"If I Were The Devil" -Paul Harvey

Ginny · Wed 08/02/2006 20:40:17

Thanks:)
Good point on the whole fiction thing - I think porn is indeed fiction, be it in form of a movie, a picture, or even a written text. Indeed violence is depicted more than most things in movies today, and I have nothing against these movies. If we can depict violence, why not depict sex? And if we can't depict violence or sex or anything controversial at all, it's an insult to us as humans with different interests and ideas. Creativity isn't always in the form of nice and pretty things and ideas.
And I'm not that sure, really, but do christians* have a problem with depicting of violence as much as the depicting of sex? After all each is considered as much a sin as the other. If so, are christians against "The Passion of the Christ"? It depicts plenty of violence.
It was boycotted here in israel because of some antisemitic messages I believe, but I got it by other means and have heard a great deal about it. I think they'll eventually give up and show it on television or somewhere, as they did with "Jenine Jenine".
An enourmous percent of movies, books and tv shows are, at least in part, about something that is considered wrong or immoral. Some even show a different perspective of it.

*Again, sorry for generalising, I am referring the conventional christian belief.

vict0r · Wed 08/02/2006 20:52:55

The first step towards dictatorship is censore.

Pesty · Wed 08/02/2006 21:06:16

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/pestilence42/missionfailedbear.gif
MISSION: FAILED.

esper · Wed 08/02/2006 22:52:42

Stranger: read my post again. "If I were the Devil", I said, not "If I were Jesus." Jesus didn't start the church that exists today.

MrColossal · Wed 08/02/2006 22:56:53

But he did start the fire...

Kinoko · Thu 09/02/2006 00:05:04

That's an excellent point about porn being fiction, I wish I'd thought of it myself. I was starting to feel like a bit of a hero in this thread, what with everyone quoting me and agreeing with me

Someone (too lazy to check) mentioned the connection of love and porn... I just want to point out that in Japan, they have 'video girls'. These are videos where you can just watch a pretty girl do silly things like run and play on the beach, and talk to you like you're her boyfriend. They aren't necessarilly sexual at all but do quite well! This is just another answer to a person's loneliness, or longing to have someone of their own. Quite an interesting concept, really...

esper · Thu 09/02/2006 00:35:53

Um, no, Eric, I'm sorry, but it was always burnin' since the world's been turnin'.

Pesty · Thu 09/02/2006 00:44:12

No no, eric, it was Uku that started the fire. He IS a professional, after all!

The Inquisitive Stranger · Thu 09/02/2006 00:45:28

Fair enough.

I do watch a fair share of movies that contain violence in them, but I don't really watch them for the violence. Slapstick humour and stuff doesn't bother me, but I'm pretty squeamish at the sight of blood and realistic violence.

On that token, I do think graphic depictions of violence are wrong (and the more tasteless and disgusting it is, the more wrong I think it is, as with porn).

Can I, however, clarify that throughout this thread, whenever I've said that I think something is wrong, it doesn't mean that I'm judging the people who disagree with me? It means I, personally, don't like it, and despite thinking the world would be a better place without it, I recognize that people are free to make their own choices about what they like and dislike.

ManicMatt · Thu 09/02/2006 14:58:10

Hey kinoko, is it in Japan where people can go in a shop and buy second hand ladies panties sealed up in a bag to contain that freshness of the previous owner?

(I did see that on TV once many years ago...)

Kinoko · Thu 09/02/2006 14:59:20

Apparently, but I've never seen any and I don't know anyone who has.

A lot of these are urban myths, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were true either.

Squinky · Thu 09/02/2006 16:30:13

Quote from: ManicMatt on Thu 09/02/2006 14:58:10
Hey kinoko, is it in Japan where people can go in a shop and buy second hand ladies panties sealed up in a bag to contain that freshness of the previous owner?

(I did see that on TV once many years ago...)

That just makes me want to barf....

The Inquisitive Stranger · Thu 09/02/2006 18:24:00

I know! With skid marks and everything? Gross!

big brother · Thu 09/02/2006 18:50:31

I bet they pay extra for skid marks...

Helm · Thu 09/02/2006 20:15:13

QuoteMy goal in this discussion is not to convince anyone that I'm right;[...]why should I take someone else's personal experience over my own?)

We're different, they're different, everybody's different. I appreciate your demeanor when it comes to conversation, but you should realize that the theoretical constructions you suggest about sexuality and the like seem to have an air of objectivity about them. This I believe is the biproduct of that you're rationalizing processes that are very, very complex and wide-reaching via your limited (not your limited as in you're limited, but as in anyone's limited) logical faculties. The fact (and I don't say something is a fact lightly, given how I'm one of the crazy quasi-solipsist people) of the matter is: human behaviour, especially emotional behaviour, is very complex. This complexity invalidates any sort of sweeping generalization that hopes to more or less capture the inner workings of individuals. Whereas when I hadn't had sex I would agree with a lot of your points about the whole process, now that I have had sex, in various configurations and with various partners and in various stages of my life, I just find it extremely difficult to relate to any of your dry, logical points about the causality in sex. Do this, that happens. If you don't do this early enough, that happens. Sex is not a closed system where you can test this stuff out. The people having sex are people, with lives and contexts that are infinitely complex. Everything interfaces with everything. You can't make these sort of statements and hope for ANY sort of credibility, really. They might seem logical, and even might appear to apply to facets of what's going on (especially from your point of view) but in reality there's too much going on for any of these points of be useful for one's personal philosophy.

