Thread: Sex & Violence
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Old 09-27-2007, 10:35 PM   #84
shadowfyr
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Join Date: Oct 2002
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Re: Sex & Violence

It can be an accurate description based on actual factual evidence actually. All morality *is* subjective, because despite lots of people that insist there is some objective and undeniable morality, when you can manage to get them to describe to you the means by which they concluded it was moral, instead of merely spouting assertions, you find that a) none of it just landed in their laps, but they learned it by practice, and b) not one of the various groups that claim an objective morality can agree among themselves precisely what the boundaries are for it, never mind between two different groups, who insist *they* are the only ones that know what the one true universal moral code is.

Morality is a label for two things, 1) instinct driven behavior, which makes it possible, unless we have a defect in our brains from birth, to process information in predictable ways and specific ages. I.e., a 6 year old can't tell you mean him to say that the "doll" represents him/herself, and thus ask him what happened to him/her, by using a doll as an example. A younger child may not even understand that the doll is an inanimate object, or meant to represent something that normally *is* animate. Teens, as a rule, lack the gut level reactions to things that adults have, so, as many studies have shown, actually *overthink* situations, leading them to make logic based choices based on if the benefits from doing something risky *seem* to outweigh the risks. Adults tend to already have clear emotional concepts of what risks are too high, compared to benefits, so act based on what they "feel", not what they logically assess. Its seems contradictory, but brain scans and detailed studies of how teens make choices don't lie.

2) Learned social behavior, which can enhance, undermine, replace or distort the instinctual behaviors. This means that if your instinctual behavior is to make friends, someone *can* warp your perceptions sufficiently to make you distrust other people and avoid friendships. It means that if "normal" behavior is to trade favors (and I mean that in all senses of the word), social constraints can introduce learned aversions to some *kinds* of trades, or even warp your perceptions so badly that you take from everyone, because the world owes things to you, or refuse any help or offers, because owing anyone something is abhorrent. One could easily argue that "both" of those extremes are unreasonable, but its not impossible to find societies where having one of those extreme traits, within a small subset of societies, is considered a sign of sanity, even while the rest of society considers you weird or crazy.

What morals are not is some ingrained, preprogrammed code of conduct. One can have "general" codes, like sharing is good, and what neurologists call "plasticity", where that can be *shaped* to say anything from, "Sharing everything, to the extent that you have no money or possessions is good.", to the opposite extreme of, "Sharing is only good if you can see a direct and obvious personal benefit from it." The irony is, we call the later sociopathic, while the former is simply considered an odd religious view some small number of people practice... Its literally *unacceptable* to suggest, as far as most people are concerned, that *both* extremes are fundamentally irrational, not evolved, and basically deviations from the baseline behaviors that "do" exist in the brains genetics, which only "allow for" such drastic differences, rather than making them happen.

Worse, one could argue, and it can be shown, that how you use language can effect what things you "can" perceive. Basically, a program can only do what it has been taught to do with new data, even if the data implies something different than the program was ever intended to handle. That's a simplistic way of looking at it of course, we program ourselves, so its "possible" to learn different language, and with that different concepts, which can lead to a reexamination of our perspectives. But, its probably pretty dang accurate when describing the sort of people that, as an example, only listen to evangelical preachers, only watch Fox news, only read news papers that present right wing views, etc., just as those people on the other side of the fence, who only read rag magazines, horoscopes, Hollywood opinion magazines, alien abduction accounts, etc., etc., are *not* going to learn how to think any differently about their perceptions of what is really going on. To do that would require learning *how* to think like their opposite number, or, at least, why, in what way, and to what extent they mean different things, when using the same words we do.

But that is sort of the point. We are not trying to reason with the illogical and irrational people. They are impervious to it. Most people are not that far gone though, and can have their opinions changed, because they use language in ways that allow them to understand both sides arguments (well, most of the time). The point is to make it very clear that the only real difference that **should** exist between something that thinks god personally gave Pat Robertson a TV show, so he could bash gay people, talk about assassinating foreign dignitaries and help prepare the true believers for the end of the world (possibly by convincing them to cause it), and someone that think that Jesus was a space alien from Cignus Prime, who used lost Atlantian technology to broadcast healing rays into people's bodies is that there must be a shortage of tin foil hats to go around. lol

And to answer Mithras' questions, If you want to wait around until you are "sure" someone will rally to your cause, then you have already lost, but seriously, its not like nudity or sex in muds is some unique and specific thing, devoid of all connection to anything else, and thus must stand or fall on its own. Its not. Such content on muds is just the smallest corner, and probably silliest, of a much bigger problem, which ranges from people insisting that schools ban books about the "risks" of sex for teens, based on the fact that the book "describes" teens having sex, and the consequences of it, all the way up to the absolutely absurd fact that we once had a strip club here where I live, and it was driven out because "some" land owners thought it might impact the number of old people that would retire here, where I am sure they all want to, instead, spend their last years complaining about the thousands of 20-30 year old boaters that drink beer, play loud music and, in the case of the women, get by with not being nude by using pasties (a small decal like object, which you glue over the nipple and its darker surrounding parts, which if anything makes **more** people stair at them.

I am not advocating every muds introducing stuff into them. I am not even advocating them doing so in a way that will "immediately" get them into trouble. I am just saying, if you have a fracking Sistine Chapel in it, don't cave in so badly that when everyone types, "look adam", you get a description that says, "complete with fig leaf". Its insulting to a) the intent of the design (both the mud and the original art work, b) the intelligence of the players and c) any sense of ethics that demands respect for truth, intended meanings or other people's work. Mind you, I could make a good argument that none of those three things are of any value at all to anyone who thinks that they have a strangle hold on right and wrong, let alone any absolute concept of what those *must* be.

And no, I don't think its something that all of them are going to rally around, certainly not if you insist on defining it as some narrow thing only involving muds, but more to the point, what part of "herding cats" did you not get. But, sometimes you can get all the cats to agree that they really truly don't like some more generic things, like stuff that makes loud noises, even if *your* can doesn't have a problem with a vacuum cleaner, but does with the engine noise from large trucks. The point is to find to larger issue and make it clear that your issue is just one in a long list of stupid BS effected by that "one" larger issue. Some might think it quite silly, by itself. As one of 900 idiotic things that wackos don't like, because they think they *might* do more damage to some kids psyche than leaving them stupid and ignorant, its an entirely different matter. But yeah, one has to assess the risks "individually", and consider if its better to push the barrier, or just make it a point to rather loudly protest that it exists in the first place.
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