Buddha1 said:
Could you say what you want to say in simpler and understandable words. And use less of philosophical ideas. If you do include philosophy, please explain things further. Otherwise, they don't make much sense.
Should I type slower for you?
This is psychology, an offshoot of philosophy.
In many ways the Other acts as a distracting element which redirects our focus away from the Self, and its ephemeral, nothingness begging for a something, and it makes it seek out identity in the outside.
In many ways the discovery of Self follows the discovery of the external world, in which this Self is found there amongst existence and is eventually recognized as something that can be called ‘I’.
Self-consciousness follows consciousness and there are few animals that can recognize themselves in a reflection. So, Self is not readily available to the mind, even if it is the closest thing to it and the only thing it can ever know.
What happens is most construct an identity through the inter-relating relationship of the external world, as they perceive them and become aware of them.
Yet, do you realise that man is eventually a part of this nature. Getting away from nature means getting away from himself.
Getting away from nature can be described as the process of unfastening ourselves from our past.
The process is stressful and the subsequent void can be detrimental to our well-being, yet it is necessary if we are to call ourselves truly free.
But overcoming nature does not mean destroying it or ignoring it.
Artificial selection is a reality and man can make biological changes in his own make up through changing his environment. But these changes eventually will harm our species.
If our changes are guided by emotion and not reason, then yes.
But here I was alluding to the differences between natural evolution and social evolution.
This discrepancy causes psychological friction and leaves man trying to live up to external necessities while still remaining true to himself.
Jews whose ancerstors lived in Europe for centuries have developed a genetic abnormality (I only have sketchy account of this!) because the ancestors were forced into white collar jobs for centuries.
Now this is interesting….Elaborate.
In the case of male sexuality, the environment has not really changed the reality of man's sexual need for men. It is in all likelihood more ingrained in men than we can imagine.
You’ve lost me, dear.
Men have no sexual need for other men.
But I do admit that men have a far greater emotional need for other men, since we can only relate to that which is closest to our being.
Men can be more emotionally intimate with other men and it is this hyper-male interpretation that places a stigma on it. I agree with you there.
But this need is not sexual, even if it might have sexual undertones, as all human relationships do - including that between a parent and an offspring.
That men and women do not function well together and that it requires the overwhelming force of sexual desire and institutional indoctrination to create a superficial bond and support a sexual relationship, is true.
Men and women are alike, as belonging to the same species, but where they differ the gulfs are insurmountable.
The ancient Greeks thought of women as so base as to be unable to fully experience
agape, and only capable of
eros. They believed that women were intuitive, instinctive beings, with little or no ability to be rational thinkers. Women represented man’s animal nature.
They thought the opposite of men. They thought that men were capable of both
agape and
eros, and were much more talented with rational thought, if they avoided being seduced by their feminine sides and their animal needs.
It is a modern myth that the ancient Greeks advocated homosexual sex and anal penetration. In fact they considered men, who acted like women in this way and who allowed themselves to be used as women, as disgusting.
The word they used for effeminate men who solicit other males into sex, was the word
malakas – which is a word often used in Greece today as a form of casual insult.
There is no evidence to support what you are saying. What you're saying is only partly true. Continuance is very important. And continuance is not dependant on sex. But it has found it the best vehicle as of now. Sex too is not there only because of reproduction, as I have shown through scientific evidences (a discussion on them is welcome).
That’s bullshit.
The only reason there are sexual types is for procreation.
If this sexuality has also evolved into a bonding mechanism or as a display of dominance and/or affection, is a secondary effect.
Males and females exist as such only for procreative reasons. Nature doesn’t care for our pleasures or our psychological needs, it uses pleasure as a motivator to enforce a behavior.
Overcoming nature, using reason here, is the only thing that can free man from her authority.
Interesting, don’t you think, that nature is often described using female labels
There are so many evidences that suggest that meaningful survival rather than survival is the goal of life. E.g.:
- Many members of animal species go on mass suicides when the quality of life goes down below a certain level.
- Suicides or suicidal tendencies are a common human occurence. Nature has given us an instinct to end our lives when it becomes meaningless for us to live on. We may have all the money and resources that we want but if we are taken away from our natural needs (including sexual needs) life can become meaningless and one can lose all interest in living. You can consider the example of Giambatista. There are innumerous such examples around us. Depression is a common manifestation of this instinct.
- As a rule, the further we go away from nature, the more 'depressed' and 'wary of life' we get.
I am not sure if science is really capable of determining this 'meaning of life'. But that makes only science redundant, not the 'meaning of life'.
So, suicide is your “evidence”?
Self destruction has multiple causes.
