If this were a dinner party,

[Kuznetzova]

So you are a young person in school in the United States in 1961. You are young, naive, and you have never experimented with illicit drugs. Your school and your television set has told you that marijuana will,

• ...make you steal.
• ...make you punch people and be violent.
• ...cause you to go crazy and end up hospitalized.
• ...make you go sterile.
• ...make you go crazy and jump out of 5th-story windows and fall to your death.

And as the 60s decade slowly ticks off the years and you get older, you end up at parties. And some older people are passing a joint. You join in the circle and toke away. At the end of the evening you realize that everything your ultra-conservative parents told you about marijuana, everything your church pastor said, and all that propaganda you heard on television were all lies. You realize you have been lied to. And the next day you talk to me. And I say to you : Your society has not given you the tools of critical analysis. Those tools which allow you to collect your own facts and draw your own conclusions from those facts. You were told what to do by authority. You were not informed by them. Instead of merely lacking to inform you, they misinformed you. They lied.

Now I am a man coming to this forum. And I have experienced for myself what I say, and I have seen what I have seen with my own eyes. And upon informing this forum of these facts I am given replies that are variations on: "Mah country and many other countriez did done make that illegal so its must bees illegalz cuz there mustah been some good reason that they did dont make it it illegal and wee--ooo---weeee--oooo!!" Or variations on: "I aint gotta xplain nuttin cuz I moderator Ug, and I erase your posts. Ug strong. Ug smashh!!" And these people pretend to lecture me on things which they have no personal experience with. Pretending to pose as self-appointed internet experts.

I feel like the man in Smallsville, USA in 1968 who is being told by ultra-conservative Christians that marijuana will make me rob convenience stores and jump out of tall buildings.

At the end of the day, what I am being asked to do here is be delusional. I'm being asked to forget what I really know and forget what I really experienced, and to cater to your delusions and your sensitive cultural sensibilities. And honestly, I'm perfectly willing to do that, that is, if this were a dinner party. At a dinner party, you cater to each other's delusions, keep the topics light. And by the end of the evening, everyone leaves feeling better than when they arrived. You keep things light and agreeable and no arguments foment. No heated arguments "ruin the evening" as it were.

I understand that. I understand and respect that social dynamic. Delusion and agreeableness for the sake of social cohesion and good feelings of comradery. Fine.

Unfortunately, this is not a dinner party. This is the Applied Ethics section of a philosophy forum. To come here , you are committing yourself to the deep end of the pool. You have to have rough skin. We don't lie to each other here. We don't engage in historical re-writes. We do not proselytize. We don't sell things. We don't misinform each other. We are not here to push a political agenda. We don't come here to regurgitate what cable TV told us.

Philosophy is a search for truth. And sometimes that search is disturbing and horrific. Sometimes the truth is not pretty. Sometimes the facts are incompatible with your previous worldview.

• Be prepared to talk about uncomfortable subject matter.
• Be prepared to have your unexamined cultural views cut into pieces and dissected.
• You would not go to a dinner party and talk about the prevalence of rape in warfare. You wouldn't mention the roman man of letters who wrote that rape in warfare a "necessary but despicable spoil of war". These are not things you say in the mixed company of a dinner party. These facts are depressing and uncomfortable.
• You DO say these things in an Applied Ethics section of a philosophy forum.
• You don't go to a thanksgiving dinner and tell everyone that "while child erotica is illegal in your little corner of the universe, it is not illegal in every part of the western world."
• You DO say these things in an Applied Ethics section of a philosophy forum.
• You don't go to a dinner party and talk about the price of escort services in Stockholm.
• That subject WILL be breached on an Applied Ethics section of a philosophy forum.

If you cannot handle the heat of this kitchen, you are free to leave at any time. If you cannot stomach this level of social analysis, soul-searching and tallying of human atrocities of history, you may close this window at any time.

The internet is very large.
If you are upset, go look at photos of kittens.
http://www.reddit.com/r/aww

[uwot]

And I say to you : Your society has not given you the tools of critical analysis. Those tools which allow you to collect your own facts and draw your own conclusions from those facts. You were told what to do by authority. You were not informed by them. Instead of merely lacking to inform you, they misinformed you. They lied.

About what?

[Wyman]

I feel like the man in Smallsville, USA in 1968 who is being told by ultra-conservative Christians that marijuana will make me rob convenience stores and jump out of tall buildings.

Except this is in no way like Smallsville, child porn is nothing like marijuana, the moderators are nothing like ultra conservatives and saying that child porn is wrong and illegal is nothing like saying that marijuana will cause you to jump out a window.

I'm reminded of an episode of Taxi where Jim says, while talking to his friends in a public men's room of an experience he had doing peyote with an Indian: 'It was in a place just like this. Except no urinals. And no stalls. And no walls or ceiling. It was just desert as far as the eye could see....'

[Blaggard]

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

[hammock]

So you are a young person in school in the United States in 1961.

