Precisely. The question therefore is how we arrive at those boundaries.
Do we set them according to how the majority feels minorities ought to behave?
Or is there more to the societal contract that binds us all together?
After all, viewed from any perspective we all belong to some sort of minority and hence don’t wish to be clattered from up on high.

Clearly a society needs boundaries.
But how we establish boundaries is important.

This boundary abhors me, not merely for its implication (i.e. there is no such thing as privacy), but also by the means by which it is established. (Ooh! Look at those disgusting perverts! Something ought to be done about them.)

Especially the latter to me has fascist connotations which I have already mentioned.

Principally, I have no problem with boundaries. After all, I’m hardly an anarchist. Yet, boundaries need to be justifiable.

Why are they there? What do they do? What do they prevent? What do they achieve?

I think the above examples of questions which apply to any boundary are not at all unreasonable. In fact, I believe when politicians always speak of us also having responsibilities aside from rights, then one of those foremost responsibilities is our duty to hold them to account, to challenge them and their doings. After all we know the old truism about freedom and vigilance…

When I see laws proposed which I cannot in any way shape or form rationalise I grow very worried. When I see us move in on ‘evil’ people who are to be deemed so because they apparently have ‘evil’ fantasies, I get very angry.
When I then see strained attempts by government at linking these ‘evildoers’ to atrocities which has nothing to do with them, I’m livid.

Government is being exceptionally manipulative in this case. If they had a clear ‘humanist’ cause, as you put it, I very much doubt they’d see the need for this kind of approach.

We need merely listen to the latter posts of Astro and Triarius to establish that the core reasons for support are moral, Canvas.

If you wish to explore the ‘humanity’ argument more, Canvas, then by all means please do. But right now, I really cannot see how humanity, in the context you raise it, should really be seen as differing from societal morality.

SteveMD:


Shouldn't that be ‘ascending’? Sorry, couldn’t resist.



Pervert! Lol.
If a majority wishes to lock people up for no good reason, they have every right to. That's democracy. Only perverts, criminals and terrorists would object to the idea of punishing people. All decent thinking folk like punishing people. I've a good mind to call the police.
You have obviously got something to hide. ;)

Who indeed!

Poor old me! Do you think I can get some money from the government for my condition?

Doesn't mean that the "certain section" is wrong. Civilizations have a nasty habit of collapsing into oblivion.

Who is to say what the future "evolution" of moral standards will bring? One day some young iconoclast will say. "Hey this Black and White minstrel stuff is cool! Let's stick it to the old-stuff shirts (that's you phantom) and put on a recreation! After all, there's no proof it ever harmed anyone it's just "bad taste" but whose taste? They have black guys playing Henry V. We need to get beyond this "racial sensitivity" s**t It's a denial of our freedom of expression." Just a matter of time - and perhaps more deadly twists than this. You might have a quaintly Victorian view that society will always evolve for the "better" but it's not a sure bet.

"Seems" is an operative word here. Technology might change. But people still lie, and cheat, and fall in love with one another, and have ambitions for their children or their empires just as they did in Ancient Babylon. Toujours la change, toujours la meme chose! (I hate giving R.E. lessons, but since you brought up Abraham - just take a scan through Proverbs. The problems addressed are, and always have been the same).

Another conjugation:

I show good cause
You have a moral agenda
He is a rabid version of the Witch-Finder General

Lol.

He’s really gone and done it!
He’s actually now advising me to read the Bible! Lol.

I better do, else our civilization is going to ‘collapse into oblivion’.
I wonder if that is before or after it rains fire and brimstone….

I think we’ve now established the nature of the divide here quite distinctly. :)



I trust I’m not alone in wondering if Triarius quite comprehends concepts such as irony and sarcasm? After all, the Varangian Guard springs to mind…. ;)

Sadly for some, I believe stylised bondage or SM related imagery, even in part necrophilia, is bound to become ever more infused into western popular culture.

