Is sex public or private?

Pretty wild out there in OZ.

OT: sent you a PM...

 

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It seems asguard's libido doesn't enable him to see past the OP title

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“ Greenburg

In light of all this, it seems that the entire public domain is about the effects of sex.

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Yes you’re right …. I guess that’s a problem you won’t find solved by postmodernism ….
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yes, I was thinking along the same lines
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I guess I kind of neglected the biological/environmental implications … they certainly are valid though … in fact they are probably the only thing that carries a voice in modern society, since there is something about the notion of , say, not having clean air to breathe that throws a real dampener on a viagra subscription.
So there is some sort of movement to “referee” these issues …. But my question is whether there is a higher issue at hand. I mean, is the whole the business of having social rules and legislation simply to prevent us driving full speed into that ditch at the wheel of selfish desires … or is there a whole different strata able to be accomplished by societies that have socialized around more altruistic values?
I guess it kind of boils down to whether one thinks that sole and only occupation of human society lies in meeting needs not at all dissimilar from animals .

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Yes
That is the wider application of dharma – there is absolutely no such thing as private. And I guess, on issues of dharma, that has implications on secularist social mechanics. I mean, to what degree can one expect to remedy a social situation when it is maintained that one’s private domain is off limits? (as I mentioned in the OP, determining to what degree a norm should be controlled by legislation or societal pressure is always a tense issue ….)

 

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Nah. Governments also have agencies to investigate UFO's ...

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:bugeye:

I think two points are crucial here:

One is the complexity of modern society and the other is conviction in karma and rebirth.

It is common that in large social groups the sense of individual responsibility diminishes. If a voting takes place in a group of ten people and in a group of thousand people, those in the smaller group will feel more responsible for the way they have voted than those in the larger group. This goes so far that people in a 300 million country don't even go to vote because they think that their vote can't change anything anyway because it is just one among 300 million. Of course, when 100 million or 200 million people in that country think that way, this makes a lot of difference but many people aren't convinced by this line of argument.
Accompanying this sense of diminished responsibility is the fact that people in modern industrialized countries engage in numerous interactions with other people. But a person has only so much energy and only so much time, so they can realistically maintain only relatively few quality relationships. So nowadays when it is crucial for survival to maintain many relationships, this limited amount of time and energy is spreadover more relationships, which means these relationships are of lesser quality. Lesser quality of relationships means lowering the standards of cognition, reciprocation and relevance because maintaining those numerous relationships it is difficult and often impossible to afford oneself those standards to be high. Bottomline, we are conditioned (by society, ourselves, the mere need for survival) to be satisfied with lesser quality of human cognition and interaction. It tends to be difficult for us to think ahead, to try out different perspectives, to not become blindly defensive when we find ourselves challenged. For people who are like this, it is very difficult to change, and anyone attempting to promote change in others needs to take this into consideration.

The other important point I wish to make is the importance of the conviction in karma and rebirth. Even if this conviction is stated in a very simple form like "What goes around comes around, therefore you should be careful what you do" or "We love our children therefore we will do everything in our power to provide them with a good environment, therefore we must not pollute", it moves people to be careful about what they do. But without such a conviction, human action becomes shortsighted and careless. Granted, humanistic guidelines like "It's important to be a good person" can guide human action successfully too, but sooner or later they prove to be too shallow to serve as a reliable basis for action - aging, illness and death are the true testers of a conviction.

As you have seen, people in the West tend to be hard to move in the direction to consider karma and rebirth ...

None.

 

Evening Greenberg!

With respect, I disagree that 'It is crucial for survival to maintain many relationships.' (I'm interested to know why you believe this.) Therefore the rest of your argument is, to my mind, irrelevant, as it is based on a faulty premise.

I don't maintain 'Many relationships,' but I do maintain a few. Outside of my limited social interaction (I'm an author/singer-songwriter/photographer, so I suppose I interact with millions but not on a personal basis) I view all of humankind with respect, love, and a sense of duty toward all people. We're all on the same journey, after all, and in my heart the playing field is level.

If one loves all people despite not being a socialite then *all* relationships should be 'Quality' relationships, should they not? I may know only a few people intimately, e.g. my husband, children, grandchildren, and a few close friends, but *all* others are important to me, so when I do interact with any other human, the interaction never lacks 'Quality' because love never does.

