The improbably named UK Home Office Minister Paul Goggins, with the even more improbable title of Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services, has defended the lack of strict definitions in a proposed new Internet grooming law. This is designed to prevent the entrapment of young children by older sexual predators. However, the proposed law, as it is currently drafted, could theoretically see a 15-year old boy-and-girl couple, who have mutually consenting sex together, being prosecuted, and sent to jail for five years alongside a 45-year old man who has sex with a 13-year old girl.
On the BBC Today program this morning, Mr Goggins said that the government could find no way of wording their new legislation to include the older predators, but to exclude the under-age couples. However, he said this would be alright, because the Crown Prosecution Service would receive the correct legal guidance on when to and when not to prosecute, to avoid imprisoning sexually adventurous youngsters. Which of course begs the question, why aren’t they clever enough to frame this splendid new legal guidance in the new law?
It also begs the question of how many Samizdata readers would be criminalized if this new law were to be retro-actively applied to them, and only kept out of jail via the masterly whim of any future Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Correctional Services? As our socialist lords and masters wrap us in ever more legislation, to criminalize us, in order to control us better, their excuses and deceptions for this cacophony of intrusive legislation grow ever flimsier. I’m confident they’ll soon make it illegal to walk on the cracks in the pavement, in a loud shirt. But don’t worry, I’m sure Mr Goggins will be kind enough not to bang us away for this heinous misdemeanour, unless of course we do something else much more serious to annoy him, such as calling him a very rude name. Mr Goggins, you are an idiotarian.
Had I ever been caught having sex with an age-appropriate but minor partner, I have a feeling something worse than prison would’ve greeted me. Two barrels’ worth of double-ought buckshot would be one good guess.
“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. ”
Yeah, why not ban this kiddyporn FILTH as well as adopting the Internet grooming law? I mean a book like Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ could effectively promote and encourage Internet grooming on the part of the adult male population.
Let’s go the whole hog!
Truly, the next step is to create a Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
It makes me despair when I think what a complete pack of clueless morons we currently have in government. How difficult is it to include a clause that decriminalises adolescent ‘fumbling about’ subject to a suitable age difference clause. I thnk its in denmark where as long as the age difference is less than 2 years no offence has been committed. Something suitable along those lines cant be that difficult to draft surely !
Andy, all good points, but you’re letting your hatred of the left blind you & reduce your potential audience. This particular strain of authoritarianism has nothing to do with socialism or anything of that sort; plenty of people on the Right will welcome this legislation, plenty on the Left will agree with you.
Another problem: how do you tell a girl’s age these days anyhow? Remember that gutter press tale last week about a 12-year old girl who eloped with a 15-year old boy for three days after returning from a holiday with their families in Greece?
A few days ago I spotted a snapshot of her and the lad in ‘The Daily Mail’. For an instant I thought she was the boy’s mother – she certainly looked as though she was pushing 30 rather than 13. But no, it was her, a sweet 12-year old, though heading for menopause rather than menarche.
I presume that no self-respecting paedophile would touch a slag like that with a barge pole.
The only solution: ID cards for the entire female population!
A_t writes:
you’re letting your hatred of the left blind you & reduce your potential audience.
First point, I don’t hate the left. It may seem like that, because I have this in-built writing style which comes across to some as semi-rabid, but really I just feel sorry for them (except when they directly invade my life without my permission, then, yes, I don’t like them too much). Having been on the left for all of my adolescence and most of my adult life, how could I genuinely hate them? That would be like self-loathing, a very bad thing. Many of them even have admirable things to say, and they spot many problems which are genuine problems. However, they are just too stupid to see the solutions, and see past their own emotive prejudices. All I want to do is to try to save them, best I can, normally by getting right in their face and making them defend their own opinions, and having done that, if at all, to try to bring them over to our side, to see the light.
They often deride me for being a right-wing loon, but I don’t care. As long as I shake ’em up a bit, and make them face, even if only for a moment, their own hypocrisy.
