racism and being 'WOKE"

[Dubious]

Sorry, Old Chum: I was getting clear with Veggie about what we are to bicker over.

What exactly can I help you with?

Did I ever ask you for any?

[Alexis Jacobi]

May I offer my services to you?

For example, is there any part of what I write about that you have questions about or disagreements with? Can you outline what you’d like to discuss?

I am not opposed though to sheer bickering. I just want to clarify in what direction we will roll.

Note: Anyone else want in here? Now’s the time to speak up!

[phyllo]

Come on, for many here in America, any behaviors [sexual or otherwise] not deemed to be what they construe to be "normal, civilized, Christian" behavior is attacked. They are all thought to be "deviants". Then it comes down [again, from my own frame of mind] to what those like you would do in regard to those you did deem to be behaving in an abnormal, uncivilized or unchristian manner.

You want to discuss this in terms of deviancy.

Well, at some point one will have to consider the harms and benefits to individuals and society.

According to Reich, the 'suppression of natural sexuality in the child...makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, 'good', and 'adjusted' in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief the goal of sexual repression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all the misery and degradation...the result is fear of freedom, and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual repression aids political reaction, not only through this process which makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical, but also by creating in his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order'.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have written pages about the medical effects of sexual repression. Reich however constantly reiterated its social function, exercised through the family. The purpose of sexual repression was to anchor submission to authority and the fear of freedom into people's 'character armor'. The net result was the reproduction, generation after generation, of the basic [psychological] conditions essential for manipulation and enslavement of the masses.

So your argument is that deviancy is good for individuals and society.

It seems possible to argue the exact opposite. That sexual freedom leads to complacency. That those distracted by sex are too busy to challenge authority. The ones who were/are sexually repressed channel their frustration and energy towards thinking and changing the established order.

How would one decide which version is correct or better represents reality? Consider what has happened in recent years.

Reich wrote that stuff in the 20s and 30s. We have had quite a bit of experience with sexual freedom in the last 50 years.

It doesn't look like it lead to thinkings, critical thinking, or any of the benefits that he laid out.

Any evidence to the contrary? Where is the freedom from authority, from manipulation, from enslavement?

[iambiguous]

Do you think that human nature has changed significantly in the last 20 years?

I don't.

What has changed is that there is now a widespread disregard for the truth.

I don't think that is desirable.

Pick one:

1] your truth
2] his truth

And, oh, I don't know, about anything?

The problem in a nutshell.

We'll need a context of course.

Oh, yeah, I forgot: I'm the context.

[iambiguous]

Do you think that human nature has changed significantly in the last 20 years?

I don't.

I agree. What would possibly make somebody think it had?

Seriously, though, given particular contexts pertaining to things like race and gender and sexuality, what is this "human nature" that has not changed?

Now, as I understand it, both of them will "somehow" connect the dots here between human nature and the Christian God.

In other words, it's not just a question of what it is "naturally" the right way to think about them rationally and morally, but, instead, of how what we do think about them will be judged by God as Sins.

Only IC insists further that only true Christians really think about them rationally and morally.

So, I would be curious to hear a discussion between them regarding what being a true Christian does mean in regard to race, gender and human sexuality.

And how, for example, they themselves make a distinction between transgenders and homosexuals.

And, of course, how that might play out if they were in power in a particular community where those behaviors are pursued by some in the community.

[phyllo]

Pick one:

1] your truth
2] his truth

And, oh, I don't know, about anything?

The problem in a nutshell.

We'll need a context of course.

Oh, yeah, I forgot: I'm the context.

No, you're not the context. You're not even a context.

[iambiguous]

Maurice Brinton from The Irrational in Politics:

In learning to obey their parents children learn obedience in general. The deference learned in the family setting will manifest itself whenever the child faces a 'superior' in later life. Sexual repression----by the already sexually repressed parents---is an integral part of the conditioning process.

According to Reich, the 'suppresion of natural sexuality in the child....makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, 'good', and 'adjusted' in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief the goal of sexual repression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all the misery and degradation...the result is fear of freedom, and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual repression aids political reaction, not only through this process which makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical, but also by creating in his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order'.

Psychologists and psychiatrists have written pages about the medical effects of sexual repression. Reich however constantly reiterated its social function, exercised through the family. The purpose of sexual repression was to anchor submission to authority and the fear of freedom into people's 'character armour'. The net result was the reproduction, generation after generation, of the basic [psychological] conditions essential for manipulation and enslavement of the masses.

The part that, in my view, some will not even broach at all because they themselves are so squeamish about all things sexual.

And then the irony others note: that because sexual repression is such a widespread component of conservative value judgments, this actually precipitates so-called "sexual deviancy".

This is what you might respond to, not anything else from your over-heated brain!

For revolutionaries, using sexuality as a tool of praxis is one of their most notable undertakings. The authority that imposes sexual restraint — the father, the patriarchy, even Platonic philosophical theory — become authorities to undermine and topple. Stimulating sexual desire the means to achieve that end.

Part of Marxist praxis within third-wave feminism involved encouraging women to liberate themselves from “oppressive” restraints. And all of it to undermine the family: the primary oppressive institution.

I am surprised Iambiguous that you reference sources like this and understand so little about how Marxism operates.

Additionally, if anyone has been largely discredited and rendered ridiculous I’d imagine it to be Wilhelm Reich.

If you create a bit of distance between yourself and the IDEAS that are presented, you can then better discuss the ideas.

