>> ^draak13:

People make stupid comments all the time. Whether or not it was intended, this thread was essentially trolled off-topic with enormous rants about religion vs. atheism. Instead of going on forever about it, why not pay as much attention to it as it deserves? Immediately after the religious posting, Enoch magnificently addressed and concluded that religion doesn't consistently shape behavior nearly as much as good parenting in just 1 post. Of course the religious faction is going to reply back; their religion is a strong component of their identity. Just don't mind it and continue the thread forward.
If it's possible to salvage this thread at all, we were actually talking about how behavioral shaping comes most strongly in 2 forms revealed so far:
1) Mass showing of materials which help instill understanding of people who are very different from normal in some way, with sincere discussion (such as dealing with bullying the gay or mentally retarded individuals)
2) Parenting, to ensure that children hold strong values about understanding each other and treating each other well.
Are there any other interesting ideas to add to the list? Also, point 2 is huge; how do you get more parents to parent better?


I think 2) is in fact overrated. Most of a child's development nowadays comes from social interactions at school and in their neighborhood. Judith Harris expounded on this in her book, The Nurture Assumption. Parents have the most impact on their child's early development, before they can socialize on their own. In that small period of time, you can develop a child's intellectual potential, but the moral character, if not already determined or strongly limited by genetics, will be molded by future social interactions. Of course, parents are included in these social interactions, but their influence will be much diluted, especially compared to the school authority figures, the real authority in a school kid's life (they can make life miserable for them both at school and at home, by telling the parents).

So, as the saying goes in Africa, it takes a village to raise a child. Again, something known in the time of the ancient Greeks. Even Plato admitted this, although he tried to bring religion in, hence why he wasn't taken seriously. In this perspective, 1) should be an integral part of society's behavior at large, not just in videos. Although of course videos can have a pregnant effect on a child's mind and act as a surrogate to real life examples. The problem arises when those children are let go after school: they see that real life is not like the videos. They can then try to change the real world, become apathetic or worse, become cynical. And this is what is wrong with preaching: the hypocrisy of the "do as I say not as I do".

To prevent this, you have to teach intellectual self-defense at the same time as the reasons why behavior as shown in the videos is more desirable than behavior seen in real life. This would be hard for even philosophers to do, not to mention underpaid elementary school teachers. In our philosophy department here, there is a minor in "philosophy of children". It has nothing to do with describing the essence of children, but more with how to talk about philosophy with children: how to approach concepts in general and how to touch difficult subject matters. Still, the goal is not for the philosopher to teach children about moral/ethics, but to teach how to think about such things.

So, as a parent be a good role model and teach your child how to fish (think) instead of just giving him fish (preaching). For example, instead of trying to always be the best you can be around your child, be yourself. And when you fail to uphold a principle or whatever, instead of giving excuses be frank and explain why people sometimes fail even if they start with the best of intentions. The important thing is not that you be the best today, but that you be better tomorrow.

Also, never think you can shield your child from anything. Better it be you that show him the ugly things than he finds out by himself or through friends/society. That way you can explain and answer his questions. So: sex, drugs, violence and death education at a very young age repeated at various times to ingrain the facts (not the moral preaching). No need to be hands-on of course! Don't want you all to go rape and kill your children or something.

This is as much as you can do, I think, to "protect" or "arm" your children against society's more nefarious influences without resorting to indoctrination or physical confinement (although these last two options sound more like blinding and amputating than protecting really). If all children were educated like this, we may not get a perfect society (the genes!), but at least it should be a better society and certainly a more honest and open one.

