Why is it uncomfortable to talk about sex?

Tonight at the Ideas Cafe, we had a great discussion about our attitude towards sex and why we are uncomfortable talking about it.

Both Shula and Mano mentioned that part of the reason may be that our sex organs are close to our waste organs and as children growing up,  we were taught that our waste organs are dirty and our sex organs may become dirty by association.

Lisa said that it is all about context.  That we should not be uncomfortable about discussion sexual education with children or talk about sex when there is a reason to. It is just not the time and place to talk about it in general conversation before we get to know someone well.

We compared to discussing sex with discussing food.  How we can openly discuss good food preparation but do not discuss improving our sex techniques.

Shula also mentioned that there is a parallel with food in that with very religious Jews,  they do not use the word "pork" as something they do not eat but refer to it as "white meat".  The word "pork" is too unmentionable to them much like some of us who do not want to use words like penis and vagina but substitute it with other words instead.

Gerry said that sex is sacred between two people in love and it is a feeling that defies description.  To discuss it is to demean it and to reduce it to a pleasure experience is desecrating the experience.  There is no word or description that can adequately describe it.

Raffi and Shula disagree in that anything we can attempt to describe with language is on its way to describing the feeling and experience.  It may not completely describe it but we have to try and to figure out what is inadequate.  To not do it is to give over to the religious authorities and to give up on trying to understand something.

There were various examples of different cultures that have different sexual rituals than ours illustrating that our attitude towards sex is rooted in our culture.

At the very least, we should be able to discuss sex more openly so that we can all improve our experience.  Joseph mentioned that this is not an issue with the younger generation and that there is no performance anxiety of not talking about sex for fear of not measuring up.

There was discussion of the changing social attitudes towards sex.  How some years ago, it was not possible for one of the married partners to complain about being raped, how it was illegal to have interracial sex before, and certain sex acts were prohibited.

Rafi mentioned that sex is too strong a motivator to be passed over by organised religion and political leaders.  It is difficult to control food as the masses need it everyday but sex is something that can be suppressed and manipulated to the advantage of those in power.

Most at the cafe feels that we will become more and more comfortable talking about sex and that attitude will continue to change to make it more acceptable.  Shula said prostitutes should be made therapists and have proper training for therapy as there is obviously a demand for their services.

The same applies to pornography and drugs.

My take from the cafe is that the more we talk about it the more comfortable we will be about it and will demystify it.  While Gerry has a point about love making sex a more spiritual experience, that also make sex more of an unapproachable topic that defies understanding.  We need both the technique and feeling.

There was discussion monogamy versus polyandrous relationships and how they arguably have their good points but that is for another cafe. 

Somehow, I feel like I am not capturing the lively spirit at the cafe.  Feel free to add comments as I must be leaving quite a few things out.

Outsourcing the military

Yesterday we discussed the considerations for outsourcing the military.

There are arguments for outsourcing government services to improve efficiency.  Why not the military?

Summary of the ideas;

1.  We already outsource parts of the military,  they buy trucks and equipment instead of making it all themselves.  They use civilians to construct military buildings even though they have their own engineers who can build bridges.  So they already outsource to some degree.  We may be more talking about the soldiers who actually carry out combat duties, the ones who put their lives at risk.

2.  When a country move from mandatory conscription to a voluntary army,  the combat duty is already "outsourced" to professional soldiers instead of military service being part of civic duty.  These professional soldiers sign on to take the place of other citizens in return for the pay and benefits offered by the military.

3.  Outsourcing the military detach military action too much from political decisions.  It is easier to send an "outsourced" military to action overseas but a conscripted defense force is much more motivated to protect their country as it is their own land but would hesitate to intervene a foreign situation.

4.  The military serve to deter outside aggression by just being there.  Having a military at the ready on standby with active patrol duty signals to a potential aggressor that they are up against a difficult task when invading.  Having a big war chest with ready funds to hire mercenaries don't quite achieve the same affect.

5.  Military action involve situations where the scope of work is ill defined.  This makes it difficult to contract the task to some other entity.  Contracting out is better suited to well defined work with agreed objectives.

6.  The military have special rules of conduct in war which civilian contractors are not obligated to.  This led to the example of torture by outsourced  contractors.  Whether the military intentionally use contracting out to distance themselves from these undesirable practices, the laws needs to be changed to cover the contractors as well and the contractors needs to be under the same obligations.

7.  Loyalty is a big factor and the French foreign Legend use French officers even though the soldiers are paid foreigners and it is only used for action outside of France.