I even WANT to be a leftie, but I can’t be, because when you examine it logically, it makes absolutely no sense. I’ve been forced to become a libertarian because of Popperian logic, and the sheer force of Austrian economic argument.
This particular strain of authoritarianism has nothing to do with socialism or anything of that sort;
This strain of authoritarianism has EVERYTHING to do with socialism. Ever heard of the Soviet Union? Or North Korea? Or Kampuchea? Ever read Atlas Shrugged, or 1984, where the principles of making law so complex nobody can live within it, thereby justifying the state’s right to haul you off or make you do what it wants, at their own whim? I can’t remember the exact section of Atlas Shrugged, where this is most clearly expressed (Randite afficianados may be able to help here?), but this really does have everything to do with socialism. No, not the impossible Utopian socialist state you may dream of, where we’re all ants, but every socialist state that has ever actually existed on Earth.
plenty of people on the Right will welcome this legislation
There’s that 2-dimensional view of world politics again. The left believe in state control of the economy, and free thought, but free thought always gets subsumed under state control of the economy, because you can’t tolerate libertarian performance poets in a socialist society, as they’d keep pointing out the lack of the Emperor’s clothes. The right believe in a free economy, but state control of the mind, therefore no drugs, no homosexuals, no atheists, etc. The economy gradually has to be taken over by the state, to control people’s social lives. I believe in neither of these things, neither the state control of the economy nor the state control of our social lives. I don’t care if rightists support laws which are based on the personal daily whim of the Home Secretary. They can go hang with the leftists.
plenty on the Left will agree with you.
Yes, particularly leftist-libertarians, one of which I used to be. I just wish they’d drop the ‘leftist’ bit, and then move over into the light and stop being so stupid.
I’m still half a leftie, really, the socially free half. Having dropped my personal antipathy towards economic freedom, because of the power of thought of people like Mr Rothbard, and Herr Popper, I am forced to be a full libertarian, not half-a-one, like the leftist libertarians. Being a full libertarian, to the best of my albeit limited ability, where I occasionally blow up in fits of stupidity, requiring long periods in the garage working out where the gaskets blew off, and repairing them, is the only fully rational position to have. Which is why I adopt it. God, some days I even miss the Guardian! 🙂
But what a waste. All those half-liberal intelligent people living in a stupid emotive dreamland of lies and unfaced hypocrisy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day they all woke up! That’s my dream, and given that my family comes first in everything, with everything I have left, that is the dream towards which I would like to work and help us achieve.
That, and it keeps me off the streets.
This is why libertarians will always be a minority fringe.
It is much easier to look at an anti-pedophile law such as this one and like it (“it’s for the children!”), than it is to look deeper and see the logical consequences of such a wide-sweeping piece of legislation.
It is easier to trust Mr. Goggins’s word, than to assume either alterior motives for him, or a degredation of our democracy by someone else at a later date.
It is much easier to put your hands over your eyes and refuse to see. That’s a much happier, and less paranoid-seeming life.
A libertarian must look at the worst in government and mankind without flinching.
This is why libertarians will always be a minority fringe.
[ … ]
A libertarian must look at the worst in government and mankind without flinching.
Hard to disagree with you, Ann — although the logic of the matter becomes a bit more clear-cut when one reverses your first and last paragraphs.
On the BBC Today program this morning, Mr Goggins said that the government could find no way of wording their new legislation to include the older predators, but to exclude the under-age couples.
They must not have looked very hard.
Someone mentioned a law in Denmark that excempts couples within two years of each other. I think here in Illinois it’s three years. Or it could be two also. This is not some new radical thing nobody ever heard of.
Why not simply go the whole way (OEER missus)make it a crime to fail to report having sex?
Its simple, just forward details of the event to the moral leaders (rebranded police) ,both++ your ID Card numbers, names are not required.
Then the moral leaders can check their DNA database to see whether they approve of the potential gene mix (if there is a pregnancy).