We have to remember that this imagery fuses the two most exciting elements of entertainment culture. Sex and violence. Both of which are almost omni-present in mainstream movies and making no sign of decreasing.

The Sunday Times features an article today on the issue of violence in the latest nasty movie to hit the big screens.

Sunday Times Article

But in my opinion pop culture with its videos tends to be particularly ahead of things, granting us glimpses of the future.

We have already seen music videos featuring fetish and bondage gear. What started with outrageous banned clips of Frankie goes to Hollywood a quarter century ago, now has gone quite mainstream with Madonna and George Michael making heavily fetish oriented videos to some of their tracks. Hell, even the pop starlet Louise once produced an act heavily influenced by bondage.

Hey, we’ve even seen a recent car TV advert featuring a pvc cat-suited girl tied up with ribbons on terrestrial telly….

Where’s the future? It’s invariably where the real shockers are residing. Those who get our pulses racing and the adrenalin flowing.
If once upon a time various princes of darkness were terrifying those concerned with moral standards, today Ozzy Ozbourne and Alice Cooper seem quite tame. Let us remember that the former of the two has by now even performed in front of the Queen.

Yet heirs to their throne like Marylin Manson are already horrifying a new generation of moralists. Merely look at some of his material featuring a mixture of sex, death and demonology and you’d think Armaggedon was here.

To state that ‘extreme’ pornography is not a major source to people like Manson would be to deny the obvious. Even his wife, the famous burlesque performer Ditta von Teese, has modelled for bondage pornography.

This hardly means the gates of hell are opening literally, but it means that the language of imagery is changing at an ever faster pace, seeking ever more thrills.
As pornography is becoming ever more seen as a form of mainstream adult entertainment, its extremes are inevitably seeping into more mainstream adult imagery.

Naturally, we can seek to ban our artists from engaging with such phenomena. We can ban and punish, seek to crush and destroy the ‘filth’. Ban our culture from interaction in the faint hope that we can somehow recreate past halcyon days. Meanwhile of course, the rest of the world is going cease what it is doing and will follow our lead. Right?

As I said, you brought up Arbraham. Just thought that reading a bit of the Bible might help you understand what you are talking about - for a change ;-)

Here’s a few gems from that anarchist anti-establishment rag known colloquially as ‘The Sunday Times’.

Simon Jenkins has a few thoughts on the ‘Whitehall Taliban’:
Sunday Times: Simon Jenkins

One can’t but help think that that some of the things said in this article seem to be arguments we’ve heard here uttered (though less eloquently perhaps) by the amoral, anarchist, anti-societal, pro-pervert side. :)







I find particularly that last quote quite startling. Did he say the onus ought to be on the executive to justify intrusion and repression?

Could it be that there are right-minded people who agree with some of the principle ideas behind our opposition?

Yes, it's only a matter of time before simulation will not be enough. We will demand that we get actual death and sexual mutilation to get our dulled senses really spiked. Aged phantom will weep in the corner "It was never supposed to be like this - this is harmful - it's not rational" while the generation he has spawned mock him as "unable to cope with the change" and a mere "moral traditionalist".

But phantom's future of ever more animalistic and perhaps deadly self-indulgence need not be the bleak inevitablility he describes. Moral revivals have occured in the past, it's up to us whether we try to hold the line or just go with the flow.

If the Government cannot show good cause, then their punishing individuals is unjust. Pure and simple.

Not, we note, the law to ban the possession of extreme images.

As to Mill, well if you want to be a utilitarian then fine. But we know that the naturalistic fallacy identified by Moore was really a body blow to that philosophy in its purest form. He also asserted that "Over himself, over his own body and mind the individual is sovereign". This itself it a problematic position since we know that human motivation and intention is more complex and many layered than was understood in Mill's time.

His answer to drug addiction would be to "persuade or entreat" a person to stop harming himself (alone) it would be an unwarranted interference with his liberties to use coercion. I think we know that addicts who have been forcibly made to quit have been subsequently grateful to those that overcame their sovereignity over themselves for that purpose. Mill's philosophy also has serious problems with causality issues and predictions of the future that Mr Jenkins has somewhat glossed over.

