Part 1: You did not get your morals from god

Does that seem like a bold claim? It's not; in fact it's quite obvious.

In this set of journal entries I am going to discuss "morals" and where they might come from. In this section, I will introduce and destroy the notion that morals come from god. Next, I will examine the question of whether morals come from nature or natural laws and some of the consequences of that view. Then, in the final section, we'll consider the problem of arriving at morals through reason or the will of the group. Let me be clear about my agenda: my purpose in doing this is to undermine any confidence you may have in "morality." What you replace it with is up to you.

What kind of god might give us morals?

When discussing religion it's difficult to know where to start because, of course, there isn't just one god that we can talk about. Since the dawn of recorded history there have been a bewildering number of gods and a great many of them have been cited as the bringers of morals. But, be that as it may, a great number of theists that I've talked to have asserted confidently that "without god to give us a sense of right and wrong, we would have no beliefs." Or variations to that effect. In some cases, the god has given this moral guidance in a concrete form:



In other cases, it's more subtle. But, for those who believe their morals were god-given, there are a few possibilities:
- You believe in one of the current batch of gods (christian, muslim, jewish, hindu, buddhist, scientologist)
- You believe in your own personal variation of one of the current batch of gods
- You believe in some sort of divine essence that manifests itself in the form of all the gods people have ever and will ever believe in

The majority of people who claim to believe their god gave them morals fall into the first category, a handful into the second, and very few into the third. There might be other forms of belief (e.g.: scientology or Spinoza's god) but generally they aren't held up as teaching a particular divine morality.

I've encountered people who smilingly claim that all gods are manifestations of one and that any difference apparent between them is in man's imagining. Let us dispense with that one immediately: if there was such a god as the source of morals, then it must enjoy contradicting itself, since it has - at one time or another - offered moral guidance encouraging everything from child sacrifice to wearing funny hats. I think we can agree that a god that says "killing is bad" at the same time as it encourages child sacrifice cannot be said to be a moral being, itself.

In order to understand why none of the current batch of gods could have given us morality, let us take a quick look at the history of morals and gods.

The Ancient Chinese

Those of us (like myself) who have grown up in societies steeped in European/enlightenment thought, revere the ancient thinkers of Greece as the founders of philosophy, political science, logic, and science. The ancient greeks flourished as a culture of philosophy during the age of the greats Parmenides (450BC), Plato (430BC) and Aristotle (380BC) - about 100 years after the lifetime of Confucius. If we were trying to sort out priority for an academic game of "who published first?" in great philosophy, Confucius wins.


(Confucius Published First FTW)

In fact, Confucius touched on a number of points that are "ahead of his time." I note with interest that he beat the enlightenment political philosopher John Locke (1632AD) to the punch, as well. Locke's famous premise from his 2nd Treatise on Government (1689AD) Government rules with the consent of the governed is presaged by Confucius' own: "By winning the people, the kingdom is won; by losing the people, the kingdom is lost." Confucius' Analects also touches upon modern topics like divorce; my point here is not that he was "ahead of his time" but rather that people, in 500BC, were dealing with more or less the same issues that they do, today. I have to admit that while I was reading Confucius I kept expecting him to make some comments about not downloading MP3s or using pirated software.

Confucius, in fact, in a manner startlingly similar to Plato's channelling for Socrates, described himself as not a great sage but merely one who collected and organized the wisdom of thinkers before him. That's not a crazy claim, because Chinese civilization is very ancient and was relatively advanced compared to the rest of the world. The Chinese Shang Dynasty (1600BC) left behind written artifacts (referring to an earlier dynasty, still!) including bronze-works inscribed with text, intended for various ritual purposes. Some Shang Dynasty legends that come back to us through these bits of text, involve the downfall of the earlier dynasty:


(Shang Dynasty Bronze, ca. 1500BC)

The Xia dynasty have failed morally and Heaven has determined her end. Therefore, Shang Tang was commanded to destroy Xia with the promise of Heaven's help. In the dark, Heaven destroyed the fortress' pool. Shang Tang then gained victory easily.

Here we have written examples that show that the Shang were worried about morals in (at least) 1600BC and probably quite a bit earlier than that - 1000 years before the birth of Confucius. Obviously, the word "moral" in that translation might be inaccurate, but we see clearly the linkage between the success of the state and the will of the gods. We see this connection time and time again throughout human history and I will revisit it several times in the course of this journal entry.

Also, before Confucius was the "Classic of History" ( Shàngshū ) - a collection of Chinese political and philosophical thinking dating from around 600BC. It includes things, going by the titles of sections, such as: "Marquis Lü on Punishments" and "Against Luxurious Ease." Again, here is a document that is clearly concerned with issues of morality, politics, and ethics.

The Ancient Greeks

I was raised with the idea that "The ancient Greek thinkers invented philosophy" but I think it's pretty clear that the ancient Chinese have priority - not merely for "publishing first" but because Confucius engages us in a deeply rational exploration of propriety, righteousness, loyalty, and filial piety. None of that diminishes in the slightest the amazing thinking that came out of Greece. There is one thing that I can say absolutely, for certain, and that is that Socrates and Confucius would have greatly enjoyed meeting eachother. The fireworks would have gone on for decades.


