Adolescence marks the onset of another of our most powerful driving forces brought in with the raging hormones of puberty. If you are lucky a few dry matter of fact explanations are on hand to help understand these experiences felt but not recognised. Except the huge curiosity generated by these hormones into everything sexual are fuelled by widely available, indeed inescapable, provocative sexually charged raunchy images. Used to sell anything as only virtual erotic images can. Images that promise and tease yet are governed to reveal nothing. An implicitly sexually charged forethought expressed in a straitjacket of prudish conformity. So where do our adolescence go to get see and imagine what this burgeoning sexuality means to them? As Society deems they are too young to explore, naturally, amongst theirs peer group.
It is normal for youth to turn to their elders for guidance. We, the elders, have surrounded ourselves with sanctimonious prudery, false moral judgement strictures. We are unable to offer good wholesome, true to life presentation of our naked bodies, shorn of all exploitation, let alone that culmination of love and emotion expressed in the sexual act.
Bye the bye who is this person, that is so above moral corruption, that they can view material that I must be shielded from seeing because I am so more corruptable they they are. Material, not prurient nor voyeuristic, but carefully, thoughtfully crafted by another decent person who spent considerable time and effort to offer it for adult viewing for them to make judgement on its relevance.
No, the only alternative we leave our youth to explore their inevitable normal and natural curiosity is through the only freely accessible material left, pornography. Nasty, crude, totally false images of how humans relate. Even though we distant ourselves, and our youth, from this obscene unpleasant material, the crudity of its unreal images now feedback into our santisied morally correct depictions of sexual engagement, tastefully stripped of any explicitness. The self same pornographic cliques are now the soundbites norms used to signify 'intercourse', the lunge, the sucking of entrails and the pelvic ramming whilst tearing off of clothes. These are the images we give our adolescents to learn from about what their raging hormones are urging them to do. Unless of course you are of the old school brigade with a cold shower and total abstinence beliefs of cloud cuckoo land.
Time we all grew up and recognised that love, emotion, nakedness and sexual intimacy are powerful and natural forces capable of beautiful, wholesome and wonderful emotions and expressions. Time we learnt to live with our sexuality, explore its complexities and celebrate in all its richness whilst helping our youth grow up surrounded by good example and natural normal outlets for their inevitable curiosity.
Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mortality. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Monday, 12 August 2013
Drawing a line
Eddie Shah's plea of foul sounds hollow, just because he was caught doing what a lot of others were doing at the time does not absolve him for being responsible for his own action. He is right of course there is a distinction to be made between the actual act of violating another person against their wishes and a technical definition of a act against a minor.
An adult of course has an overiding duty and a responsibility to protect the innocence of youth, to understand their immaturity, their gush of unchannelled surging hormone and rising desires with their lack of perception of the realities against the fantasises in their so vivid minds. That is why we have the technical definition of rape with a minor, consummated or not, to protect our not yet adult and mature young. Fine.
If an innocent and naive pubescent youth decides to strip off their clothes and gyrate infront of a adult male to draw their attention to them and that that adult male decides to consumate their sexual arousal, it is not an unexpected consequence. Maybe the youth had no comprehension of what consequences might follow but they had put themselves in a very vulnerable and highly sexually charged position, not the best spot for cool dispassionate reflection. Still not right. The adult being the adult should control their desires even when provoked by a 'willing' minor clearly lacking in modesty or inhibition. Not right , not defensible but understandable perhaps in the circumstances.
What we, our society, has to ask are the harder questions. Why is a minor so free of all restaint or guardianship as to be alone with a unknown adult, so free as to be able to shed their clothes? How come our minors consumption of sexually provocative images and behaviours are so common place that they think it right or natural for them too to act that way? Why do our youth reject the counsel of older and closer family members and instead become fixated with illusions of celebrity razzmatazz. Why are our teens so resentful of authority and so willing to flout any self-control, getting so blinded out of their minds as to be incapable of making any judgement of their exposure to risk. We have a youth mentoring problem. This cult of the youth, this rapacious selling to the youth market, this capitulation to a youth driven agenda has supplanted the norms of restraint and caution.
So clearly Eddie Shah was wrong to take advantage of a minor, offering what a minor should never ever have been in a position to offer, but we too are to blame for allowing our minor's to get so beyond our reach that they feel no constraints on their actions. Our duty is to protect them in a safe enough environment until they have matured enough to make their own mistakes when they have some skills in realising the consequences. We, not just Eddie Shah, have failed them all.
