5 ms·

I'm against forcing people to provide their ID in order to see pornography. Indeed, I am, if anything, supportive of adults being able to understand and fully e

I'm against forcing people to provide their ID in order to see pornography. Indeed, I am, if anything, supportive of adults being able to understand and fully experience their erotic lives, as long as no one is harmed, and to do so anonymously where possible. But your attitude is, in a historical context, weird. At basically no point in history has it been the case that the sole responsibility for the well being of children lay entirely with the parents. If you look, for instance, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see the Parenthood article section Parental Responsibilities), you will see, for instance, that throughout most of western history and for most people, there is an explicit or implicit understanding that it is, in fact, the parents who operate as stewards of children _on behalf of_ society and that the ultimate locus of responsibility for the security and well being of children is the society at large, not the parents. This is why, for instance, the state is typically understood to have the right to remove a child from the home of an abusive or neglectful parent. Given that understanding, there is a commensurate power in society to make rules which may protect children and in our particular historical moment these rules take the form of laws at multiple levels of government. It places a powerful (and disordered) burden on parents to make them _exclusively_ responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their children.

scarface74 4y ago
I have no desire for “society” to make rules that govern my kids. Especially seeing that between gerrymandering, the electoral college and the fact that each state no matter what the size has two senators means that people who would love to impose their religious beliefs on others have an outsized influence on laws that are passed.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  You may not have any such desire but imagine if you died and your kid was adopted by an abusive person you _would_ want the state to intervene. I'm as unsatisfied as you are about the current political situation in the United States, but the solution isn't to just demand the government withdraw. It is to actually engage _more_ politically and with an understanding of what the true responsibilities of the state are. The state will _inevitably exercise power_. Only a vigilant citizenry can hope to modulate it.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So exactly how is “engaging politically” going to help when the majority viewpoint is already ignored because they know they can just appealed to their gerrymandered system? Republicans can completely ignore California and Democrats can completely ignore the Bible Belt (except GA which is now Purple) As far as what the state can do. Again as a parent, when my children were minors, we chose trusted family members to be their guardian. If that wasn’t an option, we would have chosen friends. No matter how you feel about the abortion issue for instance, even in conservative states, the majority of people don’t want more restrictions as proven by recent ballot initiatives, yet the politicians are still passing laws. In my home state (Florida) the government is wasting all kinds of taxpayer money going after Disney and out of the list of things Florida and especially my city (Orlando) cares about is that Disney spoke out against a policy.
    - nathan_compton 4y ago
      There are ways to engage politically that do not depend on the legal structures in place.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So what is the purpose of “engaging politically” if it’s not to change laws.
  - Retric 4y ago
    It’s perfectly possible to limit the state to only specific areas, we don’t let it set up arranged marriages for example. As to that specific example, I trust my own judgment for who my kids would be reared by more than I trust a bureaucrat with the same role.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      It very much restricts people who want to marry more than one person from doing so and until a few years ago, the government restricted marriage to heterosexual couples.
Retric 4y ago
It very much lines up with the historical context. In Hammurabi's Code fathers could literally sell their kids into slavery. This seems strange, shouldn’t society protect kids? But it turns out that’s a relatively recent idea, instead there were rules around what happens when both parents die but children were plentiful and many where injured or even killed by their parents without consequence.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  Ah yes, who doesn't want to return to the good old days of the code of Hammurabi.
  - plokiju 4y ago
    Weren’t you the one just making an appeal to history and tradition above?
    - defen 4y ago
      If someone makes an appeal to tradition/history, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that they're advocating for things which happened 4,000 years ago in a society completely alien to our own.
      - Retric 4y ago
        That’s fair, but if there argument is “At basically no point in history…” it is reasonable to mention that they are mistaken in that belief and the reverse was true for most of recorded history. Which doesn’t mean I disagree with them, just that their argument isn’t sound. Slavery was also depressingly common and I am glad it’s become vastly less common today.
        yawboakye 4y ago
        the weakness of his argument is that he didn't restrict himself to a certain people's history. the hammurabi code you cite wasn't the universal law, and only applied to subjects of hammurabi. savages live in groups and share all sorts of responsibilities (see edward burnett tylor's primitive cultures vol. 1 & 2). which gives some weight to his original assertion. generally, human civilization is us picking and choosing sensible/humane parts of cultures we encounter. the romans who conquered greece were of barbarian culture, only civilized by their adoption of the greek culture, which they later spread to parts of the world the conquered. the greeks remained uncivilized for a long time as well. they attribute most of their development to encounters with egyptians and babylonians. thus, it's almost possible to see a primitive culture that upheld some of the core values of our civilization today: human rights (not too far back but pericle's athens abolished slave trade), etc.
l1tany11 4y ago
Historically the level of privacy we have now is a recent phenomenon. What would nudity, sexuality and pornography be like if it weren’t taboo at all? Maybe societies role in this matter is creating the problem in the first place. And the best thing for it to do is to abandon the puritanical principles that probably lead to the issue in the first place. If the community’s role is to protect children, maybe the community shouldn’t be creating the trap in the first place. Children are curious creatures. It’s natural that they are curious about sex and the human body. In the past they could look around and see members of their family, tribe, etc nude and having sex. Now we’ve taken that away and made it taboo. You can either do nothing, try and lock it away harder, or go the other way. It’s a very complex issue though so there’s nothing close to easy. But this kind of legislation seems like a fight that has just as much to do with a particular religious viewpoint as it does anything to do with “protect the children”.