(Lycurgus, 800BC)

As with the Shang Dynasty bronzes and porcelains, we're only able to know that about the ancients that they left behind covered in writing. We know that the Spartan king Lycurgus "The Lawgiver"(800BC) established the laws of Sparta, and defined their social and moral structures. He claimed to have gotten advice from The Oracle At Delphi, and, the story goes, cemented his laws into place with a bit of a trick. He planned to visit The Oracle for a consultation and talked the council and people to swear to follow his laws until he returned - then went out into the wilderness and let himself starve to death so as to never return. Again, we see the dynamic between political establishment and the basis for the government, looking for reassurance and justification from The Oracle.

The golden age of ancient Greek philosophy was an amazing time: Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as well as Epicurus(341BC) and Archimedes (287BC). As when you read Confucius' Analects, one thing really jumps out at you as you read these philosophers: they were concerned with day-to-day events and were trying to figure out "what is the right thing to do?" They were trying to establish (or demolish) the justification of the state, or other people's actions. In some cases they were quirky and funny about it, but the deep questions they asked were serious. In Plato's Euthyphro(399BC), Socrates asks Euthyphro to help him out, because Euthyphro clearly knows what is pious and Socrates is facing trial for impiety. If you're familiar with Plato's dialogues, you know what happens next: Socrates ties poor Euthyphro in knots; it makes you a bit sympathetic to the Athenians who wanted Socrates killed - he was that annoying.

Euthyphro offers, at one point, the definition that piety (what is right) is "that which is loved by all the gods." In other words, god gives Euthyphro a sense of what is right and wrong. Socrates' counter-attack is to ask Euthyphro if that means that something is good only because the gods say it is, or is it good and the gods appreciate it in and of itself because it is good? Of course, this places Euthyphro in the horrible position of having to say either that there is a higher truth than the gods, or that he knows the gods' will better than they do. From that point on, it's mostly downhill for poor Euthyphro.

In 399BC we see highly intelligent people asking the same questions about the origin of morals as we hear today. Personally, if I were going to adopt the view that my morals were given to me by god, I'd be a bit nervous to discover that Socrates had already been on that particular case 2,400 years ago, and that religion's answer to Socrates' question was to silence him up by putting him to death. Other ancient Greek philosophers attacked the problem of evil (theodicy) by examining the moral basis of the gods' behavior. Epicurus questions whether the gods are either good, or powerless, thus:
- If a perfectly good god exists, then evil does not.
- There is evil in the world.
- Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.

If you are a believer in one of the current batch of gods, it might be a bit sobering to realize that your religion has probably not adequately answered that challenge, even though it has had over a 1,000 years to try. But that observation is not central to our question of whether you get your morals from god - after all, your god could be a flawed and disempowered being, holding you to an artificially high standard that even it cannot achieve, itself.

For the time, let us leave the ancient Greeks and look at the religions that have sprung from the middle east: judaism, christianity, islam, and all their descendants.

The Morals of The King

When I was a child, they taught us that "the cradle of civilization" was the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates river, where the Sumerians established the first known agricultural advanced civilization around 5300BC. By 3500BC they had invented writing. That's how we know that in 2300BC, King Lagash made it illegal for a woman to take multiple husbands and established stoning as the penalty for doing so. Once again, clearly, we see a society that is very old that is concerned with questions of morality, behavior, and punishment.

I also feel I must mention that the Sumerians invented beer in around 4000BC. Truly, an advanced civilization.


(Hammurabi's Code)

By 1750BC the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, published his famous code of law. Most of us, as children, were told of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" - that's moral doctrine courtesy of Hammurabi. By the way, Hammurabi justified his authority to make these decrees as: the will of the god, Marduk. Time after time, we see this pattern: political authority justified by "the will of the gods" issuing decrees and making rules.

So, at this point, you must pause and consider an important question: Do you think god gave Hammurabi his morals?

Here's a gem from Hammurabi's code:
If anyone brings an accusation against a man, and the accused goes to the river and leaps into the river, if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house.

If there is a moral basis to this law, I don't know what it is - unless it's that you should eat well (maintain lots of body fat) and be smart enough to fill your lungs with air when you jump into the river. By the way, it was the Greek, Archimedes, who figured out the principle by which things float in water, in 287BC.

Clearly, Hammurabi's code is not the work of a very moral god. Or, perhaps Marduk didn't know about Archimedes' Principle, either - or wasn't very concerned with justice. Most of us would probably not say that Hammurabi's code, with its retributive grievance system, was particularly "moral" - yet it contains 200+ rules and touches upon murder and theft. Once again, we see ancient people concerned with day-to-day problems about property, violence, etc.

If a man violate the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.

Obviously, Hammurabi understood what "rape" and "murder" and "theft" were. As well as the concept of "blame" which is crucial to any system of morality.

The Abrahamic Gods


This isn't Moses, it's St Jerome
But I like Caravaggio so much, you've just got to deal with it.

Judaism, christianity, and islam all spring from the ancient jewish religion established by Abraham. What was the god of Abraham? Unlike the ancient Greeks and Chinese, the bronze-age middle eastern nomads didn't create much in the way of lasting artifacts or writings. But, Babylon predates the biblical exodus, and the legend of Moses, rather handily. In terms of academic priority, Hammurabi published first. The rest is details.

I'm not going to try to wade into the gigantic mess of legendary claims that are early judaism, because it's not necessary for our ability to understand where morals came from. We can tell absolutely, for sure, that Moses was not the first guy who cooked up the idea of coming up with a bunch of rules and saying that they were handed to him by god. I'm also a bit less inclined to trust The Dead Sea Scrolls - the earliest written vesions of jewish lore - which are relatively "new" and date only from 200BC compared to pieces of Babylonian stone that are a 1000 years older than judaism as a religion, or Chinese bronzes that are 1500 years older than The Dead Sea Scrolls.

If you believe that Moses got morality from god, then did Hammurabi, also? Because, what The Code of Hammurabi shows us clearly and unequivocably, is that people already knew 'murder is wrong' before Moses told them. If you believe that "morals come from Marduk" then, maybe - just maybe - you've got a leg to stand on, but the ancient Chinese didn't worship Marduk and they were cooking up moral systems of their own, without any help from Moses on Sinai, Hammurabi of Babylon, or Lycurgus of Sparta.

In other words, if you think your morals come from god, you're simply fooling yourself. Worse, if you think your morals come from god, and now I've shown you that they don't, then you've been basing your morals on false belief; i.e.: you've been immoral.

Back To The Ancient Greeks

How, then, did humans build this elaborate history of claiming that morals come from the gods? And why?


Wherever you tread in philosophy
Plato and Confucius' footprints are there ahead of you.

The answer is pretty simple, and it shouldn't surprise you at all: political expediency. I've tried to point out, repeatedly, where the moral codes of societies are "rooted" in "the gods say so." One of the reasons for that is, simply, because establishing a moral system based on pure rationality is really, really hard (that's for part 3) and politicians eventually give up philosophizing and say the closest thing possible to "because I said so." It's hard to argue with a monarch who has monopolized violence at his back, when he says "the gods told me I'm right" - because that spearman, right there, is going to make a really big hole in you if you keep arguing. If you don't believe me, ask Socrates.

Plato offers answers in The Republic. At the upper levels of his utopia, we have the philosopher-king and guardians, the remainder of society stratified based on learning and ability. To achieve the higher ranks one must be increasingly educated. But what of the masses?

But what shall their education be? ... Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers; we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be written; to write them is the duty of others.

In other words Plato's answer is: "We'll raise them on propaganda."

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle—God is the author of good only.

The ancient Greeks' gods were like normal people, only super-powerful. They fought, loved, lied, and envied, just like we do. Plato recognizes that divine morality and the moral justfication for the state are entwined in an embrace that can be either deadly(for the state) or controlling(for the people) and - as every politician before him, he explicitly advocates the use of religion as a tool for political control.

So there it lies. Does god give man morals? No. Instead, what we see is that humans have always been concerned with this topic, and countless ancient rulers have used piety as a tool to put their primacy in a place where it's safe from challenge. "Who made you king?" is easily answered by "the gods!" because otherwise you've got to spear a lot of your own people. To Plato, the gods must be moral because otherwise the citizens will question the legitimacy of their power to confer legitimacy upon the state.

If you started reading this with the idea in your mind that you got your morals from god, I hope you're going to re-assess that notion. Unfortunately, I will not be able to offer you a replacement - indeed, I expect to make matters worse in the next parts of this journal entry. Many theists I have talked to have claimed "but an atheist cannot have any basis for morality!" Well, you can take heart that you were probably right about that, but that's a topic for another day.

If you started reading this without that particular belief, I hope I've amused you a bit and maybe given you some more things to think about in the relationship between religion and political power. The notion that morals are a technique of political control is one we'll revisit again later.

Can we adopt an evolutionary perspective on erotic materials?

In my previous journal entry ([link]) I deconstructed the term "pornography" and demonstrated that its use is inconsistent, meaningless, or contradictory. If I accomplished my mission, you will have realized that "pornography" is little more than a subjective notation for "something I don't like" or, more likely, it's a value-laden label that ideologues slap on things in order to manipulate your perceptions.

The US Supreme Court has struggled over and over again with the topic, and, today, gigantic amounts of money are being expended in having The Department of Justice write and defend laws controlling "obscenity" then having the FBI enforce and prosecute them. Laws such as USC 18:2257, which are struck down as unconstitutional, are modified and put back in place, to begin another round of litigation and prosecution. From a removed perspective, what we see is one branch of the government repeatedly trying something that gets it smacked down by another, at a cost of millions of dollars to the taxpayers - who, ultimately, are held liable for the laws passed on their behalf, in spite of the fact that the public is divided on the topic. In my next journal entry, I will examine and describe some of the mental gymnastics that have happened to get us our current laws on "obscenity", and I will show you the origins, and intellectual bankruptcy, of the positions that are currently enacted in US law.

But, clearly, there is something there - as tempting as it is to simply write negativism about sexual imagery off as a byproduct of abrahamic religion - we should still ask whether there is any kind of basis to it. It will enable us to better understand it as we deal with it in the future.

Adaptationism

Adaptationism is an approach to explaining observed aspects of evolved life-forms, from the perspective that - if they exist - they must have had some sort of positive adaptive benefit for the life-form. Many critics of adaptationism (among whom I number) claim that it's ex post facto reasoning, and that it's not valid unless there's supporting evidence. What's interesting to me about adaptationist reasoning is that it sometimes directs research toward supporting evidence. For example, the great biologist John Maynard-Smith, was interested in the evolution of gender. He reasoned that it must be valuable, then proceeded to perform a game-theoretic analysis of evolution and sex, and established some crucial theories that help explain things like "why are there more males than females in some species?" Now, Maynard-Smith was not labeled an "adaptationist" probably because his theories panned out with accurate predictions of observable real-world facts. The label "adaptationist reasoning" is usually slapped on a piece of thinking where the adaptationist perspective really can't be verified. The reason I'm explaining all of this is because I'm about to tell an "adaptationist fable" about possible explanations for some social attitudes regarding sexual display.

Let me repeat myself: the theoretical stuff that I am about to spout is unprovable and is therefore not science. But, if I do it right, it'll sound pretty "science-y." I hope, honestly, that it will be plausible. I can't prove it's true. But, as you read through this, ask yourself "which is more plausible? Marcus' adaptationist fable, or that a supreme being who created the universe is upset by naked people?"

Sexual Selection and Sexual Display

One of the things Maynard-Smith was concerned with was how sex affects species' evolution, and its consequences. In sexual selection, we see members of a species selecting within that species, for characteristics that somehow indicate fitness. Sometimes sexual selection happens because the males fight over the female and, basically, the winner gets the girl. In cases where you see sexual selection based on trial by combat, you'll see males get larger and sometimes start carrying weapons like giant antlers, etc. You'll also see strategies evolve like "sneaky fuckers" - males that don't try to be large and tough, but prefer to be fast and stealthy.

Things work a bit differently when one gender is making a choice instead of just being the property of the winner. If one gender is choosing the other based on a specific trait, you're basically looking at the same thing as when an animal breeder starts forcibly selecting for a particular trait (which is how human dog-breeders turned wolflike animals into chihuahuas in a mere 3,000 years) - how do they choose and what do they choose on?

Sometimes the term "ornaments" is used to describe traits that are selected by the mate's choice - like this:

Female peafowl ("peahen" = female, "peacock" = male) have been choosing mates based on the colored plumage of their tails. Now, males sport bigger and bigger tails. It's simple: the female mates with the one with the biggest tail, so tails get bigger. Eventually you have a feedback loop, which eventually stops at the point when it becomes too costly to continue.

So, here's a sample of one of the other effects of sexual selection: our penises. In most animals, penis size is roughly proportional to body size. In our little circle of primate cousins, though, humans - shall we say - stand out. A male gorilla's penis is about 1.5in long, and a male chimpanzee's is about 3in long - even though they weigh less than 1/2 what a male gorilla (about 350lb) weighs. Average human penises are 5.5in long, almost twice that of a chimpanzee. What does that tell us? Size matters to those who are selecting human males for mates; they're just lying when they say they don't care.

Professor Maynard-Smith's biggest contribution to evolutionary biology was introducing Game Theory into our understanding of evolution. Game Theory is an approach invented by the great mathematician John Von Neumann during the cold war; it's the process of reasoning about complex systems by trying to identify all the different strategies that might be employed if that system were a simplified game. Game theory proved handy for Maynard-Smith as he explored sexual behavior in ants and other animals that had strategies that didn't make sense in simplistic views of reproduction (i.e.: what's the benefit to being a neuter worker bee instead of trying to be a queen?) Game theory teaches us to think of "reproductive strategies" in sexual behavior, as a way of making sense of apparently complicated and ineffable behaviors.

Complicated and Ineffable

Let's look at two mating strategies among certain male frogs, for example. The males are selected by the females based on their song (presumably, the bigger the song, the bigger the frog, therefore the better its prospects as a mate) but some males have adopted a strategy that is different from "get big and sing loud." These "sneaky fuckers" home in on a loud-singing male frog and lurk nearby. As the beglamoured female comes hopping along for a tryst with the Barry White of Bullfrogs, the "sneaky fucker" hops on, mates with her quickly, and hops off - mission accomplished. Because both strategies are successful, we see both strategies continuing in force because now most frogs descend either from big singers or sneaky fuckers, and females that like big singers.


Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, puts the "sexual" in "sexual display"

By now, some of you are probably feeling a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps you are wondering "is Marcus going to try to tell us that humans also pursue programmed mating strategies?" Or maybe you're thinking,"humans are special! We're not just animals that follow reproductive programs!" I hate to point out the obvious, but you're made of meat and nerves and genes - just like every other animal on earth.

On With the Adaptationism!

Now, what are some possible reproductive strategies that might involve human attitudes toward erotic materials? (what some might call "pornography")

When a young human female is old enough to mate, she's going to start looking for a suitable partner. Meanwhile, males are looking for females - just like in every other animal. Mankind has recently started to take control of its choice to reproduce, as opposed to engaging in sex for recreation, but it's an open (and very interesting) question how that'll begin to have an effect on our evolution, and when.

So, males display, attempting to indicate their fitness as mates

and females display as well, attempting to indicate that they're worth going to the trouble to attach

There's lots of game theory already going on here. The male is looking for signs that the female is healthy, strong, and can bear good children. The female is looking for signs that the male is healthy, strong, and can help protect her and the children while they're still helpless (an unprotected pregnant female human is in trouble!) By the way, one consequence of this might manifest itself as younger females' preference for older established males - a strategy that makes perfect sense in terms of game theory but is contrary to some people's ideals. Guess what the numbers show? Game theory is right: females tend to select older males. This is a perfect example of how adaptationist reasoning can lead us to form a hypothesis which we then discover is correct in real life. Thank you, Professor Maynard-Smith!

Mating game theory is very complicated; it goes beyond simply "who can provide?" into questions like "can I keep my mate attached?" or "can I keep my mate from giving me a disease?" For example, the male does not want "his" female to mate with other males; because then he'd be raising another male's child and putting all his effort into what was, for him, a biological dead-end. This, by the way, is exactly the strategy that cuckoos use: they lay their eggs in another bird's nest, so that the parents of the other bird take on the cost of raising and protecting their young. Usually, the baby cuckoo eats more than its "adopted" siblings, and eventually kicks them out of the nest to die. It's a horrible, ruthless strategy, but that's nature for you. Human males have the same strategy: they want to keep their female sequestered to prevent other males from using the cuckoo's strategy on them. Females want to ensure that "their" males are not lured away by another female, leaving them pregnant and helpless. They also want to avoid "their" males exchanging sexually transmitted diseases with other females, that they might then become sick with in turn. Just like with the frogs, it seems that there are a variety of human reproductive strategies that get employed: we have our own equivalent of "sneaky fuckers" just like the frogs do. I remember one guy I used to know, who shall remain nameless, who started a family and then, immediately found a new female and started a family with her, as soon as his first child looked viable - switching families when his new child appeared to be viable, and then starting yet another, etc. His strategy appears to be spectacularly successful since he's well on his way to starting a dynasty of children that all carry his genes. (For a more detailed exposition of human mating strategies, see: [link] and [link] )

So, right there you can see an adaptationist fable that might explain a set of human behaviors around monogamy. In adaptationist literature, we encounter terms like "mate poaching" and "mate guarding" and we also encounter a very interesting paradox: namely, that a female wants a male that has features attractive to all women so that her male offspring will be more likely to have those features, as well. Thus, we see direct competition between both genders, to poach attractive mates while guarding their own. In some societies, this results in women killing or disfiguring rivals, while, in others, it might manifest itself as American college girls spreading rumors to damage another girl's sexual reputation.

By now, you've probably realized that youthful appearance is a valued currency in female mating strategies. Appearing healthy and strong is an important currency for males.

If you think for a few minutes, you'll realize pretty quickly that many societal customs involving our sexuality are actually game theory strategies being played to either protect or attack. For example, if you have a society where females are allowed to be publicly displayed while they are too young to be mated, but then are sequestered when they become old enough to mate, what you're looking at is a strategy of "poisoning the well" to neutralize the advantage that younger females might have over older, established females. It also reduces the likelihood of mate poaching against a male. So it shouldn't surprise you for a second that some societies adopt things like "modesty wear" and that the proponents of the "modesty wear" are the older females who are edging out their competitors by nullifying their advantages. Horrible practices like genital mutilation are also ways of controlling the sexual attractiveness of the young in an attempt to level the playing field. Oh, I'm sorry - did you think that was god's idea? What supreme being would care about something as silly as what the little teeny weeny humans do with their sexual organs?

Humans exist in a constant web of sexual display and conflict. When a female gets a boob job, she's artificially inflating her assets and some females are going to be challenged and resentful of it. When a middle-aged established male buys a sports car, his wife is right to be worried; her mate is out doing sexual displays that are going to inevitably attract the eyes of potential challengers. Males who notice that their mate is suddenly dressing differently and losing weight might want to make sure there's nobody sniffing around, etc.

Erotica

At this point, I wonder if I even need to tie all of this together with the topic of erotic materials. But, in the interest of having all the points covered, I suppose I must. Why are many people threatened by "pornography"? Simply put, it shows that the male is willing to look around; it indicates that the male might be easily poached by another female. So, if a female sees her male looking at pictures of another female doing sexual displays, of course it's threatening. It's threatening for exactly the same reason that the red sports car sitting in the garage is threatening. If my female suddenly started collecting pictures of younger muscle-boys (or, worse, pictures of Jay-Z showing off his diamond-studded watch while sunning on the deck of his 3rd yacht) I'd be completely rational to start worrying a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry - did you think that God doesn't like "pornography"? It's not God that's threatened by it; that's just game theory.

So finally, here's the bottom line: if you understand who is threatened and why, you can deal with things rationally. There's no need for lots of ideology and invocations of divine wrath - it's just the mating game, pure and simple.


Just Jerk It

As I was concocting this little adaptationist fable, one topic kept bothering me: masturbation. I couldn't quite figure out where strictures against masturbation fit in, until I realized that an established male is going to be pretty uncomfortable if there is a younger male walking around all the time with a smile on his face and a wet spot in the front of his trousers, especially if that male is walking around his mate. If you don't think that human semen is packed full of stuff that a female's nose can easily detect, you get an 'F' for this lesson. Orgasms also release Oxytocin and Vasopressin, two neuropeptides that modulate ejaculation in males and egg-laying in females of some species. We don't fully understand what's going on, yet, but it's probably a safe bet that a young male that has just had an orgasm lights up like a big "INCOMING" on a receptive female's radar screen.

Envoi

I've gone on long enough with this, but I hope I've given you enough ideas that you can go further with this on your own if you're interested. Am I saying that my little hypothetical strategies are correct? No. But don't you think they're more likely to be correct than that the supreme being who created the universe doesn't want little boys to play with their own penis?

Human sexuality is incredibly complicated, but it permeates literally everything we do - especially since it's often the motivator for much of what we do. It's unfortunate that we allow some people to make some of us scared or ashamed - or, worse, mutilate us - as part of their strategies of sexual selection.

If I were you, I wouldn't allow it.

Short form: I don't know what "pornography" is. And you don't, either.

"Pornography" and the use of value-laden words

What is "pornography?" I think I've seen a thousand threads on DeviantArt and ModelMayhem purporting to resolve the "art VS porn" discussion and, after reading many of them, I'm just as unenlightened as when I started. One might ask, as many have, "who cares?" but the obvious answer is that we're dealing with value-laden words and the people who are using them care - and care deeply. If the words "art" and "pornography" were interchangeable then we'd probably just call everything "art": it's shorter.

