What's the deal with sex?

[Fido]

Originally Posted by de Silentio

You are right that is tough. Good catch.

You know, it only feels good because it is necessary for reproduction, so, how does the biology know before the person does what is necessary and will feel good?
If you think about it, it is like Hemingways description of a French public toilet: Unsanitary. And if it is you in the act -it is serious business already, and everyone involved is cool. Sure. But watch a movie of someone else in the act, and it is like two monkeys wrestling over a cocanut neither can crack. You want to laugh except for the thought that you look just like that monkey, only ooglier, and she looks only ooglier too. It's got to be love that makes such indignity into a great pleasure. I can't find any other excuse for doing it..

[Fido]

Originally Posted by de Silentio

I also find this interesting. If a community starts defining what beauty and virtue are, they essentially say what ugliness and vice are by the very fact that they are defining what virtue and beauty are. (thus the community also defines what vice and ugliness is) Or am I reading you incorrectly?

-----

Morality comes from a time when family and community were each person's hold on survival, and there was no other way of seeing family and community than as good. Are we so far from that point? Surely we do not see strangers as animals that can be killed or tamed indiscriminantly? How do we see them? As dangerous? Do you take candy from strangers like Kieth Richards? The point is, that while morality has some conscious attributes because people are forever trying to form a law around it; it is ultimately little more than a feeling for family and group, and one that takes heed of the common wisdom regarding strangers. Community is formed by the conscious choice of each person to be there. As much as you want to be out, you are out. As much as you want to be in you are in. It is not communities as abstractions which make morality, but the general love of community, and the feeling each person holds for the common welfare. The question is: what kind of person brings enemies down upon the community. What kind of person goes off an brings back disease to the community. What kind of enemy seeks to destroy the community from within or without? Good and bad, virtue and vice mark the border of the community. What side of the line do you stand on?

In regard to the sex thing, A parent and a community are responsible for the behavior of their children. It is their honor, and to their credit that they keep their hands to themselves. More than this, if that honor, which is to say virginity is not intact; then how can anything but wounded honor be pledged in marriage, which is actually a peace treaty from old and ancient times binding communities and families upon their oaths. Now, we cannot control our children and we are thought to be rank monters if we try. All our kids get a brand new toy when they reach that certain age, and how can we say they can't play with it? Marriages are good for nothing, because they have to be no better, and because families and communities are powerless to even enforce their own oaths made freely by their own. There is one boss in town now, and that is the law; and what the law don't see it cannot see to disagree. It does not matter that it is more powerful than anyone because it cannot see or be everywhere. So the more of law we have, the less we have of honor, and the more we have of crime, and the more law we need.

[ogden]

Wow! A very nice post, eloquent indeed. I am starting to understand this simplitic way of thinking about morality, its an intuitive feel for what is right and wrong according to how it affects others, relationships and recipricol emotional ties. Nice.

I laughed aloud when I read sex is oogly. I think it is also (unless i'm doing it). It is like this barbaric act that we ought to be able to escape or rise above; the quakers did, and where did it get them? did you read the wonderfully enlightening attachments that Teena posted? Very informative. We are so animalistic.

[Didymos Thomas]

There is nothing inherently wrong about sex; it isn't something we should rise above. I understand the concerns about sex - it is easy for sex to become a very selfish act, and for poor relationships to cause great harm. But it seems the problems are no different with sex than with anything else man does - selfishness, greed, lust, and every other mindless reaction we so often have.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

There is nothing inherently wrong about sex; it isn't something we should rise above. I understand the concerns about sex - it is easy for sex to become a very selfish act, and for poor relationships to cause great harm. But it seems the problems are no different with sex than with anything else man does - selfishness, greed, lust, and every other mindless reaction we so often have.

Ya, sex is no different than any of our other problems, and that is why I recommend it!
Thanks Ogden.

If you can see sex as a form of relationship, which is to say, objectively, like any other form of relationship, then what is true for one is true for the other. Of couse we know this is not true, right? Sex is special. Some times forms become just forms, formalities. Some time people get off and go back to hating each other. Some time it is bought and sold. Some times it is used to make a sale. It is good to be aware fo the powerful emotional effect it has on us; but also good to know, that like all forms of relationship, that it is best if the relationship is between equals, between people having equal power in their lives, with none having greater power over the other. The form should not dominate the relationship. To me, the greatest problem associated with sex is that it reflects only too well the general condition of society. Sexual exploitation always follows economic exploitation. Sex is often the last labor of the lost.

