and repress women so violently, reject female sexuality so utterly, that is why.
A woman who is sexually free determines the success or failure of the males around her by her choice and that takes away from the alpha male's power over his lessors.
Why do we perceive a natural act to be less suitable for our kids to view?
It's about power. Sex is freedom, sex with who you want is more freedom. Sex is the purpose of everything - if you're having sex then you're winning the game. If you're having sex with more people than the president is, then in evolutionary terms, you're beating him. Wealth? For men it's a means to attract a mate. Power? For men it's a way to drive off rivals. Sex is what it all comes down to. If you want control over other people. If you want real control over them, you need to control their sex lives. Without that, you've got no hold over them that they wont break.
Violence? Violence is just a nasty little game that the powerful can beat you at everytime.
Or, in the opposite fashion the attempt to rebrand baby/person as merely a fetus
Why should these two issues be related?
Okay, I'm being deliberately naive. They are related because in the US, a lot of the people who are against one are against the other too. However, my point is that I can see no reasonable link between the two debates. I myself believe that abortions are almost always wrong, except where the health of the mother is threatened. On the other hand, I don't see pornography as a terrible thing to be outlawed. I don't think it's victimless, but I'm not going to condmen a man for being what evolution made him.
The confusing of unrelated issues together has been one of the most successful and most damaging political tactics of the modern era and has led directly to the partisan political process you have in the US today. If intelligent people must be constrained into choosing between two monolithic amalgamations of policies, then what good is intelligence at all; for you've lost the granularity necessary to real choice and you're left with nothing but a tragic muddle.
In my case, however... my partner likes to watch it as much as I do.
That's your privilege (and your partner's). It's a big world with room for lots of views. My reasoning is something like this:
Sex is best with someone you love.
Pornography tends not to show this as part of sex, or even a possibility. Perhaps it would just distress many of the intended audience for a variety of reasons.
If pornography is a regular part of someone's life, or comes along at an important time in someone's life, say when they're still ignorant of what sex is, then perhaps they'll idealise this less emotional and purely physical sort of sex. They'll be missing out on so much.
Other people may disagree with any of those three steps, and they're quite welcome to dispute with me here, but first acknowledge that unlike the people in this "news" story, I'm not trying to ram my views down anyone's throat.
Most people probably can't aspire to the sort of physical qualities displayed in porn films. Nor do I think they should want to. But if this is all they see, if they don't become aware of the tremendous potential in the emotional side of sex, then maybe they'll always be less satisfied than they would be if they realized they can trump the porn stars every time with just a modicum of tenderness.
Besides, this isn't really about Christianity or religion, it is about power and the ability to control people.
Agreed. A nation that is paralysed with guilt about what it wants will be a nation that is easily pushed around. There's nothing that makes people stand up for themselves more than when they possess that irritating belief that they're good.
"You're a bad person for wanting such a thing. Bad person! Now go and doubt your worth."
I'd like to mod you up for looking into this a little further than I did, but I've already posted. Instead, I'll comment on an issue that you raised - gender and orientation.
It looks like you are right. There is an association here with other "moral" prejudices, such as anti-gay sentiments. These people probably would view gay sex as a perversion (and try to supress it). But also, through most of recorded history, it's women who have been condemned most for sexual freedom.
These people may regard a man who downloads pornography as a sinner, but they'll come down twice as hard on a woman, I guarentee it.
Yes, but it burns more calories. Also, regular sex can enhance your cognitive abilities. I can't remember where I read that last link though. Clearly it's time to go top up my cognitive abilities.;)
Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a Senate committee Thursday.
Pornography leads to boob jobs? May I ask why this is being presented to the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee? Now I'm not an advocate of pornography but if I were going to argue against it, I'd try to base my arguments on less personal-value laden arguments than this. And that's leaving aside dodgy use of science. Example:
"That is, it causes masturbation,
Suggesting that boys and girls don't masturbate without pornography? Children masturbate before they even understand sexual attraction, let alone requiring pornography post-puberty.
But here's another highlight,
Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association suggested that more study of "erototoxins" could show how pornography is not speech-protected under the First Amendment.
Erototoxins? Is this an attempt to re-brand a need for sexual stimulationas a medical condition again? You know that way they could overturn any constitutional protections under the guise of medical treatment, much like drug companies are pushing their drugs that render people resistant to illegal drugs. Why do I get the feeling that these people would like to be able to prevent sexual desire wherever they deem it innappropriate.