Obviously there would be personal quotas for ethnic minorities and the “underpriviledged” (hey some ‘us geeks gonna get some) etc. i.e. aFIRMative Action!
If a child is born its first gift from the state is a forehead tatoo and a DNA sample taken “for the childs own safety”.
When the child grows up to near reproductive age The Golden Leader can “assess” the child for the priviledge of working in the leaders hareem!
Just thought I would apply some of socialisms “ideas” and see where it took me!
A semantics question:
“a 15-year old boy-and-girl couple, who have mutually consenting sex together”
If a 15-year-old is mentally competent to consent to sex with another minor, why are they not competent to consent to sex with an 18-year-old? A teen getting knocked up is a teen getting knocked up, no matter how old the father is.
And come to think about it, an older partner is a lot more likely to remember to use a rubber.
Fatmouse;
If a 15 year old is incompetant to consent to sex, then both parties are incapable of proper legal consent and neither is a perpetrator.
Fatmouse nails the conceptual problem with statutory rape as it is currently on the books, at least in the US.
The problem is not that someone much older than a minor is boinking said minor. It is that minors are deemed to be incapable by virtue of their age to consenting to sex with anybody. The age of the sex partner is irrelevant to whether the minor gave consent to the sex.
The exemption for sex with someone close to the minor’s age thus raises a major conceptual problem. This exemption would seem to negate the premise of statutory rape laws, namely, that a minor cannot give good consent to sex. If a minor has the capacity to consent to sex with a 16 year old partner, why does the same minor not have capacity to consent to sex with 60 year old partner?
What has happened is that society has lost its aversion to minors having sex. Indeed, minors having sex is now lionized in much of pop culture and the media. Rather, what seems to have replaced this aversion is a much fuzzier prohibition against sex that is seen as “exploitative,” which seems in turn to be a po-mo word meaning “icky.”
I leave it as an exercise for the commenting gallery why it should be illegal for a 15 year old girl to have sex with her 21 year old boyfriend, but not her 17 year old boyfriend.
Aaron – the crime of rape does not depend on the mental capacity of the perpetrator. It is perfectly possible for a 15 year old to commit rape.
When rape is defined as sex without the legal consent of your partner, then it becomes possible for two fifteen year olds to be simultaneously the perpetrators and the victims of rape.
Hi Fatmouse,
I don’t know about you, but I was working 27 hours a day, 9 days a week, when I was fifteen, to have sex, consenting or otherwise, with other fifteen year olds (plus a few fourteen year-olds, and one very lovely sixteen year-old).
I failed, worse luck, but it wasn’t for the lack of effort. Go on, let’s take a Duncanian finger-in-the-air-poll on this. I reckon of those reading this, 80% lost their virginity before the age of 16. It is to my ultimate shame that I was in the sad, spotty, fat, and unloved 20% (please, some violins).
So if I’m right, or even close, that makes 80% of the readers of Samizdata, according to the sex-obsessed tenets of the left, either paedophiles, rapists, or sexual predators. Go on, lock yourselves up now, and throw away the keys. You evil people. Especially if you’re Blairite-loving socialists.
And if we take David Blunkett’s other proposal, where if a woman has had the slightest amount of alcohol, before she gives ‘consent’, then it could technically be described as rape, if the woman desires to threaten the man with this charge later, then every single man reading this is technically a rapist. Or a tee-totaller. Or a virgin.
I can’t even remember the last time I ‘did it’ without alcohol being involved somewhere along the way. It may even have been as late as last week, but as a happily married man, I cannot comment any further.
So was I capable of ‘consenting’ at fifteen, with that rather lovely sixteen year-old? Well, I think so. Hells teeth, I even came close once or twice, pardon the pun, especially at New Year’s Eve, when her much older boyfriend didn’t turn up.
I do know I was capable of spending entire days, no, entire weeks, listening to Led Zeppelin albums, playing Stairway to Heaven (very badly) on an acoustic, and drinking gallons of home-brew beer. I think that pretty much qualifies me for consent.
