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The Decline of Personal Truth; Technology at the service of Ignorance
Tweet Topic Started: Nov 21 2008, 06:03 PM (212 Views)
Post #1 Nov 21 2008, 06:03 PM DaFranker
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=05cf56e6-14b7-487d-9dd8-524c6248e42b

If you don't understand the correlation between the thread title and the video above, go read some more of Plato's Socratic dialogues (or find a philosophy 101 course somewhere).

What does this reveal about the world and our society? I've got my ideas on it, but they're a bit too biased at the moment from my own mental conditioning for me to see the big picture here, and I feel it would be better if this is brought up in a discussion. Theorize away! (and don't forget to philosophize)
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Post #2 Nov 21 2008, 06:27 PM Grunt_of_War
Wow. Are they serious?

I'm not going to claim that I have vast amounts of knowledge about society in general, or that my morals and beliefs can't be negated (after all, that's why people debate), but such a service sickens me - and I never liked just plain online dating sites and services in the first place. People (NOT the individual, but people as a whole) often are really stupid; this service literally crying out "convenient prostitution at your fingertips!", it just shows how short-sighted and driven by lust some are.

It's clear that truly lasting relationships has just become that much more rare as well, and that's a sad fact. If someone can't be faithful to his/her significant other, something is prompting the inclination that certain acts are "okay" and don't prompt consequence. I think there's definitive clues that our culture has become much more lax with certain schools of thought, some for the better, some not so much, even though I like to believe that it only allows that much more control over one's life - in theory, better than what it was fifty years ago. Similarly, certain acts, such as prostitution (even if only "implied") and its ilk becoming so easily referenced and now ACCESSIBLE at the click of a button, I believe, simply goes too far.

But then again, it was difficult fifty years ago for many to believe that blacks and whites could share bathrooms, for women to have equal rights less than a century ago, and slavery was accepted fifty years before that. Who knows? Maybe I'm right, but I'm definitely biased by my beliefs and morals. But, no doubt if this continues, people might start pleading to legalize nudity in public and open slut bars even before I'm dead, and that's a scary thought in my opinion.
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Post #3 Nov 23 2008, 09:16 AM crimson knight
I can't believe someone is actually getting away with this. I'm going to laugh when one of those people's wives finds out and sues them into oblivion. Seriously, what ever happened to relationships being built on love? I can't stand people who only date for the money.
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Post #4 Dec 19 2008, 11:14 AM Craggon
I agree with all that has been said so far, but have to say it was inevitable and I doubt this is the first attempt (albeit possibly the only success so far) to bring prositution to the internet as a more efficient transaction. I don't doubt there are sites that haven't been brought to the media's spotlight that allow people to purchase "escorts" through the internet. This is simply a more beautified, more public site, with people not involved in that line of work able to finally achieve their dream of being a prostitute, on the side of their real job of course.

I don't like the decline of the principles of marriage and how sacred a union it is. Being agnostic I don't quite see it as sacred as a more religious person should, but it still is more than just a formality. The reason I say should is because the number of divorces among those who would disclose their religious beliefs is equal to those who may not be as religious. When I marry it won't be for anything but love, and seeing as I have seen plenty of movies with bad marriages and good marriages, as well as experience in the real world I have gathered, I have a good idea of exactly what I will not be doing in my future marriage.

Personally I think this site has good intentions but is being taken advantage of by the wrong people, such is the case of many sites. I won't say it is completely benevolent in its pursuits, but it probably isn't completely to blame for what happens on it. After seeing the movie Burn After Reading, I see that some people use other dating sites just for a date and the physical pleasure to which it could lead. I know hollywood isn't always right, but usually they exaggerate the good things and don't have to do much to the bad, they just highlight them.

As far as long term relationships and online dating go, I would be against online dating now and probably for the rest of my life, but a long term relationship would be hard to find at my age. Not that it is impossible, but I'm probably not old enough to find one yet, and therefore shall have shorter relationships in which to refine my relationship skills and look for what I really want in a long term relationship and ultimately marriage. This isn't to say that they are short term from lack of trying, I would try my best to keep it going (unless of course it was dead and we both knew it, I wouldn't be creepy and try to defibrilate it from inside the coffin) until it had run its course. But it's not as if most happy marriages were started as each participant being the other's first relationship.

Maybe it's just became I am the "nice guy" (who sadly does fit the quote and finish last), but I will never do anything morally, ethically, or legally wrong to anyone with whom I have a relationship. It just isn't in me.
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Si vis pacem, para bellum - If you want peace, prepare for war
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WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MEN!
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Post #5 Dec 23 2008, 09:48 PM DaFranker
I've done some objective thinking, and I managed to get a less biased view on this over time.

First off, let's state a fact. "Utilitarian" relationships such as those promoted on that website aren't wrong per-se. I'd normally explain why it's not wrong, and how "right" and "wrong" are actually variable superimpositions of the imprint of a larger and more common concept that has no substance and cannot be associated with any particular "thing" in the world, but you guys don't need that and I'm glad I can skip it.