[Didymos Thomas]

I'm not sure the relationship of sex needs to be viewed objectively. The subjective nature of sex seems fairly apparent. What I'm suggesting is that the ethical problems of sex are little different than the ethical problems of anything else; only the circumstances change (which is true of any ethical situation).

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

I'm not sure the relationship of sex needs to be viewed objectively. The subjective nature of sex seems fairly apparent. What I'm suggesting is that the ethical problems of sex are little different than the ethical problems of anything else; only the circumstances change (which is true of any ethical situation).

I think that whether we like it or not we have to have some objective view of sex and sexuality. Sex is hard to avoid, for anyone. It is right in front of us when we look in the mrirror, and it is essential to our being. Even while sex has alot of subjective meaning depending upon who the other is; it also must have an objective value to the whole of society, and the whole of humanity.
So; how do you view the circumstances objectively. I view them so by either looking at the form, and all the judgements and prejudices regarding (for example), sex as a form, or I look at the relationship compared to all relationships. It does not matter if you are bumping with someone or doing the dishes with them, the relationship is the same, right? You do not become different people just by changing activities, or as the case may be, forms. And, people do change forms, again, without becoming different. If you are the kind to take it on the freeway you might be the sort to take it in bed. As one, now long dead used to say: The only difference between *******s and mudder fudders is that for the mudders there is some hope. Some forms have got more hope than others. As the poles people always live between, forms and relationships can each be made to serve as a control for the other. If you say that all forms are the same in some respect you can measure relationship against relationship. If you say that in some respects every relationship is like any other, then you can measure forms one against the other. Do you think it is too simple?

[ogden]

Yes Didymos, sex is not inately wrong, nor is it something we should rise above (I stand corrected). Yes sexual morality is like any other moral/ethical delema (only the circumstances change).

And yes Fido sexuality is a form of relationship, and can be viewed in comparison with other relationships.

A relationship requires effect/interaction between two or more, wrether the effect is intentional or unintentional. Usually the interaction is reciprical but not neccessarilly.

Imorality is an act or effect that is harmfull to another/others, especially when done with malice, but also when done with selfish disregard.

so sexual imorality would be a sexual relationship that is harmfull to someone either malisiously or motivated by selfish disregard.

The grey area is who defines what is harmfull. By that I mean; when the interaction is consentual but is precieved as offensive, could it somehow still be harmfull? Poligamist are concentual partners that are not harmed in the relationship but still viewed by some as wrong/imoral. Pornograpy might be another example.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by ogden

Yes Didymos, sex is not inately wrong, nor is it something we should rise above (I stand corrected). Yes sexual morality is like any other moral/ethical delema (only the circumstances change).

And yes Fido sexuality is a form of relationship, and can be viewed in comparison with other relationships.

A relationship requires effect/interaction between two or more, wrether the effect is intentional or unintentional. Usually the interaction is reciprical but not neccessarilly.

Imorality is an act or effect that is harmfull to another/others, especially when done with malice, but also when done with selfish disregard.

so sexual imorality would be a sexual relationship that is harmfull to someone either malisiously or motivated by selfish disregard.

The grey area is who defines what is harmfull. By that I mean; when the interaction is consentual but is precieved as offensive, could it somehow still be harmfull? Poligamist are concentual partners that are not harmed in the relationship but still viewed by some as wrong/imoral. Pornograpy might be another example.

I take the psychological definition of morality, even if there are rules we associate with morality, one does not have to break them, or any rules to be immoral. One either accepts or rejects what society puts forward as good or virtuous behavior. IN the simple feeling of rejecting society one is immoral. People make the choice to reject themselves when they reject society. In a sense, to be consciously moral, when the norm is to be unconsciously moral -means first being consciously immoral, looking for the false and the hypocracy in the standard moral teaching, and then accepting the morality consciously in spite of flaws and weaknesses. I think it is simple. We are young even at a hundred. Society is old even if it seems new to us. We have to ask what path brought it to such great age in one piece. There is a logic in morality that we may never grasp completly. In the end, no behavior no matter how comonplace or accepted can be considered moral which threatens the health and life of society.

[madscientist]

But what is morality in the first place? SOmething defined by society? Is it something universally accepted? Seems that some things seem to be universally accepted whereas others are not as much.
And where is the origin of morality and ethics - God/Bible? That's what i heard. Or should we use the theory that we should do to others as we want others to do to us instead? Even though something does not necessarily harm others, it is seen as immoral by some religions...
So how should we define morality in the first place?