Protection for minors against much older predators is one thing, but trying to criminalize entire generations is entirely another. Those twonks in the Home Office ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Postscript:
Err… just re-read that. First bit doesn’t look too good. By ‘consenting or otherwise’, I obviously mean ‘legally consenting or just mutually consenting’.
By heck, that’ll come back to haunt me when I stand for the Tories, in Reading East! 🙂
If Mr Goggins is genuinely interested in preventing 45-year old men from developing sexual relationships with 13-year old girls he might start by asking why the latter need a father-substitute in the first place.
Every time I raise the great issue of social conservatism on this blog some libbo loon comes along with a large chip on the shoulder and an even larger Popperian tome and clobbers me with it. So to all you Guessedworker-bashers I say: it isn’t necessary for government to burden the socially liberal world with copious, family-friendly policies to encourage stability in individuals and in society. It is only necessary for government to cease encouraging the opposite. Our northern European mentality will do the rest, over time or Darwin didn’t get my vote for Greatest Briton.
Hi Charles, you’re sounding too like CB. Not so nice if you’ve got an eleven year old daughter like me.
Andy: is this the quote you were thinking of?
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against–then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted–and you create a nation of law-breakers–and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
Hi nobody important,
That’s the monkey! 🙂
Nice one! 😉
Rgds,
AndyD
If Mr Goggins is genuinely interested in preventing 45-year old men from developing sexual relationships with 13-year old girls he might start by asking why the latter need a father-substitute in the first place.
Spot on, guessedworker (I am certainly not a “guessedworker-basher,” btw).
Long ago, I accidently began corresponding with someone from South London (Dulwich). Our common interest was literary fiction — everything from Austen to Amis (both of them). It was obvious she was a young person, but she seemed exceptionally well-read. It took awhile before I realized how young she was.
Three years have now passed, and the two of us still write occasionally. I know more about my “friend” now, such as that she’s half-Jamaican, and that she has recently won an all-Britain poetry prize for students at private girls’ schools. She is 16 now, and so perhaps I will not be targeted by Mr. Goggins.
As for myself, I remain in North Carolina. I’ve never been to England and it’s unlikely I ever shall. As for the girl’s father, this is not a “father-substitute” situation. He is a devoted parent who actually (!) lives at home with his family. He just isn’t much into literary fiction.
On the internet, everyone is 18 and thin.
Right, R.C. I’m 18 and thin — how did you guess? 😉
There’s a variation on R.C. Dean’s interesting description of us internet denizens:
All men are men; all women are men; all children are FBI agents.
Hmm.
Aaron – the crime of rape does not depend on the mental capacity of the perpetrator. It is perfectly possible for a 15 year old to commit rape. When rape is defined as sex without the legal consent of your partner, then it becomes possible for two fifteen year olds to be simultaneously the perpetrators and the victims of rape.
If a 15 year old cannot consent to sex, and commits rape, he has had sex, after all. So your choices are 1) the victim must be a rapist also or 2) rape can now be committed against yourself.
Which would you rather do, decide that 15 will get you 20 even if you’re 15 (which comes out to the late 30s in you figure in time for the trial), or eliminate the age of consent?
Guessedworker writes:
“So to all you Guessedworker-bashers I say: it isn’t necessary for government to burden the socially liberal world with copious, family-friendly policies to encourage stability in individuals and in society. It is only necessary for government to cease encouraging the opposite. ”
Perhaps one should add that many of the so-called ‘family friendly’ policies have the de facto effect of making family life even less attractive — by encouraging women to dump their children in daycare orphanages, for example, so that they (the women) can continue to ‘actualise themselves’ in their careers (at the taxpayer’s expense) regardless of the psychological burden placed on their offspring. Ditto, of course, as regards the subsidization of bastardry and other forms of anti-social behaviour.