The whole basis of this article seems to be that somebody has shown correlation in the brain between pleasure from drugs and pleasure from sex... as far as I understand the article, the correlation appears to be something called, um... pleasure.
I think if you watch a lot of pornography, then that can distance you from other people and perhaps interfere with forming a healthy relationship with your parter, but who knows - it's just my feeling. I don't think anyone with a brain whichever side of the argument they fall on could see this article being anything other than bollocks.
It sounds nice but the whole thing about borrowing is that at one time or another it got to be paid back.
Nobody wants to call the debt home. To do so would be a disaster on a grand international scale because the US can't pay and if it could, to do so would be to invite worldwide economic chaos.
Since the gold standard was abandoned, the US money system has been severed from reality. The US may have large amounts of wealth - i.e. infrastructure, property, Iraq, etc. - but the numbers on the computer screens say that it is hugely in debt.
There is no way that the "lenders" can write off a debt of that size, nor would want to. The idea is that the debt should be preserved as long as possible and the borrower be milked for all it's worth. Likewise, the US will not be allowed to pay off the debt because as long as the debt is preserved wealth created in the US will continue to be transferred in ownership (via the medium of owing money to the creditor) to the lenders.
Basically, money is fiction, an agreement on the global scale, but is not wealth. If the debt were payed off then what would really be be happening would be the transfer of power of the US's wealth from the lenders to the US itself. Currency valuation would change and the lenders would be worse off quite rapidly. Consider that the dollar bills in your pocket, the pounds or the euros, etc., are really notes of debt to the central bank that must be paid back with interest to the central bank, i.e. more money must be given back than was borrowed, with the only source of that money being borrowing at an agreed interest rate from the central bank.
Drop some acid and really think about what debt of debt means in terms of wealth and ownership.
Basically, the debt will not be called home, the idea is to maintain that debt for eternity and control the US. God alone knows what measures would be taken if the US came close to paying it off. The only time historically that this almost happened, you had a civil war.;)
Now that it requires so little effort to give them the data, perhaps more people will do as you are and give it for the sake of improving the content.
But five dollars a week? If you're telling me that up until now most of the data has been generated by people who were willing to fill out a load of forms for five dollars a week, then I think we may have discovered why US tv is so dreadful. Its been skewed towards the tastes of the five dollars a week people.
When I lived in the States, there were two things I couldn't believe (or stand). The first was the random and sudden interruption by adverts. Here in the UK, if you get adverts (i.e. you're not watching BBC), then you get a fixed interval at a fixed time that appears after a closing screen / music to provide a less jarring break. And the second was the standard news broadcasts which had hardly any international content at all.
Slashdot Mirror
to suggest that the entire human race would somehow be better of if we ignore this fact and concentrate on only one is foolheardy at best.
It's not at all foolhardy. We now have a world population of almost 6.5 billion. That's a lot. Now to get 1lb of steak, I think a cow eats close to 100lb of grain. That's hugely inefficient.
If everyone in the world ate according to US standards, we'd need a couple more Earths to grow the food.
Aside from that, vegetarians are shown to live longer, suffer less from obesity and just generally have fewer health problems than meat eaters.
Foolhardy, eh?
Do you not feel that women have used that power anyway in determining the status of a male, hence the need for certain traits of the "alpha" male. Do you not feel males have quested in proving those traits through forms of competition with each other?
Yes, very much. There is evidence to suggest that female selection of mates is responsible not just for superficial male traits, but fundamental ones that have directed the whole species, such as the increase in brain size or walking upright.
Context is everything however, and I was talking about slightly more recent time scales, i.e. the last couple of thousand years, primarily in Eurasia. I was trying to explain why female sexuality was consistently surpressed in Christian and Islamic cultures. In this framework, we see that in order to cement the power structure purely in male hands, a woman's ability to determine status through mate selection must be eliminated. You see the ultimate expression of this in places such as Saudi Arabia where women must be veiled and not speak to men, or some countries that practice removal of the clitoris (female circumcision).
So yes, on the evolutionary scale, women have exerted that influence. On the more immediate cultural scale, we see that there have been many attempts to remove that influence. My comments referred only to the latter case, as the timeframe is to small for it to influence us genetically yet.
Hence how would a liberation of female sexual desires change the male hierachy, if those desires for certain traits have already been recognised by male society?