Bottom line (I see you're a 'Bottom line' person

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), it isn't necessary to spread oneself thinly so that relationships suffer, any more than it is necessary to 'Maintain many relationships' to survive. If we take people (and all else in life) as they come our way, and we treat *everyone* with respect and love, we'll have many 'Quality relationships,' regardless of how evanescent their nature, or whether it's feasible or practical to maintain close ties with them. JMHO - YMMV.

Shalom aleikhem - Jesse.

 

Sorry for this, but I wanted to subscribe to this thread and am just becoming familiar with the format of this forum. - Jess.

 

I would like to see those statistics, before I believe that.

 

Let's try this again...

Admins and mods, I beg your pardon for littering this thread.

Greenberg, I wanted to say that I feel you made a couple of excellent points. The group mentality (which eventually leads to apathy) encourages individuals to cop out, drop out, or in other ways refuse to take responsibility for their actions and inactions. In reality, everything we chose or neglect to choose (a choice in itself) matters. I don't vote for human governments because God Himself views the fact that mankind asked for a human king to be an act of faithlessness, and He also commented that mankind would regret it, and I believe most of us do.

In the final analysis, if there ever is one, we are each a minority of one, and what we do matters.

With regard to karma and rebirth (I'm guessing that you subscribe to Eastern Philosophy?), my perspective is going to be Biblical as I am a Christian - a rebirth too, by definition. However, 'What goes around comes around' is a universal truth regardless of the expression of one's faith. The Bible teaches the same principle repeatedly as in "If you want mercy then show mercy," and "Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you," and many more similar expressions.

I believe all humans are hardwired with the same needs and truisms. We all need love, sustenance, shelter, a vocation, and most of us would like peace. We all value truth, honor, discipline, mercy, compassion, sacrifice, grace, and humility. We may not all agree which components those values are comprised of, but all basic human *needs* are the same. (I'm excluding sociopaths, psychopaths, and others without conscience in the foregoing.)

I particularly appreciate your understanding of age, sickness, and death. To that I myself would add loss, but it's refreshing to see the sentiment you expressed on the Internet.

As for sex, in the absence of love it's merely an animalistic act and not a worthy human endeavor. Should it be private? The *act* of lovemaking - yes, I believe so. (I'd like to add that I live deep in the wilderness and consider a deserted mountain lakeshore or a clearing in the forest to be private.) That it has far reaching social impact and consequence is true, but then, isn't that true of all we do?

Peace be upon you - Jesse.

 

So is eating food you enjoy also an animalistic act and not worthy of human endeavor? Are pastry chefs subhuman beasts?

 

Evening Roman!

Not at all - unless we're speaking of gluttony. Food, in all its wondrous varieties is a gift to us, which is why, in most cultures, we give thanks to God before we partake of it.

In my understanding, making love us the union of two human bodies, hearts, souls, and spirits. It is designed to make two people "One flesh," and is a sacred act. It is the *only* act whereby humans access the inside of one another's bodies. I'm afraid I don't put eating food (even pastry

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) on the same rung as making love with one's spouse. Do you? I'm uncertain as to why you equate the two. :shrug: On the other hand, I don't believe that love should be absent from *anything* we do. You?

As for pastry chefs, again, you've lost me. Why would a chef of any kind be an 'Animalistic beast'?

Shalom aleikhem - Jesse.

 

sure shorty, read the thread "sex IQ", its in the second link

 

A few examples of what I mean by it is necessary to maintain many relationships in order to survive -

When I go to the doctor and entrust them with the life of my body, I am putting a lot at stake. Considering that I do not personally know my doctors, don't know their qualifications, nor is there any opportunity or scope to really find this out before I begin the medical treatment - I am obviously maintaining a very low standard of what is acceptable quality of interaction. Yet in order to maintain bodily health, I sometimes must go to the doctor.

When I go to eat out in a restaurant or buy food at a store, I am trusting complete strangers whom I know nothing personal about that they have prepared a food that won't be harmful to me. Granted, I may know the producer's name and address and the qualifications they state, but I practically have no way of testing whether this is true or not. I trust them almost blindly. I may have the option to complain later on, but by then, the harm is already done and it may be too late.

