Behavioral research topic: sex as politics

[vreelanda]

So people just started being born insecure in the last 50, 60 years and for all of human history our ancestors were much more psychologically healthy? I doubt this.

It used to be the case that people could not run up a huge amount of debt in order to impress people. I do think men have always had to find ways to compete with others for a mate and this may very well have l been mostly in the domain of goods. But I also think that a person had to rely more on actually producing and having that good before certain industries were regulated more–credit cards, banks, etc. Debt is a more viable option to us than it was to people of the past so we see more of it.

Let’s say I get a sudden urge to just take a long, slow stroll through Van Nuys in the wee hours of the night wearing gold watches, $200 Reeboks, brand-new A&F shirt and JNCO jeans while blithely Twittering on my Blueberry and my iPod Touch hanging at my side playing my favorite tunes in my SkullCandy headphones. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Now, in a society with strong property rights, should I really be able to expect that I will be safe no matter what decisions I make?

Now, if you walk through a bad area in the middle of the night all of the time with a lot of fancy things on, I think you might feel like you are going to get robbed and it is possible you will. This does show you are in an area with a lack of respect for property rights, otherwise, you wouldn’t be getting robbed. In a society with a general respect for human life and property life, how high would the costs be for you to do that? Absolutely, people will bare the burden of their choices, but those choices will be in a different context than what they currently are. I suppose it depends on what you believe a free society would look like, but in general I would say it quite likely that crimes of this sort would go down significantly because its only when you have little consequence for such actions–given the police don’t track down thieves most of the time, and even when they do the process of settling, short jail time, get out and everything is okay, not much social stigma attached to it in lots of areas–that you see a large amount of this happening.

But besides all that, people are more prone to stealing than raping. It takes quite a bit more of a psychopath to rape.

As far as the womens’ rights thing goes, I’m totally with you that it makes little to no sense to say they are helping women get stronger much more than they’ve helped other peoples place in society get stronger. That doesn’t mean that their pursuance of womens’ rights has anything to do with how women choose to dress. Cops would have protected women 50 and 60 years ago, maybe not against their husbands but in general. If the main societal factor we were looking at had to do with the externalization of costs for women to dress in such and such a way, it seems we could have had a long history of women dressing provocatively since we have had police for a long time. What we’ve seen is a change in attitudes towards women. A liberalization of society, getting away from religious traditionalism, and the right of people in general to do what they want will lead to more variation in peoples’ choices, very much having to do with the social norms with which they grew up. You don’t see Born Again Christians dress scantily-clad. You do see people who have non-traditionalist upbringings more open to that, on a whole.

And your post didn’t come out as stand offish.

[vreelanda]

I get the idea from statistics, reading and talking to people. Most rapes reported are acquaintances or ex’s. I know five girls/women who have been raped and it was all done by a family member, which went unreported because of the feeling they probably deserved it or would be a bad child/sister/niece if they told the police because they would tear apart the family.

A very interesting book that has a lot to say about this phenomenon is A Bright Red Scream, where a lot of people recount being raped to their psychologist because they have confidentiality. The psychologist may not report the rape.

[Caley_McKibbin]

Unless you are picking up chicks/hunks at the rehab center, putting purchases on a credit card is hardly going to make you more appealing, except maybe if you are lying about your income on the first date. When the person discovers that you pump gas, the old commit financial suicide to look good for 5 minutes gig is up. That makes the old send a pic of someone 200 pounds lighter over the internet trick look brilliant. I’m taking a wild guess that most people are not doing moronic things like that and I would hope that my fellow Austrians here are not… In any case, that is a matter of stupidity rather than competition.

[Aristophan3s]

It’s also a bit silly by saying one sense of slavery is good, while vice slavery is bad. It seems to be a preferential argument. And that is why I mention the state. The state says there is Type 1 slavery and Type 2 slavery. And ‘our slavery is better, to save you from the other slavery’. Even religion might say that about secular society. “Don’t be a slave to TV, go to church and be entertained instead by a priest.”

This is true. My aim was not to say that one is better or worse than the other, but to point out that any behavior not taken into its ultimate consideration (ie. it’s effect on all other considerations) can be looked at as a vice. Even virtues run rampant become vices. So there is no advocation of one particular over the over the other, there is only consideration of all behavior and all effects of that behavior (reason) in order to moderate and help provide for a common equity.

No force involved from any party other than the mindfulness of one’s own reason. If there is caviar at an open party, do not eat more than what you think is equitable for everyone, of whom, the caviar is open to them at any proportion as well. There is no one telling you not to, it is just common sense interacting with your observation that your actions have consequences that are irrespective to your own ends.

The king/slave rhetoric from the Augustine quote is a reference to the soul not physical slavery. It would fit with M. Aurelius saying something like, “A slave, even while in chains his mind is free to wander…” It goes on and is deep and i cannot think of the whole thing, but it is merely saying that people are slaves to thier own perceptions of desire. Reason/Moderation is there to say that you can still partake in them, but to understand their ends and opposites.