A very tricky one to guess. Partly you can contrast modern western democracies with the islamic cultures and try and see some differences resulting from female emancipation, but it's very difficult to eliminate other factors such as poverty and the subjugation by invading forces. Alternately you can try to extrapolate from the changes Western society has undergone since the sixties and the advent of reliable birth control for women. However, it's again very difficult (impossible?) to eliminate other factors.
We in Europe, and I feel moreso people in the US, are still in the middle stages of that acknowledgement of female sexual desire. It's effects on human society are still being adjusted to, not least of all by women.
You're not going to see a complete emulation of male sexual behaviour. Women really don't have the same attitude to sex that men do on the whole. That's what millions of years of knowing you're going to have to give up the rest of your life looking after a baby in exchange for a shag will do to your sexual attitudes. But being freed from the binary choice of 'good wife' or 'ruined woman' will force men to take more account of what women want. I think you'll see a society that is better balanced. I loathe sterotyping, but for example, organizations such as CND and Stop the War, or environmental movements often have a majority of female membership, so perhaps as an example, society would become a little less warlike. It's really very hard to say. You'll probably see men start to diet more, but that's as far as I can see.
And if male and female are now competing on the same level, in the same power structure, do you feel that the female's ability to select mates will be lessened due to the fact they are now competing with each other?
That's a very good question that I hadn't thought of. Possibly it might be lessened in that women may not feel able to become involved with someone who they regard as competition. Women tend to take a very supportive role in a relationship you see and it would be setting the man's career ahead of their own. This is often what happens by the way, although partly because men have an easier time of it climbing the career ladder.
However, I'd like to think that couples can form amicable partnerships.
One thing that has happened since women have entered the workforce in greated numbers and in no
Regardless of your stand on morals, yes, it is addicting. The same neurotransmitters are activated, as there are in certain illicit drugs.
Morals are not part of my argument. I'm not a proponent of pornography as I've said in earlier posts, but I am a proponent of good science. The neurotransmitters released by sex (whether self-stimulation or with a partner) represent pleasure and their production can equally be stimulated from meditation, exercise, or cocaine. The neurotransmitters are part of the normal functioning of the human brain. We are supposed to respond this way to sex. That is the gist of most people's objection to this article - it is trying to characterise a natural physical process as something unnatural - i.e. saying that it is a drug addiction when it is clearly not. The same logic could be applied to people who go running. It stimulates the same release and therefore because I enjoy it, I am an addict and (if these people were able to) should be "cured."
But why would they not want to "cure" exercise but would want to "cure" masturbation? Because that is their own value system. Many here do not share that value system and understandably do not want to have to live according to someone elses.
How for example, would you like to have live according to the lifestyle portrayed in say, Huxley's 'Brave New World,' where a refusal to participate in the sex rituals would be regarded as a psychological disorder. Or if hippies ruled the world and wanted to force you to smoke spliffs all day long?
Happily for you, I don't think anyone here has suggested forcing people to masturbate for their own good. However, the people in the article clearly want to interfere the other way around.
Understand that these people are talking about interfering with the thought processes of the human brain. And they want to do so on the basis of upsetting the very instincts that have preserved our species since the beginning.
I think the rest of the objections to these people and this article are the examples of terrible science in it. Creating new words (erototoxins) to describe established things and portray them in a negative light (they are not toxins in any sense of the word and they are not unique to the sexual process), is gross distortion of language, a lie if you like.
Anyway, just to clarify, I'm not a proponent of pornography, but I do believe it's not my place to condemn. "Thou shalt not judge," and all that.
If we followed your ideas to their logical conclusion...
I always try to reply to people who respond to my posts, but I'm not quite sure if you meant to reply to mine. Could you explain what it is in my ideas contain that you object to? The reason it's not clear to me is that where you say: Well that is actually a neat summation of some of what I've been saying.
I strongly disagree with your closing sentiment however: What I believe is that it is meaningless to describe pornography addictive. There may be odd individuals how have some compulsive behaviour with it to such an extent that it interferes with their normal life, but basically - it's a normal biological urge. You can't treat people for 'addiction' to pornography, you could only damage them as human beings by trying. It is no more an addiction than the drive for food or shelter is.
Secondly, I don't cherish the government. It's a beats that needs to be whipped back by the people good and proper every generation. To turn your phrase around, government will be neccessary until people are converned with the well-being of those around them.
I think SOMEONE needs to stop reading papers on evolutionary psychology for a bit!