And along the same lines, there are numerous relationships I have with people in all sorts of government offices, other agencies, services, organizations; coworkers, acquaintances, family members - people without whose it would be difficult or impossible to live in the modern world without getting into some serious trouble or other. They are shallow relationships, but often a lot is at stake in them.
Official and commercial relationships of one kind or another have always existed, have had great importance in an individual's life, and have always been more or less precarious. But 500 or more years ago, it wasn't necessary to engage in so many of such relationships because the state of economy and bureocracy was not as demanding as it is today.

How can you love someone whom you barely know?

I disagree. If I am respectful toward others, then this is simply a quality of mine, not of the relationship I might have with a person. I can be a throughly respectful and nice person, polite and mannered, having compassion and concern for others - but all this does in no way guarantee me quality relationships nor happiness. If I do not have a lively and beneficial mutual exchange with someone over a longer period of time, then I do not have a quality relationship.

 

Practically speaking, this is not true.
If a person holds that this one life time of about 70 years is all there is to a person's life, then how does "What goes around comes around" explain that children die of disease, violence, poverty, or that others have lived long unharmed lives as criminals?

Why are you excluding sociopaths and so on?
You said "'What goes around comes around' is a universal truth" - so how do you explain that some people seem to be outside of what you consider to be hardwired?

 

Afternoon Greenberg!

I hope you're having a spectacular day.

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Seems to me, that sex is a very "public" act, technically.

"What populates the planet, is extremely pleasurable."

For sex=babies, and babies helps to swell the already "huge" human population size, and make the human race grow vaster and denser throughout the world. So it has very "public" effects.

But generally the effects, when limited to proper family values of sex within marriage, are positive, and so naturally-large families should always be encouraged. I'm just saying it's not so much a "private matter" as some may make it out to be. That doesn't at all diminish people's God-given right/duty to reproduce.

 

considering all the porn that is being made, I think sex is getting to be quite public. And quite boring.

 

Why can't sex be a little public, as long as it doesn't become "too public?"​

Especially since they say that "everybody does it."

I would like to amusing think, that it could be due to the world growing more vastly and densely populated, but I suspect that the evidence simply wouldn't very well support that view. As American families at least, have shrunk, square footage in homes has increased. It's not our children that takes up so much space, but all our stuff, that the TV corporate ads keep telling us to Buy! Buy! Buy!, that we supposedly can't live without anymore. As human populations grow, in most any place with any reasonable amount of freedom and free market activity, people do tend to spread out and not really grow all that "crowded."

So the better explanation, would seem to be that all that porn, could be a sign of rampant contraceptive pushing, and various related sexual disfunction, because we humans have too much perverted sex from its general, unitive, life-giving procreative nature, into too much a selfish and carnal act too much for pleasure, and not enough towards natural reproduction of more precious darling babies to experience life.

I do think that people these days get too uptight about "sexual" matters, and I would like to see people be more relaxed about such beautiful "nature," and yet keep some reasonable amount of modesty and morality. For example, I don't think that the "natural music" of neighbors enjoying procreative sex, is necessarily "obscene." Couldn't it be an "innocent" oversight? Just the result of sounds carrying farther than they thought, or of sometimes "dense" housing arrangements? I would expect married couples to feel free to enjoy sex while camping, in their tent. It's where they would be expected to sleep together. Probably not much sound insulation, and the tent windows could quite possibly be unzipped. Somebody on some forum, commented something about open windows at night in the summer, sometimes carrying such sounds from the close neighbors. Such is life.

 

The pathway to the dark side.

 

Is sex in public demeaning and degrading? To the participants or to the observers?

Should it be to either? Isn't this just a socialogical manifestation based on one's upbringing?

I mean, compare and contrast Victorian age society with today's western views on sex. Or maybe take a look at the Roman take on the subject. How about third world "primitive" societies? Is "public" sex in and of itself a bad thing, or does it depend on the perception and context of the society in which the act takes place?

 

Okay...

Pronatalist:

Location:
Earth
Interests:
reading, breeding

Reading and breeding. Hmmmm...:scratchin: