3. MORAL ISSUES

 

 

                        a. Battle of the sexes

 

   Some masculine traditions, such as the Taliban and the American

puritans, have advocated a near elimination of sensuous fun, calling it a

ridiculous offense, and answering the issue of listlessness by offering

artificial anxiety, and horrifying or highly challenging technical

pursuit; still often referred to as fun. Women in those kind of traditions

apparently engage in secret parallel traditions involving overtly crazy

colorful costumes and ridiculous shared fun.

   Many organizations lead by women press for the opposite, a near

elimination of ugly or dangerous fun, calling it entirely unnecessary;

replacing it with relentless mechanistic interaction and activity; and this

likewise inspires secret artificial anxiety or actual combativeness on the

part of males involved.

   Oddly, even those men who profess and appear to engage in sensuous fun,

and encourage their feminine associates likewise, will still run afoul the

same way; and engage in private ugly activity, courting and often meeting

technical disaster, as with drunks at a bar; and will get into life

changing strife with spouses and feminine neighbors through pressing for

some element of divine awe, greater laxity about traditional security, and

more psychic dependence.

   Likewise women who embrace danger and initiate cutting edge discussion

are not seeking divine awe; their emotionally based identity keeps them

bathed continually in the experience the men are seeking; they are acting

out of unusual spiritual faith. The hazards do not exist for them. The

actually seek new sensuous and triumphant possibilities in environments

they were shy of in the past. In the sense that a man would perceive them,

they are heartless and idiotic monsters who may be technically supportive

but are spiritually saboteurs. Thus women volunteering into a male

dominated world fare no better than the men who encourage sensuous focus.

   The world of traditional recreation has shown some meager success at

peaceful if formal sharing with both sexes, at a public library, a bird

watching class or sitting on a bus. But the kind of focus that either sex

enthusiastically calls real fun leaves the other sex frowning. Massive

effort to shake this down has proved futile; those who understand the

details of the dilemma brilliantly feel no different.

   The problem originates in the identity split that every person must do

in order to be able to function socially. A pure consciousness has no

functional, let alone emotional, separation from it's physical environment.

There is no way to create the illusion of being a separate individual

except through a compartmentalization of awareness into an observer and a

background. Neither a person's emotional awareness nor their technical

awareness is an actual independent observer of the general environment, but

it is functionally possible for one half to observe the other half and

create a pretense of independent observation that way. As long as the person

remains in a social environment validating the illusion, once they get the

appropriate self-image fantasy going, they can sustain it. But three days

without backup and it fades, and must be resurrected in order to re-enter

human relating. The best anyone can do is be aware emotionally as

undifferentiated awareness and aware of technical functionality as a unique

player in spiritual society; or else to track the structure of the

environment without a boundary awareness and engage continuous portrayal of

a fictitious character. There is no way to maintain both illusions at the

same time.

   Some people have established a life successfully hop scotching back and

forth between two fully functioning opposite sex identities. Some have got

so skilled at the shift that only a few minutes suffices to complete it. In

the movie called "Brother Sun, Sister Moon", the actor playing Francis of

Assisi successfully portrays this shift.

   But even in a world in which everyone could do that, the same conflict

would remain because it is actually a clash of illusions; each sex is

fighting to maintain it's part in holding the social fabric intact, against

the simple intelligence of the other sex. Even a baboon troupe has to

maintain this dual illusion at a primitive level in order to stay a

functional group. Dogs and cats have to join it in order to function as

pets.

   The best we can do is forgive; to say to oneself, "I am not crazy, I

have decided to be crazy, that's not the same thing(!)".

 

 

                        b. Government limiters

 

   From appearances, governments seem inclined to be responsive solely to

women's views of fun. Undoubtedly that is a result of men tending to ignore

practical communication matters until their temper blows. Women delight in

agitating about possible new venues to promenade or play in, and

undoubtedly that inspires them to send carefully thought out letters or

phone calls to people who influence legislation or administer recreational

offerings. Women's interest in speaking kindly in public and with a pretty

voice probably helps too.