8.  While the ancient Greeks take pride in looking at military service as part of civic responsibility,  we also have to keep in mind that they are land owners protecting their own land and not everyone have a vote.  Therefore the make up of civic voting group is not the same as it is today.

9.  Outsourced contractors may have a conflict of interest in wanting to prolong a war or promote conflict in order to generate more business for themselves.

10.  Constantly training to be ready is the military's routine.  Is it possible to place our nation's trust on some outside contractor to maintain this readiness?  Perhaps while they are maintaining the same readiness for a possible future enemy?

In the end, morale and motivation is a big part of military action. War is also about dealing with an enemy that may not follow rules.  All this makes it a difficult issue to define for outsourcing.  Once bits of it is defined, it can be outsourced.  Should the military outsource the manufacturing of their own bullets? I would say yes as it seems like a defined issue.  Should the military outsource its intelligence gathering?  I would say no as it seems a fluid issue with a lot of judgment calls required. 

Consenting adults and personal freedom

Our liberal society and our conception of personal freedom leads us to believe that anything is permissible so long as it is between consenting adults.

Trudeau's famous saying in the '60s of "government have no business in the bedroom of the nation" legitimized consenting adult behavior in privacy as outside of the business of others and therefore government.

Rather than providing a conduct of behavior, our laws are now mainly involved in the protection of children, minorities, and parties who cannot properly give or withhold consent.

What examples do you have that involve behavior or things that should be legitimately banned even among consenting adults?

One example is that what is agreeable between two consenting adults may have implications to other adults whose permissions were not asked for or granted.  

An employer cannot hire someone at less than minimum wage even if the worker agrees to work for less than minimum wage because it affects other jobseekers who wants to be protected by the minimum wage legislation.  

Individual citizens cannot agree to break a society's laws just because they disagree with the law legitimized by the majority of society.

Or maybe the actions of two consenting adults have what environmentalist call externalities, implications on future generations who cannot participate in the consent process.  We cannot agree to pollute a lake that unborn generations have to clean up later on and yet have no consenting participation for this decision.

What about prostitution or variations there off?  

What about exploitation ?

Is an exchange among consenting adults always a "fair exchange" ?

Of course, anything we do have affect on others.  It is impossible to do something without some affect on others around us.  

So does it mean that we always have more adult consent to sort after other than the immediate parties involved?  

This will make a mockery of the concept of personal freedom if there is nothing we can do that does not affect others and our "freedom" is always at the mercy of other people's "consent"

Perhaps there is a way we can draw the line on our personal freedom versus how our action affect others.  Where do we draw this line?

Maybe we do not need to get the consent of the grocery clerk every time we see a grocery sale because we can assume that it is not at the sacrifice of their job for us to get the sale.  But what if it is?  Should we still take the sale and keep the clerk's job as not related to the sale offered?

How do we identify who should be considered as stake holders in any transaction?

Does prostitution involve the consent of only the prostitute and the customer?  What about the customer's spouse? What about the neighbors where the prostitute carry on his/her business? The landlord who rented the facilities? The employer of the customer who wants to project a decent corporate citizen image? The community organization that the customer belong to who do not want any scandal to discredit the organization?

We are having our Ideas Cafe discussion this Wednesday and we will see whether we are actually as "free" as we think we are.

Why should life or societies be fair? What is driving fairness?

We had an interesting discussion about fairness last night at the New Westminster Ideas Cafe.

Is fairness subjective and relative to the observer?  It would seem that way given the example from Shula about the perspective of the driver versus the pedestrian and how each think the other should behave.  The interesting point is that when the driver gets out of the car to walk and the pedestrian gets into the car to drive, it does not take long for them to change their perspective to their new identities.

This rapid change in view point brings the two perspectives in consideration and remind us how much we change when we change our perspectives.

Fairness then involve understanding the two or more sides of the situation and the compromises that inevitably is required for these sides to coexist.

Even with these perspectives, and the understanding of these perspectives,  there can still be several points of compromise that can be reasonably "fair" positions.  These can be arrived at from different considerations such as waiting time of the pedestrian versus the driver, safety of the pedestrian, stop and go of the vehicle etc.

Fairness is therefore a concept that is superior to equal treatment in one dimension only but tries to encompass other considerations to arrive at an overall equitable situation for all parties.

RJ mentioned that the courts do not want to address "fairness" but strive for equality under the law.  The legal system therefore is our attempt to strive for fairness but we will have to settle for equality in particular matters.

