So much for free speech and the sexual revolution, Tumblr and Facebook...
Looking for a good time? Well, don't post about it on Facebook.
Tumblr (part of Yahoo owned by the Verizon unit, Oath) and Facebook have new, eros-unfriendly rules for their sites. Since Tumblr's beginning, they have hosted several hundred thousand adult blogs, contributing hugely to their site's traffic volume. Facebook's target is "implicit requests for sex". No more sexual slang or hints of sexual roles when mentioned with a sex act. "Looking for a good time tonight" is now a verboten phrase. Tumblr will begin purging sexual explicit material, nudity, female nipples, and naked art work on December 17.
I consider sexually explicit material, photos or paintings of nudes--including female nipples--to be appropriate material for people over 16 or 18 to view, enjoy, and share with their peers. I prefer gay erotica (pornography) but I take the same view towards straight erotica or pornography -- whichever term you prefer.
The principles of free expression can and has included erotica as well as politics, theology, philosophy, art, the news, novels, and so on. But there has always been a rear guard action against erotica, pornography, and liberated sexual behavior. The market for erotica and pornography was greatly expanded in the late 1960s and 1970s, along with relaxed rules for novels such as Lady Chatterly's Lover. As soon as the legal market expanded, restrictive zoning laws and police harassment were put in place.
The rear guard action is back, it would seem. What Tumblr and Facebook have done might well be done by Twitter, Instagram, et al.
Do you see anything at stake for democracy in Facebook and Tumblr's actions? Both of these platforms have extensive international participation; this isn't just an American issue.
Tumblr (part of Yahoo owned by the Verizon unit, Oath) and Facebook have new, eros-unfriendly rules for their sites. Since Tumblr's beginning, they have hosted several hundred thousand adult blogs, contributing hugely to their site's traffic volume. Facebook's target is "implicit requests for sex". No more sexual slang or hints of sexual roles when mentioned with a sex act. "Looking for a good time tonight" is now a verboten phrase. Tumblr will begin purging sexual explicit material, nudity, female nipples, and naked art work on December 17.
I consider sexually explicit material, photos or paintings of nudes--including female nipples--to be appropriate material for people over 16 or 18 to view, enjoy, and share with their peers. I prefer gay erotica (pornography) but I take the same view towards straight erotica or pornography -- whichever term you prefer.
The principles of free expression can and has included erotica as well as politics, theology, philosophy, art, the news, novels, and so on. But there has always been a rear guard action against erotica, pornography, and liberated sexual behavior. The market for erotica and pornography was greatly expanded in the late 1960s and 1970s, along with relaxed rules for novels such as Lady Chatterly's Lover. As soon as the legal market expanded, restrictive zoning laws and police harassment were put in place.
The rear guard action is back, it would seem. What Tumblr and Facebook have done might well be done by Twitter, Instagram, et al.
Do you see anything at stake for democracy in Facebook and Tumblr's actions? Both of these platforms have extensive international participation; this isn't just an American issue.
Comments (143)
But can you require that Tumblr and Facebook allow the posting of pornography? That seems more oppressive than allowing them to prohibit it. There's the possibility that the Tumblr creators are like the Nobels, horrified that their innovation has been used for the forces of evil. Could be. I don't know the fuckers. Maybe they've made their good fortune and can now afford to live sanctimoniously. I, for one, would live sanctimoniously if it weren't so expensive. I don't even like to pay extra for non-abused chicken. It's likely abused chickens are more tender anyway.
At any rate, I would expect that porn on the internet will continue somewhere and somehow despite this bump in the road and that everyone will still be able to enjoy all the flavors of their choice. I'd also expect that someone new will arrive at the scene to provide a platform for whatever depravity is profitable. To assume otherwise would assume this great big capitalistic machine that controls our lives no longer works, and that just can't be.
The problem re the sexual stuff is that we've been going pretty backwards for the last few decades re "loosening the grip of restrictive morality."
I'm not sure what's driving the fact that we've been going backwards--it's surely a complex of factors, and one of them was surely the rise of AIDS, but one of the main controlling, "high-level" factors is that we've maneuvered to a society where (1) livelihoods can easily be trashed via moralizing social pressure, (2) People are more prone to moralizing, including bandwagon-moralizing than ever, (3) and we've fueled this via the ubiquity of social media, where a few crazy, squeaky wheels can have a bigger impact than ever.
Facebook, Apple, etc. are just trying to watch their asses. They're not really making any moral decisions. They just want to stay in business and remain as profitable as they've been. What we need to do is change our culture so that we don't see moralizing and victimhood as virtues, and it would help if we had a different economic structure in place, so that social pressure from moralizers doesn't matter.
No. Their actions don't affect your right to vote or stand for election.
You're more than welcome to post such content on a website of your own making.
The right to free speech isn't the same as the right to use someone else's platform.
I'll add to your addition that the control of sexuality is always part of social control. It passed from religion to the state, and has now passed from the state to the corporation. It has no effect on democracy, because democracy has no effect, because all aspects of power have gone from governments and are in the hands of corporations.
I wasn't demanding that any platform comply with my wishes. Verizon, Facebook, Apple, et al can set whatever rules they wish. However, their decisions are not above criticism and their policies may affect the body politic -- for instance, Facebooks's lax policing of political ads and posts before the 2016 election. Newspapers can publish whatever news they think fit to print; that doesn't mean their decisions are above the most excoriating criticism when they misrepresent reality.
As @unenlightened has noted, parts of the once public body politic have migrated to the corporation. Take as an example the problem of accessing citizens in public to collect signatures for a petition, leaflet for some cause -- peace, sympathy with a strike, a political candidate -- etc. The "public square" sphere has become largely corporate property. In the US, the places people go and congregate are mostly private spaces like shopping malls (which include the parking lots). The malls look like public spaces, but are not. Security people routinely eject anyone leafletting, petitioning, or quietly protesting -- let alone anything more assertive.
What about "public sidewalks"? They are public property and one can demonstrate, petition, or leaflet to one's heart's content. But if you want to go where the most people are, the public sidewalk will generally be outside of the parking lot perimeter and sometimes 300 feet (90 m) or more from the front door of the establishment.
Back to Tumblr and Facebook et al: To suppose that abrupt policy changes (some in place for a decade or two) are a matter of political indifference is shortsighted. We don't have the Great Fire Wall of China, but we have a (so far) softer system of thought suppression.
One way to account for a backward drift is that large portions of the population never approved of liberalization of values in the first place. Gay marriage is now possible coast to coast; that doesn't mean that most people now approve of homosexuality. Large blocks of the population do now and have always disapproved. Numerous civil rights laws have been passed; that doesn't mean that most people are now color blind. "Bohemians" might establish interesting urban enclaves, but they tend to get "redeveloped" out of existence. Birth control and liberalized abortion helped make a "sexual revolution" possible, but again, large numbers of people never approved of the sexual revolution. Divorce rates notwithstanding, marriage is still the norm.
Political and sexual deviants like myself tend to associate with other political and sexual deviants. This can lead to a serious misapprehension about what the masses are thinking.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Indeed.
That's a good point. My perspective is pretty skewed because I was born in 1962, and I have very libertarian/libertine/hippieish parents who treated me like an equal almost immediately, plus my musical skills catapulted me into an (again libertine) adult world when I was pretty young, too--I was making money from music by the mid 1970s, So it seemed to me like the whole world was in the midst of a major change.
I think you are underestimating the power of the state, but I agree. Besides, the state has generally been on the side of the corporation. (Marx: "The state is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie.") The transnationality of corporations, and the enormous wealth lodged in the hands of a tiny fraction of the world's population (where, according to Oxfam, a handful of individuals possess more wealth than half the world's population) is a relatively new arrangement. There is a lot of hidden money sloshing around in tax havens which are outside of national revenue departments' reach.
No, it is but one website among many and it is nothing like a utility. If you don't want to communicate via Facebook, then don't. I don't. If I don't like my water, power, sewage, or gas company, it's not like I can shop somewhere else. If I don't like my social media site, I can find another way to communicate.
I do not believe it is good for society to make intimate behavior public. I also am not at all in favor of freedom of expression. I am strongly in favor of freedom of speech that is about reasoning, but not about cussing and saying offensive things. As I see it, it is only the freedom to reason that needs to be protected, and that is protected by not violating rules of human decency. I am really glad to read others seem to have this point of view.
Our newly acquired digital fora have largely replaced their old physical counterparts, or at least made them massively ineffectual by comparison, which is why I do see the regulation of digital forums to be democratically relevant (regulation ensuring free speech, and freedom from intentional deception).
If everybody happens to be using a handful of particular sites, those sites can gain a large amount of political influence by controlling or manipulating the flow of information through their networks...
Part of me wants to say that Facebook can do whatever they want with their own network, but another part wants to say that the greater health and good of our democratic system is at stake, therefore we must step in regulate on some level.
We break up monopolies with anti-trust measures even though it's their property, and we regulate the media in some ways (it's not like breaching property rights is unthinkable). According to the FCC, the public owns the airwaves, and encoding information within them requires licensing and is subject to regulations (noise, decency, slander/libel laws, and political campaign related laws). The series of tubes that is the internet was not wholly constructed by the public, but it does ostensibly allow internet providers the privilege of installing and operating them along their roads, which implies that the body politic may have some degree of right to regulate their uses.
With television and radio, we have reached a place where we allow broadcasters to make a profit but also demand they adhere to laws ensuring they don't cause damage us in the process (don't tell lies being the relevant gist).
With Facebook in particular, as it is the most common medium in use for political communication (at least for the sake of argument), it can profit more than any other corporation from deceptive and manipulative practices - telling lies - and will directly harm our democratic, political, and economic outcomes in doing so. It is true that individuals can survive without using Facebook (I've never used it), but so long as it maintains its virtual monopoly we'll be left vulnerable to its insidious political curation as a whole.
Of course, the answer is to just stop using Facebook, and if we could do so we would simply migrate to a new social medium which would grow into a monopoly as well (because the more people that use a social media, the more useful it becomes, and the more users it attracts). The next Facebook would have the same incentives to maximize clicks and monetize users/influence that the current one does, and we would be back to square one.
Why shouln't Facebook be held accountable for feeding their users outright lies in the same ways we can hold a news organization accountable for telling lies? (especially in breach of laws meant to ensure campaign fairness)...
P.S @Bitter Crank Regarding pornography, because it is neither politically important (correct me if I'm wrong), nor held in virtual or complete monopoly by any one online medium, it's not ethically meaningful to regulate against Trumblr's decision. However, if Tumblr was the only source of pornography in the world, you can bet the body politic would be up-and-armed about incorporating it as a federally protected utility!
Still, the fear of sex outside of dark bedrooms, the back seats of cars and convenient hotel rooms which motivates this kind of repression is that of the denizens of private corporations in this case, so this isn't a free speech issue in the legal sense--which, as we all know, is the only truly important sense.
Share of population using Facebook
North America 72.4%
Latin America / Caribbean 57.3%
Oceania / Australia 48.1%
Europe 41.7%
1 out of 7 people in the world uses Facebook.
I do not use Facebook; I do not have a Facebook account. I don't have to have an account to recognize its importance.
Goodness gracious; she's not in favor of freedom of expression! My psychoanalytic theory is that there is a connection between believing intimate behavior on view is bad for society and being against freedom of expression.
I don't know? The way you worded that sounds appealing to me. I think there are lines to be drawn, but I am not sure where those lines should be drawn. I think science might have something to say about the positive and negative effects of explicit sexual scenes. Clearly, some is called art and some is called pornography and perhaps the effect of these two is different? My concern is cheapening our humanness and playing to fantasies that are abusive, or believing hurtful acts are okay if that is what one wants to do. How art expressing intimacy can also bring out the best in us.
As for limits on freedom of expression, I most certainly think civil people are ruled by reason and not their impulses. But Trump is not a good example of this.
My concern is that, in general, we have trashed human dignity and made everything meaningless. We have created anarchy and because anarchy becomes intolerable there is pressure to go to the other extreme of excessive control. When people are not self-controlled, the pressure to control them increases. Like a well-behaved dog does not need to be kept on a leash, but an untrained dog needs to be on a leash. What rules the individual, physical urges or the mind?
Just curious what sorts of things you see as examples of the above?
I doubt there's any significant difference between those annoying urges and "the mind" myself. We're a part of the world, and there is no separate part of us we call our "minds" which isn't. We can conduct ourselves reasonably, though. But it isn't clear to me that the fact people enjoy porn or have sexual fantasies has caused or will cause human dignity to be trashed, or render everything meaningless.