   Thus over time the governments volunteer into paying for more education,

entertainment and travel facilities. Programs get more complex or get

morphed into novel possibilities, and hazards shakedown into tighter

oversight. Governments have financial assistance programs too for food,

education, house buying or repair and the like, for people who don't mind

presenting a tame predictable life.

   Regulation strangles more cool and exciting possibilities every year, as

they're discovered, and only retracts somewhat on issues that get

self-righteous tempers going for awhile. For someone too proud to take

assistance, too strange to be welcome at public facilities, too creative to

benefit from conventional education, fascinated by unregulated hazards and

dangerous experiments, and inclined towards a bizarre lifestyle, the

governments are an evil enemy to be dodged and thwarted or maybe bullied.

   Most men evolve into being covert and small scale with their weirdness,

and many spiritually rot inside from the lack of environmental feedback. An

upheaval like the American revolution radically expands liberty and

masculine hopefulness for awhile but eventually bucking the government

system through heartless trickery becomes the only way for many men to stay

hopeful about life. In the united states now, roughly one man in eighty is

in jail and a whole lot of the others are merely successful at staying

under the radar. The inspiration to entirely abandon morality takes a lot

of men, whether or not they're ever apprehended.

   Social arrangements of continuous dependence contribute to fun becoming

amoral or evil by letting people get way out of touch with what kinds of

caring are necessary for maintenance. Civil service institutions and

schools are so prone to this that almost any discussion about them will

include examples of overt indifference to technical tragedy. The term "going

postal" has come to refer to psychotic violence on the part of any angry

person, as if the post office environment creates that as naturally as a

farm grows thistles.

   Large scale society has this practical liability. Most national or highly

controversial leaders become amoral in the approach they take towards

emotion creation because they inevitably cannot avoid becoming

virtually imprisoned by handlers, body guards and regular servants, due to

the unavoidable murderous danger they face and the need to present a

sophisticated lifestyle in order to obtain their position. Due to this

intense dependence, many people theorize that political or economic power

innately corrupts a person.

 

 

                        c. Conflict with religion

 

   Fun and religion seem like total opposites in nearly every published

religious writing; but actually a quirk of conceptual language creates that

appearance. Like the opposition of the sex identities, language cannot

convey technical precision and an image of experience at the same time

without seriously compromising genuine communication about either. For

example, the book of Revelation in the Christian bible is a major attempt

to convey both, and the main result has been endless speculation about what

the writer is expressing. The Kama Sutra of the Hindu tradition at least

manages a presentation of technical perfection without scolding the reader

or implying they were born corrupt or deficient.

   The idea of sin, expressed in many religions, seems to suggest that

emotional spontaneity of a natural person is harmful in some sense; and

an event that sabotages someone's illusion of identity, compromising

societal cohesion, could be described that way. Women call it getting one's

feelings hurt and men call it being a victim of indecency or offensiveness

or evil.

   In the Hindu tradition the dilemma is supposed to be handled through

embracing the shattering of identity and then deliberately re-establishing

one while fully aware. Though the Hindu religious practice apparently anchors

identity quite as firmly as any other religion, through an enormously

complex and immobilizing tradition, at least the words aren't a source of

grimness.

   All the religious traditions address this issue of one person's fun

shattering an unprepared other person's identifying anchors, and

cooperation with that effort is essential to success with having fun in an

area strongly influenced by that religion. The Hindu world encourages the

social presence of beggary and unmanaged large animals, so highly complex

capitalizing wonders have to be secret and guarded slyly there. The

Christian world encourages competitive solitude involving mockery and

scolding, so sexuality and any attempts at new sensory based skills such as

music must be kept secret and guarded slyly.

   Realistically, having a feeble grip on identity and confusion about the

other forms it takes is going to spoil having fun, so allocating a part of

one's life to a thorough study of the matter proves necessary for virtually

everybody sooner or later, often taking an apparently religious form.