In the wild placing yourself in harms way or sacrificing yourself results from that self-identifying process, I mentioned earlier, which makes the Other and the Self indistinguishable.
It is a psychological characteristic nature uses to facilitate bonding and enable cooperation.
In essence the individual forgoes his/her own survival so as to enable the continuance of the Other which carries his genes or not, but that he has associated as sharing in his/her identity.
Here the sense of Self is shared between multiple entities and so sacrificing one for the survival of the rest still maintains that sense of Self continuance.
Suicide as a human social phenomenon has multiple other causes.
But to “prove” your thesis, you must first define what “meaning” means.
I think you need to make a distinction between 'necessities' and 'greed'.
Marriage serves male need much more than it does female needs.
Through marriage males that would have no chance of mating are offered the opportunity of procreating.
This procreation, in turn, establishes a social investment. Once the male has something important, to him, to lose he can more readily discipline himself to social authority.
If women were allowed their natural sexual powers, then the vast majority of males would never mate and would roam as free-radicals threatening small social groups dominated by a single or a party of males.
In lions most males live in the periphery of small social groups, dominated by a single male or two related males.
In wolves males participate in the group, as adversaries who test the alpha-male’s dominance from time to time, or as effeminate males who become feminine in their disposition and behavior, by subjugating themselves to his authority.
The role of alpha-male in human groups has been taken over by institutions; government being one such institution. The individual holding the symbolic position of alpha-male/female is simply a figurehead who represents the authority of the institutional entity, and is tolerated marginally and temporarily, in such a position which he doesn’t define but which defines him.
Due to this all other males under this alpha-institutions rule, are forced to either live in the periphery or participate as emasculated, partially castrated males, with feminine attributes and behaviors.
Dissenters are quarantined or expelled, or they are rehabilitated through pain/pleasure mechanisms.
The same process of destroying a character so as to fully integrate them within a group is used by the military the world over. During boot-camp the recruit’s sense of identity is deconstructed and diminished, and then rebuilt in accordance with the institutions needs.
In this way complete harmony and discipline is enforced and the unit functions as a whole.
There I disagree. Men were perfectly capable of forming social groups and bonding without the pressures of getting married. The only healthy models of social bonding are ones that come naturally. No mammals show, and no human societies before marriage came along showed, a tendency towards male-female bonding. It's something that can only be brought along by blocking the man's capability to sexually bond with men, and pressurising them through various mechanisms to bond with women, willy-nilly.
You are confusing bonding with sexual bonding.
Sexual bonding is a natural necessity, accomplished through chemical reactions which flood the brain and result in specific behavior.
Bonding, as friends or allies, may have sexual undertones, since bonding itself facilitates procreation directly or indirectly, but it does not necessarily have sexual desire as an element of it.
Barring the natural masculinity of man and his feminisation, my friend, is at the root of human civilisation. And it is the root of human civilisations' hostility towards male-male bonds. That is why most religions have been dead against them too. Because they were a big pain in the neck for their expansionist ambitions.
Civilization is dependant on harmonious co-existence. It therefore moralizes characteristics as desirable and undesirable and attempts to eradicate what is undesirable from its midst.
Masculinity, with its resistance and need to dominate and question and challenge, becomes an element undesirable to the stability of the whole. Especially since the role of top-dog is now taken over by an abstract institutional entity, with only a figurehead as its representative face.
As a result it subjugates both males and females and forces them into unnatural behaviors.
Females are forces to suppress their sexual power, so as to enable male participation and genetic investment, and males are forced to suppress their sexuality and free-spiritedness so as to avoid its chaotic destabilizing effects and violent competitions.
I more or less agree with you here. But would like to add that I have given several evidences that procreation is only a small part of our natural biological tendencies. To impose it upon every member or to make the entire social order primarily heterosexual is to denigrate nature and lose all the valuable stuff it has in store for us.
Procreation is the only natural tendency. All others are strategies towards this end.
What evidences?
Bonding? Bonding for what purpose?
Meaningful living? As determined by what?
What is the standard that measures meaning?
In the case of nature it is she that establishes meaning and purpose and saves the mind from thinking by simply feeding instinctual needs.
Instinct is how nature imposes its own motive, on the individual.
In the case of nature, survival and reproduction is the motive.
Reproduction n search for the ideal form, the most stable structure.
A universe in turmoil seeking an end.
We are manifestations of a universal flux. We call it chaos.
It is the constant alteration and reconstitution of forces, seeking stability.
Life is a continuance of this process. It is these forces given focus and made more efficient through awareness.
Bonding is the means towards this end. Not the end itself.
Any behaviour that contradicts this natural motive, results in feelings of inadequacy and meaninglessness.