I don't think I want to get into an argument about how men think and how women think. I will just clarify I am a woman and we have fought for a couple of hundred years for respect. That fight has really heated up and the tension between men and woman right now is concerning. I am shocked by the number of men who have lost their careers because of something they said to a woman, or a touch. When women are so angry they will intentionally destroy a man's career, there is a problem.
Exercising self-control is something that is learned and this is not as simple as knowing 10 steps for dealing with anger. Technological knowledge for managing anger does not equal the ability to do so. It takes repeated effort to change our thinking habits and responses. How one fantasizes about men or women or children or animals will probably influence how one reacts. To each his own said the lady as she kissed the cow. Just know our thinking habits influence our emotional responses, It can be really, really hard to get teenagers to focus on the school work, but those who do are likely to have better life choices than those who don't. When we make public decisions, we need to consider everyone, not just ourselves. However, what happens behind closed doors is private.
Whoo, that is an awfully big subject! Right now I am bothered by what looks sexual confusion to me. So many people don't appear to know what they are and what they want to be. I am not opposed to homosexuality but really, some men trying to be women won't succeed any more than I can pass as a teenager. I don't like being an old wrinkled person but I have to live with that, and some dark-skinned people may want to be white and that could lead to a lot of trouble. It is not just that trying to be what we are not, can be a problem for us, but also it can be a problem for those engage with us. Out of this comes pain, distrust, fear, and these lives can become unbearable to those lives them. :rofl: Looking 30 years younger would be a huge improvement in my self-image and ideas about what I can do with my life, but that ain't going to happen, so I look in the mirror and tell myself I look just the way a grandma should look. If I had magic wishes I would wish for everyone to be happy with who they are.
Thanks for the response. I wouldn't personally call "sexual confusion" a problem re human dignity or call it anarchy, but I'm extremely libertarian/libertine--there's probably no one more extreme than I am in that regard. Absolutely anything that people want to do consensually, any way they want to express themselves, anything that amounts to existential authenticity for anyone, is cool with me.
In ancient Greece and Rome, sexual conduct was seemingly much more a matter of casual public discussion and display than it is now. I have more knowledge of ancient Rome and its empire than I do of ancient Greece before its conquest by Rome, and as far as Roman attitudes are concerned we have the example of what remains of Pompeii regarding the display of erotic images, including their use as good luck charms. Then there is the example of Diogenes the Dog in ancient Greece, who delighted in public masturbation. There were, of course, social taboos and restrictions, and abusive sex and the oppression of women. But it seems that they were far less inclined to feel that sex was in some way to be avoided or kept locked away than we are now--thanks in part, no doubt, to the cheerful influence of Pauline Christianity.
And yet, to the extent we of the West employ and honor reason and self-discipline we do so because Greco-Roman philosophers and jurists developed them, considered them to be goods, and essential to living well. In fact, I doubt we know more of wisdom or right conduct than they did. We merely parrot what they had to say when we're not indulging in ennui orangst.
There are some very personal areas where the rules imposed on others by the collective or a fragment of the collective that are quite problematic. While I don't believe we should be killing leopards for their fur, I don't see a problem of wearing fox, mink, or other furs that are commercially produced. PETA, on the other hand, is adamantly opposed to meat eating, fur clothing of any kind, and the use of rats in research. I don't think PETA is entitled to decide if I can wear a fringe of coyote fur on my parka, or wear a nice leather vest.
Vegans haven't become so militant yet that they are ready to free cows and chickens from captivity and throw pig shit at people who leave the supermarket with packages of eggs, milk, cheese, and meat. Earth Firsters are willing to drive spikes into trees to make it dangerous to cut down old-forests. Maybe all that will get out of hand tomorrow, but not quite yet.
Quoting Athena
Sure, the effect of pornography and art is different. That won't make the headlines tomorrow. But if porn isn't usually mistaken for art, art is mistaken for either porn or trash fairly often, and sometimes sex has nothing to do with it.
Nobody I know has spoken out in favor of abusive sex acts. S&M or B&D are not something I am interested in, but some people are -- both the S and the M, the B and the D. I don't get it, but apparently a good time is had by all. Now, everybody agrees that subjecting an unwilling person to SMBD would be unambiguously wrong. A good many people would not interfere with SMBD, but definitely think that the participants might be at least somewhat screwed up.
There is a wideness in our humanness, and both pornography and art highlight our essential natures, just as a ball park hot dog and haute cuisine both express discerning taste as well as blunt hunger. I'm not content looking at fine art and eating haute cuisine all the time. Sometimes a hotdog, or some porn is just the thing. There are plenty of clear social mores, rules of etiquette, and laws to protect people from real harm, and there are many situations (having nothing to do with sex) where it is very difficult to protect people from their own intentions. Sometimes you just have to hope they don't kill themselves in the process of pursuing whatever harebrained goal they are seeking.
I just want there to be room for peoples' varied self-expression.
I have taken what I view as a down right retrograde position: Transsexuals are suffering from a delusion and gender reassignment specialists are collecting rent on their castles in the sky. I too would enjoy being in my prime again--fit, svelte, and with what was once a robust sex drive. Dream on, Crank -- it ain't going to happen no how.
Granted, there are some people (a very small number) who really are born with ambiguous sexual organs, and some of those have abnormal genetic ambiguousness. Those are not the people driving the trans movement. Just because someone who is unambiguously male or female thinks they would like to be the opposite sex doesn't mean they can be or should be. I would like to be many different things. I would enjoy being the #1 star soprano at the Metropolitan Opera; I would like to be an eagle; I would like to be fluent in 10 languages; I would like to be a lady killer on the dance floor. I'd like to be a great long distance runner. These are just fantasies; pleasant, but not meriting fulfillment.
If a few pioneers had not gone to great lengths to find a surgeon to reupholster themselves in the 1950s (i.e., Christine Jorgensen) I think very few men and women, or boys and girls, would be announcing that they were actually wrongly gendered. They'd just be masculine women, feminine men (but heterosexual) or they'd be gay or lesbian, or they'd be confused. So tough! There was nothing in the original contract guaranteeing that nobody would ever be confused!
I'm quite sympathetic toward transsexuals, just as I am sympathetic, empathetic, towards people who have other kinds of mental problems. I've know a few quite well. I will acknowledge that they seem happier playing their opposite gender role. Are they the opposite gender? No, they are still the same gender, but wearing different clothes, doing their hair differently, and maybe using the toilet differently--most of which they could have done without claiming to have changed gender. Taking female or male hormones does not a man or a woman make. It's just deeper upholstery, and if stopped the process reverses.
I somehow imagine (don’t know how much substance my imagination has here) that you’d be more knowledgeable about this than I am. And I currently am not.
Have you heard anything about sexual confusion (i.e., men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men) back in the Greco-Roman days?
I don’t know. Maybe dressing up in the other sex’s attire didn’t matter all that much on account of everybody wearing togas. :joke: No, they did dress differently, come to think of it. Still, I’ve never heard of transvestites back then … which I would think would be a lot more accepted by these two ancient cultures.
At any rate, the history I’ve read holds both the ancient Greeks and Romans as unconfused about their, quite often bi/homosexual, sexuality. Which leads me to tentatively speculate that the “confusion” is largely cultural byproduct of today world rather than a natural aspect of our human biology (which I take homosexuality to be … as well as the far rarer instances of intersexed individuals).
... Which is odd to me considering all the suffering that people confused about their gender have to endure in today’s world. Although this later part is probably a different topic.
The ancients didn't have a concept for "homosexuality". Their ideas about proper male and female behavior were fairly straight forward. People behaved in various sexual ways without that being an "identity". We can safely assume that some people were homosexual or bisexual, but Greeks and Romans didn't think about "sexual orientation". People just did what they did.
That doesn't mean that the Romans were just fine with whatever somebody happened to do. There were social mores, rules of etiquette, and laws. Adultery, for instance, could get one in a lot of trouble, and the punishment was pretty unpleasant (sometimes involving "the radish" a small ball with hooks attached which was inserted into the anus. Removing it would tear the flesh.)
It's difficult sometimes for us to understand the ancients. For instance, in a bath house in Pompeii there is a depiction of one male goat screwing another male goat. What did that mean to the Romans? It wasn't an advert for homosexual behavior. It was either a joke or it was something else.
The Greeks particularly worshipped Priapus, a fertility God, whose symbol was an erect penis. These Priapic statues were very common inside and outside buildings. In one invasion, the soldiers snapped off all the stone erections they found -- a clear enough message. We won; you lost. We modern people who haven't worshipped fertility gods are not likely to get what the little dildo-ike sculptures meant to the ancient people.
"Homosexuality" was identified as a trait in the latter half of 19th century. Prior to that, people certainly engaged in what would later be called homosexual behavior, but that's not what they called it.
We tell children all the time that "You can be anything you want to be." and of course we have all sorts of ambiguity about sexuality, so it's hardly surprising that people started thinking that they could just switch genders. (Of course the facts are that 99% of people are not going to be anything they want to be. In any generation of 20 years, 5 people max are going to be president. The number of professional athletes that make it big is very, very small. Most little girls learning ballet are never going to be asked to dance for money. Most child-violinists are never going to get to Carnegie Hall, except as paying customers. So basically, forget about it.
OK, yea. You’re right. For what it’s worth though, I have a vague memory from some documentary of a Cesar who was ridiculed for being sexually attracted only to women. They might not have had a term for it, but they did have the suspicion that the guy was strangely heterosexual. :rofl:
I think there is a good argument that sexual modifications in all their varied forms do not make people happier and that it leads to all sorts of other physical problems and emotional problems, both from the effects of the surgery and the hormones and from the ostracism that occurs from the process. If it can be shown that as a medical procedure it creates more harm than good, then I'd be motivated to limit it. Otherwise, I tend to think that people can wear whatever clown suit they want, including the one I wear.
Jung went over this, it is a mistake, but it isn't a delusional or pathological mistake necessarily, as the anima is in fact part of the unconscious. The problem is loving yourself more than others, regardless of whether you think you're conventional as can be (which would be impossible, because that is what is completely made up), or think you're a garden hose, or Napoleon. So don't sigh easy my friend.
Clearly not, but everyone is dying to pretend to. The two sides will be separated conscious, and present in the world. Leaning on and bound to one and other for comfort more than others because people just won't see you like you know they ought to! Well, you're an abomination. Don't worry, not necessarily incurably, and there are of course degrees.
I am quite content to let transexuals live out their delusions. I too live out some delusions; maybe you do too. Society itself may be something of a delusion, and it is at least worthwhile maintaining it in good condition.
Quite seriously, even the most hard-headed, fact-minded realists maintain delusions of various kinds. It's a necessity for beings of our kind. There are limits, however, to how far we need to go in accepting other peoples' delusions as facts. I liked Jack when he was Jack, and when he became Joanne she was still pretty much the same likable person. Or maybe Jack was a jerk, and so is Joanne. Either way, I'm not going to take Joanne's estrogen away from her.
I will point out there is a difference between our private lives and being public. Our new technology has seriously disrupted the privacy we once had, and this lead to many questions about our social rules.
Like our roads have rules to protect everyone, societies have rules. I have a strong preference for those rules being based on reason rather than religion, and a very strong preference for privacy. I think those rules are good in advancing trust and reducing fear. I hope we can speak more about this. If I think you are like me, I am not afraid of you. However, when I think you are different from me I have all kinds of fears. What will you do and how should I behave? Today a lot of people are loosing their jobs and some are even incarcerated because we do not have agreement on the rules. You don't have sex unless you are married and then you have sex only that person, makes sexual decisions very simple, and that helps people keep their jobs and stay out of prison.
Our liberty goes with the notion that decent people follow the rules, so we do not need authority over the people to make people do the right thing. And again, I will bring up the importance of privacy. These issues were intense in the conflict between Sparta and Athens and for sure their sexual morals were not compatible with Hebrew morality. :rofl: The Jews became much more concerned about educating their sons, when their sons began behaving like Greeks. :gasp:
How about this- the best thing we can do for humanity is expanding their awareness of others, while at the same time having rules for their sense of security because when people feel safe, they are not afraid and relationships are better. Rules can change but perhaps changing the reasoning before forcing a change is a good idea?
