Jason wrote:
"You initially said you'd punch a woman in the face if she asked for anal sex. Anyway, I consider the vast majority of people to be sex-phobic, you're certainly no exception."
Don't take things too too literally. If I said that, what I mean is that I think people need to be shocked out of an over-permissiveness that we are all susceptible to these days. You for me right now, and in this conversation, are that person, and you should also remember that you are the one who presented 'a text' to me that you felt represented our polarity of opinions in respect to this subject. That 'text' was the movie
'Sirens'. I don't think you were aware of it, but at least superficially the movie traces the way that 'the popular body' rebelled against sexual mores that had been established through the influence of Pauline Christianity. There was a time, and with very good reasons, that early Christianity fought a battle against sexual license. A stupid and juvenile argument would be to see this as uptight priests invading the innocent gardens where pagans frolicked engaging in their harmless and naughty pleasures, and laying on them some terrible repressive trip, yet when one understands things better one recognizes that the reining-in of brutal and thoughtless passions has been a necessary step in constructing what we now understand as 'civilization'. I am not just inventing this for you, I am not just pulling this out of my ass (no pun intended), these are sort of the facts of the case, and many people are aware of the struggle against paganism and the way that unruly populations are 'house-trained' if you want to see it like that.
So, referring again to the 'text' you presented me, that is to say the story presented in the movie itself, what do we see there? It is as transparent as anything. It is the priest and his 'backward' views who is to be seduced----by what? By the carnal appetites of a group of lower-class women and their 'raw' appetites which are tarted-up to be something they really are not. The artists, the painter himself---the author of all this novelty---remains oddly aloof from all the goings-on under his roof. He walks in the moonlight and his eyes are always facing upward, and he never, himself, participates in the orgies that begin to unfold, nor does his wife. But the girls---and these girls really have access to some profound 'truths', don't they?---they are the agents through which the seduction takes place, and it works through 'all the known suspects'. It is all sort of polymorphous perverse, has orgiastic elements, had lesbian elements, and plays also on the old imagery (you can find these stories in A Thousand and One Nights) of the slave who is the sexual play-thing of the court women (the blind servant that one of these arty girls likes and wants to fuck but who instead fucks the priest's wife).
Ho-hum, Jason, for you this is something
cutting edge I suppose but from my perspective it is common place and merely vulgar.
So, what I am noting---and it is something I have lived through Jason, is the way that 'seduction' functions. Seductions on a cultural level are
incremental, a small step at a time, and before you know it 'corruption' has infected the whole body. I am only referring to sexual seductions, sensual seduction, but the fact is that it is really far wider than that, but that is another part of the conversation. These sorts of seductions begin on the mental plane, and they require a cogent argument in pro of the pleasure so to disarm the person, so that argument has to be discovered and formed. It is also necessary that someone see another succumb to seduction since we are social beings and our behavior is influenced tremendously by what our peers do, and what our elders do. The mental work has to be done first, but once its done all the physical aspect is then ushered in.
The ramifications of this whole process which goes far beyond the sensual, is simply enormous.
"You've never even experimented? You came to this forum representing yourself as the open-minded, non-dogmatic, whimsical free-spirit. A contrast against the types of posters you thought dominated the forum, and a contrast which you seemed to delight in and play up. But you've morphed into something that's closer to the polar opposite. Funny that. You rarely if ever even break out into those poetic flourishes anymore. Now you've gotten into partisan politics, and you're looking more and more like a banal christian."
I came to this forum with a clear statement that I was essentially a religious person who was interested in defending the good reasons for a religious structure, and I have been attempting to define what I mean by 'religious' and 'spiritual' all throughout the course of my writing here. I only do this for my own sake, to work out and clarify my own ideas, and only because knowledge is power, as they say. The first element in seduction is that you cut people off from the wellspring of knowledge, of what it is possible to know. When you have them in an ignorant state, and when you remain the clever manipulator, you can then do with them what you want. You run circles around them, you ties them up in knots, you untie them from one position so to tie them up in another and tell them that's 'freedom'. They have no defense against you. You are a bright boy with a good mind, surely you can see some of the ramifications of this, see where it goes without it having to be spelled out to you, down to the finest detail?
Whether you define me as 'conservative' or as a 'whimsical free-spirit' is of very little concern to me, the real question, the far more relevant question is: What and who in the fuck are you? And what do you participate in, knowingly or ignorantly? I don't provide an answer, it is the question that is the only relevant thing. I haven't 'morphed' into anything, I am the same person I was then, it is just that this list itself has enabled me to make some substantial strides in defining what I think, or better, some possibilities to be considered.
What I have discovered, Jason, and do not have hardly a sliver of regret in saying it, is that what we refer to as 'Christianity', at a sort of inner, sub-atomic mantric level, is one of the most potent things going, and a certain spiritual power, which seemed to stem from the utterances of one individual, have literally moved the world like the Archimedean Lever. Should I care that you likely do not have the receptors to even understand what I wish I could communicate to you about this? Because I know that you have been programmed (I surmise) to block it out, as have many on this list, as have many people in the world. What we refer to as 'Christianity' is a series of bad caricatures, that is performed by very bad actors. But the core values---that which moves through time and space and had substantially moulded our world (it is not over yet)---are very real and worthy of every defense.
This standpoint, this knowledge, is a new point for me, because I never paid much attention to 'Christianity'.
But some kid who likes to put vibrating butt plugs up his ass and strut around the naughty one---how could one even get through to him? (unless one was, himself, a vibrating butt-plug?)
;-)
Some people here, I think, leave all the best potential conversations un-conversed. And it them becomes about ridiculous
minutiae that only some forlorn
masturbator could care about, could
even muster the energy to care about.
