From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   When people think of pleasure, they usually mean sexual pleasure. Actually   
   there are many other ways to have pleasures than sex. It is possible to get   
   pleasure from a nice meal, a comfortable bed, a walk in the park, a good book   
   or piece of music, a    
   stimulating conversation. And to the best of my understanding there is no   
   scriptural instruction against such things.   
      
   So we see many people saying that pleasure is corrupt if it involves hurting   
   any other person. Look at your economic system, capitalism. For Oracle to gain   
   monetarily, SAP has to suffer. It is complete hypocrisy to support such an   
   outcome as ethical when    
   one is portraying other ways for people to gain as not.   
      
   What is the truly ethical way? There are any number of them. One useful saying   
   is “your right to your fist ends where my face begins.” One frequently   
   advocated but not correct way to approach such a situation is by using Golden   
   Rule. I am not you,    
   and my needs are different from your needs. If I practice Golden Rule I am   
   projecting on you my needs while failing to see your own.   
      
   How should such situations be addressed? If your actions don’t affect   
   others, then they are not anyone’s business. In situations of your actions   
   affecting others, there needs to be done a calculus. Who is hurt? How?   
   Legitimately or illegitimately?    
   Basically, there needs to be very clearly set out what are legitimate needs   
   and what are not legitimate needs, and ones striving for the first should be   
   left alone while ones striving for the second should be confronted.   
      
   Of course the same actions stand to be judged based on the context. If someone   
   rapes or murders a child, it is more likely to be seen as a wrong than if   
   someone picks someone’s pocket in order to feed his family. At the top of   
   the list is heroic action,   
    such as people dying for their countries. Way at the bottom of the list is   
   hurting someone for sake of one’s pleasure, such as Romans watching   
   gladiators kill each other for the pleasure of the viewer in the Colosseum. In   
   the middle is everything else.   
      
   Is pleasure good or bad? It can be either or both. There are miles to go   
   between catching a suntan and committing murder. I have once witnessed a   
   situation when a man was attacking a woman who was promiscuous by citing the   
   example of Hitler. This is    
   extremely irresponsible. It is completely wrong to compare someone who   
   hasn’t killed anyone to someone who killed 50 million people. By that   
   standard half of the world have committed equivalent of mass murder.    
      
   So we have some people who claim that wrongdoing is done by people because   
   they aren’t Christian and who compare loose sexuality as moral equivalent of   
   mass murder. There are others who claim that wrongdoing is done by people who   
   are not rational, or    
   people who aren’t feminist, or people who aren’t politically correct. Of   
   course wrongdoing has been committed by all of the above and many more.   
   Wrongdoing can be done by anyone, for any reason. And none of these people own   
   wrongdoing, any more than    
   do their attackers own righteousness.   
      
   Is pleasure wrong? I do not see why there would be any correlation, positive   
   or negative, between things being pleasurable and things being bad. Some   
   hedonistic people will be good and some will be bad. Some anhedonic people   
   will be good and some will be    
   bad. Both the sex industry-influenced men who see women as “sex objects”   
   and the Puritans who used to make laws about the size of the stick with which   
   to beat their wives have ways of being complete jerks. Which makes it   
   incumbent upon the rest of us    
   to correct the wrongs done by both.   
      
   Pleasure is an easy target. It is not at all difficult to attack it on moral   
   basis, especially with the Bible nearby. As for myself I choose to use moral   
   arguments to confront real wrongdoing and real corruption, while leaving the   
   people who are into fun    
   alone. Sexual practices of consenting adults are between them and their sexual   
   partners. Sexual violence against children however is everyone’s business,   
   and something which must be confronted for the sake of the good of all. Many   
   of the people who    
   want to control people’s private sexual behavior however also seek to stand   
   in the way of prosecution of incest. To them I say, A small government is not   
   a government that seeks to control people’s private behavior. Incest is a   
   much greater sin than    
   extramarital sex. It is an abuse of power, and it traumatizes children for   
   life. Controlling private sexual behavior of consenting adults is a vastly   
   greater act of government tyranny and government overreach than confronting   
   incest. Stop prosecuting “   
   fornication”; prosecute incest and pedophilia.   
      
   When I attended the Burningman festival in Nevada, someone told me that people   
   weren’t ready for that level of freedom. I told him that the way one becomes   
   ready for something is by trying it out on small doses. As the tolerance   
   increases, it can be    
   possible to increase the dose. Certainly there are many people who have   
   difficulty dealing with freedom. It doesn’t mean that nobody should have   
   freedom. It means that they need to learn how to operate functionally in the   
   climate of liberty.   
      
   One problem I’ve seen involves relationships that start with a strong sexual   
   attraction and end up with the man being morally abusive to the woman. Such   
   person’s likes and values are not in accord. He wants one thing but values   
   another. So he either    
   gets what he wants and is dissatisfied with it or he gets what he values and   
   does not enjoy it. In both cases we see a sure ticket to misery.   
      
   Of course, when someone really is getting hurt, then that has to be dealt with   
   like all wrongdoing. As we see all around us, wrong things done both by the   
   pleasure-interested and the not pleasure-interested. Pleasure can be good, and   
   pleasure can be bad.    
   So can any number of other things.    
      
   Are there people who do wrong things for pleasure? Of course there are. But   
   there are many other wrong things that people can do. Puritans aren’t better   
   than porn addicts; they are worse than them.   
      
   There are many wrong things that need to be confronted. And only a fraction of   
   them are committed for the sake of pleasure.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)