I absolutely loved that! I remember having to wear short skirts and how painfully cold my legs got in winter. I complained to my mother and she sent me to school in pants and the school told her not to send me to school in pants again. I couldn't even wear long skirts because at that time, only older girls could wear long skirts. When I was old enough to wear long skirts, the style was wearing very short skirts. I rebelled and have a closet full of long skirts. By God, no was going to take the privilege of dressing like a woman from me. :lol:
Wearing those short skirts made no sense at all because it was just awful if a boy saw our underwear. Have you ever played on the play equipment at an elementary school in a short skirt? My wonderful mother resolved that problem by making me bloomers to wear under my skirts. The dress we have forced on women over the years was truly handicapping! And while I am uncomfortable with a male dressing like a woman, I am perfectly comfortable dressing like a man. Gardening in a dress is most unpleasant.
I have a delightful book arguing God prefers women have long hair. Seriously this is said in the Bible! Women who want to please God should not cut their hair.
Another of my old books is about us having the freedom to be women. I have a problem with not protecting women and children, but leaving them as unprotected as barbarians and forcing women to be as men. I think women's lib destroys our freedom to be women, and that this has a lot to do with the large number of females who think they are homosexual and are strongly against us doing the body care things women have done for a long time. We have become free to be as men, but not different and equal. That goes with it being okay for a woman to wear pants but men shouldn't wear skirts.
We have been through a long run of men's clothing being absolutely boring. How about these fashions?
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&biw=1024&bih=710&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=GJkSXNi6Ioa-0PEP3a2WgAQ&q=men%27s+fashion+riegn+or+louis+&oq=men%27s+fashion+riegn+or+louis+&gs_l=img.12...111894.146972..151593...2.0..0.120.3320.15j18......1....1..gws-wiz-img.......0j0i67j0i30j0i10.ZNQFq16QJVA
Our sexuality and social rules is one of the most interesting things we can about.
I love your post! :love:
You said "The Greeks particularly worshipped Priapus, a fertility God, whose symbol was an erect penis. These Priapic statues were very common inside and outside buildings. In one invasion, the soldiers snapped off all the stone erections they found -- a clear enough message. We won; you lost. We modern people who haven't worshipped fertility gods are not likely to get what the little dildo-ike sculptures meant to the ancient people."
I think we should look to the east to improve our understanding of the ancients. In the East we have a better record of the importance of yin and yang. I think we will find, wherever a society was militarized the importance of males and maleness is exaggerated and nothing symbolizes this better than a large penis. For a woman, the equivalent would be large breast. Rape also goes with war. Domination being all important. While the woman is the passive cow and object of male domination and the male is the bull, representing strength and power, an object of worship in many ancient civilizations.
According to a book I have about the history of Chinese sexuality, there was a period when the ruler increased his yang by watching people being tortured. There was also a tribe that practiced extremely rare socially accept incent. Because hunting rhinos is so dangerous, men prepared for this by having sex with their daughters. We have held the notion that males should not decrease their aggressive energy by having sex before a game. Whatever, there is a connection between sexual behaviors and a social need for highly aggressive males.
The Spartan social organization that made male and military relationships more important than heterosexual and family relationships is an interesting contrast to Athens and our own society. The male and male relationships would not do well in Rome where the father was all important! Rome was a better ground for the Christian notion of a Father in Heaven than other places. I don't think the Hebrew God is a father and the Hebrews surely would not have worshiped a holy mother. The Catholics raising the female to an important spiritual/God position is interesting.
And there has to be life after death, because surely I am not a 72 old women, and what is seen as an old woman is only a delusion. The reality is I am a young, attractive and physically fit woman, who wants to be a physically attractive and fit male in my next incarnation. There is absolutely no way I will have the benefits of being a male with my present body.
Yeah, lots of stuff is horrible, would you prefer something better to be the case? Oh, then it must! The objection implies that it is natural to conclude things based on preferences...
The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church wisely co opted popular female deities like Isis and Magna Mater into Christianity through Mary, who was given titles similar to theirs (e.g. Isis, like Mary, was worshipped as "Queen of Heaven"), just as it co opted various minor pagan deities who became saints of the Church, just as it co opted the form and structure of the late Roman Imperial state into its organization. While the Roman family was subservient to the pater familias, the women of ancient Rome had significantly greater freedom and status in society than did those of ancient Greece.
But the Romans had their own prejudices even regarding sex. For example, as to (male) homosexuality the "passive" participant was regarded with a certain contempt. For example, Julius Caesar was described by those who disliked him as "every woman's man and every man's woman."
By the time Christianity was in a position to define marriage through the state, pagan change in the marriage had already accomplished a lot towards the kind of marriage we would inherit.
Big dicks have surprisingly not always been in fashion. The up-market classical Greeks who ordered and paid for great sculpture thought big penises belonged on donkeys and horses; a small penis was more appropriate for a marble statue. (Of course no man has control over whether he has a big, medium, small, or tragically tiny dick.) And, for a bit of insider information for you, not all men who have very large penises are happy with them. They are aware that other guys (Freud missed the boat on this one -- it is males who have penis envy, not females) stare at their crotch if their large organ is visible, and keeping it out of sight means tucking it uncomfortably out of sight. Further, in gay sex, at least, the owner of a big organ sometimes finds that their partner is more interested in their dick than their whole person. Now from the perspective of the partner, a very big dick can be just too big to deal with.
There is a inchoate relationship between sex and violence. They just happen to arise together from the kind of all-out arousal caused by battle, and is more frequent with the existence of honor systems and property values. Raping a woman renders her worthless to others who subscribe to intense honor systems. If the woman is also property, so much the better to destroy the property's value.
I'm pretty sure you are aware that the German barbarians were responsible for giving men trousers in place of togas. That worked out well. Then the Jews gave us 501 button fly blue denim Levis and Dupont gave us zippers. Life has been better ever since. High heels were also a male innovation; the high heel helped the foot maintain it's best position in a stirrup (an innovation of pre-historic Asian Steppe people). Men quickly realized that high heels complimented their calves (or is it calfs?). It seems to me it was in the 20th century that the high heel became common for women.
I'm not much a clothes horse; I like denim trousers, red or light gray sweat shirts, brightly colored button up shirts, open collar/no tie, and not-too-flashy running shoes, nice leather boots, or oxfords. I occasionally wear a suit, but prefer not. Traditional plaids and tweeds are my preferred patterns. 100% cotton broadcloth or flannel. Linen and seersucker are good in the summer. Lambswool sweaters for the fall and winter. A leather vest or jacket is good.
In my youth I was known to mix plaid, florals, stripes, and solids. Fortunately I got over that phase fairly soon.
My best guess is that we'll never come to a conclusion regarding sexual expression and that the pendulum will continually swing back and forth, bringing periods that are more or less liberal in a predictable cycle. Whatever phase we might be in at a moment in time somebody will always be complaining and trying to take us towards another phase.
One thing the opening post suggests is that sex with software will increasingly be the issue as porn technology matures. Software, with various mechanical attachments, will eventually be able to meet our romantic and sexual needs better than any human, and this whole concern about what humans are doing with other humans is likely to naturally pass from the scene over time.
I'm offering no opinion regarding whether this is good or bad, because having an opinion seems somewhat pointless in regards to developments that appear to be inevitable. The porn industry is already huge (The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined.) and will only grow larger as the technical quality of the fantasy is improved.
As example, imagine a porn model photo. Now make the photo in to a video. Now project the video in to 3D space, like a hologram. Now make the 3D model photo realistic. Now make the model fully interactive.
Once we can have literally anything we want, what will sustain our interest in fellow humans, a highly imperfect realm built upon endless negotiation and compromise?
My prediction is that such developments will in time render the issue of human to human porn a thing of the past.
For sure. Christianity is blended of paganism. It was put together with Roman Law of Nature. That isn't a study of nature, but a legal tool taking what is common between separate city/states to make legal decisions involving the persons from different city/states. It was their way of knowing truth. The reasoning was if most people believed something was true, it is true. Putting all the truths together in one religion was just pragmatic. But now we are getting off topic, so maybe we should a different thread for this?
Regarding freedom of speech Thomas Paine did not get the honor he deserves because he was a deist and Christians considered this as bad as being atheist, so he was not honored with statues as others were. What Christians have done to those who do not share their faith is terrible. The biggest challenge to John Kennedy when he became president was to overcome Protestant prejudice against Catholics, and we are still dealing with prejudice against Jews. Should not we address this in a discussion of freedom of speech?
Yes, that in itself means little. However, difficult though it is for us to understand what life was like before the imposition of Christianity in the Empire, it's at least probable that attitudes towards sex and sexual practices weren't then inspired by the belief that most sex was sinful, repulsive in fact to a remarkably prudish God. There were pagan thinkers who recommended and even preached abstinence (Pythagoras thought people were best advised to have sex in winter) and some of the pre-Christian Gnostics had peculiar views about sex, but I know of nothing which matched Christianity's association of fear and shame with sex prevalent among the pagans of the ancient Mediterranean (with the possible exception of the Jews).
That was fun reading but a little of topic. :rofl: How about a thread "does the clothing make the man?"
I am sure with all of us we could come up with interesting things to say. Like for sure dude, those Romans in their metal and leather uniforms are sexy. :love:
Love and war and sex appeal.
And for penis envy- yeah I think Freud got it wrong, however, I do think having a penis would make peeing easier. I think of the breast envy women can have. It makes sense to be proud of a large penis, or breast, as that signals I am a better man or woman. I am sure this reasoning is good in the animal world and although we may not reason things this way, some things are below our reasoning. Oh, oh I think once upon a time, there was male womb envy, when the goddess was the most important and perhaps only god. Wow is this on topic or off topic?
I am quite sure male domination was the result of having to defend permanent territory. A result of farming. We may have been more like bonobo than chimpanzees. Female domination is possible and leads to different social behavior. :lol: The big concern about colored people taking over is overlooking what female domination could do to us and maybe that is the greater threat to the status quo.
PS when men watch football their testosterone level rises and they become more aggressive.
Don't forget Islam. Jews were opposed to Greek nudity and their females had to be virgins to assure the child would be the man's child because only the man's child had inheritance rights. Christianity and Islam carry on Jewish notions. All are intensely opposed to homosexuality and all want women to be virgins and under the control of men.
It's obvious when one watches YouTube how they generate money: they run first class video ads for auto companies, for instance. I never saw anything remotely like that on non-adult Tumblr sites (like NPR, for example).
Quoting Jake
The arts establishments in quite a few cities can claim the same thing. Like, "All of the arts organizations in X city bring in more income than the major league sport franchises located here." Best-seats-in-the-house tickets for high-brow concerts in Minneapolis or St. Paul, generally run around $60 to $80 and those seats are usually all occupied. Small theater productions might be $40. Given a lot of venues running year round, it's not hard to imagine that they beat out major league teams which play seasonally, and then in any given city not very often.
The porn industry (which is overwhelmingly straight) in the US doesn't just supply Americans with their visual needs: It supplies the world. And most of their production is located in southern California. It's Gods own work, because orgasms are proof the God loves us and wants us to be happy. So...
I think social agreements are very important. Are you saying they are not?
Maybe I was over-sharing a bit there (blushes slightly). Vestis facit hominem they said in old Latium, Clothes make the man. Whether it's fine Italian suits and shoes, handbags by Gucci, gowns by Dior, or denim, sweatshirts, and boots, our chosen costumes both reflect and amplify who we think we are.
Quoting Athena
So what happens to women's hormone levels when they watch football? (There are class and occupational differences in men who prefer baseball to football. If I remember correctly, it's a somewhat inverse relationship: men with the most physically demanding jobs tend to prefer baseball while men with the more cerebral jobs tend to prefer football.
Quoting Athena
As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant male I have to hope that both of those possibilities are nothing more than wild rumors. Better add a humor emoji. :naughty: :rofl:
Yet another way in which God favored males.
That pretty much all sounds very different from how I think, what I prefer, how I think people should behave, etc.
Just what good the Abrahamic religions have generated, themselves, would be an interesting study.
Whether the trousers were made out of cloth or leather, the artwork didn't say. Like, there was no Latin script on the work indicating the fabric content in the mind of the artist, like 100% raw linen, or deer skin, or wool, or whatever. Damned inconsiderate, if you ask me.
Would you be disappointed if I didn't recognize you?
Quoting Bitter Crank
God bless you for that good laugh. :lol: :rofl: I really needed it. Doctors are giving me information that I do not like and if it weren't for family, good friends and humor, I could choose to leave the playing field. I will take that up in another thread asking folks why they are here because I am asking myself why I am here.
