On 5/22/2016 10:53 AM, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
Paul, your comment had me thinking for the past few days about a deeper
aspect/corollary: Is my own judgement of those people who keep
requesting the takedown of those photos akin that very behavior that
caused my reaction?
My first thought was: Paul might be right in pointing that out.
But no, there is a big difference (even though it might seem subtle at
first).
Indeed, a lot of our views of what is acceptable and what is not is
based on one's moral code, which is not absolute, and depends on the
geography, time, culture, group of the population, etc. And who is the
judge whose moral code is superior? (That's a valid question, and I have
my answers to that, but I don't this discussion to digress that way.)
My reaction is not about the differences in the moral code. Rather,
it is based on the common aspect ("denominator") of their and my moral
code: pedophilia is not normal.
Just to throw some gasoline and a match into the discussion, define
pedophilia?
There are cultures out there that don't really have a definition of it.
There are cultures that have what we consider children being married off
and having kids.
Whose right? We see ourselves as correct, but without a lot of moral
authority.
But seeing in a photo of a naked kid and
man signs of pedophilia is a symptom of abnormality that has nothing to
do with the moral code. That's what falls under the definition of
_paranoia_. And I might be slightly in the classification, but I think
_paranoia_ is included in the category "crazy".
Bingo. And this is the big lie that has been foisted on us. I blame
9/11. All it took to change America from a strong and vibrant nation to
one that was afraid of it's own shadow was a bloody nose and a
government that was more than willing to use that slap in the face as a
way to sell us a great big steaming pile of paranoia on a plate.
They sold us that the big camera was a tool of the bad people (a
falsehood we ate up willingly), and that by extension the person behind
the camera was also a bad person. The complication is that we know that
the bad guys are brown people with bushy beards who scream Allah Akbar
before blowing themselves up.
Those aren't the people who carry big cameras, so they had to feed us
another lie, which was that people who carry them are pedophiles.
Pity the middle aged white male, who was the inadvertent target of that one.
Now that we know that people who have cameras are both predominantly
white males and pedophiles, it becomes very easy to see pedophilia in a
picture such as the one under discussion.
I guess ultimately we can blame it on bin Laden, but that is too easy.
We really have ourselves to blame because we lost that thing that is
absolutely required to have a cohesive society.
We lost the ability to trust each other, and for that, we can point
squarely at our leaders who saw a way to drive a wedge between us and
show themselves as the ones to trust, and we can blame ourselves for
believing the lies that they told us.
sorry for moving towards politics.
bill
Yes, there is another aspect that is related just to the acceptance (or
lack of such) of naked body in the photos. That indeed is related
to the differences in the moral code, but as much as I might disagree
with some puritans, that's not what I was referring to. And this is an
important distinction.
Igor
Paul Stenquist Fri, 20 May 2016 21:12:08 -0700 wrote:
I think it's great, and it certainly belongs on Facebook. On the other
hand I realize that the social mores of some differ from mine and from
the moral code of our contemporary society. They're not crazy, just
different. It's odd that the modern world is quick to condemn those who
disparage others because their religion or skin color is different but
we think it's perfectly okay to mock those whose moral code differs from
our own and categorize them as crazy. Another example of how political
correctness has failed us.
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