Pornography

[Orlion]

Is any answer actually central truth, and not merely another personal opinion?
Can any answer offered be what really is, revealing other answers to be misled or false?

No.

Personally, I am skeptical of other people's interest in mere opinion, except as titillation. I think the question of truth far more fascinating.

Then your time in this topic is wasted, no? If you're only interested in truth or fact, there's a science forum here. Issues of society and culture will never be about anything but opinion.

Hmmm. So the physical sciences are"truth" and the metaphysical simply imagination? So you have a materialist philosophy. :shrug:

The modern idea that we can "know" physical things and only "believe" metaphysical/spiritual things is simply and definitely false. As Fr Tom Hopko said, you have to believe things in order to know them, and know them in order to believe them.
I believe/know that my mother loves me, and there is no scientific way of proving it.

My purpose in my comment is to point out that if people cannot arrive at any true answer, then THEY are wasting their time in mere entertainment - as I said, 'titillation'.

How about Lewis, though? Anything intelligent to say to that?

You do have people who watch food get taken apart... they're generally chefs in training... or people who like food. If you check out the Galley, you'll find photos of food, being prepared, after it's prepared, that illicits a similar reaction that porn has: namely, desire. Of course, we often cook what we see differently or present it differently than how we see it. Same with porn. And of course, some people rely to heavily on these depictions.

Ultimately, I think Lewis fails to make things look ridiculous as he is trying to do in that bolded passage. Of course, that's how I view it.

Also, I think it's very easy to prove if your mother loves you. All you need to do is define what you mean by "loves you", observe, and presto! It only is impossible if you decide to leave love as a nebulous, nearly meaningless word.

[Cambo]

From pornography to materialism and the nature of desire, truth and love...Way to go Watchers!

That Lewis quote is interesting. I've been to a couple of strip bars, and they really did nothing much for me. Boobies, whoopee, yawn. And I do like the food analogy, although I draw slightly different conclusions than Lewis. I have to go to work soon, so I'll reply in depth a bit later.

On materialism, opinion and truth, I see science as dealing in facts, which are one form of truth, which some would call the only form of truth; objective, quantifiable, falsifiable data, the materialist viewpoint. I do think there are other, deeper truths, but I doubt very much that we are going to find them on an internet discussion board. The very most we could hope for is discovering truths about others and ourselves. This is crucially important, but different to what I think Rus means by Truth. The point about opinion is therefore valid, and not merely advocating pointless titillation. By sharing opinions, especially with those who don't necessarily agree with us, we are unlikely to ever reach a consensus, some ultimately, objective, unanswerably correct truth. I hope we may reach the conclusion that there are many truths, at least on the subjective level.

Subjectivity is an objective fact...

[Fist and Faith]

My purpose in my comment is to point out that if people cannot arrive at any true answer, then THEY are wasting their time in mere entertainment - as I said, 'titillation'.

So entertainment is not worthwhile, in and of itself?

Or are you upset because you already know nobody here is going to embrace what you have to say about pornography - arrive at your true answer - and it's frustrating you beyond endurance? Many of us believe we already have arrived at true answers, and are discussing them. Some here may not have arrived at truths on various topics yet, and are here learning what others have to say.

Whatever your problem, you still posted, eh? Why is that? Why are you wasting your time? You're upset in your first post of the thread, for crying out loud. If you only post in order to change others to your worldview, and not accomplishing that goal upsets you... Well, we see the results of that more and more these days. You should stop posting, out of self-preservation.

Or, better yet, don't be bothered that people disagree with you. Just share thoughts and beliefs.

How about Lewis, though? Anything intelligent to say to that?

Intelligent? In whose opinion? But I'll give it a go...

But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt
inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.

No, that's exactly its function. Males of nearly all species do what they can to spread their genetic material as far and wide as possible. Males of many species even go so far as to kill the offspring of other males, so that their own offspring have less competition, and flourish. Not producing a small village's worth of babies in ten years is denying its function. The reason many guys don't is because they can't make it happen. In a sense, a male sex-addict is nothing more than a guy who is better at it than the rest of us.

