I’m not sure hunter-gatherers typically avoid pregnancy—they’re much more free-lovey and screw-it-let’s-just-kill-excess-kids-ey than low-tech farmers.
Sex aversion in cultures I’m most familiar with seems to have to do with proof of paternity (individual, small set of individuals, or even just the local band) than with pregnancy avoidance. Sex when you have too many kids to raise is stupid but not gross; sex out of wedlock when you could totally raise a kid is. Don’t know if it’s because many cultures have incentives to condition for that or if it’s innate.
But that’s not quite my question. What I’m asking about is why physical and moral disgust have so much overlap. Touching poop then eating is gross, but I don’t feel it’s morally repugnant. Killing your neighbor is evil, but not gross. So why does disgust leak into morality? I don’t think we ever do in/outgroup or fairness or harm/care without a moral element. Most emotions (joy and curiosity and the like) affect moral judgement, but they’re not fundamental bases.
And why do we have such specific emotions for the sacred? It’s a weird-ass intersection of cleanliness, morality, ingroup bonding mechanisms, appeasing the high-status, and aesthetic appreciation. Who ordered that?
I’m not sure why disgust can be conditioned at all, but we can do that for all emotions anyway and cultures that learn win.
Or interacial kisses?
No, that one’s easy. The proper place for a person is among their race, leaking out is matter out of place—impurity, dirt. Plus, whites are better than blacks, so mixing black with white is disgusting corruption, like mixing dirt with food.
Whereas I’d expect basically the Ancient Greek stance on homosexuality: doing men is More Purer, and men are better than women so they’re nobler in the sack. (And two women can’t have sex, silly.)
I’m not sure hunter-gatherers typically avoid pregnancy—they’re much more free-lovey and screw-it-let’s-just-kill-excess-kids-ey than low-tech farmers.
Where are you getting this from? It does match my model, but it’s a controversial-sounding enough point that I think a cite would be beneficial.
I don’t know that there is a culture (other than some subcultures in the modern First World) who don’t consider sex sacred, though certainly there’s quite a gap between “Son, if you ever lust after another guy you’re going to Hell!” and “Son, if you don’t suck enough cock, you’ll lose your vital energy!”.
No, sacredness is way more specific. Sacred things are:
Special. They belong to their own sphere of sacred things apart from mundane ones.
Powerful. If you fuck with them, they will fuck you up.
Important. You care about them a lot.
Emotionally charged. This kinda follows from the above, but the stronger and more unusual emotions you add, the sacreder. Awe is sacred as balls.
Big. You can’t quite comprehend them; maybe there’s too much importance or power or emotion for you to handle, maybe they act unpredictably (because they’re people or something), maybe they’re inherently and magically mysterious.
A lot like your parents when you’re a little kid, really.
the prevalent culture is very much not to regard sex as sacred in that sense
That’s how that culture “wants” people to think (believe-in-belief) - because sex-in-itself has largely the “taboo” + “big” + “powerful” factors for it so people shrink from thinking too much about it; while the “importance” and the “emotional charge” factors are attached to the intersection of sex and romantic love/marriage/childbirth. Thinking about sex with those attachments is easier in such a culture than thinking about sex-in-itself.
Presumably to make sex without those latter attachments less desirable/less of a goal on a memetic level, but keep the overall cover of sacredness.
Sounds plausible/falsifiable enough within MixedNuts’ model, doesn’t it?
I used to find gay man-man kissing (or any form of intimate touching between males, really) very gross despite a very strong conscious understanding and notion that it was just as “right” for them as between a man and a woman.
Then, as I noticed and saw more of it, it got normal.
Now I don’t find any of it the least bit gross or off-putting anymore, except in rare cases that evoke specific memories.
The just-so hindsight explanation that makes the most sense is that I believed-by-default everything I was told as a child about such things being “bad”, “gross” and “disgusting” or even outright “evil” by my peers. However, that’s only the slightly-more-likely out of many possible explanations, and I don’t have real data.