Now, what really makes this wrong is that people believe it to be the whole point. They go for the utilitarian aspect, and tell themselves they're getting something out of this. This is a false assumption, obviously, since nobody's getting anything (or losing anything, in most cases, unless that money was really important or you're gonna have psychological issues about it later) from those arrangements.

The thing is, this could actually be used by people in a way that would help them get the best of themselves and become better persons. I won't explain the details of that even though I know you might be curious about it, because it involves certain things I'm not quite comfortable speaking about. And that's not a "yet", it's a permanent not-comfortable. And it's not even a personal issue, it's a public issue of if-you-can't-find-out-by-yourself-you-really-shouldn't-know. Seriously.

Now of course, people just go and assume they're already getting the best out of this, and just trade away.

I'll take no chance and remind you that love is basically just an assortment of mental associations within which you weight a certain thing or person with more value than other things. In such manner, emotions will be affected by those value weightings, and thoughts will be influenced. The brain also has many strange ways to act and react about stuff like that, but that's superfluous here. To get to the point, I'll say that Grunt was extraordinarily on-the-mark when he said that people are driven by lust. In fact, insanely so, but it's not just the sexual kind: people lust for benign gratification, physical sensual pleasure being one trigger for it. They slaves of that directive, and become so dependent as they grow on those gratifications that their whole thought system ends up being built entirely around this concept.

Making a parenthesis here, there's nothing wrong about non-faithfulness, if you think about it in plain objective terms without involving so-called "ethics" and "morals". However, what makes all this wrong is when the lack of faithfulness becomes detrimental to the relationship itself, such as when the partner is offended or scared by it. Or whatever other mental affliction it might cause them, actually.

You see, as I stated above, Love is just a bunch of labels to prioritize certain things. There's absolutely nothing wrong with loving more than one person. However, there is something wrong when something of lesser priority (someone less loved, since if that other person was more loved then she would be the one you'd have married/would be going out with officially) overlaps or damages or otherwise causes ill effects to something you love more, out of some simple-minded lust for self-gratification that's all self-contained withing your own mind (subconscious or whatever). End of parenthesis.

It's clear from a philosophical point of view that seeking those arrangements for their "value" or "what you get from them" is not good, because it's stall-thought that permits no evolution or research or learning. Things should be sought for the good they will cause, and good should be sought for further good, and this further good should be its own cause. However, there is also the fact that "good", in itself, is ill-conceived by the populace and as such cannot be used in these kind of debates and conversations. You all know how much worth is put into the "Good of God", yet how worthless in terms of true good it actually is. You also know how people superimpose Good over their own personal charts of values, beliefs, ethics and morals, while in fact Good has nothing at all to do with any of that: it is just a concept, a purity of form that must be sought universally in all its expressions, not through a chart of pre-determined down-to-earth "concepts" that supposedly form good. The people who form those charts (i.e. 99.9% of the population) simply associate certain concepts to good because they were in a situation of good when that concept also happened to be part of it, but they globally fail to see how all good things are the same and are all universally Good.

There is the same argument on this from Plato about beautiful bodies, where most people believe that beauty is THAT body or THAT OTHER body (we're talking about human bodies here, so that "hot girl" in your physics class counts), but where Plato states through Socrate's speech that the beauty of those bodies is actually the inherent concept of beauty itself, and that it's the concept of beauty that you've associated with certain things that makes things beautiful. I'm getting sidetracked here and my explanations are getting less clear by the line here though, so I'll try to explain how this all relates to the main topic.

If people were to use, as would be the intention, I presume, of the creators of such website, said websites as a means of reaching more universal goals, such as using the "beneficial relationship" as a mental platform to learn or evolve in some way, or to reach a greater goal wherein the usage of said website doesn't actually affect negatively the rest of their lives, then it's all fine.

The girl who has no remorse sleeping with guys for money, won't have psychological issues with having had sex with a complete stranger, and actually has a use for the money (such as paying for educational tuition), and also happens to enjoy the sex, has every right to go ahead and seek those websites, and NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE, has a right to judge her. Her social environment should also do their best to not be affected by it. The point where it becomes different is at which other people start reacting negatively to such thing simply because of their aforementioned "good" charts. Then, that girl may be stuck with a social labeling ("slut" and "whore" immediately come to mind), thrown deep in interpersonal complications and mind games, and many other kinds of nefast effects. These all have to be factored in and evaluated as part of the equation of whether it's "worth it" or not.

I have more to say on this, but unfortunately my mind is already starting to fog up -- I've become rusty on logical and objective thinking these past few months, and it's starting to show. I may come back at a later time to complete my train of thought, if by then I can still recall what my original intent was. Sorry for all the parts of this post that may or may not be utterly nonsensical and confusing, but to me they all make sense and work together.

EDIT/ADDENDUM: Holy shit, this post is a hell of a lot longer than I expected. No wonder then that I started getting fogged up near the end -- I'm not nearly as capable as I was a year and a half ago of prolonged real thought.
Edited by DaFranker, Dec 23 2008, 09:49 PM.
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