An adult of course has an overiding duty and a responsibility to protect the innocence of youth, to understand their immaturity, their gush of unchannelled surging hormone and rising desires with their lack of perception of the realities against the fantasises in their so vivid minds. That is why we have the technical definition of rape with a minor, consummated or not, to protect our not yet adult and mature young. Fine.
If an innocent and naive pubescent youth decides to strip off their clothes and gyrate infront of a adult male to draw their attention to them and that that adult male decides to consumate their sexual arousal, it is not an unexpected consequence. Maybe the youth had no comprehension of what consequences might follow but they had put themselves in a very vulnerable and highly sexually charged position, not the best spot for cool dispassionate reflection. Still not right. The adult being the adult should control their desires even when provoked by a 'willing' minor clearly lacking in modesty or inhibition. Not right , not defensible but understandable perhaps in the circumstances.
What we, our society, has to ask are the harder questions. Why is a minor so free of all restaint or guardianship as to be alone with a unknown adult, so free as to be able to shed their clothes? How come our minors consumption of sexually provocative images and behaviours are so common place that they think it right or natural for them too to act that way? Why do our youth reject the counsel of older and closer family members and instead become fixated with illusions of celebrity razzmatazz. Why are our teens so resentful of authority and so willing to flout any self-control, getting so blinded out of their minds as to be incapable of making any judgement of their exposure to risk. We have a youth mentoring problem. This cult of the youth, this rapacious selling to the youth market, this capitulation to a youth driven agenda has supplanted the norms of restraint and caution.
So clearly Eddie Shah was wrong to take advantage of a minor, offering what a minor should never ever have been in a position to offer, but we too are to blame for allowing our minor's to get so beyond our reach that they feel no constraints on their actions. Our duty is to protect them in a safe enough environment until they have matured enough to make their own mistakes when they have some skills in realising the consequences. We, not just Eddie Shah, have failed them all.
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
BBC is on the Game
More and more of the BBC's 'light entertainment' output seems to be about indiscriminate product pushing. A media self-attractor appears, uses the format, whatever it is, to ruthlessly plug their book, CD, series, show, tour. The host for the format appears submissive and resigned to just being an escort from one plugger to the next plugger, waiting in the wings. Each plugger in turns taking every opportunity to thrust their product at the camera. At least the shopping channels are up front and open about it, they are just there to sell product. The BBC comes, or rather came, with loftier ideals.
The BBC and its audience is in a deep relationship of free give and take, based on trust and goodwill. The BBC offers itself for free and the public accept that free offering with the assumption it is untainted. Clearly a commercial programme maker is dependant on generating revenue and that need impinges on what and how it goes about making it programme offerings. Clear and understood by them and their audience.
Its charter requires the BBC to appeal across the broad spectrum, inevitably its business is feeding the voracious appetite for 'celebrity' titbits and light entertainment new arrivals. They have to be in and on the media circus where the trade is "I make myself available to appear with you, in return I get to talk about my product". They, the BBC is inescapably in the selling game, of tease and seduction, a role that is as close as it gets to prostitution. Where the waters get muddled and muddied is the degree of how free and easy are you? Is the BBC there as a common-garden whore, harlot, hooker, strumpet or rather as some refined courtesan?
The distinction that separates a slut from a courtesan is fine but hugely significant. The difference at the lowest point where anything goes as long as you want it and long as you pay for it, to the other highest discreet end, where an accommodation of desires is reached without overt commercialisation and all veiled in good manners and refined conduct. Where prior selection, distinction or approval are the order of the day not the going rate.
One consequence of being on the game, at whatever level, is that it brings with it the attention of the pimps. Those that want control and influence on the money generated, the how's of the 'service's' provision and restricting who does or does not get access and to which aspect of the 'service'. The courtesan, to retain self-respect and that right of prior approval and selection, has to negotiate a way past these leeches who seize every opportunity to coerce the abandonment of these lofty ideals.
In the beginning when everything was all corporately funded and sourced it was more like a marriage of mutual convenience. Then the BBC, no longer the sole provider, was seen along side and judged in comparison to the 'successful commercial' providers, brazenly displaying attractive wares each carrying clear price tags. To keep, up with the 'commercial successes', the BBC has whittled away its corporate distinction, in the process losing the sense of what set them apart. It has reached a point now when the question has to be asked, do they still set their own agenda or have they become a mere vessel open for exploitation by the commercial world?