However, not populating villages really isn't denying sex's function. Humans are a bit more complicated than animals. For various reasons, humans fight against this biological imperative. That, too, is natural. It's what we do.

But looking when there's a naked women in view?? You bet your life! That's as obvious and natural a reaction as can possibly be. Doesn't mean we're not getting enough, or not happy, or anything else. It just means men like to look at naked women. If we didn't, we wouldn't bother trying to get mates. If women walked past us every day, and we weren't attracted... Know what I mean?

[High Lord Tolkien]

Or, better yet, don't be bothered that people disagree with you. Just share thoughts and beliefs.

Or endlessly quote Chesterson's and Lewis' thoughts and beliefs.

[rusmeister]

Or, better yet, don't be bothered that people disagree with you. Just share thoughts and beliefs.

Or endlessly quote Chesterson's and Lewis' thoughts and beliefs.

2 thoughts here, HLT -

1) you seem to deny the idea that beliefs can be shared.
2)And that everyone must produce absolutely original ideas.

Both absurd.

If one person's ideas convince another person that they are right, and the argument valid, then the argument is perceived as true.
If it is true (or even false), then the argument, not the personality expressing it, is the issue. On that background, an unwillingness to engage looks from anyone who DOES think it true as an inability to counter it.

I'm not buying the "post only your own words here" idea. If you think, for example, that Fist's arguments are more true than mine, say you agree with them. And you'll be doing the same thing when I say I agree with a dead person. That only living people should be in possession of the truth is nonsense.

That leads to the other point. There is nothing new under the sun. All of these arguments have been argued before. Some people might think that people of the Middle Ages or the late Roman or Byzantine empires were sitting in front of campfires grunting because they didn't have anything to say, but that would be mere ignorance. Enlightenment is not a period of history - it is learning that our ancestors knew more than we generally give them credit for, and actually thought through all the things we argue about today.
Most natural scientists have enough sense to refer to what has already been determined and build upon it and not waste time trying to constantly establish the mere beginnings of science on their own.
So the stupid thing is to refuse to study what has been argued before. Of COURSE we prefer those arguments that we agree with most. But if we want to call ourselves intelligent, we must be willing to engage with the most intelligent arguments that our opponents would throw at us. Not wanting to may be justifiable, but not on a purely intellectual level. Maybe you're too busy with multiple children or 3 jobs or 50 other books to read. Then say so. But don't go talking as if you could disdain the arguments offered without bothering to examine them. It's silly to speak as if we were inventing all these arguments afresh.

I say let us post pages of the arguments between Bertrand Russell and Fr Copleston, of Chesterton and Clarence Darrow or Bernard Shaw. Let us take the arguments of the past - and find the best in them, and discover how so much better they are than our own pitiful imitations - and I include my own as well as others' under that adjective. And maybe we'll ALL really learn things as a result, instead of merely bandying opinions.

[Fist and Faith]

The thing is, rus, nothing you're posting of those guys has made anybody go read it all. Heck, I would love to find something worthwhile in Chesterton, if only because the enthusiasm you have for him makes me think there must be something. So I read the intro to TEM again last night. It's negatively motivated. By which I mean it comes out of things like defensiveness, and even anger. And as if that's not bad enough, he uses all these wacky analogies. Analogies that you would be picking apart to the nth degree if I had made them. And he floats here and there, possibly getting back to the original topic, but, by then, it really doesn't matter any more.

And that's just the intro.

And I've gotten at least some of the same things out of all the excerpts you've posted. To which I add the fact that I simply don't agree with his premises. I see no reason to read many thousands more pages in order to understand your position on things.

You don't like hearing that we don't like him, and you don't like hearing that we would rather talk to you than read Chesterton. Them's the breaks. If you continue to quote him, you're going to keep hearing it. And we're going to continue to not read very much of him. If you continue to post here, you'll either have to endure it, or find a new tactic. You say this is the best way to get your point across. So how's it working out?