A cultural commentator (Mike Jones) who writes critically on the theme of sexual liberation:

Unlike the standard version of the sexual revolution, Libido Dominandi [his book] shows how sexual liberation was from its inception a form of control. Those who wished to liberate man from the moral order needed to impose social controls as soon as they succeeded because liberated libido led inevitably to anarchy.

Aldous Huxley wrote in his preface to the 1946 edition of Brave New World that "as political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase." This book is about the converse of that statement. It explains how the rhetoric of sexual freedom was used to engineer a system of covert political and social control.

Over the course of the two-hundred-year span covered by this book, the development of technologies of communication, reproduction, and psychic control - including psychotherapy, behaviorism, advertising, sensitivity training, pornography, and plain old blackmail - allowed the Enlightenment and its heirs to turn Augustine's insight on its head and create masters out of men's vices. Libido Dominandi is the story of how that happened.

"Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices." - St. Augustine, City of God

Note to others:

Pick one:

1] Repression
2] Anarchy

[iambiguous]

The problem in a nutshell.

We'll need a context of course.

Oh, yeah, I forgot: I'm the context.

No, you're not the context. You're not even a context.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle it is then.

Still, I do look forward to you and IC discussing all of this given both your assessments of human nature and true Christianity.

In fact, I dare you to discuss it with him.

[Immanuel Can]

Do you think that human nature has changed significantly in the last 20 years?

I don't.

I agree. What would possibly make somebody think it had?

Now, as I understand it, both of them will "somehow" connect the dots here between human nature and the Christian God.

Sorry...then you don't "understand," I guess. There was no move from either of us to do that.

[phyllo]

Still, I do look forward to you and IC discussing all of this given both your assessments of human nature and true Christianity.

In fact, I dare you to discuss it with him.

I don't have that much interest in Christianity.

Why don't you discuss it with him instead, since you're interested?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Restraint is quite different from repression. And so is the idea of sublimation.

The clearest philosophical ideas on this topic are expressed in yoga philosophy (Vedanta, etc.)

Similarly in Platonic philosophy.

The purpose of a sexual-energy philosophy or ethics is to establish rational limits and the end is to achieve creative use of libidinous energy.

Sexual passion is immensely powerful and when not restrained it tends to burn out of control. Take for example the pornography epidemic and sex-addiction.

You’ve got to trust me on this!

Reich iz geven a mshugener fun der ershter sdr!

[phyllo]

Who is sexually repressed and how does one know it's repression?

[Immanuel Can]

Who is sexually repressed and how does one know it's repression?

What they mean is "we're not allowed to do it, and we want to." That's all.

Freud was the big guy on the theory of "repression." He argued that if you are denied your desires they kind of grow back into your soul, like ingrown toenails, and destroy your psychology...so the only "therapy" was to indulge them without reservation. Slake all your dark desires, or they will eat you, is the argument.

Of course, the motives for such a theory are not hard to find. But it's bosh, of course. It's a theory of the morally bankrupt. What's more, lack of denial of desire actually kills desire, since desire only thrives in the presence of restraint of some kind. So it ends up being a toxic theory, not merely for healthy relationships, but even for desire itself. It leaves the practitioner with "His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin..." (Wilfrid Owen)

[iambiguous]

Seriously, though, given particular contexts pertaining to things like race and gender and sexuality, what is this "human nature" that has not changed?

Now, as I understand it, both of them will "somehow" connect the dots here between human nature and...God.

In other words, it's not just a question of what it is "naturally" the right way to think about them rationally and morally, but, instead, of how what we do think about them will be judged by God as Sins.

Only IC insists further that only true Christians really think about them rationally and morally.

Still, I do look forward to you and IC discussing all of this given both your assessments of human nature and true Christianity.

In fact, I dare you to discuss it with him.

I don't have that much interest in Christianity.

Why don't you discuss it with him instead, since you're interested?

Indeed. Time and again, going back to ILP, I have attempted to grasp how you do connect the dots between religion and God and objective morality.

But that is, what, too personal and none of my business?

Okay, so leaving the specifics out of it, what in tour view encompasses human nature such that, in regard to things like race and gender and sexuality, it hasn't changed significantly over the last 20 years?

And, okay, as vaguely as possible, how do you connect the dots between your own behaviors on this side of the grave and what you imagine the fate of "I" to be on the other side of it?

[phyllo]

Seriously, though, given particular contexts pertaining to things like race and gender and sexuality, what is this "human nature" that has not changed?

Now, as I understand it, both of them will "somehow" connect the dots here between human nature and...God.

In other words, it's not just a question of what it is "naturally" the right way to think about them rationally and morally, but, instead, of how what we do think about them will be judged by God as Sins.

Only IC insists further that only true Christians really think about them rationally and morally.

Still, I do look forward to you and IC discussing all of this given both your assessments of human nature and true Christianity.

In fact, I dare you to discuss it with him.

I don't have that much interest in Christianity.

Why don't you discuss it with him instead, since you're interested?

Indeed. Time and again, going back to ILP, I have attempted to grasp how you do connect the dots between religion and God and objective morality.

But that is, what, too personal and none of my business?

Okay, so leaving the specifics out of it, what in tour view encompasses human nature such that, in regard to things like race and gender and sexuality, it hasn't changed significantly over the last 20 years?

And, okay, as vaguely as possible, how do you connect the dots between your own behaviors on this side of the grave and what you imagine the fate of "I" to be on the other side of it?

I have come to the conclusion that you have no interest in what anyone has to say about God, religion or objective morality.

Therefore, I will not waste my time writing about it.

Go ahead and do your Wiggle dance now. I don't care.