Most humans find their sense of purpose in having children.
It is only reason, that questions this role, that establishes the possibility for ignoring it and freeing the mind from its natural tendencies.
Sexual identity is a social construct, with very specific anti-man and anti-masculinity motives. Man was not supposed to be bound by sexual identities, nor by spiritual (religious), nor by those of professions (Hinduism). They are all artificial social constructs that are made inorder to mislead people and misrepresent reality.
Man is the sum of his past.
As such he is male and human. These elements determine his being, as they have participated in bringing him about.
Sexual identity is a reality of being. Men and women exist, as sides to the same existential coin.
Only the mind, with reason, frees itself from such identities, by questioning the natural forces the created him and by seeking to find freedom by overcoming his past.
But reason is an element in both women and men, to varying degrees.
Pure thought knows no sexuality or identity. Nature imposes an identity on the mind through sexuality and psychology and instinct.
Society doesn’t do it. Society simply takes this pre-existing identity and shapes it or warps it using memetic ideals.
I couldn't agree more. And if nature has preserved same-sex bonds so strongly and universally amongst living beings, and in humans thousands of years of hostilities have not been able to extinguish it, then science should actually make us respect such bonds and we should strive to use science to find its real purpose in nature --- rather than to stick to Darwinism and trying to find a cause for it (hoping to do away with it by finding a 'cure', its like finding a cure for being a man!).
Same sex bonds are not restricted by society. Their expression and limits are.
Same sex bonds are part of all-sex bonds.
But this does not mean same-sex sexual bonds. One does not follow from the other.
There is no reason for same-sex intercourse in nature.
What instances exist are mostly dominance exhibition, as in the case with canines where the effeminate position of a subordinate male is reinforced through sexual display, or in Bonobo monkeys where sex functions as a stress reliever and maintains cohesion through energy release.
But these sexual functions come after the fact that sex has become the means to procreate and so necessitates bonding between individuals with whatever means and methods.
That is an absurd conclusion. In nature sexual types don't exist. Sexuality is fluid in nature. There are especially no heterosexuals in nature. What exists in nature are 'gender' types which the western civilisation has almost ignored.
What?!
The penis between your legs is what?
Is it not a natural identifying characteristic of sex?
Gender behaviors are established through social groups, not sexual types.
Penises were probably designed to facilitate procreation. But it does not mean that they are only for procreation. In all probability sex with its primary function of pleasure and same-sex bonding too adopted itsellf to this new situation of sexual dimorphism, and penis became its 'focal' point. This primary function of sex and its instinct is more universal and widespread than male-female sex for reproduction can ever be.
Pleasure is an illusion, but that’s another matter.
Pleasure is how behavior is established. Pleasure makes us seek out what gives us pleasure and so, if we are governed by it, we become automatons governed by it.
No doubt. But the same men who procreate for sex, were also meant to bond sexually with other men. Sexual identities are a hoax.
Bonding and sexually desiring are two different things.
If you are saying that male-male bonding has been degraded due to cultural prejudices and social pressures, then I agree.
But the same can be said of all human relationships.
This does not mean that men sexually desire one another.
What homosexual behaviour exists in our species is due to some genetic mutation, caused, presumably, by some hormonal factor during gestation, and due to dominance exhibitions and/or as a form of release where females are unavailable and the instinct to penetrate is so strong and uncontrollable in the male that he’ll fuck anything.
I become suspicious when the sentences become too complex. I think unless you prove these things you should say "part of the preexisting determinations". Also what are 'communally productive ways". Productive for whom?
For the whole.
Your physical body is a community of individual entities that have subjugated their being to a social unity which benefits the whole.
You are a community of cells, individual yet still enslaved to a unity.
The authority in this unity is your consciousness.
Masculinity and femininity do exist in nature. But society has forced it away from us. It has introduced its own artificial brands of masculinity and femininity. While natural masculinity is thrown off the limits of civilisation, social masculinity is unduly glorified, in order to fool men and make them vulnerable to social manipulation by inflating their egos. Femininity is given a secondary place and natural femininity in men is denigrated.
Masculinity and femininity exist as a natural necessity.
Each sex has the appropriate characteristics, both physical and mental, to accomplish its procreative role.
Differences in nature do not become established as a form of aesthetics.
I said nature is frugal.
What is a natural has a reason why it is necessary.
This difference is not cosmetic. It is determining and fundamental.
To overcome it one must overcome the system that produced it. In this case nature.