The current paedophile-hunting obsession is a red herring — just another strategem via which the public’s attention can be distracted from the real problems of broken homes and legions of unhappy, objectively sterile singletons. But perhaps the public wants to be distracted anyway.
Who likes to admit that a well-ordered society needs sexual liberation like a fish needs an oxygen mask? Sometimes libertarians seem to be almost as clueless in this respect as their egalitarian foes.
Now let’s see how many libertarians fall for the bait and object ot the use of the term ‘well-ordered society’……
PS: Guessedworker: Yes, you’re right – I gave my somewhat frivolous inner swine-dog a bit of an outing in my penultimate contribution.
“Who likes to admit that a well-ordered society needs sexual liberation like a fish needs an oxygen mask?”
oh man!! damn… if that’s the case, no *wonder* all these radical Islamist guys are pissed off with us for trying to impose women’s lib & all that other human rights/democracy guff on their relatively orderly societies.
& there was me thinking it was *them* in the wrong. My bad.
A_t writes:
“oh man!! damn… if that’s the case, no *wonder* all these radical Islamist guys are pissed off with us for trying to impose women’s lib & all that other human rights/democracy guff on their relatively orderly societies.”
Thanks for falling for the ‘well-ordered society’ bait.
But there is, after all, something between the two extremes – the Taliban extreme of women in burqas, and the ‘fun society’ extreme of billboards depicting a naked Sophie Dahl (in the infamous advertisement of ‘Opium’ fragrance) with her legs akimbo while simulating orgasm? It was reproduced on 30-foot billboards throughout France in mid-2001 and is said to have launched a thousand car accidents as a result of male ‘retinal lock’ on those splayed legs. A culture that clothes women from head to toe is certainly not our cup of tea. But displaying women in public as though they were either about to climax or were, quite simply, suffering from advanced progressive lordosis (“an abnormal inward curve in the lumbar spine”) is hardly evidence of an advanced civilisation.
Think it over, A_t.
A-t: I think you’re misinterpreting. I think Guessedworker is saying that in a well-ordered society, sexual liberation becomes *redundant,* as in you don’t need extra laws to enforce it — NOT that it should become nonexistant, as in fundamentalist Islamic societies. Correct me if I’m wrong, GW.
🙂 CRL.. from Charles Copeland’s last comment, i think he didn’t just mean the state-enforced type of liberation.
& Charles, I thought Sophie Dahl looked fiiine, & did no harm whatsoever. I grew up on a diet of topless orange juice ads on French TV, so don’t expect me to get on board the “old fashioned decency” train any time soon. Nor any of it’s “men are men and women are women” carriages either. I’ll take my human beings as they come, and provided they don’t hurt anyone else, am not particularly interested in passing judgement on what they get up to.
Anyway, the significant aspects of liberation have sod all to do with nudity or not of women, & much more to do with how many opportunities they have for a life which is not dependent on a man (not saying such a life is necessarily bad, but only if chosen, not imposed)
A-t,
My lodestar is greater stability in children’s hearts and minds through greater stability in their family life. This is a pretty unexceptional, Durkheimian position. In this respect public nudity would be irrelevant if it was all old fogeys from the local sunshine club. But invariably, of course, it is purposively sexualised. Actual sexualisation of children via the sexualisation of their expectations is a very great modern evil which brave adults, in all their liberty-loving, bold candour, just don’t seem able to grasp. So try, please, to understand. Since it is adults that have the power it is adults that must make the choices. At the moment are choices damage our young.
In general, sexual liberation has, I think, also been a great con from the start for women. An increased number of sexual partners is of no genetic value to the female, since she is not more likely to conceive thereby. Men, of course, ARE more likely to father children that way and that is their genetic imperative. I think I agree with my Darwinian co-conspirator, Charles Copeland, that excessive female display is, though dear to my heart ever since the arrival of the Quant-ifiably irresistable female in 1964, not culturally intelligent. I say this even though, psychologically, a woman must display in order to encourage the maximum number of suitors from which to choose one. The point is that an advanced culture will develop skilfull and delightful ritual for this purpose.
