Random Thoughts — Page 337

You're welcome, ender. ;-)

Frank your Majesty said:

darth_ender said:

Frank your Majesty said:

darth_ender said:

Frank your Majesty said:

darth_ender said:

Sexual frivolity, infidelity, teen pregnancy, abortions, and the like are certainly much more prevalent than before.  To what can we attribute this rise?  Largely the media portrayal and acceptance of such behavior.

 Or does the media portray this behavior because it is already accepted? I don't think the influence of books, movies and TV is that great, simply because most people wouldn't watch a movie or read a book if they are strongly opposed to its topic. The media mainly reflects the behaviour of the society, which is much more formed by social factors.

 You are right.  The media has no effect on public opinion.

 No need to be sarcastic. Of course there is some effect, that's why I said mainly, but if something is massively overhyped it's because these people just waited for it to happen. There are erotic fan fictions on the internet for years, 50 Shades Of Grey is just the first one to be published as a book and therefore more easily accessible to these frustrated 50 year old housewifes that are now running to the cinemas.

Anyways, I understand that you have no interset in continuing this discussion since you have been personally attacked. I just wanted to let you know that I didn't mean to belittle or mock you or your beliefs and I hope you don't think I wanted to do such a thing.

 I can get quite sarcastic, and I admit I've been a bit grumpier than usual lately, so I apologize for my tone, but not for the ultimate message.  Let's examine your first quote where you say, "...the behavior of the society...is much more formed by social factors."  Now let's consider a number of facts: the media is a social factor.  In fact, one could say it is the dominant social factor.  While we commonly refer to media as singular, it is actual plural for medium.  A medium is a means of communication.  And all social interaction is based on communication.

Now let's consider obvious facts connected with the media.  There's social media, a form of media where socializing influences people.  Then there are commercials, a format wherein companies influence people to purchase their products.  There are political campaigns, wherein politicians influence voters to see things their way and vote for them.  There is the news, where a persona watching Fox News and reading the Drudge Report will come away with a different view of the state of current affairs from a person watching MSNBC and reading the Huffington Post, and both will definitely see things differently from the Al-Jazeera viewer.  Women viewing ads of skinny females develop conditions like anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.  

There is a user here named Nanner Split who helped devise the Slender Man character.  There are those who have used Slender Man as an inspiration for crimes they have committed.  People have cited death metal as motivations for suicidal attempts.  The clothes you wore today were probably at least somewhat fashionable.  Those fashion trends are not just naturally ebbing and flowing, but are in fact based on conscious decisions by clothing designers and the models who show them off.  Why don't you dress like you're in the 80's?  Because such is not fashionable anymore, because the media has influenced our sense of fashion.

While people are ultimately responsible for their own decisions, to say the media has no effect is wrong, utterly wrong.  It is through the media that society changes most.  And with the rise of the Internet, those changes have only increased in pace.  Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie do actually influence people to make bad decisions, even if they didn't make those decisions for them.  Movies like 50 Shades of Grey do in fact make sex cheaper than I personally feel it should be treated.  It's not just because everyone's buddies started having premarital sex that it became commonplace.  It's because it was actually portrayed more often in media than in reality, until it became a reality.  Again, I don't wish to sound judgmental.  One hundred years ago, such behavior was utterly disgraceful.  Today it's expected.

There are articles upon articles about this.  I have a BA in psychology and have taken classes on this material.  I'm not making this up.

http://influence.bafree.net/negative-influences-of-media-on-the-society.php

Thank you for your lenghty reply, I'm glad you're still around here. Of course there's no need to apologize for your message and you didn't sound judgmental to me.

As you said, "the media" is all forms of communication, so ultimately, it's people communicating with each other and exchanging their opinions that changes society. Strictly speaking, there is no influence of the media itself, there's an influence of what people say through various media. I have to admit, that I didn't think of it this way when I made my first comment and you have opened my eyes to it. Nevertheless, these influences are small and only change one's mindset a bit. It's not one book, one movie or one song that's responsible for the whole "depravation" of society. Thus, changing society is a very slow process involving all existing media and I don't think you can fully seperate cause and effect of showing acceptance for something in the media and the society accepting it.

Especially movies, books and music only made for entertainment are aimed to appeal to many people, so they are likely to follow existing trends, 50 Shades Of Grey is no exception. No publisher would release such a poorly written book if he wasn't sure he could sell it. And he can sell it because a certain acceptance for sex in general and BDSM in particular was already prevalent.

