Del wrote: ↑25 Jul 2022, 08:52
tuttle wrote: ↑25 Jul 2022, 05:58
So did it work? Do you get to bang chicks guilt free now?
Sounds like it's mandatory behavior now, an obligation that must be fulfilled in hive-mind compliance to modern society.
"Everyone belongs to everyone else."
Doesn't sound like much fun, though.
I see no difference between "modern society" as arbitrarily defined and any other "society" except in illusion. Particularly when many of the elements of so-called "modern society" have their roots in centuries before.
I'm not interested in unquantifiable "fads" or "trends", such as the newest "iphone" craze, since that's really just minutia and not a significant bedrock of "modern society". As far as significant elements of modern society - such as our systems of law - they date back to the 19th century, and even before.
Del wrote: ↑25 Jul 2022, 16:15
I'm not a great expert on young people these days. All of my young friends are Catholic home-school kids.... and they are genuinely excited about the thrill of living lives that are both pure and rebelliously counter-cultural! I'm just thankful that I'm not treading that minefield now.
But you're not "counter" towards your own culture - you're "counter" towards another culture. Isn't everyone?
Q. What is sex for?
A. Sex has two purposes:
- The primary purpose of sex is to bring forth children.
- The secondary purpose (because it is in service to the first) is to bond the father and mother intimately so that they may work together as one to raise their children.
- To serve these purposes, sex is designed by God and nature to be pleasurable.
On this, I'm aware that "natural law" does not simply refer to "existing in the physical world" - a lot of uninformed people make that conflation, so I'll clear that up right away.
The flaws here though, are that socially, "having children" is only needed up to a certain minimum extent to perpetuate life or the existence of a culture - if individuals or cultures do it in excess - as in excess to their reasonable means of support, then it's no longer a good and brings harm, such as can be seen in impoverished countries or in perpetual "welfare" generations. The problem isn't simply reducible to the "lack of a father in the household" or whatever the excuse might be.
So this is why all societies have regulated procreation in different ways - whether it's "natural" or not isn't worth getting into, it simply is. A society encouraging procreation to only occur within marriage, or ancient cultures (not limited to the Bible) having harsh penalties for adultery are in fact, regulation procreation and attempting to curb procreation under circumstances which the society deems to be irresponsible. The "raw, purely physical" desire for sex will of course be there one way or another, whether the conscious decision to do or bear children so is responsible or not (just as the raw, physical desire to eat will always be there even if it leads to excess or obesity).
The alternative, of course would be people simply living like animals and having no purpose other than to eat, sleep, and procreate just like any other animal, sure people might "procreate more" than we do if we lived like animals, but we wouldn't have arts, religion, culture, and civilization and would be living today the same as people did in the Stone Age.
So by virtue of living in civilization itself, we are already "regulating" our own and others procreation indirectly - by the simple virtue of devoting time to civilizational pursuits such as arts, religion, music, sciences, technology, and so on. This is one of the simple reasons that people in contemporary societies have fewer children than people who live in less-developed societies - it's simply less immediately necessary for survival, and children are less likely to die in childbirth.
So I'm not entirely sure where this fits into definitions of "natural", but obviously the direct and indirect methods of regulation or diversion of procreation which already do exist (and have in every civilization to some form or another) are necessary for civilization to exist itself, as opposed to modern man regressing to the Stone Age and - like animals presumably - making "procreation" their highest priority, simply because of raw instinct (not conscious, rational decision) and for simple lack of "anything else to do", rather than anything which requires invoking notions of "God" or "nature".
Often some material value is traded as well (money, dinner, drugs, a place to stay), further underscoring the transactional nature of the relationship.
I agree about "transactionality" - though I don't see transactionality as necessarily being, or being necessarily limited to a particular context. Even people in a long-term relationship or marriage could devolve into pure transactionality.