It should also be said that sexual ritual of this sort would be pretty well nigh incomprehensible to children, and a valuable insulation. But you know – that’s all wishful thinking. Life is a lap club.
guessedworker, since when did human beings become subject to such strictly Darwinian criteria vis-a-vis their behaviour? Surely the sole criterion should be, if a woman fancies having multiple sexual partners, this should be allowed & we, seeing as it’s none of our business, should keep our noses out & not dispense moralistic judgement, whether “rationally” couched or not. Sex has not often been *solely* about procreation since time began, and since contraception became widespread, this has become the common thread. Most sex that takes place, at least over here in the West has sod-all to do with making babies.
It’s up to women to decide whether they’ve been “conned” or not, so unless you’re a woman, why do you presume to speak for them? It’s not compulsory to have many sexual partners, just an option which will not bring down social condemnation upon you (if you’re lucky anyway). To label an extra personal freedom, freely available as a choice, as a “con” strikes me as bizarre.
Furthermore, where do you get your evidence for your assertion that “an advanced culture will develop skilfull and delightful ritual for this purpose.”? What’s your definition of an advanced culture? Do you have any examples of such a culture, or could i equally state that in my opinion sexuality would be stripped of rubbish ritual & be openly & rationally presented in an ‘advanced culture’? (not that i necessarily believe this, but for the sake of argument)
All this talk of “cultural intelligence” suggests you would like to manipulate society into a shape which reflects your personal view of morality & intelligence, shaped by your upbringing etc., & no doubt contaminated by uncountable prejudices & suppositions some of which you may be conscious of, many not. This is surely denying that which makes humans & human society most interesting; the great variety of *individuals* who make it up. I have absolutely no wish to impose any standards of behaviour upon these individuals, aside from the more obvious ones affecting others; “thou shalt not kill” etc. I rather hoped that anyone who commented here would think likewise but I have to say, I’m curious about your thinking & motivation.
I agree with you about the sexualisation of children though; it’s a worrying trend, & i’m not sure a) why it’s occurring, and b) how to reverse the it.
Hello A_t,
Unfortunately, we can’t fully reverse only those elements in modern mores which contribute to the sexualisation of the very young. We need to address the issue in the round and there, I think, you and I will part company.
The reason for that parting is in our differing understandings of freedom. I have a somewhat acid conviction about the mechanicity of the human psyche and the absence that is a function of mechanicity. What this means is that the degree of control we can exercise over our own lives is perhaps not as great as we suppose.
I think it is probably fair to say that, in raising life choices such as women’s exercise of their own sexuality, you are jumping into the behaviourial steam somewhat lower down than me. Indeed, though I am only the most amateur sociobiologist, I sometimes work further upstream still, at the point where our common or racial physiologies and psychologies feed in. This is where what I would term standards of behaviour are rooted, incidentally – not in my warped mind! Anyhow, I’ll leave these apparently obstruse and off-the-wall issues there for now because I want to answer two of your questions.
First, you present yourself – fairly I know not – as a believer in the linear progress of mankind. This is very usual. But except in the sense of the vast technological achievements of the West it is not true. Societies of all ages exhibit an extraordinarily complex cultural interplay, with many and various profits at the expense of losses. Sometimes the losses are forever. One has only to consider the art and music of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to know that no such flowering is possible now. We wearied of them, fatally, a hundred years ago. Now no Haydns and Ingres exist to teach the pupils of today, even if there were any.
I hold Haydn and Ingres to be examples of cultural intelligence. I trust they serve well.
