Objective Moral Values

[cuppajoe_9]

Wait a minute - how is it a "decent trade" that students get more respect and I get less?

Unless they are actively beating you up, I consider that a decent trade off. Again, that isn't to say it's not a problem, but I would rather have rudeness than intsitutionalized violence, and I would much rather have neither.

Example? (And what does "fine" mean?)

Iceland. It means that the members of that society are, on the whole, healthy, happy and not prone to killing one another.

Let's hear it for the Straw Man (because you know that the discussion on moral progress was being applied to the 20th century but you purposely went far enough back to find an easily-attacked example - or did you? I assumed you did; perhaps that was my mistake).

Nope, not just this past century, I was trying to look at the question from a larger historical perspective. Sexual repression of the kind I describe was, in any case, present in greater quantities at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sex indelibly marks us with the heart of the other person, and - like it or not - we "carry" that other person into our next relationship.(And that I connect - in part - to our current divorce rates).

So do, to speak from experience, a lot of other things. It's unavoidable, unless you plan to marry the first person you become romantically interested in.

[Redzeppelin]

Unless they are actively beating you up, I consider that a decent trade off. Again, that isn't to say it's not a problem, but I would rather have rudeness than intsitutionalized violence, and I would much rather have neither.

Easily said by one still a student and not a teacher. You've created an "either/or" issue out of something that was not origianlly so - a clever way of making my point sound less relevant because my concerns become trivial next to violence against children. You imply a relationship between the two in order to make my point part of a "trade off," but that wasn't my point - you asked me for examples of an erosion of respect towards authority and I gave you one. You supplied the "hey, it's better than this" which really wasn't relevant. There is a continuum from the "institutionalized violence" of the late 19thC to the current disrespect accorded educators of the late 20thC - and at somewhere on the line, students weren't being beaten and teachers - as "elders" and authority figures - were given much more respect than now. Why should there have to be a trade off? Am I supposed to "atone" for the atrocities of Victorian age education? Spend one day in my shoes and you'd get it.

Iceland. It means that the members of that society are, on the whole, healthy, happy and not prone to killing one another.

Fine. Assuming that a lack of homocide is the premise that points to the conclusion of a healty, moral society. Morality concerns more than whether or not we're killing each other literally.

Nope, not just this past century, I was trying to look at the question from a larger historical perspective. Sexual repression of the kind I describe was, in any case, present in greater quantities at the beginning of the 20th century.

Point taken - but again: at what cost do you "liberate" people from restrictive attitudes? Should every restrictive attitude concerning sex be abolished? Where on the sexual continuum should we say "uh, no, that's not OK"? Can't NAMBLA cry "sexual repression" too? (Yeah, I know - extreme, unrealistic example, but you get my point.) Either way, the "free love" idea of the 60s which has flowered into the idea that sex is for whoever wants it was a flame-thrower response to a much smaller problem.

So do, to speak from experience, a lot of other things. It's unavoidable, unless you plan to marry the first person you become romantically interested in.

Maybe - but without knowing what those things are, I will simply respond "not like sex does." Sex rewires our heart in ways I don't think science can completely fathor or measure. If you have sex with 20 individuals before you settle down and get married, trust me - you have carried some baggage into your marriage that you could have done without because it was - ultimately - avoidable. But more than just "you could have done without it," I would suggest that those prior intimate connections will result in problems within the marriage. (But that, again, is based on the Biblical idea that sex takes two and joins them into "one.")

And, you wouldn't marry the first person you got romantically involved with if you refrained from sex because you would be more able to maintain some sense of objectivity in deciding if this person is right. You'd have spent time dealing with the big questions before making that committment. But, once you have sex, the illusion is created through the bonding action of sex that makes us feel like this person is the one. One wonders how many doomed relationships - instead of properly terminating for the right reasons - instead went ahead and created unhappiness (or worse) because the sex fooled them into thinking they really had something between them when they really didn't?