Nah, it's all pretty obvious when you manage to shake off your cultural conditioning.
Seriously, I take your point about generalizing. A human being is unique and never predictable. Human beings however can be generalized about. If they couldn't then we wouldn't be able to define the species. The discussion has been about humans as a whole, predominantly in modern western culture. If you try and treat any individual with these generalisations then you deserve to make an idiot of yourself; but I think we can make useful observations of the group as a whole.
It's only by trying to understand how our culture came to be the way it is, that you can address some of the wrongs in it, or conversely defend it from large-scale manipulation by such people as in the original article. Whichever side you take in the pornography debate, or the religion debate, or any other debate, you don't want your opponent to have greater insight than you do.
whoop-ti-fucking-doo
Perhaps I should clarify what I meant, then.
Firstly, the context in which I was talking was evolutionary terms. Any developments in the last two-thousand years will be marginal. Now, if you have a social group of humans, be that tribe, hunter-gatherers, town or village, then you have the males striving for a hierarchy.
But the ultimate purpose of it all is sex, reproduction. Now if a woman is free to choose her mate, to say "I want that one," then she will have power in determining status. Really, she has the strongest say in determining that status.
Now in order for a male or group of males to usurp that power and control the social order themselves, they must take away a woman's ability to choose her mates. Otherwise, the other males will not care what the 'powerful' males want. They will have mates and will fight to defend her and their reproductive rights.
Hence in a patriarchal society such as historically the Christian West, or modern day Saudi Arabia, women have no sexual freedom. A woman who expresses sexual desire is damned wholeheartedly. And that is because a sexually free woman would upset the male hierarchy that has its roots in reproductive rights.
THAT is what I meant. Contrary to what you might believe, women will not always choose George Bush (Ewww!) over a ordinary decent man they can call their own. The powerful might be able to "get laid as much as they want," but they can't have most of the women they want. I promise you.
actually I think there are different evolutionary strategies. You can have a high reproduction rate, but you lose time investment in your child, basically its a quantity approach. If you have one wife and a a few kids you can invest all your spare time raising that one child a quality approach. In todays world my money is on the quality approach.
Not only is this more viable, but you'll have better luck in an age of easy contraception. Few women will want to concieve with a one-night stand.
Besides, it's the quick developing, short lived species that usually have the fire and forget approach. Humans, with their seven years or more infancy have always taken a 'quality' approach. It's usually only teenager males and others with no chance to support a pregnant partner who think their best chance is to get in and out fast.
You shift your ground faster than an avalanche.
Quote One: Quote Two (from your first reply to me): Droves? I'm sorry that things ain't going well for you, really I am. But that doesn't make all women soulless gold-diggers and it doesn't mean Love isn't real.
You said earlier that Love is a social construct and that men are happiest running around grabbing as many partners as they can and fleeing. I think that is true for some men, and it tends to be younger men (teenagers?) that couldn't support a family and just have the urge to sneak a cuckoo into someone else's nest. But when a man is a little older, or simply matures earlier as many do, then the urge to care for someone becomes stronger.
You think that love isn't real. Despite many self-deprecating comments from 'geeks' on
I hope you find a somewhat nicer girl who can show you that women aren't that much different to men. And I hope when you do, you're not so blinkered that you don't give her a chance and treat her well.
As always, education and information are the keys. The more the populace is educated and informed, the less we need government.
I sometimes think the holy grail of state education is to be able to produce people who can function intelligently in a work environment but don't apply their brains to anything else. Orwellian double-think basically. Looking at the way the school system works, it certainly looks that way.
That's an interesting observation, except for the fact that homosexuality is more openly practiced in cultures that, in general, tend to have fewer children.
Societies that have fewer children are those where people are more affluent and have greater freedom and education. I can debate this point if you want, but it seems pretty obvious to me.
Homosexuality is perhaps more commonly expressed openly in societies that have greater freedom and education. Quel surpris!
A common cause is blatently different to cause and effect.
And the point is that homosexuals may well be able to lend a supporting hand to their relatives, given that they are likely to have fewer progeny of their own. Homosexuality is extra manpower for no extra demands on breeding. Big plus and easily enough justification in and of itself to perpetuate homosexuality, and that aside from any social pluses.
Grasping at the idea that it must be something we just don't know yet is no better than, for example, attributing something unknown to magic.