scarface74 4y ago

I have no desire for “society” to make rules that govern my kids. Especially seeing that between gerrymandering, the electoral college and the fact that each state no matter what the size has two senators means that people who would love to impose their religious beliefs on others have an outsized influence on laws that are passed.

nathan_compton 4y ago
You may not have any such desire but imagine if you died and your kid was adopted by an abusive person you _would_ want the state to intervene. I'm as unsatisfied as you are about the current political situation in the United States, but the solution isn't to just demand the government withdraw. It is to actually engage _more_ politically and with an understanding of what the true responsibilities of the state are. The state will _inevitably exercise power_. Only a vigilant citizenry can hope to modulate it.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So exactly how is “engaging politically” going to help when the majority viewpoint is already ignored because they know they can just appealed to their gerrymandered system? Republicans can completely ignore California and Democrats can completely ignore the Bible Belt (except GA which is now Purple) As far as what the state can do. Again as a parent, when my children were minors, we chose trusted family members to be their guardian. If that wasn’t an option, we would have chosen friends. No matter how you feel about the abortion issue for instance, even in conservative states, the majority of people don’t want more restrictions as proven by recent ballot initiatives, yet the politicians are still passing laws. In my home state (Florida) the government is wasting all kinds of taxpayer money going after Disney and out of the list of things Florida and especially my city (Orlando) cares about is that Disney spoke out against a policy.
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    There are ways to engage politically that do not depend on the legal structures in place.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So what is the purpose of “engaging politically” if it’s not to change laws.
- Retric 4y ago
  It’s perfectly possible to limit the state to only specific areas, we don’t let it set up arranged marriages for example. As to that specific example, I trust my own judgment for who my kids would be reared by more than I trust a bureaucrat with the same role.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    It very much restricts people who want to marry more than one person from doing so and until a few years ago, the government restricted marriage to heterosexual couples.

Retric 4y ago

It very much lines up with the historical context. In Hammurabi's Code fathers could literally sell their kids into slavery. This seems strange, shouldn’t society protect kids? But it turns out that’s a relatively recent idea, instead there were rules around what happens when both parents die but children were plentiful and many where injured or even killed by their parents without consequence.

nathan_compton 4y ago
Ah yes, who doesn't want to return to the good old days of the code of Hammurabi.
- plokiju 4y ago
  Weren’t you the one just making an appeal to history and tradition above?
  - defen 4y ago
    If someone makes an appeal to tradition/history, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that they're advocating for things which happened 4,000 years ago in a society completely alien to our own.
    - Retric 4y ago
      That’s fair, but if there argument is “At basically no point in history…” it is reasonable to mention that they are mistaken in that belief and the reverse was true for most of recorded history. Which doesn’t mean I disagree with them, just that their argument isn’t sound. Slavery was also depressingly common and I am glad it’s become vastly less common today.
      - yawboakye 4y ago
        the weakness of his argument is that he didn't restrict himself to a certain people's history. the hammurabi code you cite wasn't the universal law, and only applied to subjects of hammurabi. savages live in groups and share all sorts of responsibilities (see edward burnett tylor's primitive cultures vol. 1 & 2). which gives some weight to his original assertion. generally, human civilization is us picking and choosing sensible/humane parts of cultures we encounter. the romans who conquered greece were of barbarian culture, only civilized by their adoption of the greek culture, which they later spread to parts of the world the conquered. the greeks remained uncivilized for a long time as well. they attribute most of their development to encounters with egyptians and babylonians. thus, it's almost possible to see a primitive culture that upheld some of the core values of our civilization today: human rights (not too far back but pericle's athens abolished slave trade), etc.

l1tany11 4y ago

Historically the level of privacy we have now is a recent phenomenon. What would nudity, sexuality and pornography be like if it weren’t taboo at all? Maybe societies role in this matter is creating the problem in the first place. And the best thing for it to do is to abandon the puritanical principles that probably lead to the issue in the first place. If the community’s role is to protect children, maybe the community shouldn’t be creating the trap in the first place. Children are curious creatures. It’s natural that they are curious about sex and the human body. In the past they could look around and see members of their family, tribe, etc nude and having sex. Now we’ve taken that away and made it taboo. You can either do nothing, try and lock it away harder, or go the other way. It’s a very complex issue though so there’s nothing close to easy. But this kind of legislation seems like a fight that has just as much to do with a particular religious viewpoint as it does anything to do with “protect the children”.