Thread by @EveKeneinan

Sargon is struggling with this one, but in a productive way. It’s a bit frustrating and a bit heartening at one and the same time, since he’s very slowly inching step by step to the truth:

Should We Ban Porn?

MOST people in our age are 16 to 90 steps in the WRONG direction. Sargon is about 12 steps in the right direction, but really needs to catch up.

To get it out of the way, Sargon makes a truly terrible argument for why porn must be free speech, viz: “Free speech is about political expression, and talking ABOUT porn is political speech, SO porn is political speech, SO porn is free speech.”

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The problem of course is that it is just false that anything TALKED ABOUT as a political issue IS ITSELF political speech. You could depend anything with that: slavery or rape are “free speech” because we talk about whether or not to criminalize them.

I’m fairly sure we don’t want to go down a road where rape is an act of free speech, much less a protected one.

Sargon says that “sending someone a dick pic is clearly free expression, and therefore free speech," which can’t be made illegal.

But it can and has been made illegal. Flashing someone is “free expression” too, and is also illegal.

Sargon quite properly identifies the problem with porneia: it is DEGRADING. It is degrading to those who produce it, who take part in it, who consume it.

And we all know this.

The problem with the DEGRADING/DEFILING moral axis is that it DENIGRATES or DEFILES the SACRED.

Sargon rightly says that we MUST talk about porn and sex in terms of sanctity and degradation.

He rightly says the real question is “Is sex sacred?”

He gives a remarkable answer:

"Is sex sacred? I don’t think we should treat it as if it ISN’T.”

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So Sargon is saying that we ought not to treat sex AS IF it were NOT SACRED, which is a strangely backhanded way of saying SEX IS SACRED.

But this is a PROBLEM for an ATHEIST.

Atheism ANNIHILATES the category of the SACRED, and THUS opens up all manner of DEGRADATIONS.

This situation is like Carl’s claim to be a moral subjectivist, even though every CONCRETE discussion of ethics and morality he has, prove that HE IS NOT.

He seems not to be an atheist—but just as with moral objectivism, he has some IDEA that won’t let religion be a live option.

So he’s going to spend this video talking about the category of the sacred. Guess Who/What isn’t mentioned, ever? God.

Also, he calls Jonathan Haidt’s moral FOUNDATIONS, moral TASTES. I’m not sure if that’s a revealing error or a revealing revision on Carl’s part.

Yes, the problem with porn is precisely that it is DEGRADING.

It takes a sacred thing and throws dirt on it.

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The problem with the degradation of porneia is that it is self-referential: no human being is unaware of the degrading aspect of porn (and other kinds of illicit sex)—but human nature is so perverse in this area THAT THE DEGRADATION ITSELF BECOMES AN ADDITIONAL SEXUAL ADDICTION.

At first, so to speak, one merely, guiltily, gets off to the pornographic images or writing—but soon enough one becomes addicted to the very degradation which one cannot really escape.

I mention here the case of the cuck.

Having FAILED as a man, the cuck finds a kind of perverse pleasure in his own failure, which he himself takes the lead in rubbing his own face in.

Part of the problem is that Carl tends to frame moral issues in a Kantian absolutely right vs absolutely wrong framework.

This is odd for someone who seems to have studied at least SOME of the ancients.

Next Carl makes an observation that a certain kind of left-liberal is completely blind to (and it also derives from Kant):

The idea that while you can’t hurt OTHERS, you CAN HURT YOURSELF.

Why? If it is wrong to do X to an innocent person and you are an innocent person …

1 It is morally wrong to kill innocent persons
2 You are an innocent person
3 ∴ it is morally wrong to kill yourself.

This is perfectly sound.

Here is how Carl puts the point, that self-harm is, after all, HARMING SOMEONE (you), and is morally suspect: vib.by/v/myF1AYWu_

If it is WRONG to do certain things to innocent persons, why would it be NOT WRONG to do these things to yourself, an innocent person?

This was my comment:

I stand by it too. I’ve never seen any form of the libertarian case for so-called “self-ownership” that doesn’t justify slavery.

If you own yourself absolutely to the point where you can destroy yourself, then you can obviously sell yourself as a slave.

Not to mention that “self-ownership” is not a possible relationship.

One cannot be BOTH owner AND owned thing.

Carl makes mention of Robert Nozick’s “experience machine.”

He even speaks of a “lesser human being.”

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The question is simply: why not degrade yourself UTTERLY if you find some kind of PLEASURE in it?