Lyrics:

Your heart is promised to a man and so I have no hope to win it
But consider my propsoal, sir, if you can find a minute
I think the future of our species would be better with you in it
I know you have your problems, and maybe I have mine

But you should leave someone to carry on when you have turned to dust
And plant your genome in an infant, sir, I think it's only just
And you would need someone to bear this child, a woman you can trust
I'll put my body on the line

Mr Stephen Fry, I see no reason why
You wouldn't want someday maybe
To let me have your baby
You would be amazed what science does these days
So think it over, and tell me what you think

I am ideal for this position, which I hope you will not doubt
I've got those child-bearing hips you always hear so much about
I have permission from my boyfriend, and he'd like to help you out
I know it isn't much, but it's what I have to give

And I don't drink and I don't smoke and I eat all my leafy greens
I'll try to go to bed much earlier, I'll get all my vaccines
And I'll put headphones on my belly and I'll cut back on caffeine
I'll hang an iPad in the crib

Oh Stephen Fry, I see no reason why
You wouldn't want someday maybe, to let me have your baby
And I'm in my prime
So you've got loads of time
So when you're ready, let me know what you think

You deserve to reproduce
And I was built to procreate
I hope my womb can be of use
So think it over, I can wait
And one day if you're sure of it
Then I can be your surrogate

Oh Stephen Fry, I hope you'll tell us why
You wouldn't want someday maybe, to let me have your baby
We adore you dear
I come before you here
To be the only woman you will ever need
And my fertility is nearly guaranteed
Cause I have all the tools you require to breed
So send along your seed

You can be my surrogate any time baby.

So to follow your logic.... if it is proved scientifically that being gay is not a choice, but is biologically inherent to the organism, you would treat their inability to have a child "normally" like an other infertile heterosexual couple?

Because your argument seems to hinge on the word "choice" if I read it correctly.

In reply to this comment by Pprt:
Yes I did, I'm averse to using the surrogate route to garner sympathy because it's biological.

They can't have it both ways... they made their lifestyle choice. Now they should live with it. If it's a man who fathers a child and then before bi/homosexual it's different. The kid has a mother and can rely on that psychological comfort.
In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
I'm just curious.... did you watch the video? Or just read the comments?

In reply to this comment by Pprt:
Homosexuals should not be granted the right to adopt.
In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
Why would you say that?

In reply to this comment by Pprt:
Let me know when there's a petition AGAINST them getting this child.

wow any idea *why* the money is holding on to a pig?

...because the BABY monkey, like all baby monkeys, instinctively grabs on to his mother. Newborns will cling to the mother's belly; older infants often ride on her back. So here you have a video of a baby monkey who's obviously been taken from its mother, whose need for constant physical contact and warmth is so strong that he's clinging to the boar. The boar is basically acting as a surrogate mother to him and that explains why he's so upset when he falls off and starts running after the boar. Of course it also explains why he settles down as soon as he's able to grab onto the boar again.

Sorry to say but there's nothing funny about the video when you really think about it. It's quite sad actually.

>> ^blankfist:
Forcing people to do things that aren't voluntary is wrong. Forcing people to redress damages is not wrong.


You are dancing around an 800 pound gorilla: property is violence, markets require property, therefore preferring markets over governments does nothing to address what you claim is your primary motivation.

example:

You have a car in front of your house, you claim it is your property. I have no contract with you or anybody else where I agree not to use said car. If I take it, you or your surrogate, will use violence to coerce me into returning "your property", and then you will also likely take something which I use as penalty. -- by your definition this can not happen in a free market, because the implementation of the property system itself requires the use of coercive violence applied subject to a non-voluntary (social?) contract.

This is not to say that markets/property are a bad technology, only that your "solution" does not address the problem you claim it does.

Via Wiki knowit all Pedia.com

Because SOMEONE wanted to be Obtuse about it...

" The Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a group of largely unconscious (dynamically repressed) ideas and feelings which concentrate on the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex.[1][2] According to classical psychoanalytic theory, the complex appears during the so-called "oedipal phase" of libidinal and ego development; i.e. between the ages of three and five years, though oedipal manifestation may be detected earlier.[3][4]

The complex is named after Greek mythical character Oedipus, who (albeit unknowingly) kills his father, Laius and marries his mother, Jocasta. According to Sigmund Freud, the Oedipus complex is a common phenomenon, built in phylogenetically, and is responsible for much unconscious guilt. The Oedipus complex, as Freud put it:
“ His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours – because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.[5] ”

Classical theory considers the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex to be developmentally desirable, the key to the development of sexual roles and identity. Freud posited that boys and girls resolved the conflicts differently as a result of the male's castration anxiety (caused by oedipal rivalry with the father) and the female's penis envy. He also held that the unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex could result in neurosis, paedophilia, and homosexuality.

