cousinbasil: Hate to upset this little tautology, but I understand you perfectly well.
jupiviv: No you don't. If you did then you wouldn't be bringing children, love, my niece and compassion into a discussion about whether consensual sex is possible.
You are simply illustrating the very tautology I am speaking of, which again is this:
If I understood your truth, I would necessarily agree.
I am bringing those things into the discussion fully aware that you don't think they belong. I mentioned them
because I knew you would have such a reaction.
The fact is they very much belong, because you are asserting consensual sex is not possible because the activity itself is irrational. I am trying to point out why this position is untenable. That is, I do not agree with it - which does not mean I do not understand it.
Here is the logic, very simply. If consensual sex is not possible, then non consensual sex cannot be possible. However, if non-consensual sex is possible, it then follows that consensual sex must be possible. Therefore, I am trying to focus your attention on acts of non-consensual sex. How old is that niece again?
Right now in the US there is a flap at Penn State University about a former assistant football coach under the revered Joe Paterno who repeatedly dragged young boys into the locker-room shower and forced them to have sex. He was arrested after years of this behavior and more years of investigation. Now I ask you: on what basis has he been arrested? Or better yet, perhaps you can tell me if you think he should have been arrested at all. Or just in general - should society ever judge the sexual activity of an individual? If so, on what possible grounds?
If I can give one counterexample to your assertion, I believe my point has been made.
I never said that any act of reproduction or sex is inherently irrational, only that it is irrational amongst human beings. The reason is that we have evolved to breed and not be conscious/rational.
If this is an example of your clarifying your position for me, you could have done a better job. If it is irrational amongst human beings, then it must be inherently irrational, since it would also be presumably irrational among any other species. Or are you saying that because only humans
can be rational, then among only humans would the sex act be irrational? I'd agree with that. But I am not quarreling about whether sexual activity is rational or not!
cousinbasil: The world could no more abstain from sex en masse than you as an individual organism can hold your breath until you die.
jupiviv:Not having sex won't kill you, I promise!
My point was that every species is hard-wired to have sex in order for for its survival to be ensured, the way an individual is hard-wired to breathe. As a whole, it would be impossible for the human race to utterly forgo reproduction.
And I know not having sex won't kill me - otherwise I have used up all nine lives already! But doesn't it necessarily follow that if you can choose
not to have sex, then you can choose
to have sex?
Are you enlightened? If not, then why are you judging the actions of an enlightened man?
I see my attempt at humor falls flat once again...