Sexual practices and the emotions that surround them are very complex, capricious and do not listen much to appeals to reason. Right now, your head is clear, you are not in love nor in lust and your emotional state is generally 'calm' (to make a completely invalid description, really) but when you've experienced a number of situations that make no sense you begin to realize that there's things you experience automatically, focusing your self-awareness on the experience, and then there's the after-the-fact rationalization that's just a safety measure to keep an illusion of control and understanding a knowledge and codification of experience. The latter has very little to do with the former. Emotions do not translate to causality in a simple way. Letters, words, phrases, arguments fail to capture the interconnections to a hopeless degree. What you're explaining when you say 'this or that' about sexuality, is more where you stand right now emotionally, what you think you would do when the time comes, and much less present a clear moral position that indeed applies to your actions to come. In reality, we watch ourselves make "mistakes" (things that we've rationalized as being mistakes) over and over again, playing no active part in the decision-making, and that feels hopeless. So we make rules. And we break them. And we feel hopeless. And we make new rules. And we break them. And so on. Hopefully on the way you've experienced stuff, sex, break-ups, watching a movie with a person that finds you important, whatever. Those things are the ones to watch. Intentfully. Being present. Not the after-the-fact rationalizations. I can paint either picture (for and against promiscuous sex, for and against the modern stylization of sexuality, for and against god, the universe anything) pretty convincingly. Which sort of proves the point: words are words and words have nothing to do with experience.

An examiner that is interested in sociology might gather something useful about very specific aspects of mass behaviour, where a man is abstractified down to a bundle of numbers, but you're saying these things on a personal level. You're saying, this is my life philosophy, I present it to you, learn from me as I learn from you. On that level, the numbers (and words) mean nothing. You have no life philosophy. You have a lot of words, which you might break or keep according to processes you don't even begin to understand (and within which 'free will' means nothing). Life doesn't make sense if you look at it on the microscopic level, and believe me, that's what you're doing. Live is a whole, and we lack the faculties to examine it holistically. Our eyes are too small to gaze on this whole city at once and so on so forth max ernestsims and the fucaultisms you so like.

QuoteAlso, might I ask what makes you think you know exactly what "experiences everyone else in the world is having"? I highly doubt that you know exactly what goes on in the heads of every denizen of the world...

You don't either, yet you adress the issues as if your vantage point benefits over adam's because of logical continuity. It doesn't, and it isn't. Logic doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what's going on in the hypercomplex system that is one man, let alone people in interaction. Everything interfaces with everything. All sides of this argument are more self-validating themselves (feels good) by presenting arguments than talking to each other and learning things.

QuoteObjectification is a form of degradation; it reduces a human being into something whose only use is the pleasure of others. This is why I find it wrong.

See this is the thing. A neat explanation of what you believe to be the case about a strict effect of one thing. Presented logically, and one-sidedly. But what about people who want, for whatever reason, don't try to give me the 'they're ill' line, to be objectified? What about people who simply do not understand or speak of reality in such terms? What about mock-up sex as a replacement of sex, when you're 'having sex' to 'have sex'? When does sex, the image of sex, pornography become it's own message and not the envelope for the message that reads 'this is objectified'? For someone who says they've read post-modernists, your points of view are startingly positivistic. Just saying. Words are wrong. Beware of words. Words make manifest a lot of effects, and truth is not one of them.

QuoteRepression is a form of obsession. Why would you go through such pain to suppress something if you didn't care about it so much? Read "The History of Sexuality" by Michel Foucault for more on this.

Anyone that has read Foucault or Derrida or whatever would find 'repression is a form of obsession' to be a hilarious statement, equally valid (in it's invalidness) to any other 'x is y' statement. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't make these statements, it really means we shouldn't believe them. It means we should make them because they make us feel good, as if we understand the world and are in control. But there's nothing to believe in there. Are you sure you want to cite post-modernists as sources in your replies? They invalidate your method of communication.

ManicMatt · Thu 09/02/2006 20:19:15

Salesman: "Would sir be interested in our super deluxe panty edition? This lady not only shat herself, but she forgot to use a tampon! My mother is a bit senile you see."

Squinky · Thu 09/02/2006 20:44:29

Quote from: ManicMatt on Wed 01/02/2006 17:30:01
Quote from: MrColossal on Wed 01/02/2006 03:43:51
Brown banana you say, Squinky? I see what you mean!

EXPLAIN YOURSELF supossed mature moderator!

Is there something I'm mis-interperating here?

You attack a moderator for joking a little, but now you come in here with your sexaully oriented jokes and now it's cool?

Helm · Thu 09/02/2006 20:58:54

Good day to you sir!

ManicMatt · Thu 09/02/2006 22:07:11

That bananna joke sounded racist. Does my joke come off as sexist then?

Becky · Thu 09/02/2006 22:13:49

No, it comes off as stupid.