Classical theory holds that "resolution" of the Oedipus complex takes place through identification with the parent of the same sex and (partial) temporary renunciation of the parent of the opposite sex; the opposite-sex parent is then "rediscovered" as the growing person's adult sexual object.

In classical theory, people who are fixated at the oedipal level are "mother-fixated" or "father-fixated", and reveal this by choosing sexual partners who are discernible surrogates for their parent(s)."

THE CLIPS:
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Babylon A.D.
Knowing
Sherlock Holmes
Death Race
The Uninvited
Max Payne
Fast & Furious
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Midnight Meat Train
Quarantine
2012
Ninja Assassin
Twilight Saga: New Moon
Whiteout
The Final Destination
Daybreakers
Race to Witch Mounta More..in
Moon
Inglourious Basterds
The Box
Obsessed
Friday the 13th
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Watchmen
Dragonball
The Spirit
Carriers
Bangkok Dangerous
District 9
Surrogates
The Book of Eli
Mirrors
The Happening
Wanted
(some Russian title)
Sorority Row
Fighting
The Road
Angels & Demons
Jennifer's Body
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Pineapple Express
The Last House on the Left
The Haunting in Connecticut
Shutter Island

THE MUSIC:

AudioMachine - Akkadian Empire
Groove Addicts - Zero Hour
Audio Network - Mars
AudioMachine - Lachrimae (VadoskiN DNB mix)
Wild Rumpus Music - Blame It on the Falling Sky 2.0
John Murphy - The Last House On The Left SCORE

Actually, marriage, like any other word in the English language, is largely how it's define. In the USA, the term is a contract.

If you define marriage as between a man and woman, that's one defination.
If you define marriage as the process to procreation, that's another defination.
if you define marriage as between two adults, that's a third.

What alot of you get hung up on, is that 'marriage', is not only a religious concept and meaning. There's a financial and legal defination.

The financial defination, usually means, things are joined shared in terms of expenses and financial gain. In addition, if a spouce passes away, the other, gains full ownership of assets and expenses.

Legal defination, is that, a spouse can make decisions for their spouce, in the even their loved one is unable to make decisions (i.e. in a coma, serving on active duty, in prison, etc). This applies to issues in which legal definations are needed as the result of issues that arise from local, county, state, and federal laws and regulation.

So in the end, if you oppose gay marriage, not from a religious point of view, you would need to define exactly what is the financial and legal documentations and rights of the people. I have yet, to hear one arguement that is non-religious in nature, that holds weight, in why two homosexual people can not marry. Even the one on procreation. Since, the couple can still adopt, or maybe one or both have children from a previous relationship. Still, they could hire a surrogate mother to carry a child to term (and be paid for it too).

Now, some argue, that if gay marriage was allowed. Marrying one's dog/cat, or sibling, or underage person, or, taking a 2nd or 8th wife, is equally 'ok'.

Marrying one's pet: This is not allowed under contract law of the USA, on the grounds that a pet (i.e. a dog) can not communicate understanding of the legal issues of being married. Notice your dog doesnt get Visa/Mastercard applications in the mail? There's a reason for it.

Marrying one's silbing/underage person: Contract law can only 'stick' if A) The person is 18 or above, or B) Has a parent's permission (inwhich case, the parent is held libable for any damages). Except for a few states, most states in the US prohibit this.

Marrying multiple people: Besides the fact that this would just be a legal nightmare to navigate through. One would have to make the arguement, that those in previous but current marriage contracts, agree, to the terms of the new marriage. Unless one is a Mormon, I doubt anyone would really pursue this for legimate reasons.

Only "gummint busybodies and religious crusaders" are going to be sympathetic? I think that you have spent too much time on the internet. It doesn't take crazy people to realize that nothing good comes from porn and that it is a destructive, disgusting, immoral industry.