Disagree and I'll explain why. We have an observed phenonmenon - homosexuality perpetuated in our species for all of recorded history. If we cannot see a reason for this observed phenonmenon, is it more reasonable to "grasp at the idea that it must be something we don't know yet," or as you have been arguing, to say that it's a freak blip that will go away?
I would say that we have had more than enough time with this phenonemon to say that if it were counter-productive to our survival it would have been eliminated by now.
As a possible suggestion of why it might be advantageous to have a proportion of the population be homosexual, consider this. In social animals, we see many examples behaviour that is not good for the individual (in evolutionary terms) but is good for the group. This ranges from dogs looking after another's young to soldiers going out to die. This behaviour can and is perpetuated through the process of group selection, an important factor in evolutionary theory.
My proposed advantage of homosexuality? It's good for the group. Gay men / gay women, may provide a number of services. One might be that they will tend to contribute to the group (extra manpower) without being likely to (a) produce excessive young and (b) introduce more destructive competition. Also, just the fact of having intercourse with others of their own gender may introduce greater bonding, social cohesion - sex without competition with rival males/females, a release for those without a mate, a bridge between genders, possibly just introducing for males a gentler component that makes things run more smoothly or a few women that will not want or be tied to a male and thus serve the women in the group as a bulwark against male control.
Who knows? I can propose a lot of plausible reasons, but I think it's fair to say that we've had homosexuality for long enough that we can say their is a probable reason for it, even if it's difficult to prove any of them for certain. So yes, I think this is better than "attributing something unknown to magic."
well hippie I've got news for you. killing is just as natural as fucking.
No, otherwise there would be a world population of 0. You didn't do maths, did you?
I don't think I've ever seen such a high-proportion of AC's in a thread before. Clearly it was one of those stories...
the assertion that porn that depicts sex within a loving relationship doesn't exist or is hard to find is simply untrue.
I'll grant you that I haven't gone looking for it, but I am aware that there is a massive quantity of the other sort of porn - the mysoginistic, souless porn. Is it not the case that this sort of porn has swamped awareness of an alternative.
I'm curious. Where would I find the sort of porn that I would like?
Oh and I'm sorry to reply to my own post, but one last thing to add to that list....
Women. Women are the key, they give or withold sex, they choose or reject the mate. At least that's the way it was in evolutionary terms. If you want an explanation about why the powerful subjugate and repress women so violently, reject female sexuality so utterly, that is why.
A woman who is sexually free determines the success or failure of the males around her by her choice and that takes away from the alpha male's power over his lessors.
Why do we perceive a natural act to be less suitable for our kids to view?
It's about power. Sex is freedom, sex with who you want is more freedom. Sex is the purpose of everything - if you're having sex then you're winning the game. If you're having sex with more people than the president is, then in evolutionary terms, you're beating him. Wealth? For men it's a means to attract a mate. Power? For men it's a way to drive off rivals. Sex is what it all comes down to. If you want control over other people. If you want real control over them, you need to control their sex lives. Without that, you've got no hold over them that they wont break.
Violence? Violence is just a nasty little game that the powerful can beat you at everytime.
Or, in the opposite fashion the attempt to rebrand baby/person as merely a fetus
Why should these two issues be related?
Okay, I'm being deliberately naive. They are related because in the US, a lot of the people who are against one are against the other too. However, my point is that I can see no reasonable link between the two debates. I myself believe that abortions are almost always wrong, except where the health of the mother is threatened. On the other hand, I don't see pornography as a terrible thing to be outlawed. I don't think it's victimless, but I'm not going to condmen a man for being what evolution made him.
The confusing of unrelated issues together has been one of the most successful and most damaging political tactics of the modern era and has led directly to the partisan political process you have in the US today. If intelligent people must be constrained into choosing between two monolithic amalgamations of policies, then what good is intelligence at all; for you've lost the granularity necessary to real choice and you're left with nothing but a tragic muddle.
In my case, however
That's your privilege (and your partner's). It's a big world with room for lots of views. My reasoning is something like this:
Other people may disagree with any of those three steps, and they're quite welcome to dispute with me here, but first acknowledge that unlike the people in this "news" story, I'm not trying to ram my views down anyone's throat.
Most people probably can't aspire to the sort of physical qualities displayed in porn films. Nor do I think they should want to. But if this is all they see, if they don't become aware of the tremendous potential in the emotional side of sex, then maybe they'll always be less satisfied than they would be if they realized they can trump the porn stars every time with just a modicum of tenderness.
imho
Besides, this isn't really about Christianity or religion, it is about power and the ability to control people.