It is no longer clear with any BBC programme whether it is freely sourced, unbiased and presented purely from some artistic, cultural or educational endeavour. Or is it, as is now so often the case, linked or even tied to some other objective manipulated by others outside of the corporate BBC. We the viewers can no longer rely on the impartiality of the BBC. That trust has gone. Every programme offering has to be assessed, is it given freely without qualification, is it a disguised free offer of inducement or is it just a blatant bribe? Lets be clear here. The BBC has opened itself up to commercial exploitation and joined the world of prostitution. It offerings can range from the benign, its own commissioned programmes from independent producers, to buying an outsourced complete programme, to bidding in auction wars with rivals all the way through to accepting programmes just as vehicles to sell product. Where now is our courtesan?
The BBC and its audience is in a deep relationship of free give and take, based on trust and goodwill. The BBC offers itself for free and the public accept that free offering with the assumption it is untainted. Clearly a commercial programme maker is dependant on generating revenue and that need impinges on what and how it goes about making it programme offerings. Clear and understood by them and their audience.
Its charter requires the BBC to appeal across the broad spectrum, inevitably its business is feeding the voracious appetite for 'celebrity' titbits and light entertainment new arrivals. They have to be in and on the media circus where the trade is "I make myself available to appear with you, in return I get to talk about my product". They, the BBC is inescapably in the selling game, of tease and seduction, a role that is as close as it gets to prostitution. Where the waters get muddled and muddied is the degree of how free and easy are you? Is the BBC there as a common-garden whore, harlot, hooker, strumpet or rather as some refined courtesan?
The distinction that separates a slut from a courtesan is fine but hugely significant. The difference at the lowest point where anything goes as long as you want it and long as you pay for it, to the other highest discreet end, where an accommodation of desires is reached without overt commercialisation and all veiled in good manners and refined conduct. Where prior selection, distinction or approval are the order of the day not the going rate.
One consequence of being on the game, at whatever level, is that it brings with it the attention of the pimps. Those that want control and influence on the money generated, the how's of the 'service's' provision and restricting who does or does not get access and to which aspect of the 'service'. The courtesan, to retain self-respect and that right of prior approval and selection, has to negotiate a way past these leeches who seize every opportunity to coerce the abandonment of these lofty ideals.
In the beginning when everything was all corporately funded and sourced it was more like a marriage of mutual convenience. Then the BBC, no longer the sole provider, was seen along side and judged in comparison to the 'successful commercial' providers, brazenly displaying attractive wares each carrying clear price tags. To keep, up with the 'commercial successes', the BBC has whittled away its corporate distinction, in the process losing the sense of what set them apart. It has reached a point now when the question has to be asked, do they still set their own agenda or have they become a mere vessel open for exploitation by the commercial world?
It is no longer clear with any BBC programme whether it is freely sourced, unbiased and presented purely from some artistic, cultural or educational endeavour. Or is it, as is now so often the case, linked or even tied to some other objective manipulated by others outside of the corporate BBC. We the viewers can no longer rely on the impartiality of the BBC. That trust has gone. Every programme offering has to be assessed, is it given freely without qualification, is it a disguised free offer of inducement or is it just a blatant bribe? Lets be clear here. The BBC has opened itself up to commercial exploitation and joined the world of prostitution. It offerings can range from the benign, its own commissioned programmes from independent producers, to buying an outsourced complete programme, to bidding in auction wars with rivals all the way through to accepting programmes just as vehicles to sell product. Where now is our courtesan?
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Philosophy of Death
You do eventually reach a point in your life when death is no longer that distant abstraction but a reality coming up over the horizon. It make you think and you take time to reflect on this and that aspect of life, it meaning, purpose and for this particular blog the manner of death. I have written an advance directive as to the how and what of my care in the event that I am incapable of agreeing to any planned treatments. What we as a Society are struggling to come to terms with is our technical skills are keeping people alive for much longer. One consequence is that more and more people are experiencing a lingering, distressing, humiliating and undignified existence before death finally relieves them. A gradual loss of physical control is one end and the other end is a loss of almost all conscious control. Even the gradual creeping infirmity of old age is so badly handled in this society of ours, robbing them of any self-respect and side-lining them into oblivion. An inconsequential shell that has to be serviced to a minima 'quality of life' until it expires. Not a very flattering view of the end game ahead.
