[MD] Sex, Rape and Law in a MOQ

[John Carl]

Ok, Arlo, I went over this a bit elsewhere, so we'll just skip right to the
points needing more coverage.

[Arlo]
> It takes two earthworms too (although I hear they are less picky about who
> gets
> to be the girl and who gets to be the guy).
>
>
John:

If you mean it takes more than mere numbers to be "a social pattern"  well,
I do agree with you there.  It takes a consciousness of self and other, that
I don't think earthworms posses.  Mammalian nurture, is how I think social
patterns are born.    And I think this is one reason why computer
intelligence is impossible.  There's such a vast complex of realization -
mental-biological analogues - necessary for the birth of comprehension or
consciousness.  A vast neural-chemical matrix that can't be replicated
machine-fashion. But that's another topic for another day.

Arlo:

I agree that modern human social patterns present a socially-mediated
> complex
> ritual of negotiation in order to "control" who gets to who, but I think
> this
> is conflating two levels unnecessarily.
>
>
John:

Well I'm sure enough that you can never BUT conflate the intellectual and
the social.  They blend in a continuum and are only distinct at extreme
ends.  This is an important metaphysical point, I keep coming back to again
and again, and I understand it is not quite "the orthodoxy", but that's
because the orthodoxy is wrong.  My irreverent and easily dismiss-able
judgment is that often the extremely intellectual are the most blind to
intellect's dependence upon social reality.

[John]
> Even rape is a sociopathic behavior rather than a merely biological urge.
>  In
> fact, it's pretty widely known that rape is due more to rage issues than
> mere
> horniness.
>
> [Arlo]
> Of course, and this is the evidence of the intellectual level coming in and
> dominating the social level. It is the intellectual level (rape laws) that
> defines the act of "rape" as a crime of violence and controls social
> patterns
> that would place shame and humiliation on the victim.
>

John:

I dunno, Arlo. Rape is tricky.   For instance, in Leviticus, there's a
difference between rape in the village and rape in the countryside.  For
rape in the countryside you had to pay a fine, but for rape in the village
it was just naturally construed as consensual and you can see the logic
there, but also the idea that those herdsmen back then treated procreative
activities far differently than we do today.  Furthermore, it's mainly
confined to humans.  In the animal world, the alpha male expresses sexual
behavior as its expression of dominance and breeds in season and there's no
such thing really.

So I'd say fundamentally I agree that rape is by law and of intellect.

WHooP!WHooP!WHooP!WHooP!  Insight Alert, insight alert!  Rape is an
intellectual definition because otherwise it's the biggest and strongest,
not the smartest, who get to breed.   That's a key realization, that is.
That just came to me.

Arlo:


>
> As I said, if we look at cultures dominated by social values (modern one,
> or
> even historically our own), we can easily see how social patterns dealt
> with
> "rape"; shame and humiliation (since the act is seen as sexual the victim
> is
> tainted as well), based on the ownership and property of the woman by the
> husband (again, there was no such thing as a husband "raping" their wife).
>
>
John:

Right.  It's not the act itself, it's within a social matrix which  "where
we draw the line" has been intellectually determined.

Arlo:


> "Fear", of course, we do see initially on the biological level. Sneak up
> behind
> a deer and yell "BANG!" and you'll see a non-social biological response.


John:

You say "biological" because you're talking about an organism that has
biologically evolved "prey reactions".  So in that sense, yeah, it's a
biological beast we're talking about.  But in the sense of one individual
(prey) reacting to an other (predator), the heart-pounding fear is more
directly that of other - a social otherness, rather than the mere reactions
to a biological being.  For a deer doesn't have the same fear of other deer,
or non-predators as I'm reminded of years ago in a walk in the woods, and
finding a stag with a huge rack and ring-tailed cat, walking together along
my path.  Who you are in a social matrix determines your biological
reactions.


Arlo:


> These
> responses can be mediated by social patterns, so you could train that deer
> not
> to be afraid, but I don't think anyone had to first train the deer socially
> TO
> be afraid.
>
>
John:

Well I'd say these social reactions rather are being intellectually mediated
then.  As when a man intellectually trains a beast, or himself even to
display a different reaction than "normal".  Like how not to run from a
bear, because he intellectually knows that such behavior will not have the
social outcome desired.  (!)  But if they were just autonomous biological
reactions, there'd be no control over them at all. They'd come like
breathing, or heart beating, or chemical reactions of adrenaline, which
occur naturally through intrinsic biological action.

Arlo:


> "Love", on the other hand, is hard to think of as not mostly social.



John:

Ya think?  At least when it's done right.

Arlo:


> I suppose
> you could argue its rooted in a physiologically-based need to mate or not
> be
> alone, but then I would expect to see "love" on the biological level. And
> other
> than looking at anthropomorphic actions of non-humans I am not sure how
> we'd
> even look for it. (Professing disagreement with Pirsig, I'd say the
> evidence
> that your dog "loves" you is the result of social activity between you and
> the
> dog, not a physiological function of the dog's biochemistry.)
>
>
John:

Love, like rape is tricky.  We have a certain view of romantic love, that
seems unique, that seems to be absent from most cultures and species and
warps our sense of this word, imo.  At least insofar as attributing that
"love" to anything outside our cultural experience.  But a bond of caring
between individuals, however you call it, is what makes the world go 'round,
no doubt about that at all, Arlo.

Take care,

John