Women's hormones are known for their reaction to a baby crying. I love the subject of hormones and human behavior but maybe that would be going off topic here?
Here is a goal I think worthy. We all learn more about how our brains work and about how hormones effect us and what effects the production of hormones. Our freedom of speech without better information could be folly. :wink:
I would love a thread about fashion and what it says about us and our culture. I am planning on going to an annual Christmas dinner at the Hilton and I always wear a semiformal. It is very disappointing when many people show up in jeans and teeshirts. Stay at McDonald's if you want to dress like that. When I complain I am told this Eugene and in Eugene formal means jeans without holes in them, and not even matters too much. Sorry, Jeans are great on the farm or in the mill, but there is a time and place for dressing up. Do a thread about fashion and culture and PM me.
Or as Thomas Paine asked, in a universe that may be full of planets with life like ours, did Jesus have to play the same drama of enduring torture and sacrificing his life on each of these planets? If this is the way God works, it would have to be the same everywhere, right?
No. After Eden God said, "No more of that free will shit for sentient beings; from here on out, it's strict divine determinism all the way." And so it was. On each new planet the two sentient beings, XX and XY, always did what they were told, never disobeyed, so Jesus and his Blessed ever-virgin mother were able to devote their eternal attention to taking care of the perpetually wayward, devious, deviant, and deplorable basket of free willed homo sapiens, who, despite it all, still amused God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost more than the radiant, obedient children elsewhere in the universe. The Blessed Virgin Mary was not amused. She often said to the Triumvirate, "These sons of bitches are not getting punished nearly as much as they deserve." For which comments God smirked, Jesus signed, and the Holy Ghost turned bright red with wrath.
I wish you would say more. I think privacy is very important. Do you disagree with that? I think feeling safe is important. Do you disagree with that? I think our relationships are much better when we share social agreements and feel like we can trust each other. Do you disagree with that? What would follow is discretion is important. Discretion, good manners, and respect. Not shoving a difference in someone's face is being respectful and that is conducive to feeling safe and having good relationships. Now who the other person is, doesn't matter because we show all people the same courtesy and respect. It doesn't matter who they are, because it is our behavior that matters. Doesn't that solve a lot of social problems?
Whoo, wait a minute am I wrong or was that a little misogynistic? What was ever said about Mother Mary for you to say she is concerned about punishing us and would call us sons of bitches? That kind of misogyny is a bit unnerving to me. Are you a safe person for me to interact with or should I expect to be the target of anger? Or perhaps I am misinterpreting you after a marriage with a man who had a controlling and castrating mother?
:lol: I think most of us spend our lives trying to recuperate from our unpleasant pasts. I think that is where we can find most of our problems, and we keep projecting them into the present. Philosophically speaking, this problem is reduced when we follow rules of good manners and attempt to respect everyone. By doing our best we create the possibility of having good outcomes, instead of ruining the moment with past traumas.
I think I disagree with you? I have not been as successful in life as I think I would like to be because I was way too defensive and pushed people away. In my old age, I seem to notice those of us who are always on the defense are not likable people, nor are we good parents, and we lack the skills necessary for getting our way. This is a serious political problem because we can not make the world a better place when we lack the skills to get what we want. It is a pretty serious deficiency.
When we were children we were pretty powerless. That is not a good way to spend the rest of our lives. Today we have much more information about social skills than we had the past and a much better understanding of developing support systems. We need to take advantage of this information. We need to open the windows and doors for the good to come into our lives and back out into the world.
We need this forum to share with each other and stimulate the good. :flower:
I certainly agree that everyone is far too much on the defensive, making any amount of offense seem like the worst thing ever. Yeah, people want to be around you, but they're guarded, they lie, they tell you what you want to hear. Being on the offensive is expressive, it is deeply revealing of the core values of a person. If we all hide from the world, we all go unseen, remain alone forever, and fear distrust, and are just ignorant of one and other.
So yes, far far too much defense, not nearly enough offense. There are of course conventional routes to offense, but they're just ideological, and likewise mask the real self by supplanting the true motivations, and needs that the person has.
Where did you get that picture? It looks like it is a small piece of a larger picture.
That came from this link http://masculine-style.com/historic-style-barbarian-clothing/
It is interesting the author speaks of the manly art of war. I am sure not all cultures were based on the art of war, and some cultures were a mix of the domestic arts and the art of war. This could make for an interesting discussion of the woman's place in these different cultures.
Wow that is a curious statement. To whom are you speaking?
People I admire are not offensive but yet they are bold when asking for what they want. I especially remember a man who was a major in a small town, and he was always cool and in control but not controlling. He listened to others very well and brought out the best in them and bought opposing points of view together. He was awesome!
Some people dominate with charisma. I think this was the Athenian goal of arte.
The Athenian sophist used rhetoric to persuade people and could be both admired and hated. Socrates was surely greatly admired and hated. Cicero was one of the most influential men in history because of his writing and oratory skills and yet he was killed, as was Socrates killed. What do we have to learn from this history?
That attaining fame, and attaining immortality looks quite different.
For sure those who have fame today are unlikely to go down in history like Socrates, Pericles, Cicero, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Hamilton. It is our works that give us immortality. That is quite a different understanding from Martin Luther and Protestantism that is not by works that we gain immortality, and paradoxically Protestantism is known for its work ethic. What to explain that one?
I already did it. The world is watching.
You already did what? The world is watching what?
I am not good at interpreting poetry. I need better explanations than you are given.
what is nvm?
You are killing me with curiosity.
That was a joke, inverting the natures of the Trinity and the BVM. Joke? Sure, in many religious cultures (Russian, Irish, Serb, etc.) there is a strain of curses and jokes that do this. Not to be taken figuratively or literally, any more than saying "Rats!" when one drops one's keys in the mud.
Am I "safe", are you "safe", is anyone "safe"? We are all a bit dangerous, aren't we?
Carry on.
It was from a Tumblr blog devoted to history--I didn't save the link, just the picture. I noticed the trousers on the figures because I had just been reading about what the Germans brought to the Empire's culture, one of which trousers.
I follow about 150 art, photography, and history blogs, so it's a bit hard to retrace my steps a week later. I love finding gems, like this one below. the composition and subject of the photo is perfect.
The picture is from https://undr.tumblr.com a blog of "black and white // vintage // street // photography".
I will search a bit and see if I can find the source.
Thanks to Google Image Search, we know the picture is the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus,
The Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus or "Great" Ludovisi sarcophagus is an ancient Roman sarcophagus dating to around AD 250–260 from a tomb near the Porta Tiburtina. It is also known as the Via Tiburtina Sarcophagus, though other sarcophagi have been found there. It is known for its densely populated, anti-classical composition of "writhing and highly emotive"[1] Romans and Goths, and is an example of the battle scenes favored in Roman art during the Crisis of the Third Century.[1] Discovered in 1621 and named for its first modern owner, Ludovico Ludovisi, the sarcophagus is now displayed at the Palazzo Altemps in Rome, part of the National Museum of Rome.[2] [Wikipedia]
:lol: funny boy. I never heard of that humor before. Isn't the internet wonderful? It makes our world bigger and expands our understanding of others.
There's a really weird presumption I'm seeing where people hang their hat on whether or not it's a private entity that's controlling the thing without considering the role such large things occupy. Say someone has a controversial view. Maybe it's false, contentious or even true but disliked by those in the mainstream. If the major avenues of these people putting their views out there are constrained by these platforms, that's stifling speech. It's even worse when the government is, as in this case, working to determine what speech is acceptable or not...
Wow is that one nostalgic for me!
Reminds me of when I was a child in Hollywood, California and my mother would take my sister and me to the Woolworth store for shopping and lunch, the lunch counter looked about the picture. Growing up I switched from Coca-Cola to coffee and a cigarette. That is just the way life was. And we were pretty girls not bothered with a need to be smart and have careers. We got married and stayed home to care for our families. Then we sat around the kitchen table with our coffee and cigarettes and chatted until the kids got fussy and it was time to take them home for a nap.
Someone has created a place for people with Alzheimer's to reminisce. It is kind of like a small town in a huge building. Many find comfort in the past and a strengthening of a sense of identity.
You might like the book "SUICIDE OF THE WEST" how the rebirth of tribalism, populism, nationalism, and identity politics is destroying American democracy - by Jonah Goldberg. I found it at the library yesterday and I am skimming through it. In the US public education was about having a strong and united democracy until 1958. While a lot is being said about the disintegration of the US none of the authors are addressing the change in education and Military Industrial Complex as part of the problem.
The problem came in the a couple decades later when younger activists decided that marriage wasn't a heterosexual institutions, and that marriage should be available to same sex couples.
I have never had a desire to marry my partner. If love and loyalty didn't hold the relationship together, nothing else would. Well, water under the bridge: same-sex marriage meaning marriage in full is now the law of the land. BUT, big but, a very large portion of the population do not accept the idea that marriage includes same sex couples.
So, I am aware that in pursuing the identity politics I liked, I probably added to cultural divisions that are not helpful. Then there is tribalism, populism, and all that -- which activists in those fields are quite certain are good things to work for.
It's a puzzlement.
There's nothing weird about it. Private entities may certainly act to restrict speech. You may too. If you do, though, you do nothing illegal here in God's favorite country. The legal right to freedom of speech can only be infringed by the government or its agents. So it may not be good when private persons or entities restrict speech, but it isn't necessarily illegal. That's all being said by reference to private actors, as far as I know. There's the law and not the law.
You refer to governments doing so in some fashion you leave undefined (the reference to Israel being involved is somewhat ominous). If the federal, state or local governments of the U.S. are involved, then the right to free speech is being restricted.
You have to read SUICIDE OF THE WEST by Goldberg. It speaks of tribalism, populism and all that.
When it comes to gay pride and all the other prejudices, I cling to my grandmother's three rules.
1. We respect everyone. It doesn't matter at all who the other person is because this about who we are. Either we are civil and respectful people or we are not and other people's private choices are none of our business! Public choices we share. Private ones are private.
2. We protect the dignity of others. OMG that rule can prevent so many social problems.
3. We do everything with integrity and this goes with being honorable and being honorable goes with having a sense of purpose in life and believing in human dignity, liberty, and democracy.
I was attempting to write a book like SUICIDE IN THE WEST, but more focused on education and the Military Industrial Complex. That is not as fun to think about as the book Goldberg wrote is entertaining and informative. However, I could perhaps write a complimentary book using my knowledge of education and what liberal education had to do with protecting the democracy we had.
You might appreciate all this about liberty and democracy. Gay rights are human rights. And if you want to blame someone for the destruction of marriages and family order, then blame the Military Industrial Complex. Through industry and education, we have destroyed the family order that used to order the whole United States. Since Athens, democracy is family order, and Sparta was military order, but we have replaced our family order that with Prussian military order applied to citizens. This is destroying our liberty and democracy. But OMG is this paradoxical! Family order goes with tribalism so how is destroying family order contributing to tribalism? :grimace: I think I will go blow my brains out. This realization of yet another paradox is another stumbling block in explaining reality. But men's loyalties tend not to be with women and children. They compare their worth by the size of their cocks, and ability to compete against each other, not with how well they match up with women and father their children. Men's loyalties tend to be with men, industrial and military order. :groan: I think I have a headache.
Only when our democracy is protected by the citizens is it protected and only when education prepares them to do this, do the citizens have the mentality to protect our liberties. We stopped that education in 1958.
Our freedom of speech is about spirit not law and because we are not understanding of this we are destroying it. Our spirit has turned very ugly and destructive. Citizens, through laws protecting private property, are destroying our liberties and freedom of speech.
I have a problem with Christianity because of what it has done to our understanding of spirit and morals since we replaced liberal education with education for technology and left moral training to the church. :groan:
We need to understand we protect our liberty by following the social rules, so a mod doesn't have to step in and ban us. Or if we were a cooperation, management doesn't give us a pink slip. Private property rights trump our protected right to freedom of speech, so we have as much freedom of speech as the owners wish to give us. It is their spirit that matters, not exactly laws. The way they interpret the law and how they should use it, depends on their spirit. The spirit of America is dying and the spirit of tyranny is rising. When the bottom line is the dollar, reality gets ugly.
