I was just about to comment just how good the writing is on this and the link between diet fads, exercise fads, etc as a link to paranoia about war or terrorism was beautifully done, and something...
I was just about to comment just how good the writing is on this and the link between diet fads, exercise fads, etc as a link to paranoia about war or terrorism was beautifully done, and something I had never thought about. Thanks for linking, this was a great article.
Am I missing something here? To me there is more sex in TV and movies today than there ever has been. It does seem to be on the decline in decline in summer blockbusters (do those still exist?)...
Am I missing something here? To me there is more sex in TV and movies today than there ever has been. It does seem to be on the decline in decline in summer blockbusters (do those still exist?) but I suspect that's a financial decision to avoid a restrictive rating when most of your ticket buyers are teenagers.
Which to me suggests the problem may not be the film industry but rather the draconian ratings industry trying to overly shield teenagers from sexual content.
What a great article. I've always wondered what it is that ultimately drives developments like these and have a theory to offer: Humans almost always want what they can't have. And very often if...
What a great article.
I've always wondered what it is that ultimately drives developments like these and have a theory to offer: Humans almost always want what they can't have. And very often if they acquire it, what follows is a short time of content followed by more desire. I think someone called this the hedonistic treadmill. While the concept in question refers to materialistic needs, I wonder if this can be extended to sex. The 80s saw a sexual revolution of sorts, where it something that had for the longest time been reserved for spouses and required a life-long commitment to be socially acceptable to do, didn't anymore. So people started doing it, or rather, each other. Quite a lot, and very liberally.
And while the people who were young during this time grew up and their sex drives normalized, this culture remained, this sexual liberation. And it became normal. It wasn't exciting (unless of course you were doing it, at least I hope, otherwise you're doing sex wrong) anymore because it wasn't different or new. Added to this the generation who was in their sexual prime during this time grew up in the boomer era, where worrying about stuff really wasn't permanently on your mind the way it is with today's generations. I know multiple people who worry about founding a family because they don't know what the future holds, because there is a massive uncertainty about it.
Added to this, most blockbusters are produced in America, approved by American CEOs and funded by American or Chinese money. And America has a fucked relationship with sex. No nude bodies, no sex, no nothing. I think it is different in movies produced primarily in other countries. Hell, the comic book movies mentioned a lot in this article can't even do romance right, rather than just sex. Until WandaVision I have not believed that any two heroes on screen in the MCU were actually in love, other than for the fact that it was explicitly mentioned. There was like one scene between Black Widow and Hulk I think in Age of Ultron that showed some light flirting and that was it. It's honestly horrible.
Honestly, I don't know if it's confirmation bias or something else, but it does seem like buddhism is growing and spreading more than ever lately. And as someone who despises buddhism that's quite...
Honestly, I don't know if it's confirmation bias or something else, but it does seem like buddhism is growing and spreading more than ever lately. And as someone who despises buddhism that's quite worrisome..
Quoting myself on another website: I hate Buddhism due to the following: The whole central "life is suffering" message (though others argue it's a mistranslation of "unsatisfactory" or something...
Quoting myself on another website:
I hate Buddhism due to the following:
The whole central "life is suffering" message (though others argue it's a mistranslation of "unsatisfactory" or something but many still take the former to heart). And no, it's not uplifting if you say that there is a way to overcome it, if you say that the only way is to follow the tenets of your religion and that everything else is wrong and misguided. That's just a religious vendor lock-in.
The concept of reincarnation. First off it sounds super new age-ish and like too much supernatural babble, secondly it's also kinda horrifying if you think about it, I mean if it's true that basically means you reincarnate over and over, which leads to practically infinite possibilities. Imagine currently being a person who's fighting against dictatorships, only to reincarnate as a dictator yourself. Or reincarnating as a child in a poor country who's going to get violently murdered at some point. But it's still kind of a bummer how Buddhists consider it their ultimate mission to end this cycle, kinda lowkey antinatalist?