Value-laden words are the material from which propaganda is made; they are used to label things, and the labels' purpose is to obscure realities. Let me illustrate to you, briefly, why this is important. We are individuals; no two of us are alike or have ever existed that are completely alike. We each hold beliefs and opinions that are the result of our experiences, cultural influences, parenting, and education. Each of us comes fully-equipped with opinions of our own. Now, suppose that you and I are walking through a large art gallery - say The Louvre or The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York - would we both like the same things? If we were to make, each of us, a list of the 50 best pieces in those museums, do you think they would be exactly the same? Now, imagine that some group of anonymous critics out there made up a list of the 50 best pieces and called it "great art", do you think it would exactly match yours? Of course it wouldn't.

The reason I say value-laden words are propaganda is that they don't add any information when they're used. Re-consider the hypothetical list of "great art" we were discussing a moment ago; does the idea that some bunch of strangers called it "great" make it more meaningful to you? How can it? Only if your turn off your own critical faculties and just accept what someone else says - which would be a rather strange thing: how can you accept someone else's opinion as your own? Example: I think Picasso's cubist works are garbage. First off, I doubt that everyone reading this accepted my opinion without reservations - but, more importantly, what did my use of the term "garbage" add to your understanding of Picasso? Nothing! I just put it there to manipulate you.

It seems to me that a great deal of political discourse consists of going around slapping labels on things, as an alternative to coming to grips with the fine nuances of reality. In the case of politics, labelling is used for broad-scale manipulation - who cares what 'weak on crime' really means if you can tag someone with a killer label like that? It's a lot of hard work to tunnel through the storm of labels once people start throwing them around, but if you do, you'll discover that everything is vastly more complicated than the labellers are trying to make it seem.

"I know what is when I see it"

The complete quote is: "I cannot clearly define pornography — but I know what it is when I see it. U.S. Justice Potter Stewart. (I feel obligated, in fairness, to point out that the rest of Justice Stewart's comment was "...and this isn't pornography")

The problem with Justice Stewart's oft-quoted quip is that when you're placing someone at jeopardy from the law, you need to be objective; justice can't be based solely on Justice Stewart's opinion. Indeed, Justice Steward said that in 1964 and it's quite likely that whatever he considered to be pornography might be quite different, today. He was also being provincial; prevailing attitudes in The United States are different from those in Europe or the Middle East. So, here is one problem, already - someone saying a particular thing is "pornography" might mean something completely different from the person who nods and agrees. In the case Justice Stewart was commenting on, Jacobellis v. Ohio, a French film, The Lovers which had resulted in the conviction on obscenity charges, of a theater manager for showing the film. What's obscene about it? It depicts (make sure you're sitting down!) adultery.

Obviously, cultural values depend a great deal on where, and when, you are. The US Supreme Court later tried to come to grips with this in the landmark 1974 case Miller v. California, Chief Justice Warren Burger writing:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

As I showed you earlier, the 'average person' does not exist. Nor does "patently offensive" or "community standards." Unlike "murder" or "exceeding the speed limit" which can be fairly clearly defined, we are presented with the ugly spectacle of a Supreme Court decision that waves its hands in the air and appeals to an abstraction. Unfortunately, justice cannot deal comfortably with abstractions: a justice system that places people in personal jeopardy based on interpretation of an abstraction is not a justice system, it's subjective, arbitrary power. Above, I jokingly offered "exceeding the speed limit" as a fairly well defined crime - imagine if our notion of "speeding" were written something like:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether the 'average person' applying contemporary community standards, felt that excessive speed was manifested. (b) whether excessive speed, as defined by state law, was manifested; and (c) whether the speed manifested was deemed appropriate under the circumstances, or there was a good excuse."
Obviously, that's ridiculous. Because too many people would have to agree about too many intangibles, and different courts would have tremendous leeway in interpretation.


(Hokusai)

Justice systems, in principle, exist to protect us from eachother. Their purpose is not simply to pass laws because they are bored; "pornography" (and obscenity) laws in the US go back to the 1850s, with the Lord Campbell's Act in England; it was the first law that restricted the sale of "obscene" material. (The English were not the first: in Japan, in the 17/18th century, making erotic woodblock prints was punishable by execution) The Obscene Publications Act outdid the US Supreme Court for vagueness: they didn't even try to define "obscene" - they merely criminalized it. Imagine if you made speeding illegal without explaining what a "speed limit" was! It was, however, the English who offered the first justification for banning "obscene" material, in 1860:
"the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences [such as small children], and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."
In other words, the potential victims are (as they so often seem to be!) the innocent little children.

US law regarding obscenity sort of evolved willy-nilly from English common law. One of the ways it evolved was by dodging the question of defining "pornography" or "obscenity" - presumably English common law knows it when it sees it. It wasn't until Roth v. United States that the US Supreme Court first attempted to define "obscenity" as:
"utterly without redeeming social importance"
"whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest."

It is to this "prurient interest" we will now turn.

Prurient Interest

I recommend that you take a break from reading this and search some legal dictionaries online for definitions of "obscene" and "pornography." They may be instructive. If you're really lucky, you'll find a circular definition; one in which the term is used in its own definition. Circular definitions are generally a pretty good sign that someone has no idea what they're talking about - imagine if I was trying to describe "red" as "a really dark shade of pink." In a legal context, of course, such a definition would be completely unacceptable since it is impossible to know what it means without already knowing what it means. If you search for definitions of "pornography" you may find the word "obscene" featured prominently - then search for "obscene" and see what you get. One that I found included:
causing uncontrollable sexual desire.
And prurient interest is:
A morbid, degrading and unhealthy interest in sex
("Morbid" is often defined as "pathologically unhealthy" which makes its use here redundant)

At this point a rational person would say to themself something like this: "Oh, so if this is all about preventing me from suffering from uncontrollable urges, what's the big deal?" And, you'd be perfectly right to ask. But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this bizzare topic, yet. Let us now consider the producer/consumer question.