Why do we esteem fairness as a desirable trait for our society? Perhaps against our evolutionary self interest to give up some of our benefits to share with others in the name of fairness?

One possibility is that we all want to live and be part of a social group that is fair. Partly because we may be on the other side of this fairness evaluation someday and therefore investing in fairness today by sharing may benefit us later on.  The other part is that self interest is a lonely pursuit and against our social nature to be accepted and valued by others of our social group.

Shula reminded us that we are unfair when it comes to treatment of our children versus other children.  We all want the best there is for our children.  We still teach them to share with other children but we treat our children better.

This unfair treatment extends to other social boundaries beyond our families to our immediate neighbourhood, our city, our province, our country etc.  There is always an unfair bias to our social group and this fairness line gradually shifts as our social group definition gets bigger.

Therefore, it seems that we have these two competing considerations of self interest versus group interest.

We like to be part of a stable social group but that stability is promoted at the expense of some of our self interest.

This compromise of self interest versus group interest continues on to interest of the social group we are currently in versus the social group that is immediately outside of our current group.

For people living outside of the Vancouver area, is it fair to have the province spend money on the Winter Olympics ?

I am sure that they would rather have money spent in their area but they would also like to be in a province that had raised its image because of the Olympics.

Is it fair to have paid sick leave when some people are sick more often than others? Abuses aside, it is much easier to say yes if the sick person happens to be a close friend or relative than a stranger.

Again, we have made progress in understanding fairness but only to find that there is much more to be discovered!

Political correctness

We had an interesting discussion yesterday and today about political correctness.  What is it?  Who sets it?

Wikipedia attribute the origins of political correctness (p.c. in short) with the feminist movement in the 70s.  We have all witness the changing of language such as chairman to chairwoman, to chairperson, and now to chair.

Language frames our thinking and terms carry other meanings besides the main intended one.  Sometimes, terms also carry negative baggage from old attitudes that needs to be changed and new terms facilitate that.

Shula said that changing terms is only superficial, it is the thinking that needs to change.

Mano said that the last 50 to 100 years have seen more social change than the centuries before it and p.c. represents the transitional stage before our attitudes and value systems settle into a new equilibrium.  As an example he cites how woman chose their married names from the husband's family name to keeping their own maiden name, to hyphenated name, to new word consisting part of each family name, and maybe to something else.  Like the change from chairman to chair, p.c. represents the state of social acceptance of each new step.

Eventually, society reaches a point where an acceptable term or attitude is reached and our attention is diverted to some other area that draws our attention.

P.c. is also used by the conservatives to complain about not being able to talk about some of the things permissible in the past for fear of offending sensibilities of parts of society. Using the term p.c. sarcastically is the conservatives way of attacking the change.

So p.c. is used by the weak in society to promote a new attitude and value system.  If this idea takes hold and there is enough support, the proponents can claim that it is the new main stream and label those not conforming as politically incorrect.

It takes courage to initially promote a new idea and convince others that they should adopt this.  At a certain point when there is enough support for this and the movement becomes mainstream, a bandwagon effect happens.

The people who join later are more like bandwagon followers than courageous early adopters. It is now the people who oppose this movement that needs courage to speak against it and risk being run over by the band wagon (and mob).

Dan mentioned that he behaves differently within the various social group that he participate in.  There are unspoken controversial topics for each group and for harmony, these topics are avoided.  This is not p.c., just the way we socialize and get along with the people around us.

However, as the group size grows to societies, the term p.c. seems to apply to these controversial issues.

How do we know when p.c. have gone too far?

Comedians and satirists are always ready to make fun of p.c.

Eventually, the rise of a new social concept relies on the sympathy and support of the masses.  The privileged have to be convinced that they should give up power to those who are underprivileged up till then.

Whether it is an appeal to their sense of justice, fairness, or that the society as a whole will be better off with the new attitude,  the privileged class complies and p.c. is now mainstream and no longer demand attention.

What about issues that was starting to be politically correct but did not manage to change social attitudes later on?  Somehow I cannot think of an example just this minute.

Let me know when you think of one!

Should we admire an artist or athlete for their talent or their effort?

We had a great discussion in the North Vancouver Ideas Cafe tonight.

Shula started off with the first point that it is the result that we admire, not so much of the reason as to whether it is talent or hard work.  We appreciate good music and inspiring athletic performance on its own.

But what about Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, who had to overcome extraordinary obstacles.  It is their persevering over these obstacles that is the object of admiration, not the result of crossing the finish line.