(When I talked about social factors I was more talking about "people getting poorer leads to them commiting crimes which is followed by violence that's then shown by the media..." I should have made this clearer but I was short on time and couldn't think it through.)

 I think we're closer to agreeing now. In fact my point was not only that I despise the book's existence, but that I'm sad at how widely it has been embraced. To me, this is glorification of sex that bugs me so. This book is simply another contributor, as well as a pulse on our society's ambivalence to what I find sacred.

@imperialscum, I haven't interacted with you for some time, so to read this makes me wonder if you always missed the point so completely, or if this is a lone instance.  I don't mean to be rude, but I think you were trying to reply to something between the lines, but didn't read the lines themselves.  You reply to me like I am defending religion from your onslaught.  I was not defending it at all.  I intend to do so, but not here, and not now, since it will take a little longer to compose what I intend to write.  If I were an atheist, my point in my previous comment would be identical.  So please read my following reply, reread the previous comment, and understand what I really mean.

imperialscum said:

darth_ender said:

I am afraid that this is all a bunch of ignorance.  I don't disagree that people who are without religion can still hold high moral standards.  But bear in mind where those standards came from.  Right now you are from the UK if I recall correctly.  Your nation has been tremendously influenced by Judeo-Christian values.  Let's say that the world was taken over by the Islamic State.  Over time, societal norms conform to those accepted by what we now see as an evil group.

First, you are saying that one religion will protect us from the other, which is kind of a paradox in this discussion. So if it is the religion that may harm us in the first place, why don't we just get rid of all religions if they are the problem?

Nope, that's not what I am saying at all.  I am saying that you hold moral values that you consider right.  Do you know where those values came from?  From society.  And that society's values are descended from Judeo-Christian values.  That's all I'm saying here.

darth_ender said:

In 100 years, a guy very much like you wishes to live a life with morals much like yours.  Do you know what would happen?  This man would be branded a heretic and executed for apostasy.  You know why, because he would be living a life if immorality according to a different society, though his standards may be exactly like yours today.  Lest you use this as an argument against religion due to the extremism of such Muslims, I do wish to point out that even atheistic societies like North Korea and the Soviet Union have adopted truly evil norms.

I hope that this was some kind of joke. You speak like Christianity gave us freedom and stuff. You better learn the history of Europe. The Church (in the name of Christianity) was exploiting people for centuries (it still does to a lesser degree). Funny how you mentioned "branding one a heretic" and executions in the name of religion. In medieval Europe, that was a very common practice of Church ... burning people alive, invention of unimaginably sick torture devices to extract the "confessions" out of "heretics", etc. The Church actively suppressed the freedom and sabotaged the secular progress in Europe for many centuries (Copernicus, Galileo, etc.).

Oh my gosh.  You mean Christianity did all that?  I didn't know.  Gee.

Well, if I really were so ignorant, you still would be off center, because my point here was not that atheist societies are amoral and religious societies moral.  I was trying to point out that a society's values can change and become very different.  You see yourself as a moral person, but that is because you live by the morals your society holds to.  If you lived by the same moral code in a society of strict Islamic interpretation, you would actually be immoral, according to society.

It was only when secular sphere (such as science), led by intellectuals, forced the Church to change and accept new norms that were demanded by the people. So I hope we are now clear on the fact that it is the secular sphere to be credited for the modern western society and NOT the religion.

It is fair to mention that in northern countries the Church wasn't forced but rather reformed itself. But still, the reformation was a result of influence and progress in the secular sphere.

Thanks for the history lesson, though I probably know more on the topic than you, including the piousness of those individuals who reformed such views. It still has nothing to do with what I am addressing here.

darth_ender said:

Lest you use this as an argument against religion due to the extremism of such Muslims

Some Muslim countries have their "middle age" as we had ours in Europe. A common denominator in both cases is/was a religion.

darth_ender said:

I do wish to point out that even atheistic societies like North Korea and the Soviet Union have adopted truly evil norms.

Of course there are some exceptions. But a vast majority of atheistic societies (EU countries) are doing very well in terms of moral norms.

Please do not continue on your train of thought.  I said no such thing in either of the above quotes taken from the same sentence.  I used the Islamic State as an example.  I was trying to point out that religious and atheistic states both are capable of extreme evil and was not singling out Islam.  That is all.

Btw this sounded like you consider USA a theocracy? It is kinda funny that it actually have some elements of theocracy, such as the use of bible in court. As an atheist, can you refuse to participate in that ritual?

