The Walking Sepulchre

Plato calls up a lot of mythology and writes of supernatural realms, but he strikes the humanist note so well that the modern reader happily embraces it as poetic, as when Plato writes in "Phaedrus" of the time before we lost our wings and fell to earth to become men:

Whole were we who celebrated that festival, unspotted by all the evils which awaited in the time to come, and whole and unspotted and changeless and serene were the objects revealed to us in the light of that mystic vision. Pure was the light and pure were we from the pollution of the walking sepulchre which we call a body, to which we are bound like an oyster to its shell.

How can I not appreciate that tragic sense of life? And, in Milton, I find myself a bit invested in the mythic idea of a lost paradise. And I sort of want to believe.

The Walking Sepulchre

Plato calls up a lot of mythology and writes of supernatural realms, but he strikes the humanist note so well that the modern reader happily embraces it as poetic, as when Plato writes in "Phaedrus" of the time before we lost our wings and fell to earth to become men:

Whole were we who celebrated that festival, unspotted by all the evils which awaited in the time to come, and whole and unspotted and changeless and serene were the objects revealed to us in the light of that mystic vision. Pure was the light and pure were we from the pollution of the walking sepulchre which we call a body, to which we are bound like an oyster to its shell.

How can I not appreciate that tragic sense of life? And, in Milton, I find myself a bit invested in the mythic idea of a lost paradise. And I sort of want to believe.

In the Game

He says, “Free will is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.”

She says, “It's like real life. It's just enough to make it interesting.”

-- "eXistenZ"

Sounds like Milton's God. Just enough freedom to fall.

In the Game

He says, “Free will is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.”

She says, “It's like real life. It's just enough to make it interesting.”

-- "eXistenZ"

Sounds like Milton's God. Just enough freedom to fall.

A Less Slutty Generation of Teens?

Sluttiness is perhaps the most frequently given example of how far kids these days have fallen -- fallen, that is, from the zenith of innocence embodied by fucking your gf in the back of your car at Make-out Point (or the drive-in theater), round-robin pairing off during the sexual revolution, and the barely-covers-you costumes of the disco era and its spillover into the nightclub scene of the 1980s. Although there are not national probability samples (as opposed to convenience samples) going back decades for the entire diversity of perversions, indicators of sexual misbehavior correlate with each other, so we may need to rely on a proxy indicator if data are lacking for another.

. . .

Taken together, these various indicators -- what percentage of teenagers have had "many" partners, what percentage has ever had sex, and what percentage has a common STD -- all argue for a period of cultural decline starting in the 1960s, perhaps as early as the late 1950s, which lasted until about 1990. Since then, however, our culture has been in a state of progress regarding teenage sluttiness. Thus, if any age cohort gets to brag about improving sexual mores, it is those born about 1975 or after.

-- Gene Expression

Is this suppose to be good news? Notwithstanding STDS, of course. The less of that the better. But sexual deprivation is pretty bad, too.

One more interesting note tackling the issue of how girls dress and dance more sexily:

Finally, note that the average female's appearance tells us nothing about the actual level or rate of increase/decrease in sluttiness. Because this is what most older people use to support the declinist hypothesis -- "young girls didn't used to wear thongs or jeans that low-cut when I was a boy!" -- it's worth emphasizing. Note also that more salacious dance practices among youngsters don't tell us anything real either, something I pointed out with a field study on my personal blog. Girls these days may give you a standing lapdance on the dancefloor, but -- although the male receiver may wish otherwise -- this doesn't mean she is going to fuck you. One plausible reason for the disconnect between appearance and reality is that appearances are largely driven by fashion, which changes for its own sake, rather than reflect underlying changes in preferences or behavior.

So, the gals are greater teasers these days. Nice. I guess it's just tougher to be a man in today's world.

A Less Slutty Generation of Teens?

Sluttiness is perhaps the most frequently given example of how far kids these days have fallen -- fallen, that is, from the zenith of innocence embodied by fucking your gf in the back of your car at Make-out Point (or the drive-in theater), round-robin pairing off during the sexual revolution, and the barely-covers-you costumes of the disco era and its spillover into the nightclub scene of the 1980s. Although there are not national probability samples (as opposed to convenience samples) going back decades for the entire diversity of perversions, indicators of sexual misbehavior correlate with each other, so we may need to rely on a proxy indicator if data are lacking for another.

. . .

Taken together, these various indicators -- what percentage of teenagers have had "many" partners, what percentage has ever had sex, and what percentage has a common STD -- all argue for a period of cultural decline starting in the 1960s, perhaps as early as the late 1950s, which lasted until about 1990. Since then, however, our culture has been in a state of progress regarding teenage sluttiness. Thus, if any age cohort gets to brag about improving sexual mores, it is those born about 1975 or after.

-- Gene Expression

Is this suppose to be good news? Notwithstanding STDS, of course. The less of that the better. But sexual deprivation is pretty bad, too.

One more interesting note tackling the issue of how girls dress and dance more sexily:

Finally, note that the average female's appearance tells us nothing about the actual level or rate of increase/decrease in sluttiness. Because this is what most older people use to support the declinist hypothesis -- "young girls didn't used to wear thongs or jeans that low-cut when I was a boy!" -- it's worth emphasizing. Note also that more salacious dance practices among youngsters don't tell us anything real either, something I pointed out with a field study on my personal blog. Girls these days may give you a standing lapdance on the dancefloor, but -- although the male receiver may wish otherwise -- this doesn't mean she is going to fuck you. One plausible reason for the disconnect between appearance and reality is that appearances are largely driven by fashion, which changes for its own sake, rather than reflect underlying changes in preferences or behavior.

So, the gals are greater teasers these days. Nice. I guess it's just tougher to be a man in today's world.