I mentioned nothing about legality at all, so this is nearly all irrelevant. I said people here, and evidently you, place greater emphasis on whether or not the the place people are being removed from are privately owned and ignoring the rather obvious fact that these have near monopoly status in their industry. Being banned from them because the decision was made that they don't like these people sets a terrible precedent. Oh, some unthinking folk were ok when it was just a lunatic like Alex Jones, but then they came for people on the other side of the spectrum. The World Socialists Website, irrespective of your own political leanings, is as professional as one could want. And yet Google didn't see it and the type of content (namely, anti-war content) that way, and so changes to the search algorithm last year resulted in traffic to such sites falling by 2/3rds. Or deleting TeleSur's page for a myraid of nonsensical and conflicting reasons (their press releases kept changing).
Google, Facebook and others often times coordinate with each other to remove or demote those they don't like, and worse will work with governments (including the U.S.) and overtly political groups to decide what content has run afoul. For example, Facebook met with Israeli government officials to determine what pages counted as encitement and thus should, in the estimation of the government of Israel, be removed. Quoting TeleSur:
Or if you don't see the problem doing such at the behest a repressive foreign government,how about doing it at the behest of the U.S. government? (from previous link)
So yes, this goes well beyond whether or not it is directly legal or not. Anyone hanging their hat on that has lost the plot entirely. These entities coordinate with themselves and major governments in the U.S., China, Israel and more as they act to suppress speech they don't like. They have near monopoloy status and given about 66% of people get their news from these sites it represents a danger to democracy as well because people are only exposed to A) What they've been allowed to see (algorithm demotion, page removal etc.) and their own bubble that they naturally create.
Well I think I've given a decent amount of evidence for that. Whether or not it's actually illegal isn't clear because the government isn't directly coming down on these individuals. They're "urging" private corporations to do so, and if that Israeli justice Minister is correct it's borderline a rubber stamping process.
I'm afraid I have no knowledge of the law of Israel, or for that matter that of Venezuela, which apparently is the primary source of funds for TeleSur, speaking of government involvement in sources of information and communication.
There's a tendency to refer to freedom of speech or the right to it as if there is such a right, apart from the law. There isn't; not an enforceable right, in any case. The distinction between a legal right and a non-legal "right" is significant. One shouldn't be treated as the equivalent of the other. When they are, things get confusing.
Should Facebook, Google etc. restrict access to information? I would say no. What is the remedy if they do? Is there an enforceable right to information? Nope. Should there be? That would require a law. That would require a government. Should government be in control of the availability of information? Will that ensure that democracy (which doesn't exist, really) will obtain? That depends on the government, the nature and extent of the control, and its purpose.
In the end, all comes down to law, and what we want to do with it.
You'll have to remind of what happened in 1958. I was in Catholic schools until my junior year in high school, alas.
Money is the spirit of America,, I'm afraid.
Who Telesur is funded by is irrelevant to what I was saying.
The issue I raised wasn't "government involvement in sources of information and communication", but rather governments pressuring private entities into censoring or hiding the views of people they don't like.
And finally I suppose we'll just be ignoring the example I gave of the U.S. government being involved in exactly these same things?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Again, didn't I already say I find focus on legality to be besides the point?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
There may be legal avenues that remedy this, such as classifying them as utilities given their near monopoly status, but you are very blaise where a serious issue involves government attempts (successful ones, given the examples I gave prior) to quash speech and views they don't like by coming down on the premiere private entities on which people get their information. This reeks of the
I mean imagine the post office stops reliably delivering mail from homes who have occupants registered to some political party. Is your response really going to be "Ah well is it against the law for them to be a little unreliable? You don't have a right to flawless mail delivery."
Governments which pay the bills of news sources may have a degree of influence over them, you see. Just as governments may have a degree of influence over Facebook or Google for other reasons. I tend to be suspicious of any government influence.
Regulation similar to the regulation of utilities would be an option, I would think.
I understand you don't want to focus on legality. For my part, I don't see the point of merely expressing outrage. Addressing legal remedies and advocating them may be useful, though less satisfying.
Since the dawn of time people have been persecuting others because one belief system contradicts another, so there is no avoiding this kind of thing from happening, but I generally feel as if most if not all ideas should have a platform. Of course, Tumblr and Facebook feel differently, and nothing can stop that except for the destruction of the way of life of everyone who thinks that adult content doesn't belong there. We will all continue to live, but an idea dies when a decision like that is made, and who is to say that they're wrong? I feel as if we are going through the growing pains necessary to build a society that values what the more influential group of people want.
Your probably do, or heard about it at some point. Then there is the infiltration of the KKK, spying on Martin Luther King and other civil rights luminaries, hounding communists and homosexuals (McCarthy), etc. The feds have been quite willing to do all sorts of things in "the national interest". (I hope that last sentence doesn't lead anyone to think I am a conspiracy fan, since it's all historical).
Ah, no. I don't imagine the republic will collapse as a result of Tumblr's actions towards its large constituency of sexually explicit micro-bloggers.
What happens in democracies (it has happened here before) is that there are various bans which stick and people get used to bans. Then there are more bans. Another example of suppression: The union movement is not dead, but it is not doing well either. Why? Because a series of progressively more restrictive legislation by Congress and Legislatures have been limiting unions and hobbling their ability to organize. Unions and porn aren't related, except that suppression is achieved in much the same way -- continually tightening restrictions.
Now, the union movement is more important than NSFW microblogs, but the more ordinary individual's capacity to carry out executive agency are suppressed, the harder it is to maintain a healthy democracy.
I think that it does perhaps damage democracy a bit. I just can't help but feel bad for all of the people being deplatformed. There are of course more places for them to go, but as you said, one restriction leads to another. I suppose it's just society's way of weeding out the ideas they don't like. Of course, what is a weed and what isn't falls to the individual. I just wish we weren't so hasty, lest we pull out something valuable and throw it away.
Now, I realize there tends to be a pendulum swing in this sort of thing: There was very up-tight anxiety about sex in the 1950s, then sexual liberation in the 1960s, then gay liberation and women's liberation, Roe vs. Wade, and so on and so forth. Hell seemed to be popping out of the woodwork left and right. Then there was a reaction starting in the 1980s. Playboy and Penthouse covers needed to be put behind a plastic shield; Playboy was banned from college unions (at the behest of feminists); war on porn was declared; porn shops (with mostly straight, some gay content) were shut down where a rationale could be found; and so on. (The same thing happened in film production. In the early days of film, the boundaries were pushed. Then a reaction followed which imposed a code which forbade numerous rather ordinary sexual imagery and language.
Not just the Internet, but the invention of browsers led to a busting open of all sorts of new information sources, including porn. Over the course of 20 years it has brought us the blessings of Wikipedia, Google search, and so on. Plus Tumblr NSFW microblogs. Once again, the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards restriction.
The thing is, though, the pendulum doesn't swing automatically. It's pushed. Since Roe vs. Wade, conservative Catholics and Evangelicals have been remarkably persistent in opposing abortion; it has taken them 45 years to date to make abortion fairly hard to get in many places, if not outright illegal. Anti-sex anxiety attackers are involved in pendulum pushing too. Many feminists, some evangelicals, various up-tight 'family values' types, all combined have never been happy about liberalized social mores for sex.
The personnel may change over time, but there always seems to be opposing advocacy groups in favor of loosened mores, and other advocacy groups in favor of tightened mores.
I guess the question now is, where do we fit into this? I believe (well, hope) that someday these advocacy groups can live in peace. It won't happen soon, but I keep out hope that it can, and Philosophers may be able to help. Advocates for both major theories of sociology would probably argue that what leads to progress is these two sides pushing, but a man can dream, can't he?
All that aside, I believe you have a point. Democracy is damaged by restrictions like this, but the people who put those restrictions in place are usually ok with a less egalitarian society as long as they get their way, and I think it would be bold to say that Democracy is the only way to go for a free and functioning society. There are probably lots of ideas that we haven't tried yet. Democracy surely is the only form of government so far that respects freedoms, but I think to just stop there would be foolish. Our ideas trailblaze the future, and if we want a better future, I think we should start thinking one up.
What do you think a truly free form of government would be like or involve?
Yes, getting deplatformed is unpleasant. But, there is a long tradition of deplatforming which goes back before the concept of an internet platform had even been imagined. People the government considered extremists or activists in groups as dissimilar as the KKK, Socialist Workers Party, the 1960s Student Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam, the Communist Party USA, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (civil rights for blacks), and so on have always found themselves in the crosshairs of efforts to literally deplatform them, if not figuratively do it.
As Churchill said, Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time... (Apparently WC did not originate this statement. Didn't he also say that "Americans will always do the right thing after they have tried all the alternatives."?
Your question is utopian and I am a sucker for utopian fantasy. First, we would need to abandon capitalism as the world economic system. Capitalism isn't inherently anti-democratic, but it has no limits on its field of endeavor. It just tends to fuck things up. So, some kind of democratic industrial socialism would be a better replacement.
Under democratic industrial socialism economic decisions (which are often as not also political questions) would be made in a decentralized bottom up manner. There would be markets, because markets are the obvious method for people around the world to trade goods and services.
This system (imagined by Daniel DeLeon, founder of the American Socialist Labor Party, and others) contains elements of syndicalist anarchism (a combo of socialism and anarchism).
I am in favor of a quite liberal approach to personal and collective morals.
My vision has 0.0001% chance of ever coming to fruition, unless it turns out that God is a Socialist Labor Party member.
At least to me, that just sounds like capitalism between socialist states.
It's an interesting discussion though. As you said, I am also a sucker for that kind of utopian fantasy. I try to stay away from politics mostly because it seems that not many people actually wish to discuss them, more indoctrinate.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I believe he did. It is, of course, a bit ignorant of us to always seem to do that, but the statement itself reminds me a lot of the other European nations at the time that also thought they were right. Churchill has always been a strange figure to me. Bold in his words, and they were necessary for the time, but maybe not self-reflected.
I think that people tend to be irrational about privacy issues. Part of that is the degree to which people estimate that anyone is going to really be interested in their private lives.
Feeling safe is fine, but if that involves an aversion to difference, or if it involves people being hypersensitive and rather neurotic, then we have serious problems.
Re trusting each other, that's important in close relationships, of course, but I think it's just as important that we don't automatically trust others, especially not what they say. We put far too much weight on utterances/speech acts in general in my opinion.
I'm not at all a fan of etiquette or "good manners" for their own sake. I want people to be existentially authentic and to be able to accept difference.
I'm very pro-difference, pro everyone letting their freak flag fly, and pro being cool with others letting their freak flags fly, no matter how different they may be from your own, no matter how much you wouldn't choose the same things for yourself.
And respect needs to be earned.
What solves social problems is being cool with difference. Being laissez-faire. Not wanting to control others. I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity.
I think we need to be careful with our words. Money is not a spirit. Our spirit can be generous or greedy, it can feel safe and bold or afraid and powerless, but money is money. Money has no feeling and cannot be spirit.
A lot happened in 1958. The Military Industrial Complex was embedded in our government. We replaced liberal education with education for technology. This meant the end of education for good moral judgment and transmitting the culture that is vital to empowering the people and liberty. The social, economic and political ramifications of this change are huge.
In any society there has to be a system for exchanging goods and services. Markets are an ancient institution, whereas capitalism is a relatively recent system (last few hundred years). Socialism is also a recent development, more recent than capitalism. The essence of capitalism is not buying and selling; people have been doing that for several thousand years. Capitalism is a legal system creating corporations directed by boards of directors, selling shares, and existing to maximize profits for the shareholders. A market where a seller exchanges wool for lumber doesn't have to involve any of the essential capitalists features. A market (Target, Amazon) can be a capitalist corporation, but it doesn't need to be.
Quoting TogetherTurtle
I haven't read a biography of Churchill, but my impression is that he was like Roosevelt: a consummate politician with a varied history.
Feeling safe will always involve an aversion to a difference, or a curiosity because we are primates. It is instinctive to detect sameness or difference. It is instinctive to need to know if this movement or object is a threat to us or not. We can overcome our fears by becoming familiar with the movement or object. That is having enough information to know the cause of the movement or what the object is and can do.
Our fear of the stranger is fundamental to our survival. Let us appreciate that and be respectful of it. Then we can make better judgments based on awareness of our survival need to know and that fear is our friend. Feeling bad about ourselves because we fear something or someone will not help. Apply reason, not blind prejudiced judgment.