 Yes you can refuse.  But I made no such statement or inference at all.  You read into everything I said, but it appears you understood nothing.  Please reply to my quotes and not what you think I must truly be getting at.

TV's Frink said:

You're welcome, ender. ;-)

 I guess I should say thanks.  I do enjoy the discussion, as long as I'm not being accused of being nasty.  So far so good ;)

imperialscum said:

I mean you may try blame everything on the Church as an institution and say religion has nothing to with it. But I am a very practical person and cannot accept such excuse.

Except that that is not practical thinking at all.  Just because some branches of the church twist things does not make something twisted to begin with.  That's like saying, for example, that a chain of restaurants is overall terrible because the one in your city isn't very good.  Chances are the one in your city is privately ran following guidelines given down, and they just are not following the guidelines well.  Individual churches are NOT united, even the bible warns against individual churches taking orders from another church.  Blaming all churches for the misdeeds of a few is not practical at all, but it is typical, sadly.  I'm afraid your not as much better than everybody else as you may like to think.

darth_ender said:

TV's Frink said:

You're welcome, ender. ;-)

 I guess I should say thanks.  I do enjoy the discussion, as long as I'm not being accused of being nasty.  So far so good ;)

 I'm not sure I was clear, I was saying that in reference to the ot.com orgy discussion.

     Um, the Catholic Western state church has been Luciferian from it's inception.

     All this talk about "Christianity did this in the middle ages" and "The Church did that in medieval times" is sheer nonsense.

     It was all infused with gnosticism and paganism and absurdly false doctrines from the get-go.

    After the Reformation, some Protestants held to some false doctrines and nonsense. Their violence  was almost always about goods and temporal power, when it wasn't about barest survival from the assaults of the Catholic Satanists or vicious natives.

    None of this has anything to do with the Christian faith as presented by a careful and plain reading of the Gospels, freed from all presuppositions.

    To regard all spiritual faiths as equivalent is to buy into the central LIE of the Catholic Jesuit, Freemason, Shriner Muslim, Illuminati Luciferians.

    Outright atheists and atheist/Luciferians are burning down all flickers of decency in the world from both ends.

    The depraved try to imagine they can build a glorious new order from this act.

    They can only produce inhuman cruelties beyond anything Westerners can comprehend.

    All this debate over faith is really needless.

     Of one thing I am certain:  UNDERNEATH IT ALL, PEOPLE KNOW.

     Everyone above the age of 25 with a few functioning brain cells is well equiped with a Sense for determining right from wrong and likely Truth from cruel falsety.

     Some just don't care. A great many care only enough to construct absurd rationales and then drive themselves to as much as half-believe these lies to escape from their underlying Sense that what they are doing is twisted, stupid and harmful.

    I reject the notion that there is any daylight between the shoulders of a sincere Christain and a rabid Western atheist or atheist/Luciferian on the topic of whether Christianity can be considered in the same breath with Islam; or atheism, for that matter. Underneath it all, the Western atheists know that godless characters can't sustain human decency. 

    Some atheists are driven by a hatred for their Creator after denial of help. Most atheists and A/Luciferians are driven by a combination of the denial of help, guilt over past misdeeds, and the heinous thrill they derive from being involved with the destruction of the innocent and/or weak. 

    But       UNDERNEATH IT ALL, PEOPLE KNOW.

imperialscum said:

darth_ender said:

@imperialscum, I haven't interacted with you for some time, so to read this makes me wonder if you always missed the point so completely, or if this is a lone instance.  I don't mean to be rude, but I think you were trying to reply to something between the lines, but didn't read the lines themselves.

Well the most important rule of forum warfare is to state your point in 2-3 sentences. If you write a big reply as you did, with many side-points, it is very likely that your main point will be either lost, not understood or even ignored.

That is just a friendly tip from a veteran. :)

 Username: imperialscum
Join Date: March 7, 2013
Last Online: February 8, 2015, 4:34 PM
Post Count: 1018

Username: darth_ender
Join Date: April 26, 2011
Last Online: February 8, 2015, 3:23 PM
Post Count: 7161

I wouldn't call him a hick. Hicks aren't intelligent enough to be so insultingly stupid.

On that point, I'll bet you're right. He certainly comes off as an internalized homophobe most of the time.

Leonardo said:

thejediknighthusezni said:

    Outright atheists and atheist/Luciferians are burning down all flickers of decency in the world from both ends.

    The depraved try to imagine they can build a glorious new order from this act.

    They can only produce inhuman cruelties beyond anything Westerners can comprehend.

    All this debate over faith is really needless.