My biggest problem: the whole nondualist non-self "one is all, all is one" stuff. It's a super creepy concept to me that individuality is an illusion, the self doesn't exist, etc. It also doesn't help that this is probably the most vague part of an already vague religion, since everyone seems to have a different idea of what self means. Some seem to reject the self as a sort of perception/idea that we have of ourselves, others reject the entire idea of self/individuality altogether. The latter is what I take issue with since if they're right that the self is an illusion, it basically throws a wrench in the whole concept of existentialism where you exercise your free will and individuality to make your own meaning, and it also makes relationships malfunction since personalities also become a sort of fake thing when looked at this way. It's basically collectivism reinforced through existential gaslighting, nefarious as hell imo, it's like they're deconstructing your entire existence and trying to teach you that your meaning is fake and then trying to implant their "your mission is to love one another" meaning, and I don't appreciate others deciding what I should value or live for, at all. Scariest part is that even a lot of non-buddhist thinkers agree with this concept, but I blame them (buddhists) for coming up with the idea in the first place. Though apparently the buddha himself neither affirmed nor rejected the self accordingly to some, many, if not most buddhists seem to still take this to heart.
Also, buddhists tend to be quite the gaslighters from my experience, every time you come up with a counterargument against them, they immediately resort to stuff like "that's just because you're afraid of the truth", " that's your ego not being able to handle the truth", "that's because you don't understand", and variations. They always assert that they're objectively right all the time this way.
Finally, they commit crimes just like any other religion, most infamously the genocides in Myanmar.
Um, the New Age lot got it from Buddhism. If anything it's very much an Old Age-y idea, they've been at it almost 2000 years and I'm pretty sure they weren't the first. Also I don't think it's...
First off it sounds super new age-ish and like too much supernatural babble
Um, the New Age lot got it from Buddhism. If anything it's very much an Old Age-y idea, they've been at it almost 2000 years and I'm pretty sure they weren't the first. Also I don't think it's very fair to have a go at one particular religion for being supernatural-y when it's something they all do. Is coming back to life any more or less nonsense than living again after death in some kind of magic cloud city or whatever it is the Christians believe?
It's a super creepy concept to me that individuality is an illusion, the self doesn't exist,
Creepy, maybe. Bit scary at first, sure, but the current science seems to suggest they're probably right. 'Self' is looking more and more like an emergent side-effect of the brain doing it's thing. Free will is boring anyway.
Out of all the religions to 'despise' picking Buddhism to top the list is pretty unusual, but at least you didn't really choose, it just happened due to a chance confluence of unrelated neural activity.
Also, buddhists tend to be quite the gaslighters
Again, picking on Buddhists alone for this is strange. All the religious do this. They have to. It's how faith works.
just like any other religion
Meh, not quite just like. There have been Buddhist atrocities but nothing on the scale that Christianity, Islam or more recently Zionist Judaism have done. Buddhists are mostly pretty chill.
Science going in that direction is precisely why it's so disturbing. But, at the same time, nothing is certain yet about topics like these, I can also show you plenty of people who argue that free...
Creepy, maybe. Bit scary at first, sure, but the current science seems to suggest they're probably right. 'Self' is looking more and more like an emergent side-effect of the brain doing it's thing. Free will is boring anyway.
Out of all the religions to 'despise' picking Buddhism to top the list is pretty unusual, but at least you didn't really choose, it just happened due to a chance confluence of unrelated neural activity.
Science going in that direction is precisely why it's so disturbing. But, at the same time, nothing is certain yet about topics like these, I can also show you plenty of people who argue that free will exists for example.
Science isn't "going in that direction" as such, science doesn't really have a direction. People just find stuff out. I mean sure, they choose things to investigate, so it's directed in that...
Science isn't "going in that direction" as such, science doesn't really have a direction. People just find stuff out. I mean sure, they choose things to investigate, so it's directed in that sense. But equally often they find their hypothesis is wrong, or discover something unexpected.
If the self doesn't exist, that's not because some scientists decided to prove it didn't, it's because it doesn't exist and it happens someone found evidence for such.
The free will discussion is ongoing, of course. As is everything. It's an interesting one and I don't think it pays to be dogmatic about it in either direction.
I understand, but I mean moreso in the sense that their findings are "heading" more in that direction than in the "the self is real" direction. I'll just assume both the self and free will exist...
Science isn't "going in that direction" as such, science doesn't really have a direction. People just find stuff out. I mean sure, they choose things to investigate, so it's directed in that sense. But equally often they find their hypothesis is wrong, or discover something unexpected.
If the self doesn't exist, that's not because some scientists decided to prove it didn't, it's because it doesn't exist and it happens someone found evidence for such.
I understand, but I mean moreso in the sense that their findings are "heading" more in that direction than in the "the self is real" direction.
The free will discussion is ongoing, of course. As is everything. It's an interesting one and I don't think it pays to be dogmatic about it in either direction.
I'll just assume both the self and free will exist until there's absolute 100% irreversible, indisputable evidence that they don't, for my mental health's sake.
