Hello RPM,
Originally posted by rpm
A couple questions struck me as biased.
Who is to say what is inappropriate? If I was 18 and she was 17 am I going to Hell? The question should be "I am 45 and have the hots for that 15 year old blonde down at the A & P."
Who is to say what is inappropriate? Well RPM, traditionally there are three competing arguments as to who determines "inappropriateness"; the first is that we determine it by a fixed and unchanging standard established by an absolute authority. At one time in Western society, that standard was the Bible. I would still argue that that is the only true and coherent standard for right and wrong, but obviously I'm in a decided minority in the modern world.
The transition that was initially made after the bible and still quite popular, is that government decides what is and is not appropriate. Occasionally this is done simply by dictat when an absolute ruler imposes his preferences on the people (as in the case of Stalin, Hitler, etc.) sometimes it is done by the consensus of an oligarchy (such as the Supreme Court in the USA) or sometimes it is done via a 51% vote of the people. Either way, what happens is that preferences of individuals are imposed and become the standard until the balance of power shifts or the preferences change.
The manner of decision that many people naturally prefer however, is that they decide what is inappropriate and what isn't according to their personal preferences and simply act in accordance with their decision. The problems with this are that no social compact is possible using this method and when widely applied it usually makes people scream for an authoritarian version of option #2. Let me give you an example, let us say that you are a hulking brute of a man and you decide that it is entirely "appropriate" for you to have a sexual relationship with your neighbors six year old son. Your neighbor is a single mom, and she cannot stop you herself, if she doesn't agree with your definition of "appropriate" she will need either outside help, either via clan or society or she'll have to kill you with a firearm. We might aplaud her decision to do so, but what if she decided to kill you for having a consensual sexual relationship with her 33 year old daughter, which she did not believe was "appropriate"? Obviously a uniform standard for where the general borders of appropriate and inappropriate lie needs to be set and agreed upon in any society lest we become a pack of wild dogs.
Personally, I am happy that even though our society has abandoned natural law and now makes up the rules as it goes along, the majority still feel that things like child porn, sexual fantasies involving children, and sexual relationships with children are "inappropriate." I am not looking forward to the day that NAMBLA fantasizes about when the age of consent is dropped to something like 11 or 12 and you and can no longer legally shield our children from adult predators. As for your scenario, the average age of most respondents here, like you and I, is well over 21, and in our age bracket we are talking about something a little more serious than high school seniors dating the sophmore girls.
I'm not married. Is any relationship I have inappropriate? The question should be "Have you ever cheated on your wife?"
RPM, even the word "cheating" is biased and implies that there is something wrong with that action. Heck, even the phrased "cheated on a test" implies a bias and moral stigma. Should I have said "harvested answers from other sources not approved by the test giver" to avoid that stigma? Where do we come to the end of all this "there is no right and wrong" babble? Do you really want to live in an entirely user defined society?
"How dare you say flying a plane into the Twin Towers is 'inappropriate', that is because you have an infidel bias, it is a good and glorious thing to me, I demand you stop using the biased term "act of terrorism"!- SEAGOON