(Rembrant Van Rijn)

We'll use the term "producer" to refer to someone who creates an artwork or an artifact. And let's use the term "consumer" for the person who looks at it, reads it, or otherwise uses it. So, consider Rembrandt's "The Night Watch": Rembrandt was the producer, and I (and now, you) are the consumer. Rembrandt created this complex scene with some ideas in mind; it didn't happen by accident. But we have no idea what he was thinking, anymore, because he's been dead for a long time. The consumer of the image might see many things: brilliant use of lighting, militarism on parade, good examples of primitive arquebuses (the forerunners of today's rifles), or a bunch of good-looking guys dressed up for a parade. It should be pretty obvious that Rembrandt can't control what the consumer sees in his painting; other than what he originally painted into it, he's unable to communicate with the consumer at all. So what if the consumer happens to be an arquebus fetishist, with a prurient interest - shall we say - in ancient musketry? Can we hold Rembrandt blameless for any prurient interest this image might arouse?

That was, perhaps, a bit too easy.


(Helmut Newton)

Consider another image. In this photo we see - a shoe. We know nothing about the photographer, Helmut Newton's intent in creating this image. Can we say anything about Newton's intent? What if this photo was shot with intent to appeal to the "prurient interest" of shoe fetishists? Is it "obscene"? This is a serious question; if the reason we have laws against "obscenity" is to keep people from being exposed to things that excite prurient interest - especially of the "morbid" and "pathologically unhealthy" kind - we need to exonerate or condemn the artist. Or, do we? In the case of a living artist, they might provide some information about their intent; we might see this image differently if it had been shot to be the cover-photo of an erotic shoe fetish site. But that wouldn't change the image one iota, only our perception of it.

To amplify this idea, consider some of the photos I've posted in my gallery. Many of them are nudes of females, in a variety of states of dress and undress. Were a homosexual man to view them, he might be quite uninterested (other than to, hopefully, enjoy my technique) a photo can hardly be said to have "prurient interest" if you're not interested in its contents! Thus, if we look at "obscenity" and "pornography" from the producer-only view, we'd need to take into account the orientation of the producer vis-a-vis their expected consumer. Of course that's silly; on the internet (or in books) the producer has no way of knowing who or what the consumer is, or wants. I suppose we might hypothesize that all images might be "obscene" that excite prurient interest in any of their hypothetical viewers, but the problem then becomes a matter of finding an image that isn't potentially exciting of prurient interest.

What if the interpretation lies solely with the consumer? After all, it's the consumer's prurient interest that is being aroused. That line of reasoning would account for all various flavors of sexual preference - each of us might be aroused (or offended) according to our own orientation. The image of the shoe, above, which holds no fetish significance for me, does not risk setting off my uncontrollable desires. The problem, then, is the question of what might set off someone's uncontrollable desires. Suppose one of the consumers of an image site like DeviantArt is a puppy fetishist whose uncontrollable desires are sparked by photos of big-eyed flop-eared puppies? Are the photos of puppies now "obscene"?


(Sally Mann)

Obviously, sometimes a producer will deliberately create an image designed to instill feelings in the consumer. How is society to fairly determine that agenda?

Considering "obscenity" in the light of agendaless producers and unknown consumers, you can see that there are huge problems with the entire concept if it's based solely on the relative content and/or its impact on the consumer. This is why I subtitled this article "...and neither do you." At this point, there's not much we can conclude other than that the terms "obscenity" and "pornography" are meaningless except for as value-laden terms suitable for use by propagandists.

Some Worthy Attempts

When writing rules, you don't always have to be precise or fair. Obviously, we expect a US Supreme Court judge to be concerned with fairness and constitutionality of law, but not everyone needs to be. For example a web site like DeviantArt can promulgate its own rules according to (basically) whatever criteria it likes, as long as it's subject to national law, etc. DeviantArt, for example, has its own definition of "pornographic" here: [link] and it's a fairly good one, except for where it fails miserably.
There should be no use of imagery depicting a male erection that a reasonable person would believe is intended to elicit a sexual response.
One hardly needs to comment on that, other than to ask, "Who is that intended to protect? And from what?" I, for one, am not gripped with uncontrollable sexual urges at the sight of an erection. Nor am I filled with revulsion. Your mileage, of course, may vary but one might reasonably ask why erect nipples are OK if erect penises are not. If the problem is that DeviantArt wants no overt displays of sexual excitement, a better and more rational rule is necessary. Of course, under the "it's our site, we make our rules!" doctrine, rationality is not a requirement - mere authority suffices. Perhaps DA's founders have a horror of erections; their personal phobias are now something we all need to take into account.

Adult toys" consisting of dildos, strap-ons, vibrators, etc. are not allowed.
What about a screwdriver? Or a banana? What about fingers?

Subjects should not be depicted in a clear display of sexual intercourse.


Your reaction, upon reading my comments, might be "that's ridiculous!" but - well - that's the point, isn't it?