[Vraith]

As it happens, I know a bit about G.K. and Shaw in respect to each other.
A fair amount of it is interesting stuff. [hell, Plato is interesting stuff to me...I just think, though inspired and brilliant in a lot of ways, much of it is also just wrong. The wrongness doesn't, in some ways, detract from the worth or accomplishment...but it does in others. It's worth understanding, but not to believe true or live by]
But, as Fist said of the one, I say of both: I do not agree with the premises...for either of them.
And actually, I have a problem with Shaw exactly as I do with Lewis:
Their works were best works when their belief systems were more veiled. [That's why Narnia is superior to the Space books].

And, back to the excerpt you posted:
To agree with your quoted piece, I'd have to agree with the premise that every sex act should occur only with appropriate prior consecration, and with the purpose of making babies, and everything else about it is pointless at best, sinful at worst.
But I don't.
I'd also have to agree that the drive to eat and the sex-drive are basically the same. Which I don't. That seems semi-Freudian to me [not logically/directly, just similar philosophical milieu, and I think Freud's interpretation/conflation of sex with everything else is basically silly.]

[Cambo]

Hmm. You know rus, I do see where your coming from with the whole reverence for those who came before us thing. I agree most things, if not everything, has been said before in some way or another. I agree some of the most worthwile things that have ever been said were said hundreds or thousands of years ago.

However, I don't think it necessarily means that you or I have nothing worthwile to add to the debate. For one thing, context changes. Chesterton or Lewis might have some stuff to say on the consumption of sexuality, but what to they have to say on the unique effects the internet has had on this? You or I, rus, are much more qualified than they are to comment on this, so even if you still agree with Lewis, I'd imagine that for the contemporary world you'd have much more relevant stuff to say. You are, after all, an active participant in Web 2.0.

You may say that, while the context is dated, the central message of the "dead people" you like quoting remains the same, and you still agree with that message. Well yes, but similar to what Fist was saying, if we don't immediately agree with the message or its underlying assumptions, we are unlikely to just leave it there. At that point, it can be frustrating to have your opponent just keep pointing and saying "that's what I think."

Suppose, for example, I were to counter Lewis' argument that visual erotica is a symptom of a hyperactive sexual appetite, by pointing out that there is evidence of rates of sexual assault decline as pornographic material becomes more readily available. This has been particualrly marked as people have observed areas gaining access to highspeed broadband, effectively granting everyone access to pornographic material, whenever they want. I doubt Lewis has anything interesting to say about internet-age pornography and decline in sexual assaults, but I bet you do.

[rusmeister]

As it happens, I know a bit about G.K. and Shaw in respect to each other.
A fair amount of it is interesting stuff. [hell, Plato is interesting stuff to me...I just think, though inspired and brilliant in a lot of ways, much of it is also just wrong. The wrongness doesn't, in some ways, detract from the worth or accomplishment...but it does in others. It's worth understanding, but not to believe true or live by]
But, as Fist said of the one, I say of both: I do not agree with the premises...for either of them.
And actually, I have a problem with Shaw exactly as I do with Lewis:
Their works were best works when their belief systems were more veiled. [That's why Narnia is superior to the Space books].

And, back to the excerpt you posted:
To agree with your quoted piece, I'd have to agree with the premise that every sex act should occur only with appropriate prior consecration, and with the purpose of making babies, and everything else about it is pointless at best, sinful at worst.
But I don't.
I'd also have to agree that the drive to eat and the sex-drive are basically the same. Which I don't. That seems semi-Freudian to me [not logically/directly, just similar philosophical milieu, and I think Freud's interpretation/conflation of sex with everything else is basically silly.]

Good post, Vraith -
I totally agree on Freud. Did you check out that totally non-partisan PBS special on Lewis and Freud?
www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ (click on "The Program")

The one thing I have to object to is the idea that the Christian tradition treats the sex act as pointless outside of baby-making. The bed is undefiled - the act is holy, whether or not babies result, and the pleasure IS a gift to us, and not pointless. But the gift is to be used in the right context. Dessert is properly enjoyed after dinner, not whenever one feels like it. The good things in life have proper use- and abuse.