Trusting each other is essential to commerce and the economy. Trump's power plays are crippling to the trust essential to good commerce and economic growth. I wish his playing board remained his private affair and had not become a public affair affecting international politics and economies. He is like the bully who brings the ball to the game and drives everyone home by insisting everyone play by his rules. Trust is very important to commerce and economics.
Can you follow the logic of respecting all people because we do so for the sake of being respectful? What happens when we respect another? What happens when we disrespect someone. Might we want one result and not the other? The Greeks understood moral as knowing universal law, (knowledge of how the universe works) and good manners. Practicing good manners for their own sake is vital to manifesting a better reality and avoiding so many of our human problems. Now it doesn't matter if the other has a different sexual orientation or is a different race or ethnicity. There is one rule that applies to all equally. :smile: We are equal and different. The world is a better place when we follow the rule and problems arise when we do not. Do you agree with that logic?
What is the benefit of being pro differences? I am sure there are some benefits but too much of a good thing is not good. What you say of being pro differences leads me to think of being on a small life raft in the middle of an ocean and having no idea which way to paddle to have a chance of surviving. Promoting differences and holding that respect has to be earned do not go together. That would be finding fault with someone who does not meet your idea of a person who earns respect, and that is not promoting differences.
What is being cool with differences if it is not being respectful? Telling me you think respect needs to be earned, does not go with "I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity." Please check your logic.
GOOD JOB! I love the way to cleaned up the popular misunderstanding. :up:
Quoting Athena
A problem with this is that there are lots of people who don't feel unsafe just because of difference.
@Athena In general, I think primates, people, dogs, cattle, bees--all sorts of creatures--do have a strong tendency to be on guard around the stranger and the very different... whatever that is. It's not a pre-frontal feature, more of a gut reaction. Instinctive.
It isn't a bug; it's a feature, and a feature over which we can exercise some control. We don't have to kill the stranger, we can sample the different -- or not. Context matters immensely here. Alone on a dark night, strangers are more worrisome than they are in broad daylight. Strange food is safer in a highly rated restaurant than deciding whether to eat a strange plant in the jungle.
Hear! hear!
Quoting Terrapin Station
I've been the weirdo non-conformist in many settings, so I get the importance of acceptance and authenticity. I'm fine with letting folks fly as freakish a flag as they feel like unfurling, as long as I don't have to live with, next to, or too close to them. Just as straight-arrow people ought to give freaks some room, freaks need to give straight-arrow types room too. We can be "cool with difference" and that is generally a good thing, but making "cool" mandatory seems like another oppressiveness.
In terms of freakishness, sometimes the inauthentic, straight-arrow conformist is actually more freakish than any whacked out weirdo could hope to be.
Sorry for misunderstanding at all. I haven't taken any classes on economics or looked into the writings of many capitalist or socialist advocates. I probably should, and may very well in the future. Again, sorry for misunderstanding at all, but from how Athena put it, it seems to be common, so at least I know that I may be mistaken now.
I think if I'm being honest, I like any idea of a Utopia, whether it be a Libertarian's lawless world or a Socialist's united one. I can't shake the feeling, however, those old world systems could never lead to a world where every last person is happy, (which I suppose would be the definition of a utopia). So to restate my question from earlier a bit more clearly, do you think that there could be a system of economy or administration that could lead to that? Something that doesn't need to be entirely new, but could probably benefit from a few new ideas. So I'm sort of asking you to theory craft your own new government using any ideas you like.
Utopias have their attractions, but there is a hidden flaw in utopian schemes: Once everything is perfect, everything must stay perfect, and in order to stay perfect, everyone and everything must remain static. Life, given its chaotic nature, is disruptive and things don't stay static for long.
There are non-utopian schemes which might make people happy, but there is yet another problem: People are sometimes extremely unhappy despite themselves. Discontents, mental illnesses, physical ailments, injuries, and so on can leave people unhappy.
The best we can do is design a society where there is a good chance of most people being reasonably happy much of the time. Quite a few systems have achieved something of the sort. What do they have in common? (This is all pure speculation, you understand, prepared from notes written hurriedly on the cuff of my shirt sleeve.)
a) Social conditions are stable, but not rigidly fixed.
b) Social mobility (upward and downward) is possible.
c) Economic measures indicate steady growth with occasional recessions, but no booms or busts.
d) Population growth is at a moderate rate, in line with the economy
e) Public education is excellent, producing a literate, culturally capable population
f) There are no aggressive enemies
g) Government is efficient, honest, and effective
h) Religion tends to be tolerant, flexible and moderate in its demands
i) Industry is conducted on a socialist model, agriculture on a family farm model.
.....
You'll note an emphasis on stability, moderation, good government, excellence in education and 'liberal' religion. This is the sort of society that I think the largest number of people can be happy in. The conditions described are more likely to exist in an economy that is collectivist rather than highly competitive and acquisitive (which is what we have now).
Within this society there will still be unhappiness, but the causes should not issue from the nature of society itself. Our society tend to drive people crazy.
This will probably prove disappointing. It's not much of a utopia -- just something people could live with.
I think one of the main things that makes a society utopian is access by all to cures for these kinds of things. So in my belief, a prerequisite for a utopia would be everyone fully having the capacity to be happy already, they may just not be at the moment due to factors other than their health.
I think that a stable structure like you describe is certainly good enough for now, but perfection should be pursued even if impossible because the more we try the closer we get. I also don't think it's the only stable structure. I may be seen slightly as a radical by some, (and of course, I would never do any of these things, I think they're horrible) but some cultures are simply ok with things that we would consider violations of human rights. Societies around the world and certainly in the future will include extreme social stratification, and in some parts of the world, that is considered fair. Of course, corruption happens, but I would assume socialist nations have had some history with corruption as well.
In nations and parts of the world where the values that socialism protects (equality between all economically and non-competitive economies) are wanted, people should certainly live that way. If people wish to live by the word of their god (regardless of whether you believe that their god is real or not, personally, I don't) or to create great wealth for themselves, I have a hard time telling them those are morally ambiguous goals. One man's trash is another man's treasure is essentially what I'm trying to get at here.
Could a world dominated by socialist economies exchanging goods work? Probably, and it would make socialists very happy, but what of everyone else? In a few generations, most people will probably have submitted, but there will still be holdouts. You would have to take them by force, and that sounds more dystopian than utopian to me. It's almost the same thing as our original subject here. Capitalists get deplatformed and a whole way of life is destroyed. Was that way of life good? To you, no, but to the small business owners and CEO's and the average man who wants to live above average means, it certainly was good. The poor will most likely agree with you, but that just seems like choosing one group over another.
I'm probably wrong. All I know is that this whole crazy world is full of even crazier people who think entirely differently with different values. Sometimes equality just isn't valued, and the only thing you can do about that is try to convince them, and if you can't, you have to live with that. They probably think you're just as wrong as you think they are. If a utopia were to come about, it would have to circumvent this entire problem as well as provide institutions that make people happy.
Capitalism has been vigorous and relentless in defense of free enterprise and capitalism, so many people in the industrialized west have no knowledge of what Marx and Engels were proposing. It is radical - absolutely, but it isn't utopian. It isn't a long text -- its a short booklet -- but even so there are passages that are not very relevant to the present moment.
For some people, revolutionary conflict would be utopia. There would be a great cause to fight for, a great enemy to fight against -- good vs. evil -- and revolution need not be a violent overthrow of the government. Most Marxists understand that trying to violently overthrow the American system would be a good way to get shot.
Daniel DeLeon, an American Marxist (late 19th, early 20th centuries) argued that IF democratic mechanisms were available, it made sense to use those mechanisms to overthrow capitalism. For Deleon revolution is political, not military. It involves intensive and extensive organization of unions, of political activity, disciplined voting in elections, and so forth.
I suppose that's true. I'll look into more reading about this and maybe we can discuss it some day. For me at least, a utopia would have to be a society in which no ideas are suppressed, so I guess the million dollar question is how to do that. I'll think on that and I hope you do too. Other than that, I have nothing else to say. Thanks for the resources, I hope you have a great day.
The way it needs to be mandatory and oppressive is in there being not only no laws against difference, but not control via social pressure, either.
What is the problem with knowing it is our nature to be on guard when in the presence of a stranger? I thought understanding human nature was always a good thing. What is the problem with that?
The reason you'd be relatively on your guard when in the presence of a stranger doesn't have anything to do with difference--maybe the stranger looks, dresses, acts, etc. just like you, apparently has the same tastes and interests as you, and so on. The reason to be relatively on your guard (I say "relatively" because you don't need to categorically be too on-guard, there are other factors here) is that you don't know the person yet, you don't know whether you can trust them, you don't know that they might not be trying to scam you somehow, etc.
I think what you said is excellent and I want to add to this the importance of liberty and an organization that empowers the people, democracy.
Liberty is not the freedom to do anything we please, but the freedom to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong. This goes with an understanding of morals as a matter of cause and effect, and it requires training for logic. It is not basing our decisions on our feelings but on reason.
Freedom does not imply good moral judgment. Freedom is doing whatever we feel like doing at the moment and it can be disastrous. I think we are in moral crisis because we think about freedom and not our responsibility to use our freedom wisely.
Empowering people who run on emotion and false beliefs is not a real good idea. On the other hand tyranny is an even worse idea, no matter how well-intentioned the tyrant is. The problem with tyrants is not if they have good or bad intentions, but human judgement is better when everyone participates in the decision making. The collective mind is superior to the mind of a few. But here things can get a little dicey. An emotionally driven mob, surely is not to be desired! Steps must be taken for the mass to have both power and good reasoning.
Two reasons for having liberty and democracy are-
1, the collective mind holds more information
2. people obey the laws when they believe they hold the responsibility for those laws. When it is their laws, they want to protect them. When they feel responsible for the laws, they take steps to change laws when they believe they need changing.
This is totally different from religion with rules given by a God and demanding only obedience of the people, not reasoning. Mans' laws are changeable. God's laws are not changeable. At least not until God sends us a new prophet who can correct the misunderstanding of what the last prophet said. :lol: In short the Christian bible does not give us a good explanation of democracy. It talks a lot about being obedient and not thinking too much and then we elect presidents who do not think too much but we hope will do the will of God. This is difficult because Christians have so much control of our country and the religion is not good for liberty and democracy. Obviously, we can not have rule by reason when Christians dominate. That leads to destroying liberty and democracy especially when public education stops preparing the young for liberty and democracy.
One more thing, judging human nature that has been denominated by believers in the God of Abrahman is like Fraud's belief that women envy men's penises. The truth is distorted by cultural exclusion, and not knowing of humans outside the culture. Religions give us a biased point of view.
Freedom of speech is one of our most important freedoms and we need to protect it even when someone is saying something we do not like. It is the principle that must be protected, and I will say only when get rid of religion will we return to the principles of democracy. Because religion is relying on the will of a God and democracy is relying on rule by reason.
Only highly moral people can have liberty, and it is reason that brings us to highest morality, not religion. But we have lost this reasoning because in 1958 we dropped education for good moral judgment and left moral training to the church. Now we are in a real mess and our most threatening enemy is ourselves.
In 1917 teachers were very proud of what their education for democracy had to do with the increasing powers of the unions. Farmers had granges so they could also have shared benefits. Parents had far more control of education than government, through personal contact with the schools and PTA and socializing with each other and going to town hall meetings.
The power of Christianity was manifested out of the strength of its organiation. Secular organizations have tended to be weak and without education for democracy, they are being disseminated. It was a terrible decision to end education for good moral judgment and leave moral training to the church. Our liberty and democracy are being destroyed as the Military Industrial Complex is swallowing up the rather weak secular orgainzation we had. (I am testing this bold statement. If you think me wrong please say so.) Bottom line is democracy needs unions or better yet, replace autocratic industry with the democratic model.
Can we please with begin with the science of our nature? From birth, we are programmed to recognize sameness and differences. Research determined at birth the baby can distinguish between the parent's language and a foreign language. I believe we need to be aware of this programming and from there develop our concepts of truth.
Obviously, culture has a lot to do with our ability to trust others and I that is why I am making my arguments. We had a culture that encouraged trusting each other and we are rapidly destroying our past reality of privacy and trust. In the 1950s I lived in Hollywood, California and we did not lock our doors and we did not live in fear. Today I wouldn't even drive through Hollywood without locking my car doors and there is no way I would attempt to live there. Hollywood is a hell hole compared to when we could ride a trolley to the beach. Trust is not just about how fearful or courage we are. It is also about the world around us.