Ridiculousness Compounded

In the US (thanks in part to the trial of Max Hardcore) The Supreme Court decided that it is unconstitutional to consider an image "child pornography" if it doesn't have any actual children in it. That's probably some sort of minor triumph for rationality, because it saves us from having to see drawings that disclaim: "the character represented in this drawing is over 18" but some countries are struggling with the problem of representational thought-crime. In the European Union, simulated "underage" content is treated as actual child "porn"; what's next? If you play Grand Theft Auto and shoot a police officer in the game, is it the same thing as if you'd assaulted a police officer in real life?

The UK's "Extreme Pornography" law makes it illegal to produce representations of, e.g: "an act which threatens a person's life." I hope someone tells The Church of England to take down all their crucifixes! I've written before about USC 2257a, which has similar problems: [link] Oh, of course they don't mean that but - aren't we back to the question that laws need to be clear, fair, and fairly enforced?

In all questions of law, we need to consider that for there to be a crime there must be both a victim and a criminal. What if they are the same person? Take the following thought-experiment:
Timmy, a 17-year-old male, steps out of the shower and catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He has an erection.
(a) Arrest Timmy: he saw child porn
(b) Arrest Timmy: he starred in child porn
(c) Let Timmy dry off and get on with his life
Timmy might, conceivably, be gripped with prurient interest by what he sees in the mirror (any of you who have been teen-aged boys will understand) and the situation can get dramatically more complicated if Timmy prefers boys.

What are we protecting Timmy from? How are we protecting him? Perhaps, after enough thinking, we might ask the all-important question of whether Timmy wants to be protected, or just left alone. But, if there are to be laws protecting Timmy, they should be fair, objective, and based on preventing some kind of bad thing from happening to him.

There are definitely cases where "pornography" has been involved in victimization, i.e.: child abuse. What we must not do is lose focus and forget that child abuse is already illegal, and like most personal crimes is fairly well-defined and understood. That there is a victim, and a perpetrator is clear - unlike in the situation with Timmy.

The English Common Law notion of "obscenity" appears to argue that viewers of obscenity will be victimized by it; i.e.: that they will succumb and become unhealthily sexualized as a result. Holding that notion up to the light for a moment makes us begin to doubt: "where is the evidence of that?" and "what, exactly, does that even mean?" The entire argument begins to fall apart because, basically, nobody really knows what "normal" sexuality is. Worse, if you try to determine what that is by examination, one is engaged in circular logic: "abnormal" is just a statistical outlier but sexuality isn't a single-axis thing - not by a long shot. Is it "abnormal" to want lots of partners? Biology says "no" and so do some popular cultures. What exactly do people mean by unhealthily sexualized? It turns out that, well, nobody knows. So how can we worry about protecting someone from a problem we don't even understand? Shouldn't we be asking whether there's even a problem at all? Before putting the weight of the legal system behind something, it's a good idea to make sure that that "something" even exists.

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning: "I don't know what pornography is, and you don't either." By now, hopefully, you've had a chance to think about it and realize that, in the absence of a workable notion for what is (and therefore isn't) "obscene" or "pornographic" the words are meaningless.

There is another angle to the whole topic, which I have not gone into here, because I'm trying to deal with the topic rationally: religion. Followers of the abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all share a common deeply-rooted anti-nudity taboo. The question "where does that come from?" is really interesting and provokes some fascinating (and often mixed!) responses. Since, ultimately, religion's answers are based on "a little man in my head told me" it's hard to avoid the trap of circular argument. In a future journal entry, I may deconstruct a few examples of how religious ideologues treat the topic of "pornography" as an invitation to lie for jesus.

In a future journal entry, I may offer an adaptationist view of human attitudes toward "pornography" with a possible explanation of why it's such a hot topic. I'm not an adaptationist; it'll be a thought-experiment only. Ultimately, however, my aim will be to further deconstruct the notion that "pornography" is relevant to anyone except the emotional cripples who worry too much about what other people do with their time on earth.

mingled at last
the ashes of faiths
flutter like the feathers
dropped by a concrete
phoenix

What about Marx/Lenin/Confucius is anti-porn?

The other day, I saw that the government of China was complaining about Microsoft's "bing" service and Google doing a bad job of blocking pornography in searches.

"Hmmmm..., what about Marx/Lenin/Confucius is anti-porn?" I asked one of my friends. Neither of us had any good ideas; at least followers of the abrahamic religions can fall back on the notion that the supreme all-powerful being that created us doesn't like to see us running around naked (for his own mysterious reasons). But, really, if you're ideologically Marxist/Leninist, pornography may simply be a new opiate for the masses; it serves government's agenda more than not.

But then the other shoe dropped; really, what's going on is that they're using pornography as the stalking goat for enhancing the tools of political control. If you can block porn, you can block links to "how to bypass content filters" and "here's photos of how state power responds to pro-democracy protestors, using tanks and guns." Sure - use porn-blocking to justify tightening your control of information.

One reason this strategy works is because the US (where Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft are) has its own horrible indecision about censorship. Thanks to a run of religious fanatics in our government, we have a Department of Justice that spends a significant amount of effort trying to prevent free speech in spite of the fact that, every time they try, The Supreme Court shoots them down. "The will of the people" doesn't even enter into it - but this kind of nonsense puts US companies in a position where they're already used to being told what is 'acceptable' or not by a government, and the legal structures are already in place to force compliance.

Censorship has always been one of the primary tools of the religious autocracy and dictatorship. Stifling free expression is necessary, especially when you are lying - and know you are lying - to your own people. Whenever you hear about dissent being suppressed, or a crack-down on anti-government speech, you can bet that - if it's on the Internet - the tools being used are the ones that were put in place for "porn" filtering. Think about that, next time someone tells you "it's for your own good."



mjr.