06-15-2021, 10:33 PM
(06-15-2021, 05:52 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:(06-09-2021, 11:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(06-09-2021, 04:47 AM)Captain Genet Wrote: There are some positions in my old posts (especially from Personality Cafe) which now make me cringe:
- Seeing male sexuality as a destructive, barbaric force. In fact, most rapists are driven by anger and desire for power (like the "incel" community shows) and even after castration seek hormones to be able to do the thing again. A healthily socialized man with high libido will seek a high libido wife rather than commit rape. If his wife is not willing, he will use his own hands.
Male sexuality can range from tender and caring (the sort of sexuality that strengthens marriages and keeps women seeking even more of the same) to violent, brutal, and dehumanizing. At tle latter extreme is male sexuality that punishes, abuses, or degrades women. Think of Ted Bundy, who may have been worst because until he did his monstrosities he seemed unlikely to do them. He was the definitive betrayal of expectations. Rape punishes, abuses, degrades, and harms women. Real men hate rape and rapists.
I still do hate rape and rapists and always will.
Whether male sexuality becomes destructive and barbaric or tender and caring depends on how the man sees the woman. One pole is the Madonna, chaste and sacred, object of pure love offering intercourse as the ultimate reward, which may be postponed for years but is still worth waiting. The other pole is the whore, despised but offering immediate sex. Somewhere in between there is a healthy relationship, where sensual and spiritual passions are balanced.
of course there are men who go from one extreme to another, assuming that they marry a Madonna yet get most of their sexual gratification from whores or through abusive sexuality. That is no solution. Healthy sexuality treats the partner with respect and dignity.
Quote:Quote:Dating is a crude attempt at judging the 'genetic' desirability of someone to bear or side a child (homosexuality perhaps excepted, and too complex for me to fully understand, so I am not going to discuss it). People seek to assess virtues and abilities. Dating may be one way in which to reject people that one deems grossly inadequate as spouses. Stupidity? Callousness? Cruelty? Immaturity? Deviousness? Disloyalty?
I agree.
My mistake was to overestimate the influence of genes on human character, in relationship context or elsewhere. Hitler's parents were normal people. Donald Trump's sister is also normal. Bad genes may make it easier to make some bad choices and that's all.
Some people transcend their genes and their upbringing. One psychologist set up a test for sociopaths and found that he fit all the criteria except for doing criminal acts and exploiting others. It could be that extremes of early deprivation accentuate the worst characteristics of sociopathy (think of Charles Manson) or bad family drama (Ted Bundy finding out that his supposed sister was really his mother). On the other hand, alleged "affluenza" might promote extreme irresponsibility, as with Donald Trump... and many vicious aristocrats of the past. Much of the class struggle that Marxists see as the cornerstone of social conflict and political life results from the assertion of alleged rights of elites to abuse, impoverish, and exploit others and the resistance to such by those whom those elites expect to treat such abuse, poverty, and exploitation as either necessary, inevitable, or even desirable.
So what happens when an economy no longer needs scarcity to compel people to endure poverty and overwork? All advanced societies face that, and with that the old status symbols will become irrelevant.
Quote:Quote:Marriage remains a tricky proposition.
And yet there is no shortage of lifelong, wholesome marriages in the world. The dark side of human sexuality is real, but so is the good side.
Some people organize their livers to that effect, and they are most likely to get that result. Barring trauma, human character rarely changes once one turns 25 or so. I'm not going into what marital patterns are more likely to succeed or fail.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.