Well I've had a pleasant weekend with some friends celebrating their Silver Wedding, but I nearly wish I'd passed it up because I could almost have had so much more fun here...!

Thanks, as always, to Phantom and SteveMD for keeping up the side of sanity against outraged morality as evinced by this wonderful statement from astrocat which was seconded by Triarius:



Frankly this sums up the mindset of those who propose and support this law perfectly.

As far as they are concerned it is *THEIR* opinions which should govern the behaviour of all of us. It doesn't matter how deluded or irrational or misguided those opinions are, it doesn't matter that there's absolutely no evidence to back them up, nor proof of harm, it's simply enough that *THEY* don't like it, so *we* should not be allowed to see it.

Oh, BTW, Triarius:



No, that's just you stating opinion as fact. However:



You could *claim* that right, but it wasn't until Article 7 of the European Convention on Human rights (which says "No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed") was ratified was that "right" guaranteed *BY LAW*.



On the contrary, rights that exist on paper are the only ones that have any *proof* that they exist.

It seems odd, however, that Triarius thinks that he should have the right to do anything not expressly forbidden by law, yet thinks that the majority have the right to tell the minority what they can or cannot do or see.

I feel another irregular verb coming on...

I have the right to do anything not forbidden by law.
You have the right to be told by the majority what you can or cannot do.
He has the right to do what the Government says he can and nothing else.

And so do you - except that you think that it is guaranteed by some euro-legislation. I knew I had it before that ever came into being IN LAW. You must be a LibDem.

Correction - not "see" but "possess" and only if and when they pass a law to that effect. And that law applies equally to me.

So I assume you have some of this material available on your coffee table as a talking point for guests?

Oh, you’ve got to love our Triarius.

A discourse on why philosopher quoted by a journalist is wrong on drugs (yet not on the principles at hand), a comment on a quote being about ID cards (and a refusal to understand a parallel argument) a conclusion that someone who disagrees with him evidently must be a LibDem (oddly, that’s not his first time he’s used that one) and finally an insinuation that Graham obviously must have hardcore ‘extreme’ pornography on his coffee table, just for daring not to agree with him.

Well, for a man who suggests I consult the Bible Triarius surely lives up to the stereotype, no?

What I explained on pop culture seemed to wash over him as amoral dreams of someone advocating perversion. It’s the world he inhabits. He sees what he wants to. Better yet he encourages all to ‘hold the line’ in the hope of a moral revival.
I guess to him this is a war. (The Varangians are back again.)

Alike in some battle of Tolkien’s, the forces of evil are pouring down into the lands in the form of Marylin Manson and internet websites to be held back only by a brave few who, if only that can get their vital new law, will be able to turn back the tides of time and restore long lost virtues.
A sort of legislative Canute, I guess...

But where will the turning back of tides end? Manson music videos? Swearing footballers? Ladettes? Punk? Rude teenagers? Mini skirts?

After all, we’ve just read his views on philosophy, whereby we all need to be coerced for our own good, like drug addicts. One merely hopes that ‘our own good’ isn’t too far back in time. No doubt Triarius and friends will know which is the proper decade (or would that be century?) to return to…

What we are seeing displayed in all its glory by now is moralist paranoia. It’s nothing new. Old Plato already decried the moral decline which led Greek artists to sculpt marble into realistic nudes. Yes, folks, classical art was already deemed obscene in its day. (Plato demanded it be stylised like Egyptian sculpture to be more decent.)

Then there’s Volterra. Remember the name, people. For it was he who was commissioned to paint fig leaves in 'strategic places' on Michelangelo’s altar wall in the Sistine Chapel.
These are the kind of delights ‘moral revivals’ bring us.

Today’s Volterran fig leaves are to be the people incarcerated for having the wrong magazine on their coffee table, to paraphrase. To paint out those who would think differently out of existence is perfectly alright. After all, they’re all obscene, right?

