interesting story (that goes with pic)
interesting story (that goes with pic)
say your fairly new to sexual relationships and not too sure how to act. what should you do? well one technique is to copy behavior you've seen elsewhere -- movies, tv, books, friends, strangers in public, even parents, whatever. ok at first that sounds like a bad idea. and of course you don't want to act exactly like James Bond or any other fictional character. you don't even want to act exactly like a real person, not even a cool one. everyone is different! but that doesn't mean you can't model specific behaviors after the stuff you've seen, at least as a temporary measure to do *something* since otherwise you wouldn't know what to do.
now, obviously this is error prone. but that's ok. how we get our first generation of theories on a subject, and how good they are, *isn't very important*. what's gonna matter is how good and how fast our error correction is. ok sure we start with some highly stereotyped actions, and it's ok at first, but we should probably develop our own more personal behaviors soon, and try to fix as many problems as we can with the archetypes.
anyway, in that context, here's my observation:
in any except the very closest and most open relationships, it's very difficult to move away from stereotyped behaviors once they are started. why? well, are you suddenly going to act differently sexually towards your new girlfriend because you decided your old theories weren't the best? without telling her? just out of the blue? maybe very gradually, but i rather doubt it.
ok can you talk about it, then change your behavior? well in theory you could. of course it's possible. but how many people are that close to their girlfriend? a few. what about that close to a girlfriend they haven't known for years? pretty much no one.
why is talking about such a change so hard?
well, explicitly talking about sex is fairly taboo.
explicitly talking about *philosophy* is often even worse. most people are instantly turned off. or will go into mumbo jumbo mode because they think that's what philosophy is supposed to be like since historically most philosophers really were incoherent.
and what about explicitly talking about *relationship theory*? hah! it's generally not acknowledged that such a thing even exists...
and of course there is the obvious embarrassment. for you *or* your partner, or probably both. not just for the previous reasons, but more so because:
it's generally accepted that sex requires justification. this is why, for example, people can find kissing someone for the first time really scary. yeah there's the fear of rejection or doing it wrong, but it's more than that. touching lips physically isn't a big deal. it's just that kissing is sexual. strangers aren't supposed to kiss. it's supposed to be intimate. and justified by an appropriate relationship. it's often the case that people want to kiss each other, they *both* do, but they wonder if it's appropriate (ie justified). this happens all the time. ok our society is pretty liberal so this is less a big deal with kissing, but sex is the same just way more so.
so in that context, why might discussing such behavioral changes as i was talking about be embarrassing? well, how many people feel confident about how much sexual activity their relationship justifies? how many people feel confident they are on the same page about that as their partner? not many.
what if someone worried that suggesting a certain behavioral change might be interpreted as asking for more sexual activity? wouldn't such worries mess up about half of any potential behavior changes? people have a hard enough time asking for that nonverbally.
and what about the other half of behavioral changes, that mean less sexual activity? well those don't work either! how many people are good at saying no to *new* sexual activities? what about retroactively deciding no to old ones? without making your partner feel rejected or hurt?
so to sum up: people new to sexual relationships will begin with some probably-stereotyped and regardless highly error prone behaviors. it will then be difficult to change the behavior even when they come up with improvements.
unless they dump their partner and get a new one. then they can make all the changes they want by starting out the new way.
Words of Wisdom:
Social people interact breadth first. Anti-social people interact depth first.
Every choice you make excludes choosing otherwise.
Humans live by their creativity, not by devouring limited resources.
People twist their factual views to fit their moral views, not vice versa.
Children are people.
Young people are people.
A Few Consequences:
Anti-social people waste less time.
Trying not to exclude any options is absurd. Trying not to exclude some specific options isn't. "Trying to keep your options open," without the context of refering to some specific options, means keeping the ones that society cares about open. For example "You should go to highschool to keep your options open" means that highschool is helpful on the standard paths through life (it helps get into college and helps you get hired with or without college). Keeping options open in that sense, as a goal, is not a good way to live, because we should seek our own path, not choose between stereotypes ones.
We shouldn't ration our raw materials to last for 50,000 years. Not even for 1,000 years. How long exactly, then? Well, hard to say, but the market knows. The market knows because prices reflect supply.
It's not all that surprising that presenting, say, an anti-semite with a factual history of Israel, is ineffective.
TCS.
Do you have a porn film? Cause if so, you just sold a copy.
it's just so good i have no choice, you see
PS listening to Lillix
"24 is sometimes bad but never boring" (i forget the source on that observation).
and what's even stranger than this apparently nonsensical comment, is that it only looks nonsensical if you think about it. the truth is, we understand exactly what it means. somehow, in our culture, the criteria for a good TV show is not whether it is entertaining, exciting, and generally something we would want to watch. instead, there is a special criteria for what TV shows are called good or bad that is different from the criteria we use to decide which to watch. (more commonly instead of calling shows bad we call them trashy or junk TV or a B movie something like that).
the criteria for "quality" movies, which we are all familiar with, is approximately whether it is something elitist leftist intellectuals (think of a PhD Professor of Woman's Studies) would like. it's not generally explained this clearly, but there it is.
what's notable is that *we* often use the criteria too. our society speaks in their terms, but then decides what to watch on its own terms. isn't that hypocrisy?
i think it's more like: no one wants to argue with elitist intellectuals. so they don't. they just say "fine, you're right, whatever" and then continue on as they were.
so i don't think this is hypocritical. but i *do* think it's bad. we ought to stand up to these people and say "no, i don't agree with you, and you're a jerk so i won't argue with you either, and i won't use your terminology as if you were right" or equivalent.
and also there is a distaste not just for arguing with leftist intellectuals in our society, but for any arguing. also for philosophy and being an intellectual. just because a few idiots associated themselves with those things and thus tainted them. too many people believe that's really what arguments and philosophy and being an intellectual really are, and thus think they are actually bad things. *sigh*
if the US isn't a unified, *Christian* country, why haven't the multi-cultis shut up yet?
update:
in other words:
That the multi-cultis have something to whine about proves the US is a unified, *Christian* country. If it was more diverse in that regard they'd shut up (because they'd have won).
synagogues burn in the Europe but not in the US. both places have plenty of "tolerance". so that can't be the difference. what could the difference be then? dare I suggest Christianity?