     Of one thing I am certain:  UNDERNEATH IT ALL, PEOPLE KNOW.

     Everyone above the age of 25 with a few functioning brain cells is well equiped with a Sense for determining right from wrong and likely Truth from cruel falsety.

     Some just don't care. A great many care only enough to construct absurd rationales and then drive themselves to as much as half-believe these lies to escape from their underlying Sense that what they are doing is twisted, stupid and harmful.

    Some atheists are driven by a hatred for their Creator after denial of help. Most atheists and A/Luciferians are driven by a combination of the denial of help, guilt over past misdeeds, and the heinous thrill they derive from being involved with the destruction of the innocent and/or weak. 

    But       UNDERNEATH IT ALL, PEOPLE KNOW.

    

 Yes, UNDERNEATH IT ALL, PEOPLE KNOW THAT YOU'RE A CUM GUZZLING HICK.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvuVFHTvdaY

imperialscum said:

darth_ender said:

@imperialscum, I haven't interacted with you for some time, so to read this makes me wonder if you always missed the point so completely, or if this is a lone instance.  I don't mean to be rude, but I think you were trying to reply to something between the lines, but didn't read the lines themselves.

Well the most important rule of forum warfare is to state your point in 2-3 sentences. If you write a big reply as you did, with many side-points, it is very likely that your main point will be either lost, not understood or even ignored.

That is just a friendly tip from a veteran. :)

 This was my point, which I stated in the following sentences, or even perhaps just in the underlined:

darth_endersaid:

In other words, morals are not universal.  There is no supreme law that says that murder is wrong, that human equality is right.  Not unless there is a Supreme Being.  Otherwise, those values are actually just accepted by the majority of society.  Being moral in one society may be immoral in another.

I hope you use the term warfare in a bit of hyperbole.  I do not wish to cause contention, though I debate passionately.  I really had no side point.  I just used a lot of words to convey my point, which I summarized in the above quote.

imperialscum said:

Possessed said:

imperialscum said:

I mean you may try blame everything on the Church as an institution and say religion has nothing to with it. But I am a very practical person and cannot accept such excuse.

Except that that is not practical thinking at all.  Just because some branches of the church twist things does not make something twisted to begin with.  That's like saying, for example, that a chain of restaurants is overall terrible because the one in your city isn't very good.  Chances are the one in your city is privately ran following guidelines given down, and they just are not following the guidelines well.  Individual churches are NOT united, even the bible warns against individual churches taking orders from another church.  Blaming all churches for the misdeeds of a few is not practical at all, but it is typical, sadly.  I'm afraid your not as much better than everybody else as you may like to think.

Well if you make a comparison/analogy, at least get the scale right. It's more like saying, for example, that a bad chain of restaurants is overall good because there is one in your city that is an exception and is actually good.

 No, it isn't like saying that.  Your opinion is not fact, as hard as this may be for you to believe, and your attitude of arrogance is very annoying.  I don't know about the other theists here, but I completely accept that there is a distinct possibility that there is no God.  It's highly possible.  I don't find other viewpoints absurd just because I don't believe in them.  You seem to think that everything you don't believe in is certainly wrong, and I pity you.

All right, this forum orgy has to happen now.  It's the only way to get all this burning sexual tension out of our systems!

impscum, I replied to you in the religion thread. And...

imperialscum said:

darth_ender said:

@imperialscum, I haven't interacted with you for some time, so to read this makes me wonder if you always missed the point so completely, or if this is a lone instance.  I don't mean to be rude, but I think you were trying to reply to something between the lines, but didn't read the lines themselves.

Well the most important rule of forum warfare is to state your point in 2-3 sentences. If you write a big reply as you did, with many side-points, it is very likely that your main point will be either lost, not understood or even ignored.

That is just a friendly tip from a veteran. :)

 ...oops. Oh, well. I have no intent to cut that post down, and whether you read it or not, I will link to it if the subject comes up in debate again. I'm afraid I like debating a bit too much, so if you aren't as enthusiastic about it as I am, I don't imagine you'll take the time. Know that the reply is there, however, so if you continue to debate this topic, I invite you to read the other side of the debate before you present more arguments.

hairy_hen said:

All right, this forum orgy has to happen now.  It's the only way to get all this burning sexual tension out of our systems!

Again, I must reiterate, unless any of you guys are my type (and I'm 100.99% sure 99% of you aren't), I'm not taking part. 

Ah, but there are ways around that.  There is such a thing as roleplay, after all.

Just close your eyes and think of England . . .  :p