What really strikes me is the widespread idea that Christianity is gloomy and sees physical things as bad - including (esp) sex. One of the problems is the lumping of all forms of Christianity together, as if they were philosophically the same thing. (That's part of the bigger problem of treating all religions as alike). In the Orthodox view (largely shared by Catholics, Anglicans, and some others - IOW, a major cross-section of Christianity, esp. outside the US) God made the world and saw that it was GOOD. Everything was good in its beginnings. Even Satan. Even Saruman. Tolkien really nails that in his stories. And so, sex is good. It was precisely the groups that spread into America, such as the Puritans and descendants of Calvin, that were the most Manichean - that saw pleasure as bad - that treated all sex as dirty, all drink as evil and forbade all fun.

Only we Fell - chose ourselves and turned away from God and sought the source of Life in ourselves, seeking to make ourselves our own gods, and so, cut off from the true Source by our own choice, began to die. And began messed up in countless ways. And the desires, which before could not be wrong (or 'bent' as Lewis put it) became wrong/bent. We appeared in a Fallen world.

You may know a lot of that already, but when I see ideas that suggest that what I accept as true condemns pleasure, I have to "strike back".

I also object to the idea that the sex drive and hunger are basically the same - certainly there are differences - but in that piece Lewis was drawing an analogy for a popular - as opposed to highly educated - audience to get across the idea that there is something abnormal about the modern treatment of the sex drive.

But like I said, I agree with, or at least understand a lot of what you were saying.

(Edit: I'm doing triage on response to posts - I'll try to get to folks when I can. Please be patient!)

[rusmeister]

Hmm. You know rus, I do see where your coming from with the whole reverence for those who came before us thing. I agree most things, if not everything, has been said before in some way or another. I agree some of the most worthwile things that have ever been said were said hundreds or thousands of years ago.

However, I don't think it necessarily means that you or I have nothing worthwile to add to the debate. For one thing, context changes. Chesterton or Lewis might have some stuff to say on the consumption of sexuality, but what to they have to say on the unique effects the internet has had on this? You or I, rus, are much more qualified than they are to comment on this, so even if you still agree with Lewis, I'd imagine that for the contemporary world you'd have much more relevant stuff to say. You are, after all, an active participant in Web 2.0.

You may say that, while the context is dated, the central message of the "dead people" you like quoting remains the same, and you still agree with that message. Well yes, but similar to what Fist was saying, if we don't immediately agree with the message or its underlying assumptions, we are unlikely to just leave it there. At that point, it can be frustrating to have your opponent just keep pointing and saying "that's what I think."

Suppose, for example, I were to counter Lewis' argument that visual erotica is a symptom of a hyperactive sexual appetite, by pointing out that there is evidence of rates of sexual assault decline as pornographic material becomes more readily available. This has been particualrly marked as people have observed areas gaining access to highspeed broadband, effectively granting everyone access to pornographic material, whenever they want. I doubt Lewis has anything interesting to say about internet-age pornography and decline in sexual assaults, but I bet you do.

Thanks, Cambo.
I mostly agree.
The only thing I might offer anything 'counter' on is that in the stuff I have found truth in, it is precisely in its relevance, and it is what remains relevant when what is fad and fashion passes. Things that are popular today are passe tomorrow. What remains then? That which is always true.
I've pointed to those writers because I have found them ESPECIALLY relevant to our time, and that it is the issues they raise that is more important than whether it is done in newspapers, on new-fangled radio (or at least, at one time it was), on TV or the internet. The problem of the sex instinct remains the same, no matter what current* issues are raised. So I agree, continue the discussion - but I disagree strongly with the crowd that says "We will not consider any ideas unless you post them again in your own words". I read them and immediately see their relevance. I'm willing to use plenty of my own words to show their relevance. But why should I have to reinvent the wheel? Such a demand effectively insists that I keep my arguments as primitive and undeveloped as possible, or that I spend many more hours that I simply don't have in trying to deliver what to many now seems an alien worldview.

*All of these words, like current, which refers to that which floats away - the current that brings stuff and takes it away, the very source of temporary fashion; and like modern, which means 'temporary', 'fashionable', 'what is NOW' - the most subjective understanding you could imagine. A favorite line of mine is from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty", where, in heated discussion with his father the king, Prince Philip says "But Father - this is the 14th century!" - which we laugh at, not getting that whenever we take pride in our own modernity we do precisely the same thing. Thus, the temporary comes to naught. The current takes it away. It is the eternal that matters. (That which is always true for those allergic to the word "eternal".)