Hell, boy, this is 2014. You could play shock-jock in 1961 with an exploration / celebration of what the Etoro people, Catholic priests, and Jerry Sandusky have in common, when the subject might have been somewhat novel. But in the desensitized climate of today, after several decades of countercultural bowel movements and violent computer games, your choice of a scat monkey to defile Mama Peek's couch with is so retro and boring and prehistoric that it could only give an intellectual hardon to freshly deflowered underclassmen who don't know how to use a rotary phone and would go insane if they had to change channels on a television manually.

[Arising_uk]

... if they had to change channels on a television manually.

You can change channels on a television remotely!!!(old fogey)

[Arising_uk]

...
If you cannot handle the heat of this kitchen, you are free to leave at any time. If you cannot stomach this level of social analysis, soul-searching and tallying of human atrocities of history, you may close this window at any time. ...

The problem is that you are like the news, only bad news sells, to top it off you are like old-news and only choose the news to suit your agenda.

[Impenitent]

welcome to the Hotel California...

-Imp

[hammock]

... if they had to change channels on a television manually.

You can change channels on a television remotely!!!(old fogey)

Yeah, yeah. I was just indicating the age of the latest generation of wannabe shockaholics and taboo-breakers. That just about anything they consider a "new frontier" was plowed-up one side and down the other by baby boomers and subsequent evolutions of hipster-dom. The current fuddy-duddies have already been there / done that or dissected whatever stuff is paraded around as the next phase in nonconformity, regardless of whether or not it was blessed by the powers that be at the time.

That old "narrow-minded" gal getting about with a walker and shouting Hosanna in church services has first-hand memories about inebriated Daddy chasing his 11-year old daughter around the bedroom during Mother's frigid weeks. Less than a decade later from then, sometimes while not even floating chemically at high altitude, she voluntarily and repeatedly wanted to know what it was like to be a white turkey slice smothered in the middle of a heavily toasted sandwich.

Thanks to personal diaries and journals, we know that even those supposedly sleepy, sedated neighborhoods from centuries past were also anything but that. Aside from public officials being accused of rape, openly unwed mothers suing for child-support, and the occasional mass-murder suicide in a family, this summary leaves out Martha Moore's account of a neighbor molesting his young daughter. And, surprise, being arrested for it rather than today's typical impression of girls back then choosing to hunker down in shame and fear rather than report such parental violations.

[Blaggard]

If this were indeed the dinner party in question with the people present and "bon vivant" chat that was going on, well I'd kick you all out, and get drunk on the wine I had bought for the dinner party. Then I'd probably have a bit of a cry and go to bed...

j/k

... if they had to change channels on a television manually.

You can change channels on a television remotely!!!(old fogey)

Yeah, yeah. I was just indicating the age of the latest generation of wannabe shockaholics and taboo-breakers. That just about anything they consider a "new frontier" was plowed-up one side and down the other by baby boomers and subsequent evolutions of hipster-dom. The current fuddy-duddies have already been there / done that or dissected whatever stuff is paraded around as the next phase in nonconformity, regardless of whether or not it was blessed by the powers that be at the time.

That old "narrow-minded" gal getting about with a walker and shouting Hosanna in church services has first-hand memories about inebriated Daddy chasing his 11-year old daughter around the bedroom during Mother's frigid weeks. Less than a decade later from then, sometimes while not even floating chemically at high altitude, she voluntarily and repeatedly wanted to know what it was like to be a white turkey slice smothered in the middle of a heavily toasted sandwich.

Thanks to personal diaries and journals, we know that even those supposedly sleepy, sedated neighborhoods from centuries past were also anything but that. Aside from public officials being accused of rape, openly unwed mothers suing for child-support, and the occasional mass-murder suicide in a family, this summary leaves out Martha Moore's account of a neighbor molesting his young daughter. And, surprise, being arrested for it rather than today's typical impression of girls back then choosing to hunker down in shame and fear rather than report such parental violations.

QFT.(Quoted For Truth) before anyone asks, it's one of those internet gibberish things.

I think a lot of it is as you say, there are so few taboos to break now, it's not like the kids of today are any different than the kids of the 60s of the 18th century it's merely the sort of social dynamics have changed. So in essence I completely agree. Which will probably strike you as odd. But then you are probably fat and gay and er like Harry Potter, and er over obsess over children and er... run out of ideas now... j/k

[Arising_uk]

Yeah, yeah. I was just indicating the age of the latest generation of wannabe shockaholics and taboo-breakers. ...

Sorry, I missed-out the question mark and a determiner "You can change channels on a television remotely!!!?(an old fogey). Hope this makes it clearer.

[hammock]

Yeah, yeah. I was just indicating the age of the latest generation of wannabe shockaholics and taboo-breakers. ...

Sorry, I missed-out the question mark and a determiner "You can change channels on a television remotely!!!?(an old fogey). Hope this makes it clearer.

Saa right. Even the misinterpretation I took as a facetious poke. I'm well familiar with being misunderstood due to my risky style of ironic facades and exaggerated affectations, deadpan/dry delivery, and dependency upon unsaid things between the lines that are up to the reader / listener to infer or dig out.