On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:03:29 -0700, jeanpauljesus wrote
(in article <gb9870$nv$1@aioe.org>):
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:47:02 -0500, Morpheus wrote:
>
>> It has nothing to do with morality or legality. The proscription of
>> nude pictures is merely a means of social control. Any power-craving
>> despotic government will undertake a couple of things straightaway. The
>> first is to subvert culture (often by banning dialects or native
>> languages) and the second is to criminalize normal behavior.
>>
>
> Yes, it's social control, but I also think it is other things. That's
> another (deeper) level of analysis. Freud may have been the first to
> point out that control of the sex drive as he called it was a key task
> for any society to maintain the power structure, actually just to
> maintain order. Marcuse went further and framed this in political terms.
> On the nutty but interesting side, there was Reich, who I haven't read.
> Then much more recently, Foucault discussed the control of sexuality as
> sociopolitical control, but being a popular guy who valued his success,
> he sold out and stuck to gay rights of course, retaining the view that
> pedosexuality was pathological, afaik. Other may be abke to inform us
> better.
>
> You have probably seen the Inquisition 21C website (those who haven't
> should look it up - be aware there were claims the FBI were trying to
> monitor visitors' IP addresses, I don't know if that was just
> scaremongering,) This takes the social control view, though from a
> rather idealist viewpoint, and has some good stuff, but, like much of my
> own scribbling on this topic, has a habit of ranting circuitously and
> stridently at times. It is hard to be cool and analytical when faced
> with such unreasoning hatred and hegemony.
>
> Re: Y Not - I have no knowledge or viewpoint on this since I am not a
> usenet regular, so I cannot comment and do not knwo fi you are correct or
> not. I only remember Y-Not as a poster of pics.
>
> But there is a lot of effort going in to creating petty spats and
> disputes between posters, regardless of whoever is doing it, it needs to
> be ignored.
>
One of the ways that power brokers exert control is by creating artificial
scarcities. This type of control is more economic than psychological. Man
is, among other things, a combination of various biological drives. Food,
water, sex are among the most powerful of these. The are biological,
psychological and sociologically driven.
From time to time power brokers have used food or water to bend people to
their will. The economic technique is artificial scarcity. But this has
limited utility because without food or water, the organism will die. The
Sudan is a recent attempt by the government to force people to migrate by
deliberately withholding food.
It is different with the sex drive. An individual can live a long life
without sex. In the long run without any sex, the species will die out, but
that is not, typically, proscribed for long periods.
Thus the sex drive has been used throughout the history of mankind, usually
through the creation of artificial scarcity, to manipulate people. It is
especially popular with religions.
Too much sex - promiscuity - (whatever that might mean) is seen as bad.
Especially devoute and pious individuals foreswear sex altogether (Buddhist
monks, Catholic priests). For the general public, some sexual expression is
allowed (hetero sexual over 18 in the U. S.) and some proscribed (homosexual,
sex with so-called minors, etc.)
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