Mano pointed out that we do not need to look at things on an either/or exclusive of each other basis.  We can admire someone for both their talent and their effort or a combination of both.  We can also admire the end result on its own regardless of how it was achieved.

As the discussion went on, it became clear that the word "admire" is rather loose with several meanings. It can mean appreciation, recognition of extraordinary accomplishment, or just liking something that is good to look at, and to know.

Rafi pointed out that good looking people are known to get further ahead in society with less effort.  It is similar to talent.

But then again, even the predisposition to work hard may also be a trait we are born with;  in which case the desire to work hard to accomplish is no different than talent and beauty?

Blair thinks that hard work can only get so far, especially with something creative like music.  However, he would still rather hire a hard worker over someone who is talented.

Leagh agreed that talent is not important as being dependable and hardworking for most jobs.  However, as the discussion continues, it became apparent that there may be jobs where creativity is more important than being dependable and hardworking.  It is just that the vast majority of jobs are better served by the hard worker.

Poets are a good example of creativity over hard work.

Steve Nash is an example of a successful basketball player in spite of not being a very tall person.  Michael Jordan is an example of a tall basketball player who is successful not only because he is tall.

So we can admire the end result, the effort, the will, the normalcy of the artist or athlete in spite of their success.

We can also admire ordinary people doing their task against stiff challenges with little recognition from others.

But the admiration tends to come from something extraordinary and over our expectations.  It is hard to admire people doing routine tasks such as making toast or boiling water (unless some challenging situation which makes this exceptional).

What we should not admire is the herd behavior of what is "popular" for no other reason than other people like it.  This then branch off into a discussion of how to appreciate art and music that we do not currently appreciate.  Is this an "acquire taste" that we should train ourself? or is our taste correct in judging it bad art no matter how many other people like it?

Topic for another day!

Angry Atheists

Shula moderated the Wednesday SFU philosophy cafe about the new wave of militant atheists.  Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Danial Dennet have done much to bring atheism to the main stage so that atheists can feel comfortable coming out of the closet.

While most in the group are non religious,  there were a few who spoke for the religious side.

It is always quite personal when it comes down to religion.

However,  the points I got out of the discussion was

1.  For the average person not involved in academic scientific research,  it is just as much an act of faith to trust scientist as it is to trust religion.  It comes down to who they choose to trust because they do not know enough about science to see the scientific inquiry process in action.

2.  Science itself is affected by human weakness like herd mentality and lack of independent thinking.  There is definite favoritism involved in the publishing of papers and choice of research area as well as "accepted opinion".

3.  Some attribute religion for the great art and culture in human history but Hitchens and Dawkins, the atheists would attribute it to the great wealth of the church over the ages and artists have a choice of working for the church or the monarch but not too many other people until the Venetian bankers came along.  Michealangelo better walk the churches' line to paint what is appropriate for the church.

4.  The religious side also attribute our morality from the bible and other religious teachings.  This is where Hitchens and Dawkins point out all the other horrible episodes of slavery, unequal treatment of women, killing of the enemies etc to show that we have been just picking parts of the bible that fits our morals.  Besides, the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, and other cultures have their moral code either before the new testament or independent of it.

5.  While the religious texts do treat matters of morality, codes of behavior, and meaning of life which science does not,  the objection is that it is a prescription without discussion or explanation.  So it addresses the subject but do not shed any more light on it.

I think the biggest difference is that religion approach life from a know it all position because the supreme being know it all and we are suppose to listen and follow.

Therefore, the important thing in religion is finding the right authority to listen to. Which supreme being, if there is one, is the one we should listen to?

The scientific inquiry method and philosophical discussions starts from a position of ignorance and build knowledge from observations, logic, and repeat experiments. The path of discovery is filled with disagreements, setbacks, and new discoveries that contradicts previous findings.

And we never know how much more there is to discover.

We don't have to trust Newton or Socrates, we only have to repeat their experiments, or examine the logic of their arguments.  Even if they both turned out to be fakes and they stole their ideas from someone else,  it is their ideas that matter, not the person.

With religion, the choice of god is everything. Whether it is the Greek gods, the Christian, Jewish, or Islamic god, or the Hindu god,  it is the deity that promise to provide the answers.

Whether there is a god or not,  the religious approach certainly discourage independent thought and promote following without question.

Dawkins thinks we should not bring up children in only the religion of their parents but that children should be encouraged to think independently as well as be told about other religions as well as atheist perspectives so that they can make an independent choice when they grow up.

I would agree.