That's fine, as long as you know it's just an assumption and it might well be wrong. Like how most of us are happy to assume we live in a real universe not a simulation. It doesn't bother me...
I'll just assume both the self and free will exist until there's absolute 100% irreversible, indisputable evidence that they don't, for my mental health's sake.
That's fine, as long as you know it's just an assumption and it might well be wrong. Like how most of us are happy to assume we live in a real universe not a simulation. It doesn't bother me either way, to be honest. It feels like I'm a thing that thinks I'm me and thinks for itself so that'll do, even if I might just be fooling myself.
Well, you can't be sure of that.. ;-) Descartes still has a point, even if the (pseudo)entity that thinks it am is just a side-effect of some other process. Eppur si cogito, if you would. fwiw,...
I envy you.
Well, you can't be sure of that.. ;-)
Descartes still has a point, even if the (pseudo)entity that thinks it am is just a side-effect of some other process. Eppur si cogito, if you would.
fwiw, this is what happens when you study philosophy. After your first year these sort of issues become far less bothersome. Or you drop out. Or both.
Science is not equipped to answer questions that extend past the observable universe. I don't have a subscription to this website but if you could link me the paper I'd be interested because it...
If the self doesn't exist, that's not because some scientists decided to prove it didn't, it's because it doesn't exist and it happens someone found evidence for such.
Science is not equipped to answer questions that extend past the observable universe. I don't have a subscription to this website but if you could link me the paper I'd be interested because it doesn't sound like science to me.
Try this paper, I think that's the one in question. New Scientist is a respectable magazine though, they don't publish non-science. Some people make pretty convincing arguments that a sense of...
Try this paper, I think that's the one in question. New Scientist is a respectable magazine though, they don't publish non-science.
Some people make pretty convincing arguments that a sense of self is an observable thing, it turns out. fMRI and other brain imaging techniques are pretty powerful things.
I think if you're putting any human experience out of the realm of the observable then you're getting into religion territory. Just because neuroscience can't currently point to a structure or brain area state and say "that's the bit that thinks it's people" doesn't mean that isn't happening.
I wonder how much of that is because they're owned by Disney rather than any larger trend in American movie-making? Disney has always been sex-averse under the guise of "family friendly" content.
Hell, the comic book movies mentioned a lot in this article can't even do romance right, rather than just sex. Until WandaVision I have not believed that any two heroes on screen in the MCU were actually in love, other than for the fact that it was explicitly mentioned. There was like one scene between Black Widow and Hulk I think in Age of Ultron that showed some light flirting and that was it. It's honestly horrible.
I wonder how much of that is because they're owned by Disney rather than any larger trend in American movie-making? Disney has always been sex-averse under the guise of "family friendly" content.
Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s there was an entire genre of AAA bro-comedy films whose entire raison d'être was to show boobs and gratuitous sex scenes. They were calibrated to be just...
No nude bodies, no sex, no nothing.
Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s there was an entire genre of AAA bro-comedy films whose entire raison d'être was to show boobs and gratuitous sex scenes. They were calibrated to be just restrained enough to dodge an NC-17 rating.
The age of gonzo porn basically killed that.
International distribution is a trip too. I watched Shoplifters on an Emirati airline and noticed there was a weird part where it seemed like the plot just kind of jumped from one point to another without really developing the relationship between two characters. It wasn't until I read a review of the movie where they mentioned how touching the sex scene was between those characters and I was like "What!? A sex scene!?"
Air Emirates had edited it out and the movie made less sense as a result. I can see how a screenwriter would want to avoid that.
Very well put. I've often wondered about how much the media I grew up with has shaped my own hatred of my body and the disorders I've struggled with on account of this. Would more sexual scenes...
Very well put. I've often wondered about how much the media I grew up with has shaped my own hatred of my body and the disorders I've struggled with on account of this. Would more sexual scenes have changed this? Or is it because in the pursuit of more perfect bodies they've doubled down on steroids, plastic surgery, post processing, and other techniques. It's hard to say, but I think it definitely has had some effect on the lens of society and their hypothesis seems as likely as any. Is the pursuit of perfection, absent love, lead to a cold calculating individual - one who might be more easily polarized on issues for lack of diversity, support, and understanding in their life? This leaves me much to ponder on, thank you!
I was just about to comment just how good the writing is on this and the link between diet fads, exercise fads, etc as a link to paranoia about war or terrorism was beautifully done, and something I had never thought about. Thanks for linking, this was a great article.