I distinctly choose to be with people my own age, because I share values with these people, and life experiences that make it easier for us to understand each other, It is more pleasant for me to engage with people like me. Here sameness means feeling comfortable and it requires less energy. I would love to travel around the world and experience people of different cultures, and I eagerly engage with people from other countries. I love differences but in my day to day life, I want what is familiar and comfortable.
I have said it is important to respect everyone, but trust is something that must be earned. A good con person will appear to be like me, knowing that will lead to me being trusting. It is just our nature. However, today it is foolish to be trusting without knowing the other. Brand name companies have shot themselves in the foot by having their products made in China and then marketing a product that is far inferior to the standard we expected from these companies. And then there are the jerks who tried to run on the good name of Windows, who scammed us. When the bottom line is money, morality can go down the toilet, and today we have created a very untrusting reality. The rip off artist in foreign countries have increased our distrust of strangers. The management company that took over the apartments where I live has caused people to move out because they can not be trusted for anything but gorging more and more money from us. In the long run, people who have made money the bottom line will pay for that. Perhaps our whole nation will pay for that as we come to believe no one can be trusted. This is very destructive to even very large and powerful nations.
"Our nature" is every way that any human is or can be. And part of that is that we don't have to feel unsafe due to difference. It's incorrect to say, as a universal generalization, that we don't feel safe around difference. And as I explained but you're not really acknowledging. for many people that's not why we're cautious around strangers. Maybe for some people it's why they're cautious around strangers, but that would probably just amount to some sort of bigotry/prejudice.
That's not even comparable. Assume there's direct control over what TeleSur puts out and what the Venezuelan government demands of them. Great, now how is that at all comparable to governments having near unhindered success at making private entities hide or remove content they don't like based on political reasons (e.g. revealing government corruption and malpractice)? It isn't comparable. You're comparing suspicions you have about one entity reporting a certain way, with a certain slant, and on the other hand engaging in censorship and widespread PR for the government.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
The reason I don't want to focus on legality is because even if it is illegal, it's clearly not stopping the government from doing so. And besides which, the people who often support this reveal themselves to not actuall care about free speech because they're cool with Jones type loons being negatively affected, and they get up in arms when it goes the other way. If I say "Isn't this wrong?" the answer shouldn't amount to "Well it's legal".
As for the power of Christianity, as far as I was aware it has been a huge part of American and western culture for hundreds of years. I may be mistaken, but it seems like up until 1958 schools did teach morals, but they were Christian morals, which kind of defeats the purpose of mentioning how they stopped teaching them in an argument against Christians themselves. I would imagine that a lot of moral positions you hold are also ones the church held, (The Ten Commandments and such. Of course maybe not all of those, but for the western world they seem to be the starting point for most senses of morality.) and those were probably taught in schools. Of course, some things the Bible says (Like stoning homosexuals and women being traded almost as property) are certainly bad, (at least today) and I don't disagree with that. So overall, I don't think everything religion teaches is good, or accurate, but they are certainly a useful institution that has had power for a long time and is worth keeping around if for nothing else as a sort of "devil's advocate" (ironically) for an increasingly Atheistic society.
I think my position is something close to pacifism in a political and moral way. There is no universal answer key telling us what is right or wrong, true or false, so hurting others emotionally or physically for holding a view is a risky venture at best. (Of course, I assume you don't do those things, but some people certainly do.) So I don't think the church should be the primary source for moral teachings to the general populace, but I don't think secular organizations in schools should be either. Isn't the most egalitarian way to give both a platform and let the people decide from there? What about the other organizations that have strong moral views? I don't see why they are any more right or wrong than the two mentioned before, so they should have platforms to discuss too. Ideally, society would be governed (at least in the context of morality) by the majority group out of all of those, or by none at all, each acting as sort of guiding hand to those who wish to learn their ways and then apply those.
Quoting Athena
Hell if I know. From personal experience, I can tell you that at least where I live, Atheistic ideas and institutions have never really held power. The only reason I ever learned about the concept was a book about the Bill of Rights I read when I was in 5th grade. I grew up around people who thought I was a freak for not believing in God, and for a time I thought that they shouldn't be able to speak their mind because they didn't think rationally, but as I got older I questioned rationality itself. How can we be sure we are correct when our brains forget things and make up new things all the time? It is my belief now at least that a fundamental part of the human experience is not knowing the truth. I find it hard to think that I am above my friends and neighbors and family when I don't even know if I'm right after all.
As for a Military Industrial Complex, maybe. We have been militaristic almost as long as we've been religious, so it would be hard for me to say without looking into it more.
Freedom of speech- arguing with each other about what is true and right is vital. What is essential about this is understanding there are rules of logic that must be followed. Just spewing off at the mouth is not protected freedom of speech. A President of the US refusing to speak with a leader of another country is violating the principle of freedom of speech. The purpose of freedom of speech is rule by reason. It is not power plays carried on by a couple of jerks who unfortunately have positions of power. I will repeat the important points. Democracy is rule by reason and this very different from dictatorships or monarchies that are the rule of humans over humans. Freedom of speech is essential to rule by reason and it must comply with rules of logic.
Religion- religion violates the rules of logic, therefore it violates good moral judgment and rule by reason. Sure religions carry some morals, but it does not prepare anyone for good moral judgment. The story of the Little Red Hen or the Empires New Clothes and most fables from many lands transmit morals. Jesus spoke in parables to transmit moral concepts and this is no different from telling fables. Mythology is about preparing the young to be adults in the communities. While all of this helps us be better humans, it is not truth as science is truth. Believing one has the word of God is nuts and it causes a lot of problems! A lot of problems- from ignorance that leads to people dying of disease, to wars with all sides believing a god is on their side.
A huge part of our problem is spell check thinking, technological thinking instead of philosophical thinking. There is truth, and spell check insist I write "the" truth, not of truth. There is a serious and important difference between thinking of truth versus "the" truth. Education for technology along with leaving moral training to the church and people who think they know God's truth is killing our democracy and liberty.
Education for democracy, liberty and good moral judgment is education in logic and increasingly complex concepts. I repeat, education for good moral judgment is education in logic and knowledge. It was Socrates' goal to expand our conscience- con means coming out of and science means knowledge.
"There is no universal answer key telling us what is right or wrong, true or false,"
"I don't think secular organizations in schools should be either."
Ouch,that thinking is the problem today! And we come to this by leaving moral training to the church and leaving the masses to believe they have God's truth, although they disagree with each other about what that truth is. This is nuts and it will destroy us.
What about logic and social agreements? Please, we are reduced to running around like a bunch of monkeys or pack of wolves without logic and the ability to make social agreements based on reason. Religion with its notion of having God's truth has us really messed up! No one has God's truth in a book written by men. There is only human reasoning and a human concept of truth. Understanding our reality gives us a better reality than the reality that monkeys and wolves have. We came from living like animals, and only recently got out of ignorance and poverty, and today's reasoning would destroy our wonderful achievement. Because of human nature, reasoning and accumulated knowledge(math and science) the ability to have social agreements, we have had a few hundreds of amazing progress. Christianity almost wiped this progress out of human memory when it got control in Rome. Truly history is not a straight line of progress. Christianity threw us into the Dark Ages, and we might return to that because of ending education for good moral judgment and leaving moral training to the church. We are destroying what we have achieved with ideas like the selfish gene and freedom to say or do anything we please. The reason for morals is to avoid that destruction. Morals are logical reasoning.
"Hell if I know. From personal experience, I can tell you that at least where I live, Atheistic ideas and institutions have never really held power. The only reason I ever learned about the concept was a book about the Bill of Rights I read when I was in 5th grade. I grew up around people who thought I was a freak for not believing in God, and for a time I thought that they shouldn't be able to speak their mind because they didn't think rationally, but as I got older I questioned rationality itself. How can we be sure we are correct when our brains forget things and make up new things all the time? It is my belief now at least that a fundamental part of the human experience is not knowing the truth. I find it hard to think that I am above my friends and neighbors and family when I don't even know if I'm right after all.
As for a Military Industrial Complex, maybe. We have been militaristic almost as long as we've been religious, so it would be hard for me to say without looking into it more."
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We can never be absolutely sure we are correct.
Democracy is an imitation of the Greek gods who argued with each other until there was agreement on the best reasoning. And we all know, after everything is settled, someone gets a new insight or our situation changes and we have to start the reasoning process all over again. That is what makes democracy different from religion. Religions are not self-correcting. Democracy is self-correcting.
Our good manners is based on the fact that we can not be absolutely sure we are correct. Being like a 10 year child who can only deal with absolutes is not a desirable trait for adults. We have to live with paradox and opposing rights (this is right and so is that right, but we have choose) and other difficult choices. I used to wish I had a magic ball that would tell me my best choice. :lol: Our reality is not as black and white as education for technology can lead us to believe.
NO, We WERE NOT MILITARIST! :cry: I am overwhelmed by the challenge I face in these forums. The Enlightenment springs out of a lot stupid warring in Christian Europe and a determination to have rule by reason, rather than rule by the reasoning of few men who think life is nothing more than power struggles and their personal purpose in life is to have the most power.
Democracy is rule by reason. Liberty is about living with rule by reason. The US was known for standing against war. It demilitarized after every war. Not until Eisenhower and the Korean war did the US determine to maintain military power. When we geared up for the second world war, we ranked 17th in military might, below small countries. Our American revolution was in part a rebellion against paying taxes for England's military might. US tax payers were strongly against having a large military and paying for it. That they think the power and glory of our military might has always been part of our national pride, is like Jesus putting on an uniform and leading us into war. And damn, but if the Christian Right does not love our presidents who take us to war in the name of God. SOMETHING HAS GONE REALLY WRONG!
The same thing happened to Germany and for the same reasons. Hitler's New World Order and Bush's New World Order are the same. This is the gift of Prussian military bureaucracy applied to citizens and education for the Military Industrial Complex. We lived for the love of God and the Prussians lived for a love of war. We are all Christians you know, but can you picture Jesus dressed like Ceasar?
I am not understanding your reasoning. Do you agree it is natural to experience fear of the unknown? The stranger is unknown and this can result in fear, right? Under what conditions is this not true?
Everything that anyone does or experiences is natural in my view. So yes, it's natural to experience fear of the unknown. There are people who experience that.
Quoting Athena
Sure.
Quoting Athena
Since it's a statement about possibilities, I think it would be difficult to say conditions under which it wouldn't be true. That doesn't imply that strangers DO result in fear. It's just true that they can. It depends on the people involved, the exact circumstances, etc.
If we are really sure of ourselves and confident we can handle whatever happens, we will be less fearful. Good social skills could reduce our fears. A belief that a God is protecting us can reduce our fears. Being logical can increase or decrease our fears, depending on the reality of the situation. Special military training can override our natural impulses. In public speaking if we think of the feeling as excitement gearing us to do our best, instead of fear, we can trick ourselves into feeling safe and very alert. :grin:
What is the difference between the masses thinking they have the truth of God and disagreeing on exactly what that is, and scientists thinking they have the truth of logic and disagreeing on exactly what that is? As you said-
Quoting Athena
So, to restate what I said before, Religion is almost certainly wrong and I agree with that, but I don't think we should be so hasty to adopt the next great thing in entirety and ignore the dead ends that can leave us with. (String theory, unexplained phenomena, the 99% of the universe we have never seen or explored) Doesn't logical thinking kind of backfire when what we came to logically turns out to be a paradox? In other words, a logical solution could not possibly solve some questions we ask, therefore logical thinking may be very powerful, but not powerful enough to explain everything and certainly doesn't always provide absolutes. I agree with you to an extent that logic and reason are the best we have at the moment in terms of explaining our world, but people may have very different things to say about logic and reason in the future and may think of us as just as ignorant as we think of those dark age peasants.
Speaking of the dark ages, saying that Rome adopting Christianity was the cause would be a bit of a stretch. Generally, the position historians take is one that follows this line of thinking, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times". Many factors went into the collapse of Rome, and I think most would attribute it to size and corruption (that was present in the government of Rome far before Christ was even born) as well as enemies on the borders seeing opportunities. Even so, it was probably more complex than that. One of the world's most powerful empires ever doesn't fall for just one reason.