Remember that coercion is good for you, people. Immorality is like drug addiction. (We’ve heard that comparison made again and again here, haven’t we? And from several supporters, if I recall.)

If only we’re coerced hard enough, we’ll see the error of our ways and be grateful for it. Free will is not such a good thing after all. Well, not for all of us anyhow…

It seems the mask has now truly slipped and we’re getting the ‘Full Monty’…

Trying not to get too sidetracked, I’d like to explain a little more the thinking behind the opposition to the law. As I know there are some who would like to hear more, rather than merely be witnesses to the quarrelling. :)

-

I think it is important to remember that it is such material which does not have widespread approval which requires protection. After all, material which enjoys widespread material requires no protection from the intolerant at all.

Let’s take the play Beshti. We all recall the case. A UK theatre trying to stage a play written by a female Sikh author which featured a rape at a Sikh temple.
A enrraged section of the Sikh community came out in force and started attacking the theatre. Government shamefully provided no help to the theatre at all. The play was called off.
After that the odd minister or two made a few remarks condemning mob behaviour, but that was that. Beshti was dead.

Here we had it. Material highly offensive to some was being confronted with menace. One didn’t like it, so one was going to see to it that no-one else, even the willing, would get to see it. Essentially it was a moral cause to those Sikhs outside that theatre. Yet a cause which clashed with British secular culture.
I remember I was livid. Not least because of the outright betrayal by the powers-that-be.

I’m now even more confounded.
What once was the government standing by as the mob descended on the theatre to silence the author, has now become the government itself seeking to silence a ‘moral outrage’ of which they disapprove.

Coincidentally, it in part even centres around the issue of rape, just as the Beshti affair did. There is an irony in there, I’m sure.

As said so often, if the government were to seek to prevent crime from happening in the making of material, it would only need to ban material which was made under real coercion. The really nasty stuff, so to speak.

Instead government has opted for the moral option. It isn’t about the prevention of criminal behaviour to produce the material. It’s about the creation of a new offence altogether. The offence of possessing fictional material of which the government morally disapprove.

The government except that the depictions are almost in their entirety consensually produced fictions, yet they insist that these are fictions of which they happen to disapprove.

A fictional play never hurt anyone. But the stones thrown at a theatre could indeed.
A fictional depiction could not hurt anyone. But imprisonment of those who own the ‘wrong’ fictional depictions could indeed.

The temptation to silence those we don’t like is strong. Yet we must resist it at all cost.
We need ask ourselves what our vows for protection of freedom are for if not to protect the freedom of those who are not popular do not conform or seem disturbing.

The golden rule is that if they are doing no-one any harm they should be left alone to be as they like, irrespective of their moral vice. After all, what other measure for a free society is there?

For if we don’t stop ourselves from intervening where we have no need to, where do we stop? Only once all the ‘immoral, depraved filth’ has been cast out? Once the ‘moral revival’ is complete? Read some of the latter comments of supporters of this law and you see the hopes the image in which they would like to mould the world.

We can no longer help the play Beshti. We failed it when it needed support. (Were it for me it ought to be granted a slot on national television instead!)

We now need to make sure that people of the very same ambition to those who stoned that theatre don’t get to close down our own privacy in order to have their way.

All I try to do, phantom, is to explain that the world is not as simple as you make out. All you do is reflect my views back to me in a corrupted and distorted form. You put words in my mouth and thoughts in my mind which are not there. I point out problems with the utilitarian position and you say that "we all need to be coerced for our own good" - a usual rather "sixth-form" tactic of overstating the opposing case in order to ridicule it.

Well it won't work. The point is that Mill said you should "never" coerce an individual for his own good, but we know in common experience that is not always the "good" option. SOMETIMES coercion against an individual's will IS the good thing to do for him and he is grateful after he has recovered himself (vis-a-vis drug addicts or even those who are the victims of mindwashing religious sects).