Until the twentieth century the older generation were held in respect. They had carved out a way of life that enabled their genes to pass on, and provided sufficient shelter and sustenance for those gene in tum, to make their own way. All the while they were the depository of the collective and received wisdom and experience of their own life but also the life of the genes that bore them. They were a point of stability and a continuum that could provide assurance and direction in all of life's hurlyburly. Nowadays the role is reversed. Having provided the initial resources to enable the genes to be passed on, their continuing life is now a draining and diverting of resources away that would be better placed with the successor genes. Their cumulative wisdom and experience can longer keep up with rate of change and progress of the society around them, so as to be irrelevant. Any residual possible common ground of a deeper insight into the ways of man gets tossed aside along with all the other 'so called' outmoded insights.
So the older generation is left to reverie to its own age group about the past and how it was and have nothing to offer about what might be that anyone considers worth giving any attention. It is only a matter of perspective and creating time to assimilate, but as it happens those are the two missing ingredient in today's headlong rush. Robbed of the historic role in society, what is the point of living on? It terms of contribution into the family and society, nothing in reality. An offer of a historical viewpoint when the preoccupation is grasping and managing the change all around? The old really do not have a role to play. Sure, if they are lucky they are familiar worn fixtures, a cosy habit to accommodated, enjoyed for old times sake, providing they don't get to be too demanding. Not really significant.
What I see ahead is a gradual decline in my faculties and nothing ahead to make the increasing struggle worth the contemplation. One horror scenario for me would be to live to be one hundred. Why, what for? The only reason is the absence of options. Yet this is the fate ahead for increasing numbers of the present baby-boomers, like me. So the question I am circling around is, if we cannot choose the manner and timing of our death, why accept remedial medical interventions? The interventions offered are the 'easy cures' to reduce the risk of mortality. Take way death by causes that can be easily cured and you are left with death, because that is inescapable, by some incurable, hard to treat cause. A cause more likely to rob you of that dignity we all want in the final stages of our life. Until such times as assisted suicide becomes the norm and accepted, for me, the answer is to refuse all interventions and let life roll whatever dice is my lot. I am not looking for it, not seeking it, more than content to continue as things are but I don't want mankind trying to play God and intercept death dice rolls, even if it is nice and easily preventable with minimal consequences. I'll take my chances. Any one got spare tickets for Switzerland?
Until the twentieth century the older generation were held in respect. They had carved out a way of life that enabled their genes to pass on, and provided sufficient shelter and sustenance for those gene in tum, to make their own way. All the while they were the depository of the collective and received wisdom and experience of their own life but also the life of the genes that bore them. They were a point of stability and a continuum that could provide assurance and direction in all of life's hurlyburly. Nowadays the role is reversed. Having provided the initial resources to enable the genes to be passed on, their continuing life is now a draining and diverting of resources away that would be better placed with the successor genes. Their cumulative wisdom and experience can longer keep up with rate of change and progress of the society around them, so as to be irrelevant. Any residual possible common ground of a deeper insight into the ways of man gets tossed aside along with all the other 'so called' outmoded insights.
So the older generation is left to reverie to its own age group about the past and how it was and have nothing to offer about what might be that anyone considers worth giving any attention. It is only a matter of perspective and creating time to assimilate, but as it happens those are the two missing ingredient in today's headlong rush. Robbed of the historic role in society, what is the point of living on? It terms of contribution into the family and society, nothing in reality. An offer of a historical viewpoint when the preoccupation is grasping and managing the change all around? The old really do not have a role to play. Sure, if they are lucky they are familiar worn fixtures, a cosy habit to accommodated, enjoyed for old times sake, providing they don't get to be too demanding. Not really significant.
What I see ahead is a gradual decline in my faculties and nothing ahead to make the increasing struggle worth the contemplation. One horror scenario for me would be to live to be one hundred. Why, what for? The only reason is the absence of options. Yet this is the fate ahead for increasing numbers of the present baby-boomers, like me. So the question I am circling around is, if we cannot choose the manner and timing of our death, why accept remedial medical interventions? The interventions offered are the 'easy cures' to reduce the risk of mortality. Take way death by causes that can be easily cured and you are left with death, because that is inescapable, by some incurable, hard to treat cause. A cause more likely to rob you of that dignity we all want in the final stages of our life. Until such times as assisted suicide becomes the norm and accepted, for me, the answer is to refuse all interventions and let life roll whatever dice is my lot. I am not looking for it, not seeking it, more than content to continue as things are but I don't want mankind trying to play God and intercept death dice rolls, even if it is nice and easily preventable with minimal consequences. I'll take my chances. Any one got spare tickets for Switzerland?
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