Am I missing something here? To me there is more sex in TV and movies today than there ever has been. It does seem to be on the decline in decline in summer blockbusters (do those still exist?) but I suspect that's a financial decision to avoid a restrictive rating when most of your ticket buyers are teenagers.
Which to me suggests the problem may not be the film industry but rather the draconian ratings industry trying to overly shield teenagers from sexual content.
What a great article.
I've always wondered what it is that ultimately drives developments like these and have a theory to offer: Humans almost always want what they can't have. And very often if they acquire it, what follows is a short time of content followed by more desire. I think someone called this the hedonistic treadmill. While the concept in question refers to materialistic needs, I wonder if this can be extended to sex. The 80s saw a sexual revolution of sorts, where it something that had for the longest time been reserved for spouses and required a life-long commitment to be socially acceptable to do, didn't anymore. So people started doing it, or rather, each other. Quite a lot, and very liberally.
And while the people who were young during this time grew up and their sex drives normalized, this culture remained, this sexual liberation. And it became normal. It wasn't exciting (unless of course you were doing it, at least I hope, otherwise you're doing sex wrong) anymore because it wasn't different or new. Added to this the generation who was in their sexual prime during this time grew up in the boomer era, where worrying about stuff really wasn't permanently on your mind the way it is with today's generations. I know multiple people who worry about founding a family because they don't know what the future holds, because there is a massive uncertainty about it.
Added to this, most blockbusters are produced in America, approved by American CEOs and funded by American or Chinese money. And America has a fucked relationship with sex. No nude bodies, no sex, no nothing. I think it is different in movies produced primarily in other countries. Hell, the comic book movies mentioned a lot in this article can't even do romance right, rather than just sex. Until WandaVision I have not believed that any two heroes on screen in the MCU were actually in love, other than for the fact that it was explicitly mentioned. There was like one scene between Black Widow and Hulk I think in Age of Ultron that showed some light flirting and that was it. It's honestly horrible.
Honestly, I don't know if it's confirmation bias or something else, but it does seem like buddhism is growing and spreading more than ever lately. And as someone who despises buddhism that's quite worrisome..
As someone who doesn't know anything about buddhism, I'm genuinely curious: Why despise it?
Quoting myself on another website:
I hate Buddhism due to the following:
The whole central "life is suffering" message (though others argue it's a mistranslation of "unsatisfactory" or something but many still take the former to heart). And no, it's not uplifting if you say that there is a way to overcome it, if you say that the only way is to follow the tenets of your religion and that everything else is wrong and misguided. That's just a religious vendor lock-in.
The concept of reincarnation. First off it sounds super new age-ish and like too much supernatural babble, secondly it's also kinda horrifying if you think about it, I mean if it's true that basically means you reincarnate over and over, which leads to practically infinite possibilities. Imagine currently being a person who's fighting against dictatorships, only to reincarnate as a dictator yourself. Or reincarnating as a child in a poor country who's going to get violently murdered at some point. But it's still kind of a bummer how Buddhists consider it their ultimate mission to end this cycle, kinda lowkey antinatalist?
My biggest problem: the whole nondualist non-self "one is all, all is one" stuff. It's a super creepy concept to me that individuality is an illusion, the self doesn't exist, etc. It also doesn't help that this is probably the most vague part of an already vague religion, since everyone seems to have a different idea of what self means. Some seem to reject the self as a sort of perception/idea that we have of ourselves, others reject the entire idea of self/individuality altogether. The latter is what I take issue with since if they're right that the self is an illusion, it basically throws a wrench in the whole concept of existentialism where you exercise your free will and individuality to make your own meaning, and it also makes relationships malfunction since personalities also become a sort of fake thing when looked at this way. It's basically collectivism reinforced through existential gaslighting, nefarious as hell imo, it's like they're deconstructing your entire existence and trying to teach you that your meaning is fake and then trying to implant their "your mission is to love one another" meaning, and I don't appreciate others deciding what I should value or live for, at all. Scariest part is that even a lot of non-buddhist thinkers agree with this concept, but I blame them (buddhists) for coming up with the idea in the first place. Though apparently the buddha himself neither affirmed nor rejected the self accordingly to some, many, if not most buddhists seem to still take this to heart.
Also, buddhists tend to be quite the gaslighters from my experience, every time you come up with a counterargument against them, they immediately resort to stuff like "that's just because you're afraid of the truth", " that's your ego not being able to handle the truth", "that's because you don't understand", and variations. They always assert that they're objectively right all the time this way.
Finally, they commit crimes just like any other religion, most infamously the genocides in Myanmar.