The quantum side of the mushroom is that I agree and disagree at the same time. Pr0n is a con, a tease and an addictive surrogate for a great many men. But it also fulfills a biological need (if women wanted to fark as much as men, there'd be no one doing anything else) as well as a need for illusion and fantasy. One could also make a pretty convincing argument that all the romance crap that women willfully subject themselves to creates an unhealthy and unrealistic view of men and relationships. Many a man has suddenly found himself in the doghouse for not being able to telepathically read a woman's mind.

The majority of sane people believe (pr0n is bad). It is not an unusual, backward, or unfounded notion. I don't think that people of my parents' generation realize the extent to which their sons and daughters are falling victim to the lie and becoming involved in or addicted to porn.

Billions are being spent on pr0n, but watching pr0n is just one of those things that people do that they see no reason to admit to. Sexuality cannot be separated from humanity and it's been around awhile.

http://india-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_erotic_temples_of_khajuraho

If we create a market for this filth, someone is going to do it.

It's economics. The human sex drive came first (sorry) and pr0n is just the latest incarnation of market forces fulfilling a need...and it's only going to get worse (or better). To paraphrase (and update) Dennis Miller: If some unemployed construction worker in Trenton, New Jersey, lying on a sofa with a bong, can jack in to his computer and make love to Megan Fox for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka."

I realize that sex workers have more options than 19th century factory workers, but there is no way that working in the sex industry is psychologically healthy. Someone is always going to do it as long as the industry continues to grow.

Just like Lubben says, those who are involved defend the industry. I find that porn users defend porn like it's their firstborn. Regulate and make as many laws as you want. Porn is and always will be a plague on society.

Pr0n has its place in both society and life itself. A great many religious people can and do watch it.

It would be wonderful if everyone found the love of their life and had a committed relationship, etc., but that's not how the world works.

Prostitution should be legal the world over. The Europeans are light years ahead of us on this, and Jerusalem is the prostitution capital of the world.

The internets must be used for more than witty political remarks and sifting!

I chose selections from an article about male porn habit that addresses the subject for your reading pleasure. I have a few problems with the article. It seems to assume that only lonely and hurting people use porn, and that isn't true. Still, it makes some good points:

"How addictive is pornography?

‘I'm frightened of real sex, which is unscripted and unpredictable so I engage in pornography, which is totally under my control. But it brings intense disappointment because it is not what I'm really searching for. It's rather like a hungry person standing outside the window of a restaurant, thinking that they're going to get fed.’ That’s how one man described his porn addiction to Edward Marriott...

...Like many men, I first saw pornography during puberty. At boarding school...long before my first sexual relationship, porn was my sex education....Being away from home, my friends and I longed for love, closeness, acceptance. The women over whom we masturbated - surrogate mothers, if you like - seemed to be offering this but, of course, were never going to provide it. The untruths it taught me on top of this disappointment - that women are always available, that sex is about what a man can do to a woman - I am only now succeeding in unlearning.

...'Just like drugs, pornography provides a quick fix, a masturbatory universe people can get stuck in. This can result in their not being able to involve anyone else.’

...Men, as much as women, hunger for intimacy. For many males, locked into a life in which self-esteem has grown intrinsically entwined with performance, sex assumes a freight of demands and needs...

...It is into this troubled scenario that porn finds easy access. For in pornography, unlike in real life, there is no criticism, real or imagined, of male performance...

...Women in porn are always, in the words of the average internet site, ‘hot and ready’, eager to please...

...Men, say psychologists, also feel threatened by the ‘emotional power’ they perceive women wielding over them...they are at the same time painfully aware that their only salvation from isolation comes in being sexually acceptable to women. This sense of neediness can provoke intense anger that, all too often, finds expression in porn...

...The porn industry, of course, dismisses such talk, yet occasionally comes a glimmer of authenticity. Bill Margold, left, one of the industry's longest-serving film performers, was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century. Margold admitted: ‘My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams.'...

...As well as ‘eroticising male supremacy’, in the words of anti-porn campaigner John Stoltenberg, pornography also attempts to assuage other male fears, in particular that of erection failure. Pornography answers men's fetishistic need for visual proof of phallic potency...

...Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and relationships. It seduces vulnerable, lonely men with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect of pornography. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: ‘I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long.’