But thanks again for your kind words!

[rusmeister]

The thing is, rus, nothing you're posting of those guys has made anybody go read it all. Heck, I would love to find something worthwhile in Chesterton, if only because the enthusiasm you have for him makes me think there must be something. So I read the intro to TEM again last night. It's negatively motivated. By which I mean it comes out of things like defensiveness, and even anger. And as if that's not bad enough, he uses all these wacky analogies. Analogies that you would be picking apart to the nth degree if I had made them. And he floats here and there, possibly getting back to the original topic, but, by then, it really doesn't matter any more.

And that's just the intro.

And I've gotten at least some of the same things out of all the excerpts you've posted. To which I add the fact that I simply don't agree with his premises. I see no reason to read many thousands more pages in order to understand your position on things.

You don't like hearing that we don't like him, and you don't like hearing that we would rather talk to you than read Chesterton. Them's the breaks. If you continue to quote him, you're going to keep hearing it. And we're going to continue to not read very much of him. If you continue to post here, you'll either have to endure it, or find a new tactic. You say this is the best way to get your point across. So how's it working out?

Well, Fist, with you I'll just quote Khan Noonian Singh:
"Perhaps I no longer need to try, Admiral."

Seriously, your statement that you see the intro to TEM as "negatively motivated" has me scratching my head. "Defensiveness"? Depends what you mean, I suppose. Anger? Huh?
The Intro begins with modern criticism and modern popular conceptions of faith. Those views are less than flattering. The negativity which you have ascribed to GKC is actually the negativity of the critics, and so the only negativity GKC is guilty of here is in negating the negation. Defensive? Yes, of something WORTH defending. That is a positive, not negative thing. And he DOES point to the positive thing that the critics would cast as negative (and he begins with it in the very first paragraph). And he expresses a lot of the kind of criticism expressed around here.

That's why I think that your own worldview has you coloring what you read - as it did for Ali - making reading it useless for you. Chesterton is anything but negative. Even Ali admitted to his recurring sense of humor - which I would describe as bubbling, myself. I'll say to you "Don't read Chesterton!" It is far worse to read a jolly fat man, see him as negative, angry and defensive, and to think you have actually read (in the sense of understood - agree or not) him, than to not read him at all. You won't investigate my faith - fine. Even though I still say "Come and see!"
Like you said, you are not so negatively disposed to Lewis. So read him if you will, and find what you do appreciate and grasp. I freely admit that I had read Lewis thoroughly before I encountered Chesterton, and GKC was a very difficult read for me at first. And I was already not on the side of the critics that GKC takes apart, so I was able to read his works and see the humor and ultimate cheerfulness behind even his most serious words.

[rusmeister]

My purpose in my comment is to point out that if people cannot arrive at any true answer, then THEY are wasting their time in mere entertainment - as I said, 'titillation'.

So entertainment is not worthwhile, in and of itself?

Or are you upset because you already know nobody here is going to embrace what you have to say about pornography - arrive at your true answer - and it's frustrating you beyond endurance? Many of us believe we already have arrived at true answers, and are discussing them. Some here may not have arrived at truths on various topics yet, and are here learning what others have to say.

Whatever your problem, you still posted, eh? Why is that? Why are you wasting your time? You're upset in your first post of the thread, for crying out loud. If you only post in order to change others to your worldview, and not accomplishing that goal upsets you... Well, we see the results of that more and more these days. You should stop posting, out of self-preservation.

Or, better yet, don't be bothered that people disagree with you. Just share thoughts and beliefs.

How about Lewis, though? Anything intelligent to say to that?

Intelligent? In whose opinion? But I'll give it a go...

But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt
inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.

No, that's exactly its function. Males of nearly all species do what they can to spread their genetic material as far and wide as possible. Males of many species even go so far as to kill the offspring of other males, so that their own offspring have less competition, and flourish. Not producing a small village's worth of babies in ten years is denying its function. The reason many guys don't is because they can't make it happen. In a sense, a male sex-addict is nothing more than a guy who is better at it than the rest of us.