Um, the New Age lot got it from Buddhism. If anything it's very much an Old Age-y idea, they've been at it almost 2000 years and I'm pretty sure they weren't the first. Also I don't think it's very fair to have a go at one particular religion for being supernatural-y when it's something they all do. Is coming back to life any more or less nonsense than living again after death in some kind of magic cloud city or whatever it is the Christians believe?
Creepy, maybe. Bit scary at first, sure, but the current science seems to suggest they're probably right. 'Self' is looking more and more like an emergent side-effect of the brain doing it's thing. Free will is boring anyway.
Out of all the religions to 'despise' picking Buddhism to top the list is pretty unusual, but at least you didn't really choose, it just happened due to a chance confluence of unrelated neural activity.
Again, picking on Buddhists alone for this is strange. All the religious do this. They have to. It's how faith works.
Meh, not quite just like. There have been Buddhist atrocities but nothing on the scale that Christianity, Islam or more recently Zionist Judaism have done. Buddhists are mostly pretty chill.
Science going in that direction is precisely why it's so disturbing. But, at the same time, nothing is certain yet about topics like these, I can also show you plenty of people who argue that free will exists for example.
Science isn't "going in that direction" as such, science doesn't really have a direction. People just find stuff out. I mean sure, they choose things to investigate, so it's directed in that sense. But equally often they find their hypothesis is wrong, or discover something unexpected.
If the self doesn't exist, that's not because some scientists decided to prove it didn't, it's because it doesn't exist and it happens someone found evidence for such.
The free will discussion is ongoing, of course. As is everything. It's an interesting one and I don't think it pays to be dogmatic about it in either direction.
I understand, but I mean moreso in the sense that their findings are "heading" more in that direction than in the "the self is real" direction.
I'll just assume both the self and free will exist until there's absolute 100% irreversible, indisputable evidence that they don't, for my mental health's sake.
That's fine, as long as you know it's just an assumption and it might well be wrong. Like how most of us are happy to assume we live in a real universe not a simulation. It doesn't bother me either way, to be honest. It feels like I'm a thing that thinks I'm me and thinks for itself so that'll do, even if I might just be fooling myself.
I envy you.
Well, you can't be sure of that.. ;-)
Descartes still has a point, even if the (pseudo)entity that thinks it am is just a side-effect of some other process. Eppur si cogito, if you would.
fwiw, this is what happens when you study philosophy. After your first year these sort of issues become far less bothersome. Or you drop out. Or both.
Science is not equipped to answer questions that extend past the observable universe. I don't have a subscription to this website but if you could link me the paper I'd be interested because it doesn't sound like science to me.
Try this paper, I think that's the one in question. New Scientist is a respectable magazine though, they don't publish non-science.
Some people make pretty convincing arguments that a sense of self is an observable thing, it turns out. fMRI and other brain imaging techniques are pretty powerful things.
I think if you're putting any human experience out of the realm of the observable then you're getting into religion territory. Just because neuroscience can't currently point to a structure or brain area state and say "that's the bit that thinks it's people" doesn't mean that isn't happening.
I wonder how much of that is because they're owned by Disney rather than any larger trend in American movie-making? Disney has always been sex-averse under the guise of "family friendly" content.
Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s there was an entire genre of AAA bro-comedy films whose entire raison d'être was to show boobs and gratuitous sex scenes. They were calibrated to be just restrained enough to dodge an NC-17 rating.
The age of gonzo porn basically killed that.
International distribution is a trip too. I watched Shoplifters on an Emirati airline and noticed there was a weird part where it seemed like the plot just kind of jumped from one point to another without really developing the relationship between two characters. It wasn't until I read a review of the movie where they mentioned how touching the sex scene was between those characters and I was like "What!? A sex scene!?"
Air Emirates had edited it out and the movie made less sense as a result. I can see how a screenwriter would want to avoid that.
Is this for real? I never heard about anything like this.
Very well put. I've often wondered about how much the media I grew up with has shaped my own hatred of my body and the disorders I've struggled with on account of this. Would more sexual scenes have changed this? Or is it because in the pursuit of more perfect bodies they've doubled down on steroids, plastic surgery, post processing, and other techniques. It's hard to say, but I think it definitely has had some effect on the lens of society and their hypothesis seems as likely as any. Is the pursuit of perfection, absent love, lead to a cold calculating individual - one who might be more easily polarized on issues for lack of diversity, support, and understanding in their life? This leaves me much to ponder on, thank you!