Traditional Values

[And I Love Her]

Fun discussion!

I'll just add this little quote from the Beatles: "There's nothing you can do that can't be done." In the realm of sex, if you can think of it, then it's been tried. Some group of humans, somewhere, has probably held every sexual viewpoint you can imagine - and many more that you can't. When we go back in history, we're just seeing different slides from the total sum of human sexuality.

This is a rather shitty time for us, so some of those times look a lot better. Just to throw out some examples:
- The Islamic Caliphates
    The Muslim J-man engaged a girl of 6 and consummated the relationship when she turned 9. Add that with the prevalence of poligamy, and Muslims had a solid thousand years of pro-pedo rules.
- Ancient Greece
     If you're into twinks, Ancient Greece would have been your heaven. Older citizens mentored adolescent boys into being good Greek citizens. I'm guessing that's why the Greeks invented the word "pederasty".
- The Samurai
     A Samurai would take a young apprentice and "educate" him. Sex continued until he came of age, so I guess there was a reverse age of consent.

[on the rocks]

I guess while their god forgives, the Christians themselves can be judgy AF.

Being judgy is not the sole purview of Christians, it's a human trait. You're doing it yourself OTR, by failing to capitalize God, referring to Jesus as J-man, and referring to the President as Dear Leader- a term that was reserved for one of the most ruthless communist dictators in history. I don't say this to single you out but we need to look within as well as without. Balanced and impartial is better than biased.

True, but then again I don't have any pretense of being attached to a religion where forgiveness is supposed to be a big part of it.
I may be a judgy prick at times, but I won't be a hypocrite. 
At least in this one area...

Credit where it's due, Christianity did make popular the foundational principles for things like human rights and individual freedom.  They took a while to incubate, but I wouldn't be sitting here casting judgement on many sects of modern Christianity without it.

[OneLove]

As they say, to err is human, to forgive is divine. They knew forgiveness isn't easy. It just isn't part of our DNA. It is however, an ideal to strive toward, as are most of the primary principles of the great religions. I can't check most of those boxes, but I'd like to.

[Lillab]

Brave New World was a great book, but Huxley failed to offer a viable alternative. Small bands of runaways and rebels can self-govern just fine, but when populations grow to include thoughts from all walks of life then governance becomes difficult. The usual solution is a heavy hand by a central government or a civil war and secession. Sometimes the line between chaos and control (insert Get Smart reference)  is a thin one. We're now on the brink of social chaos.

May I ask what you mean here? Are you saying Brave New World doesn't have an alternative? Because it wasn't meant to. It was a discussion of possible problems in the future. It was a dystopian future. He also wrote a utopian future, Island, which you could say is his idea of a solution. If you really want to hear his solutions, you could read the many essays he has written which talk more directly about issues and solutions. We could also start a civics topic and dig much deeper. In this current thread, the discussion is more about how older cultures viewed child sexuality. Speaking of which, I assume you have some good recommendations of even older books that discuss sex with kids? You've mentioned before you have a fascination in this subject, especially finding more pornographic passages.

[Lillab]

So I finished both Brave New World and Island. Huxley's dystopia and utopia are incredibly similar, which makes me realize I got the totally wrong message from Brave New World. For example, he made both societies polyamorous. I guess he wasn't trying to say polyamory is bad in the first book, the evil part was that it was being forced on the population by the government. Little kids engaging in sex play with each other wasn't bad, the problem was that it was being forced on them in the first book but in the second book the kids were empowered to make their own decisions and were given as much information as they could handle. He did talk about how horrible and destructive it is to society that we terrorize boys for masturbating, a practice that has been going on for centuries. Well, Huxley is one of the most banned authors in schools. I feel like society was so close to sexual enlightenment going into the 60s, but then pedophobia started to grip the world. I suppose around the same time we had the movie Child Bride, which was the beginning of the push to stamp out pedophilia. That's when people started campaigning for stricter age of consent. Pedophobia has steadily gotten worse ever since. I really could have seen it go the other way. It is mostly religious leaders behind the pedophobia, and yet as the world is becoming less religious, pedophobia is as strong as ever. I wish I better understood what's behind all of this. I'm not sure how much people are actually against pedophiles versus just playing the part because that's what's expected. Virtue signalling. Kind of like how people get uncomfortable and start dancing around their words when it comes to racism. It's a bunch of witch hunts, and no one wants to be caught in the cross-fire. As long as we aren't able to have honest conversations, I don't see how we can end up with a healthy outcome.

[OneLove]

Wow, this is mind-opening. I didn't know about Island and his comparison of dystopia vs. utopia. I'll have to read it.

[on the rocks]

It is mostly religious leaders behind the pedophobia, and yet as the world is becoming less religious, pedophobia is as strong as ever. I wish I better understood what's behind all of this.

One could hypothesize that the religious angle against pedophilia was them hitching their wagon to a "winning" cause that had its start in more non-religious quarters.  I'm not one of those cats who blame feminists for pedophobia, because that's an oversimplification. Nevertheless, there was always a core element to the women's movement over the last two centuries that if women are going to do something other than be baby factories, they needed to work against girls getting married off when they were still young teenagers.  So that means advocating for age of consent laws and encouraging society to shame men who bed girls deemed to be too young by the movement.

But all of it is rooted in the industrial revolution.  To keep it short, the industrial revolution meant that most labor became detached from physical strength thanks to increased mechanization.  Which means a greater percent of jobs are accessible to both women and men.  Which, in turn, gives women more choices in life beyond housewife.  So that jump-starts the women's movement.

At the same time, the industrial revolution started society on a path where more knowledge became increasingly important, so therefore, more schooling.  So it became necessary to keep "kids" in school longer to learn their future trade effectively prolonging "childhood".  To some extent, what we call "pedophobia", particularly when it comes to hebe age girls, might simply be a natural outgrowth of a society that needs it's workers know more shit before it lets them start their "adult" lives.

It's generally understood that the whole concept of "teenager" is barely 100 years old.

I'm not sure how much people are actually against pedophiles versus just playing the part because that's what's expected. Virtue signalling. Kind of like how people get uncomfortable and start dancing around their words when it comes to racism. It's a bunch of witch hunts, and no one wants to be caught in the cross-fire. As long as we aren't able to have honest conversations, I don't see how we can end up with a healthy outcome.

Some kind of critical mass seems to have been achieved in this new century where I think, yes, it's mostly about having some group of "others" that it is acceptable to hate in society.   Pedos were the easiest ones to become that boogieman.  It appeals to people of most stripes to hate on us.  If you're a religious type who hates sex, you're all aboard to hate these premarital pervs. If you're a lefty bleeding heart who is always looking to fight some sort of 'oppressor', you've got an acceptable target in those nasty pedos picking on innocent children.

I often wonder if the moral panic about pedos these days is connected in some unconscious way to the reality that people are having fewer and fewer children so each child maybe needs to be protected even more.  Like people aren't even aware this is affecting there thinking about pedophilia, but maybe it is?  If so, it's having the opposite effect.  This world of helicopter parents and bubble-wrapped kids is leaving them vulnerable and unprepared for the grim realities of adulthood.