That is why the social notions of masculinity changes from society to society depending on the kind of manipulation of men required by the society. In the west an 'equal' relationship with a woman may be deemed 'masculine', a traditional society may frown at it as wimpy. In traditional societies a man's devotion to his mother may be glorified, the western heterosexual society may see it as 'wimpy' or 'childish', while celebrating a man's devotion to his wife/ girlfriend as masculine. A man devoting too much time with females may be considered 'unmanly' by a traditional society, but may be propagated as 'masculine' in the west. Holding hands by men or even kissing each other may be considered macho acts in traditonal societies, while in the west men may cringe at the thought of it since they are considered utterly queer acts.
The degree to which masculinity and femininity is allowed to be expressed changes from culture to culture.
The basic elements are always the same, as they are the product of nature.
For one thing sexuality is not a fundamental part of a man's idenitity. It's been made so by putting artifical stress on it by the heterosexual west. And life is not just a self-replicating mechanism. It has a much deeper purpose to know which it is almost a must to give up heterosexuality. Why else do you think spiritual men give up marriage and children (remember Buddha!).
Sexuality plays a central part in identity.
Particularly when the mind is guided by instinct and emotion
In most instances, males judge themselves and their value through their sexual exploits and their sexual performances and endowments.
Women judge themselves through their children.
This is nature dominating over human psychology.
Most of human civilization is rooted in the need to attract and maintain sexual partners.
Men seek wealth to have access to pussy.
Men create and procreate so as to maintain the illusion immortality. We construct symbols of our presence.
2. Sexuality is everything but a matter of choice. If it is a matter of choice, it is only for a few people. For the rest there is no real choice. Like you hold a gun on a person and say you have a choice. If you take orange you'll be shot. If you take apple you will be rewarded. But you have a choice.
This is no real choice.
Are you for real?
I’ve never heard of a man, except one that had homosexual leanings, who ever expressed any coercion in his attraction to females.
I’ve had nobody pressure me into finding female behinds and breasts attractive.
You must, though.
I sense that you’ve been living some social lie and the psychological pressure to maintain this façade is wearing you down. You fear the repercussions of total disclosure.
So, you’ve constructed this elaborate and self-serving error to let some psychic steam out.
A heterosexual society is really great for some women. It removes all possible social regulations from them and places a lot of power --- sexual power in their hands over men. After all men must service them in order to get 'social masculinity' --- a matter of life and death for them. And women are the ones who are given the power to give it.
Paternalistic societies are, most often, the most stable, because they restrict the destabilizing effects of female sexual power.
But even in paternalistic societies a woman maintains a great amount of control and power.
Women are protected from reality in many ways in paternalistic societies.
A fact they are now discovering, on their own. Female emancipation has deteriorated the family institution around which feminine subjugation was constructed, and as a consequence it has also liberated males from their socially enforced responsibilities.
As a result a female might procreate with a male she finds genetically attractive and then seek out that stable, nice provider that will offer her a stable and safe environment to raise her offspring in.
This arrangement is temporary and tenuous.
Dropping birth rates point to a decline and moral deterioration results in decadence where meaninglessness and emptiness force a search for alternatives (life-styles for example).
The procreation boom, has had the added effect of deteriorating genetic health.
When all males and all females can procreate, weakness and defect is not eradicated from the gene pool.
As a result genetic mutations flourish. Possibly rising homosexual tendencies can be seen under this light.
Perhaps it’s a natural population control mechanism, where large populations with few external regulating threats are stopped from exceeding a certain limit through mutations which are procreative dead-ends.
While I don't understand the second part of what you're saying, I do agree with the first part. But I will qualify it by saying that this particular characteristic ---when it is a primary identity, should be based on a natural distinction not a social distinction brought about for manipulative reasons. The only natural division of men is along the lines of gender. Not sexuality and that is easy to prove.
The size of the group is a well known factor in behavioural psychology.
In small groups the individual still has some relevance. His distinctive traits and talents are still important to the group and so his independent identity is desirable.
Subjugation to group dynamics is minimal.
As a group grows the individual becomes replaceable and his distinctive characteristics, if they confront authority and social harmony, become more and more undesirable.
Common denominators are enforced and nurtured, creating ‘averageness’ as a desirable trait.
The larger the group the more non-descript, “normal”, docile, disciplined, unchallenging, non-confrontational, tolerant, un-free, unthinking the individual must be to be successfully integrated within the whole.
This is why ants and bees are such successful species.
Who is a society? Society is not a living being.
A whole is the sum of its parts.
Society is a non-specific, entity, governed by popular opinion and averageness.
You are a sum of your parts.
Society functions and behaves as a living being.
Nation states establish relationships and behave as living organisms, trying to feed off of and absorb and procreate using other nation-state entities.
This globalization trend is really an Americanization trend, where American society is attempting to integrate the entire planet within its being.