Like many men, McLeod is torn. Quick to claim that porn has ‘no harmful effects’, he is also happy to acknowledge the contradictory fact that it is ‘deadening’.

Extended exposure to pornography can have a whole raft of effects.
By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. ‘I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films.’ Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. ‘There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech.’

...Even when in a loving sexual relationship, men who have used porn say that, all too often, they see their partner through a kind of ‘pornographic filter’. This effect is summed up by US sociologist Harry Brod, in LynneSegal's essay Sweet Sorrows, Painful Pleasures: ‘There have been too many times when I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for a woman wasn't enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented deeply my lifelong indoctrination into (pornography).’...

...Running through all pornography use, according to David Morgan, is the desire for control...

...The user of pornography is also psychologically on the run.
Welldon says: ‘people who use pornography feel dead inside, and they are trying to avoid being aware of that pain. There is a sense of liberation, which is temporary: that's why pornography is so repetitive - you have to go back again and again.’...

...For John-Paul Day, an Edinburgh architect, the experience of being a small boy with a dying mother drove him to seek solace in masturbation. He says he has been ‘addicted’ to pornography his entire adult life. He has attended meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous for 12 years...

...Like drugs and drink, pornography - as Day has realised - is an addictive substance. Porn actor Kelly Cooke says this applies on either side of the camera: ‘It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up, you realise how addictive it is, both for consumers and performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it.’

The cycle of addiction leads one way: towards ever harder material...

Morgan believes ‘all pornography ends up with S&M’.
The myth about porn, as a witness told the 1983 Minneapolis city council public hearings on it, is that ‘it frees the libido and gives men an outlet for sexual expression. This is truly a myth. I have found pornography not only does not liberate men, but on the contrary is a source of bondage. Men masturbate to pornography only to become addicted to the fantasy.'..."

Read the whole article here: http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2302

Other articles on the sibject of porn "addiction":

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

http://men.webmd.com/guide/is-pornography-addictive

Wow, that was heavy handed. They made some articulate points about the value of individuality in the beginning. But then portrayed all "normal" people as cruel, intolerant, unimaginative, misanthropic warmongers.

For a video that pretends to preach love and understanding it seems bizarrely filled with hate for humanity. Except of course upside down people, presumably those are the surrogate for hippies, they're alright. But everyone else - total fucking sucm.

It's great to see a journalist permitted to speak his opinion on the news. That is strangely rare in America. Not that they don't all have opinions, just the only acceptable ways to express them are through innuendo, spin or a talking head surrogate. Frankness and sincerity are the last taboos.

Not coincidentally that was also more insightful then any report I've seen on the elections.

That's kind of a straw man argument. There are all kinds of fertility treatments, and new ones come along all the time, and we're almost at a point where a completely infertile couple could produce a genetic offspring (through surrogates, but genetically theirs). A more valid argument is that since women can produce children simply by going to a sperm bank, why is Pat Buchanan against homosexual women getting married? With sperm easily available, they're even more fertile than a heterosexual couple.

In California, where domestic partnerships by law grant all the same rights as marriages, the gay marriage debate is simply a culture war over a word. Both sides of the argument seem petty to me, one for having couple's rights but wanting a different name for it, and the other for exaggerating the effects of redefining a word.

And the scary thing? Some of the things that 'scientists' did with monkeys was, really... this bad, and much, much worse.

Some really horrible stuff was done by Harry Harlow. He subjected baby monkeys to horrible, horrible things all in the name of finding out what effects having bad parental figures etc. has on children.

Now, I love science, I love the scientific method, but what he did was really horrible and cruel, and is the type of experimentation that those who are religious zealots point to and say 'Look what happens when science is allowed free reign'. Well, no, it's not the fault of science, it's the fault of someone who doesn't feel compassion for other living creatures.

With total isolation, surrogate mothers who hurt the baby monkeys and the like, you can see where a skit like this comes from. Sometimes 'scientists' lose sight of humanity.

But don't for a minute think that's confined to science... far more often you find religious extremists reducing their fellow man to less than animal status because of what they believe and feeling they are worthless and able to be exterminated.