Nature v Civilisation, Hypocrisy v Political Correctness

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Nature is civilization. There is no nature vs. civilization. Everything is nature including technology.

I take you point about being variability I moral compass, but is does average out. You premise isn't really an argument, unless you are completely anarchist. Civilizations have laws and rules, and democratic countries consensus is the driving force. Before civilizations there were proto-civilisations and groups, and even those have rules.

The point about legal principles, it they they have little room for subjectivity. They have to be exacting. So regardless of relative experience they have to use the same standard. That doesn't mean that severity isn't taken into account in sentencing.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 30 Aug 2014, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is way off base. this is not even remotely factually accurate. In fact not only can parents be held to account for their action there also unfortunately room for parents to be pilloried, and abuses of power to happen. I have seen this first hand.

I have to say this is copout. I don't agree with him either but regardless this is not an argument.

Of course the forum is entitled to publish or not publish anything it wishes.

For many centuries, 'civilised art' has frequently included images of the naked human body (both male and female). Natural History films regularly show 'lower species' shagging. Hollywood stars rejoice in their increasingly risque behaviour and appearance. Modern novels are required to include some explicit sex scenes in order to guarantee publication. Did you ever go to a ballet, and manage to ignore the shape of the bodies?

The Human Race is obsessed with sex, but Civilisation tries to pretend otherwise.

I get your general gist that society/civilization cant seemed to handle human sexuality without a great deal of hypocrisy. A point I cant argue with. But I dont know of any society, beyond stone age hunter gather bands, that IS able to deal with human sexuality without alot of hypocrisy. The contradictions may manifest differently from place to place, and era to era, but they still exist. The present generation didnt invent the contradictions and conflicts. The more men and women change, the more they stay the same. For example Victorian ladies would (pretend to) faint (get "the vapors") when gentlemen failed to act gentlemanly. Now folks involve the state with sexual harassment suites. Not saying one is either better or worse than other. Just that they are both survival mechanisms of different ages.

But that anecdote that implied that we should allow guys to do that act on buses was rather cryptic. But I get what you're saying now about how not all prostitutes are really victims. Many are like St. Mary of Egypt (before she saw the light ofcouse), and just capitalize on their own nymphomania (why not?).

No it doesn't. Maybe under the Taliban.

Civilization is not a single thing, but civilization is a product culture and nature.

Societies are tending towards progressive, but that doesn't mean they tolerate everything.

One of the reason why the Greeks/Athenians advocated pedophilia and sex with young boys is male and female relationship were actually quite conservative and sexually desiring adult females was taboo. The men had to go though a period of study and civil service, and they weren't allowed to have anything to do with females until this period was over, then you were expected to marry. Therefore they advocated young boys a muses, and they were to give up these after this was over.

Personally I don't think that was a good or healthy aspect of their culture.

You seem to think there is some kind of contradiction between societal rules and nature, this is thinking is flawed. social rule are just as much a part of nature as everything else.

just becuase you can desire sexually almost anything doesn't mean there aren't societal limits.

Civilizations aren't just moral code there are also the capability to live in these large group, and these structure are integral to that.

So yes a society may not tolerate a hypothetical attraction to vacuum cleaners for example. That would be integral to that society where there is law.

However as societies are tending to more rational, it based on your right not impeding others, and not causing harm to others against their will.

If you want to live outside of this you can but don't expect society to tolerate this. Both of these things are nature. You can't escape it.

I guess the Athenians were as confused as we are today about how to incorporate sex into civilisation. I agree with naturalplastic that sexual perversion probably didn't exist before the beginning of technology. I also agree with 0_equals_true that technology exists within nature. The problem is that, apart from a few isolated examples of birds and monkeys using sticks in order to break into a source of food, technology is uniquely associated with human nature.

It seems to me that technology's purpose is to facilitate the desire of the human race to enhance its own experience.
It does so by understanding/altering/improving/damaging/regulating/harnessing the primitive processes of nature.

There is no doubt that technology and civilisation go hand in hand - until fairly recently, the way to win the hearts of the uncivilised members of the Soviet Union was to ply them with CocaCola, BiroPens, and Levis.

But there are aspects of primitive animal behaviour which human civilisation has struggled to control. Until they were introduced to CocaCola, BiroPens and Levis, there were tribes of people on the 20th Century Planet Earth who would actually eat their enemies, f'chrissake. I wonder if they have now also discovered sexual perversion.

But technology has yet to provide the process of civilisation with an effective tool which will ensure civilisation's ability to regulate the sexual behaviour of human beings. As with many of the rules and regulations which are intended to protect our physical well-being, the actual result is to make the world (and the human experience) a duller place for those who like to enjoy some of nature's simpler pleasures. I grew up as a kid in a seaside town, and as a ten-year-old or so, nothing gave me and the family dog greater pleasure than going out on a dark and stormy evening and playing dodge-the-waves-and-spray. Our favourite stretch of beach is now closed to the public when the wind is blowing more than a force 5.

I understand that many people do not regard sex as one of life's simpler pleasures, and my question is 'Why not?' The family dog never had a problem with it, and neither did his b*****s. Sex is definitely 'crude', and long may it remain so. Peoples reluctance to use crude language to describe a crude process is part of the problem which civilisation has not yet solved.