Agreed. A nation that is paralysed with guilt about what it wants will be a nation that is easily pushed around. There's nothing that makes people stand up for themselves more than when they possess that irritating belief that they're good.
"You're a bad person for wanting such a thing. Bad person! Now go and doubt your worth."
I'd like to mod you up for looking into this a little further than I did, but I've already posted. Instead, I'll comment on an issue that you raised - gender and orientation.
It looks like you are right. There is an association here with other "moral" prejudices, such as anti-gay sentiments. These people probably would view gay sex as a perversion (and try to supress it). But also, through most of recorded history, it's women who have been condemned most for sexual freedom.
These people may regard a man who downloads pornography as a sinner, but they'll come down twice as hard on a woman, I guarentee it.
I'd say porn is about as addictive as television.
Yes, but it burns more calories. Also, regular sex can enhance your cognitive abilities. I can't remember where I read that last link though. Clearly it's time to go top up my cognitive abilities.
Pornography leads to boob jobs? May I ask why this is being presented to the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee? Now I'm not an advocate of pornography but if I were going to argue against it, I'd try to base my arguments on less personal-value laden arguments than this. And that's leaving aside dodgy use of science. Example: Suggesting that boys and girls don't masturbate without pornography? Children masturbate before they even understand sexual attraction, let alone requiring pornography post-puberty.
But here's another highlight,
Erototoxins? Is this an attempt to re-brand a need for sexual stimulationas a medical condition again? You know that way they could overturn any constitutional protections under the guise of medical treatment, much like drug companies are pushing their drugs that render people resistant to illegal drugs. Why do I get the feeling that these people would like to be able to prevent sexual desire wherever they deem it innappropriate.
The whole basis of this article seems to be that somebody has shown correlation in the brain between pleasure from drugs and pleasure from sex... as far as I understand the article, the correlation appears to be something called, um... pleasure.
I think if you watch a lot of pornography, then that can distance you from other people and perhaps interfere with forming a healthy relationship with your parter, but who knows - it's just my feeling. I don't think anyone with a brain whichever side of the argument they fall on could see this article being anything other than bollocks.
It sounds nice but the whole thing about borrowing is that at one time or another it got to be paid back.
;)
Nobody wants to call the debt home. To do so would be a disaster on a grand international scale because the US can't pay and if it could, to do so would be to invite worldwide economic chaos.
Since the gold standard was abandoned, the US money system has been severed from reality. The US may have large amounts of wealth - i.e. infrastructure, property, Iraq, etc. - but the numbers on the computer screens say that it is hugely in debt.
There is no way that the "lenders" can write off a debt of that size, nor would want to. The idea is that the debt should be preserved as long as possible and the borrower be milked for all it's worth. Likewise, the US will not be allowed to pay off the debt because as long as the debt is preserved wealth created in the US will continue to be transferred in ownership (via the medium of owing money to the creditor) to the lenders.
Basically, money is fiction, an agreement on the global scale, but is not wealth. If the debt were payed off then what would really be be happening would be the transfer of power of the US's wealth from the lenders to the US itself. Currency valuation would change and the lenders would be worse off quite rapidly. Consider that the dollar bills in your pocket, the pounds or the euros, etc., are really notes of debt to the central bank that must be paid back with interest to the central bank, i.e. more money must be given back than was borrowed, with the only source of that money being borrowing at an agreed interest rate from the central bank.
Drop some acid and really think about what debt of debt means in terms of wealth and ownership.
Basically, the debt will not be called home, the idea is to maintain that debt for eternity and control the US. God alone knows what measures would be taken if the US came close to paying it off. The only time historically that this almost happened, you had a civil war.
Very, very, funny.
(unless you are Iraqi).
Now that it requires so little effort to give them the data, perhaps more people will do as you are and give it for the sake of improving the content.
But five dollars a week? If you're telling me that up until now most of the data has been generated by people who were willing to fill out a load of forms for five dollars a week, then I think we may have discovered why US tv is so dreadful. Its been skewed towards the tastes of the five dollars a week people.
When I lived in the States, there were two things I couldn't believe (or stand). The first was the random and sudden interruption by adverts. Here in the UK, if you get adverts (i.e. you're not watching BBC), then you get a fixed interval at a fixed time that appears after a closing screen / music to provide a less jarring break. And the second was the standard news broadcasts which had hardly any international content at all.