However, not populating villages really isn't denying sex's function. Humans are a bit more complicated than animals. For various reasons, humans fight against this biological imperative. That, too, is natural. It's what we do.

But looking when there's a naked women in view?? You bet your life! That's as obvious and natural a reaction as can possibly be. Doesn't mean we're not getting enough, or not happy, or anything else. It just means men like to look at naked women. If we didn't, we wouldn't bother trying to get mates. If women walked past us every day, and we weren't attracted... Know what I mean?

To respond, or not to respond...
On the one hand, I think that responding to you IS a waste of time.
On the other hand, there are things I would like to say that are not about my worldview, but about yours (plural).
Whether things sadden or disappoint me is irrelevant to truth. And that's the problem as I see it.

Many of us believe we already have arrived at true answers, and are discussing them. Some here may not have arrived at truths on various topics yet, and are here learning what others have to say.

The trouble I have with this is the general attitude toward truth - that it is something of entertainment, and not worth fighting over. If it is TRUE, and the others mutually and exclusively contradict it, then they are actually false. If they thereby are a threat to true human happiness, then we should fight them tooth and nail. But here what I get is the supreme unimportance of what is seen as "true" - that it is an "opinion" and a subject for mild curiosity and entertainment at best.

When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating.

I'd add "loose a noble hound with the object of actually catching dinner" (as opposed to loosing it so it can just run up and down and bark).

If we HAVE arrived at truth, and know the answer, then wherefore the interest in answers we already know to be false? If the earth really IS round, then who cares what flat-earthers think? We would want to know their arguments only to show them that they are wrong, if we think we are really right - unless we are not at all sure that the world really IS round. In which case we HAVEN'T arrived at (ultimate) truth.

But I'll submit that a number of people HAVEN'T arrived at truth, and realize this, and so some of them may find some truth in what I - and those I quote - say.

As to sex - I know what you mean. But we see even the desire to look at a nude woman in a different light than you do. In that light, attraction is normal, but the desire must be controlled precisely because we are Fallen. And the only way to do that is to not look when we are not in the presence of our own wife. The power of this attraction is so great that there is no other way to stop it - for thoughts are surely born from the willful looking, and they percolate until they find an outlet in deed. Christ very wisely said that a man who looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And thoughts do lead to deeds - directly or indirectly - if you give them free reign.

But Lewis was right about function - because he was speaking of humans, and not animals - as you yourself went on to point out.
(FWIW, I quite sympathize with you on so-called "sex addiction". I see it to be modern nonsense - a current fashion of thinking based on a near total vacuum of philosophy.)

My point, again, from the beginning, was to challenge people to consider whether things are true, rather than merely admire them as 'quaint' or 'interesting' ideas. It is much better to disagree with me hotly and insist that your own view of truth is true than to simply admire mine without considering its truth or falsehood.

[Lord Zombiac]

porn, as a general rule i find, looks like fake sex to me.

only bad porn. in the good stuff, everyone looks like real people, not super models, and what makes it good is that they are enjoying themselves!

[Lord Zombiac]

What's funny is that my fiancée and I enjoyed some this very morning, something it seldom occurs to us to do.
Her selection, too, which I've never done before! Quite exciting to explore what turns her on that way!
Fun times!

[Cambo]

All right LZ!

Totally agree that genuine pleasure is essential for porn to be stimulating.

[lucimay]

porn, as a general rule i find, looks like fake sex to me.

only bad porn. in the good stuff, everyone looks like real people, not super models, and what makes it good is that they are enjoying themselves!

ok then. i haven't seen any good porn. i've just seen crap.
anorexic women who's bones you frankly WOULDN'T want to
jump and guys that are about as exciting as an oil pump.

[sgt.null]

i want to congratulate every here for making the topic of porn very unstimulating.

[Fist and Faith]

You kidding?!?!??? I've never been more turned on in my life than by that pic luci just posted!!!!

[sgt.null]

You kidding?!?!??? I've never been more turned on in my life than by that pic luci just posted!!!!

well we see those all the time here in texas, so i am jaded now.

[Cagliostro]

So can anyone explain why these turn me on?




Too many propeller pasties in my past, perhaps?


Try saying that 3 times fast.