So your simplistic reading of the moral landscape cannot be taken as universal truth - there must be some other principles at work. It is like insisting on a Newtonian universe because addition of velocities appears to work at 10mph but ignoring the fact that it won't work at 186,000mps. So we might nod to Newton, but we need to get to Einstein to get to a deeper truth.

As to "holding the line". You have explained why you think it is futile but have failed to answer a question: Are "long lost moral virtues" always the wrong principles to hold? If so why? You have ridiculed them, but put very little argument forward as to why this is so "bad". Is it because it is a lost cause or because they are always inherently morally inferior?

I respect your seeking the answer to the question "How do we run a society using correct and consistent moral principles" It's just that the answers you come up with are full of holes and obvious exceptions that make them difficult to accept.

PS I am with you on Beshti - a noisy minority attempting to illegaly overthrow what the majority deemed quite acceptable. I don't expect them to like or approve and they have a right to say so, but should put their argument within the confines of the law.

I see, dear Triarius is being misrepresented. :)
Or so he says. That is until he decides to further describe his pint and then we return to the same line. So initially it’s merely a philosophical point he was raising, yet then he returns to insist that people at times need to be coerced for their own good.

Now let’s remember that we are here on a string dealing with government intentions to prohibit an individual’s right to possess material which is essentially harmless, albeit offensive to some.

Apparently if we are to draw a connection between Triarius’ arguing here for the rectitude of coercion for people’s own good and a ban on possession of pornography, we are being terribly unkind to him. These two comments of his comments are utterly unrelated. Supposedly.

As has become ever more clear over time, our Varangian is limping badly on this subject.

Now call be puerile if you like, but I think it’s fair for us to be put two and two together here.

In fact traditionalist moral prejudice is to a system of law what Einstein’s theories are to physics. It just gets better and better.

Of course, he who would argue against anachronisms will pull down the whole structure of civilisation. To reject traditional moral condemnation of homosexuals is to decide that ‘though shalt not kill’ also no longer applies.
Supposedly this is in response to my simplistic view of modern secular ethics.

So evidently I cannot have my cake and eat it. If I refuse to accept that a married couple ought to be imprisoned for taken polaroids of each other whilst engaging in fetishistic sex, I also will be condoning rape, pillage and no end of other biblical atrocities.

It seems we have at last reached the end of the line.
Like the famous Black Knight of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, our Varangian is by now devoid of arms and legs yet still seeks to fight on regardless.

Yet he simply can’t gain purchase anymore. Once has talked oneself into a corner and now there is no escape from it.

That is of course, unless we need to be coerced for our own good. No doubt, we’ll all thank him later…

Well since we are going back to the beginning, the way I see it as follows. Phantom has argued that in devising legislation, the majority must apply a strangely archaic utilitarian calculus surrounding "harm" despite clear philosophical problems with the principle involved that have not been addressed or solved. In fact and in law, as a free people a majority (through proper procedure and lawful institutions) are able to choose any criteria they please to frame and decide on what laws will prevail.

We then moved on to the shortcomings of moral traditionalists (or "Varangian Guards" as we prefer to call them). Phantom claims that the imposition of this legislation goes against an inevitable tide of historical development in a way that is both futile and morally wrong. Although he cannot and will not demonstrate how the future that the current trend will produce is in any way more desirable than one which is not a result thereof. So he cannot give a rational reason for standing against current trends as he defines it other than it is the current trend.

As to whether a traditionalist moral convention is by definition wrong. He has stated that he would retain many moral rules that are also "traditionalist" (e.g. those against rape and murder) on the grounds that these also comply with his principles - so they are not wrong by definition - just old. The ones which fail for him are those which do not comply with his utilitarian calculus - a principal which one is free to chose for oneself, but whose soundness is a matter of philosophical dispute and therefore should not be considered as automatically binding on all.

So if the majority choose to legislate against these pictures, as they might, then they can do so in good conscience without feeling that they are in breach of some fundamental moral or legislative rules.