 

 

                        d. Family disintegration

 

   In parts of the world that have well established beautiful and friendly

traditions like Indonesia, India and Brazil, family disintegration doesn't

figure as a threat to having fun. In effect, with a whole society playing

together in an easily comprehendible way, it matters little whether or not

a family plays together.

   In a society in which the basic framework of expectations keeps changing

every week for one reason or another, a family that has no clear pattern of

cooperative fun will splinter in confusion eventually from random identity

threats. Many societies in which this is common have adapted to it

completely, even requiring by law that everyone between six and twelve

years of age spend a minimum of 30 hours a week in opposition to family

influence, and assuming that every 19 year old person who doesn't splinter

from family intimacy must be seriously infantile.

 

 

                        e. Poisoning of friendship

 

   Fun is nearly always the social dynamic that originates a friendship,

one person's presence becoming a symbol of life affirmation or

light-hearted humor for another. Unfortunately, fun always evolves, and

belief is a conviction built on sand. Novelty is the soul of fun, so unless

a large scale traditional pattern maintains a belief in each others divinity

and humanness, a friend can just as easily become a symbol of evil or a

symbol of emotional vacancy.

   There is no clear remedy for this. Even people who make a point of

interlocking all their friendships, with each friend known personally by

several others, a poisoning of belief in someone can still happen, and can

even split an entire network into two.

 

 

                        f. Social out casting and suicide

 

   The psychology of suicide appears to vary quite a bit, but defining

suicidal interest as a life denying, humorless outlook, one could say that

fun is critical to life, and that convincing someone to forsake pursuit of

fun can be construed as the same as killing them. So from the view of many

people who directly knew a person who killed their self, or volunteered into

front line combat, the event was murder.

   The rhetoric that creates the disaster rarely originates maliciously

though. Words can so easily convey double meanings taken out of context,

and often conversation can mix words about one focus and intense feelings

about something secret and unrelated. The simple question "how are you",

asked as encouragement to converse, can be taken as an implied mockery and

rejection of spiritually exact discussion, without the speaker even

noticing. Several years of experience with similar encounters can easily

drive a person to suicide with no one at fault and everybody upset.

   Social out casting is thus a very inexact phenomenon. Someone being

rejected as a job applicant could take it as validation of their greater

suitability for another context that is less legitimate but much more fun,

with the employer seeing only a fool.

   Logically there is no way to deliberately take the pressure off someone

who has a seriously rejected identity. A stuttering teenager is actually

horrible to a majority of their associates even if most try to keep a good

face on it, particularly if the teenager seeks fun related to conversation.

An ill formed or unadapted identity often must die even if it means the death

of the person. Making a new identity is always theoretically possible but

the people who suggest everyone can do it tend to be like Scatman John, not

mere mortals.

 

 

                        g. Inspiration to warfare

 

   Understanding how life affirmation can result from politically motivated

group violence has baffled a lot of people, but the feeling is undeniably

widespread among men and boys. Many will express overt delight in imagery of

maiming and killing arbitrary political opponents, perhaps seeding the real

thing to some degree. Many people also view belligerent political conflict

like dirty dishes, a civic necessity that only an idiot would see as

optional, a perhaps poorly defined but genuine crisis, something that men

are able to turn into fun in order to make the best of it.

 

 

 

                        h. Accidents

 

   Whether or not a particular sort of accident is preventable or not can

illicit quite a debate, and people having fun certainly seem more careless

than somber people. People generally focus on fun while within a social

cocoon, contributing to a loss or absence of practical awareness that

results from a long period of being dependent, and a tendency to be

indifferent to some kinds of significant technical tragedy.

   Masculine fun is often deliberately courting disaster, even if generally

matched by skill. Some people have remarked that they quit skateboarding not

from social condemnation but from too many bruises. Courting disaster may be

great fun, but meeting it usually isn't.

   Drunk drivers appear to be the only class of people who create accidents,

that fair better than their unintended victims. Accidents appear to be self

correcting unavoidable cost of a social network established by each person

maintaining a form of deliberate insanity. Most accidents are minor and are

an effective warning to all but the most committed.