Quoting Athena
I think the majority of human societies throughout all of history have been militaristic. Say what you will about the enlightenment and how those European nations started to slowly encourage thought, but they still had wars and still forcefully took control of lesser off nations as colonies as late as the world wars. Even now, lots of businesses have factories and plantations in poor areas of the world that used to be colonies used for those things anyway, and they pay very little and rule with an iron fist. As for America, I think that Native Americans and Mexicans who lived in the Southwest and colonists from other European powers would disagree in your thought about America being more pacifist than militarist. Manifest Destiny is sort of just militaristic conquest said politely so people don't feel bad for stealing land. Of course, I don't believe in absolutes, especially morally, so I don't have a position on whether that was right or wrong, but I think I can classify it as militaristic.
Quoting Athena
This is true, but more out of necessity than greed. If America did not have a competitive military, Russia would have and would have steamrolled through America. Greed was certainly there and is a driving factor now, but if they hadn't of done that, I feel confident in saying that we would be speaking Russian right now. Make of that what you will, I don't like to bring politics into discussions online. All I'm saying is that it's hard to make agreements with a very large, very fanatic nation with a very large military if you can't at the very least make sure that when negotiations fall through, you can defend yourself.
Quoting Athena
Democracy - a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Liberty - the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
These are copy and paste definitions. I know that definitions are kind of shaky on things like this but I suppose whatever people say it is the most is a good place to start.
Democracy seems to be rule by the people in some capacity. I think we can both agree that the people of any nation (and the human mind itself) are very easily deceived. The average person does not decide who they want to be president or what laws to pass on just reason, and sometimes no reason at all. When people go to vote, a lot of complex reactions are happening in their brain and I'd be willing to bet most of them have something to do with emotion. A people can value reason all they want, but unless they modify their own brains in order to only see reason, they will also have emotions and that will skew the result. Personally, I'm not against genetic modification of any kind, but I don't think artists would be very happy about you removing their children's emotions.
Liberty seems to have very little to do with rules, especially those by reason. Liberty seems to be the opposite of rules in a sense. If you live by reason, that is totally fine, but telling people what to think is inherently authoritarian, even if you're "right". (Right in quotation marks because we have both already established that speaking that absolute is troubling.) It is also just as authoritarian even if what is right changes with what the evidence is, If anything, that would be more authoritarian because you are then not only telling outsiders what to think but also forcibly changing what your own people think.
Quoting Athena
I never had any intention of being cruel. I just wish to have a pleasant discussion about life with strangers on the internet. I have to say that most of your points have been interesting if not flawed (Just like everyone else's, including mine I'm sure.) and I do look forward to further discussion on this. If someone is actually belittling you, I can't do anything to stop it, but I would like to treat you as an equal if not a superior. (I saw in another post of yours that you used to live in Hollywood in the 50's. You have obviously had a lot more life experience than a lot of people here and are a very important asset in a discussion.) So if you take anything away from this, just know that at least I am not deliberately trying to deny things you hold as truths, but challenge them just as you should mine and just as everyone else should to everyone else in the most respectful manner possible.
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I absolutely love the discussion and very much appreciate what you are saying. It is my inadequacy that is the problem. I have been doing this for years and still, struggle to answer questions.
Someone who shared his knowledge of Qabala in a forum many years ago, explained without discussion people do not gain understanding. We have to talk and discuss liberty and democracy daily and this must be a constant part of our lives, just as Christianity is a constant part of life for Christians. Our Forefathers were Masons and they were discussing liberty and democracy or reading about it daily. WE, THAT IS THE HUGE POPULATION OF THE US, ARE NOT DISCUSSING OUR LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY. We can copy and paste, but what do know of the meaning?
I already replied to your post but walked away and thought about it. The reason I am being so bloody picky about how we understand our nature and fear is because I watched a video of Bill Moyer talking about our violence. Someone pointed out, what looks like a lot of anger is actually fear. Now these are macho young men raging and beating the stranger or fight with that other gang, and hell would freeze over before they admitted their behavior is about fear. We need to recognize our fear and think about it. Are we creating a world we want to live in when we build a wall to keep others out and ignore the danger that some people are forced to live with? Is a man screaming at us at these people are criminals and rapist, telling us all we need to know about building a wall to keep people out? How can we throw stones at the Russians for the wall they built and be proud of ourselves for building one? What are we really feeling and how much reasoning can we do?
And for sure, life in a highrise apartment is not living with nature.
I know it's going to seem like I'm just trying to be disagreeable :grin: but I strongly disagree with comments in this vein. (Re being disagreeable, I simply have a lot of views that are not the "normal" views.)
What makes anything "about" something is how the individual in question is thinking about it. When we're talking about something that a lot of people are doing, it's not going to be the case for anything that everyone is thinking about it the same way. The only way we can know what something is about to an individual is to ask them. They may not give us an honest answer, but we can't know better than they do whether their answer is honest.
So re people wanting a border wall, for example, there are probably tons of different motivations there--it's just going to depend on who we ask.
Re the highrise comment, that's not "living with nature" if we're making the distinction man-made/versus not man-made. But then no construction is living with nature in that sense (and anything we do wouldn't be nature in that sense, since we'd be making our activities the demarcation criteria).
And so we all come to the same conclusion eventually. We enjoy the journey but the destination is disappointing. Or maybe we haven't reached the destination yet.
The only constant theme there seems to be is that our minds restrict us in terms of our knowledge of the universe. If only we could become more.
I know I will have left a lot of points left undiscussed doing this, but I really can't keep this up. I am leaving for a trip soon and won't be able to use the internet while I'm gone, and the scope of our discussion seems to have reached critical mass. Someday we will pick this up again, but for now, I have to say farewell.
About the wall, there seem to be two sides. Those who are afraid of the stranger and those who are not. I don't think the details of individual differences matter. Trump is speaking to one side when he tells us how threatening the strangers are. He speaks to their fear and what we see is their anger.
I have a neighbor who is severely depressed about Trump shutting down the government to get funding for a wall that many of us do not want. She is very afraid she will not get her Social Security and will become homeless. None of us dependent on Social Security would be happy campers if that happened.
This does remind me of the fall of Rome. The invasion of the barbarians and rapid change in government personnel and no one trusting anyone else. I never thought we would see the day when a President of the US acted like a tyrant, but even the way he came to office fits the ancient definition of a tyrant. Like Roman citizens lost control of everything and one tyrant after another took control until the secular government was too weak leaving only the church to hold things together.
It is no longer reason holding us together and ruling over what happens. It is institutionalized tyrants and corruption, and our freedom of speech which is vital to something different is perhaps the most corrupted part of the mess we are in. What individuals think does not matter when we are running on emotions and mostly fear. A tyrant to takes advantage of our fear of strangers can control the mob. And one who can shut down our government is beyond democratic control. We are in serious trouble. Trump could not do what he is doing if so many humans were not so fearful of strangers. And after our reaction to the fall of communism and its wall, how can we take pride in building a wall to keep people out? We are not strong again. We are chicken little running out of control. This is a we problem not individual problems.
At least for now social security won't be affected:
https://www.businessinsider.com/government-shutdown-2018-social-security-checks-still-paid-2018-1
Thanks. I was not overly concerned because I know when things get bad enough, they will turn around and I really want things to turn around. But oh my goodness when will people believe things are bad enough to throw out the tyrant who is abusing his power?
The place to protect our freedom of speech and democracy is in the classroom. Trump is acting like a tyrant and even if we will continue to get our Social Security checks, our government is obviously too weak to fend off the take over a tyrant. We must return to liberal education and training the young for good moral judgment and understanding what that has to do with our liberty and democracy.
:love: We did become more but then we changed the purpose of education, and we are destroying our human potential. We must understand education must be teaching the young how to think, not want to think. Education for technology is preparing the young to serve the beast. I know that is a biblical term that may turn people off, but just because something is written in the bible, it doesn't make it wrong.
Rome became the beast when military powers took control of Rome. The military got control of Rome because of economic causes. The cause doesn't matter so much as understanding the nature of the beast. Mythology and religion attempt to control with culture and this empowers everyone. When a nation shifts from cultural control to military control, the beast becomes the power over the people. The purpose and power of the beast totally different than when it is mythology and religion organizing society.
DOES ANYONE ELSE REALIZE WHEN EVERYONE IS WORKING FOR A PAYCHECK AND IS OVERLOADED WITH BY A WORK SCHEDULE AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES, THAT DOES NOT LEAVE PEOPLE FREE TO DO THE DISCUSSING AND THINKING THAT IS VITAL TO OUR LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY! OUR GOAL TO EMPLOY ALL ADULTS IS DESTRUCTIVE OUR HIGHER HUMAN POTENTIAL. Like Rome our military forces are superior, but our human potential that can only be realized through philosophy and our government are as weak as Rome in the last days. This a serious moral problem.
The 30 year mortgage did a great deal to pacify the population.
In the Age of Enlightenment, the discussion was how to make life better for everyone. I think we need to get back to that discussion.
Life IS better for everyone in general. At least, according to Steven Pinker. Life expectancy, happiness and well being are up, disease, crime, poverty and most other bad things are down , thats worldwide.
We seem to be past the conversation and into the doing. Heading in the right direction.
Even for those who have housing, the health of low-income people is not that good.
I am one of those poor people because I was disabled, so we might want to understand what real health problems and disabilities have to do with being a low-income person. The cause of poverty can be a health problem, or poverty can be the cause of a health problem. However, my life is extremely better than it would have been 100 years ago thanks to medical care, government assistance, and education. I am far above those people who do not qualify for assistance but for one reason or another can not compete for jobs or housing.
In 1958 Eisenhower made new connections with the media and research facilities, and education for technology replace liberal education at all grade levels. This education leads to dependency on the experts/authority.
When Reagan took offices, all research on poverty disappears from the abstracts and in its place is research on welfare fraud. Such a change in research leaves no question that research is biased. In a short time, the media is flooded with stories of welfare fraud and the war against poverty became a war on those living in poverty. At the height of a long recession caused by OPEC embargoing oil to the US domestic budgets were slashed and we began pouring money into military spending.
That is when our efforts to take military control of the Mideast got serious, and it brings us the Bush and the invasion of Iraq. There could not be a more glaring example of the devastation of our free press than this. There was no investigative reporting, only reliance on "authority" and for the first time the US began a war against a nation that was not mobilized for war against the US. This was not good for our international reputation. It could be argued our military actions in the Mideast lead to 9/11- the attack not on US citizens but against the Military Industrial Complex. It was not Iraq involved in 9/11 but Saudi Arabia and the US remains on friendly terms with Saudi Arabia and gladly sells it arms.
I think we have strong reasons for being concerned about what 1958 has to do with what is happening today. We have serious reasons for being concerned about what happened to the control of the news we get. We can start with Reagon lied to us about not needing foreign oil, and why we escalated our military position in the Mideast. In the 20tys a newspaper article warned us, "Given our known supply of oil and rate of consumption, we are head for economic disaster and possibly war". We need to understand that as Roman's needed to understand their economic crashes and economic growth was about exhausting gold mines and finding new ones and the need to secure resources with military force and the taxes to pay for the bureaucrats and military that kept everything going. The same beast is now running the US only it is oil, not gold mines feeding the beast. Self-government demands understanding our reality and understanding our reality demands a media that believes it is the duty of media to keep us well informed, not cover the political nominees or party or industrial interest that pays the most of media coverage. We do not have the media a democracy must have, because we stopped educating for that.
Just like the principal (no, not the principle) of the thought you think the corporations are suppressing, the more it gets suppress'd, the more it will stand up.
Just a thought. And it's the thought that counts.
One upside of Draconian laws, if such even computes, is that people become (under duress) highly creative and put their wetware to work in earnest for they must break/bend rules without actually doing so, they must stretch the laws/regulations but not violate them, loopholes are the key to doing what's actually illegal legally, and it takes genius to find and use 'em. Hmmmm...gives me ideas!
A lot of so-called cultural and social progress has taken this roundabout/elliptical route (a learned scholar like yourself should find many real-life instances) and many have expressed great admiration at such feats of intellect par excellence. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Using the backdoor is a legit tactic under repression. When you take away my freedom, you free my mind! :grin:
Quoting Agent Smith
That is the most positive construction we can apply to suppression.
We hope that suppression of thought will rebound to inventive free thought! Alas, quite often suppression works quite well. When it does, the suppressed ideas eventually disappear, not just from public view. That's not the end, of course. Ideas that were suppressed occur afresh in another generation.
There are limits of course; exert enough pressure, for long enough, and minds collapse (zombies/automatons). It's happened before, so you're on target. For such times, the apt motto is nil mortalibus ardui est (nothing is impossible for humankind! Perhaps I'm (too) optimistic.