Second, sex is procreational. Yes, sex is fun, too, and god help us if the condom splits. But we are slaves to our natures. Just how much we are slaves to our natures is sobering and something not too many libbos seem willing to contemplate, never mind take on board. Another time, perhaps.
hmm… i think we part company not by virtue of me being further “downstream”; believe me, i’ve considered many aspects of human behaviour in terms of their evolutionary aspects too. Also, i’m no particular believer in linear progress; in many ways I think we’ve regressed at various points… indeed, evolution itself does not imply ‘progress’ per se; only change, so progress in the most basic sense of the word, i suppose. We part company in our interpretation of our instincts, & how this should affect our daily lives. Personally, i feel we should take instinctive behaviour into account, in order to have a realistic picture of what drives us; acknowledging our motivations is clearly important & empowering, but beyond that i feel no need to serve the original purpose; the mother-nature “propagate your genes & cause your clan to dominate” instinct. For good or ill, nature has endowed me with intellect, & I use it to decide my own path, shaped but not determined by my various instinctive desires.
In terms of social progress/regression, your assessments of Haydn & Ingres are purely subjective. I’m familiar with Haydn, less so with Ingres, and although I can appreciate the genius of Haydn, I’m more enthused by Stravinsky, Steve Reich or John Coltrane, and feel their forms of expression to be more refined & ‘perfected’ if you will. In fact, I would argue passionately with anyone who suggested there was a paucity of musical talent in the 20th Century (or the first few years of the 21st) relative to any previous era.
As for sex, I’d say the reason why we enjoy it is that it was useful in an evolutionary sense that we enjoy it; that’s the way our brains are wired for the most part, & it’s served our genes well. I can’t remember if it was Douglas Adams or another sci-fi author who suggested that the easiest way to control a robot’s behaviour was to initiate emotions of pleasure & pain and then associate certain things with them; the rest would follow. Perhaps someone else knows? But anyway, that’s very much how i view our sexual instincts. As a control mechanism to encourage reproduction, you don’t need much more than “sex = fun”. Given the human appetite for fun, without contraception this rapidly leads to many babies & hence propagation of genes.
However, this doesn’t mean we have to be slaves to the original purpose, and contraception effectively means, for good or bad, that sex is now hopefully only about making babies when we want it to be. This is just the way it goes; not particularly good or bad; i have no compuction whatsoever over subverting mother nature’s intended purpose; we’ve done so in many other ways, with various consequences, & i see no reason why the results have to be negative.
In a similar vein food & the desire to eat are all about survival basically, but it hasn’t stopped us recruiting it to a number of other causes; social prestige, seduction etc. None of this is seen as cultural degeneracy or signs that our civilisation is in any way lacking.
I suppose you could argue that the primary purpose is still being satisfied though in those cases, so ok… try the double-perversion of sugar-free chewing gum; the blow-up-doll of the food world 😉
OK, A_t, there’s not much to argue about. There’s no profit to be had from arguing the merits of baroque or romantic music with those of 20th century jazz. My point, in any case, is not to be an arbiter of taste but to demonstrate intellect in cultural forms in support of the proposition that today’s dumb sexual mores could also be capable of greater refinement.
I’m glad you have examined the sociobiological issue. It is of far wider significance than the leading lights of this blessed blog wish to admit. You come close to saying it but I will make the point specifically … Modern medecine works, the computer is wonderful and rockets fly. But sometimes directly, sometimes far from directly, our behaviour as individuals remains in substantial part informed by racio-environmental adaptivity. Everything must redound to the advantage of our genes – or those of our nearest relatives. The motor is selfishness, and that goes for apparently altruistic acts. We cannot break this pattern, which has been one hundred thousand yars in the making, because of the introduction just today – or in 1963 – of the birth pill, for example. In consequence, the pill breaks us. I really do not think this is contestable.
Down the years I have listened to a lot of good people who are convinced that feminism changed women or we are more free than before or, maybe, more relaxed about race … whatever. It’s that notion of linear progress again and, of course, a lot of liberal-left (and social liberal) propaganda has distorted public perceptions along the way. But, you know … cultural intelligence … Haydn and Ingres. We weren’t any less stupid when medecine was leeches. We knew less and we knew more, that’s all.