I used to find gay man-man kissing (or any form of intimate touching between males, really) very gross despite a very strong conscious understanding and notion that it was just as “right” for them as between a man and a woman.
Then, as I noticed and saw more of it, it got normal.
I don’t think so. I think that everything vile, disgusting, and repugnant got normal, not just gay sex.
I say this from observation of people who have conditioned themselves for a politically correct lack of disgust reflex. They also have a non political lack of disgust reflex: Observe, for example the “no pressure” video, and the cannibalism video
I predict that you are also no longer disgusted by poop eating, cannibalism, or the malicious infliction of painful and destructive injury.
I predict that if you watch the “no pressure” video, or the cannibalism video, you will wonder what the fuss was all about.
Someone who quite genuinely does not find feminists disgusting, is likely to be sincerely astonished when lots of people who piously pretend that they do not find feminists disgusting react with outrage at the “no pressure” video.
That’s the preaching-to-the-converted version. When preaching to the unconverted, more pragmatic arguments tend to be brought forward
Unwanted pregnancy would have been as disastrous as disease in the econiomcally constrained socieites of our ancestors. .
Or interacial kisses? Depends where y’all come from, I figure. Old chap.
Short answer: conditioning.
I’m not sure hunter-gatherers typically avoid pregnancy—they’re much more free-lovey and screw-it-let’s-just-kill-excess-kids-ey than low-tech farmers.
Sex aversion in cultures I’m most familiar with seems to have to do with proof of paternity (individual, small set of individuals, or even just the local band) than with pregnancy avoidance. Sex when you have too many kids to raise is stupid but not gross; sex out of wedlock when you could totally raise a kid is. Don’t know if it’s because many cultures have incentives to condition for that or if it’s innate.
But that’s not quite my question. What I’m asking about is why physical and moral disgust have so much overlap. Touching poop then eating is gross, but I don’t feel it’s morally repugnant. Killing your neighbor is evil, but not gross. So why does disgust leak into morality? I don’t think we ever do in/outgroup or fairness or harm/care without a moral element. Most emotions (joy and curiosity and the like) affect moral judgement, but they’re not fundamental bases.
And why do we have such specific emotions for the sacred? It’s a weird-ass intersection of cleanliness, morality, ingroup bonding mechanisms, appeasing the high-status, and aesthetic appreciation. Who ordered that?
I’m not sure why disgust can be conditioned at all, but we can do that for all emotions anyway and cultures that learn win.
No, that one’s easy. The proper place for a person is among their race, leaking out is matter out of place—impurity, dirt. Plus, whites are better than blacks, so mixing black with white is disgusting corruption, like mixing dirt with food.
Whereas I’d expect basically the Ancient Greek stance on homosexuality: doing men is More Purer, and men are better than women so they’re nobler in the sack. (And two women can’t have sex, silly.)
Where are you getting this from? It does match my model, but it’s a controversial-sounding enough point that I think a cite would be beneficial.
Miswiring.
Is it? So sex isn;t sacred. it is just believed to be. By some people.
I don’t know that there is a culture (other than some subcultures in the modern First World) who don’t consider sex sacred, though certainly there’s quite a gap between “Son, if you ever lust after another guy you’re going to Hell!” and “Son, if you don’t suck enough cock, you’ll lose your vital energy!”.
Not sure what you mean by “sacred”. Almost everybody obsesses about it, positively or negatively. Is that sacredness?
No, sacredness is way more specific. Sacred things are:
Special. They belong to their own sphere of sacred things apart from mundane ones.
Powerful. If you fuck with them, they will fuck you up.
Important. You care about them a lot.
Emotionally charged. This kinda follows from the above, but the stronger and more unusual emotions you add, the sacreder. Awe is sacred as balls.
Big. You can’t quite comprehend them; maybe there’s too much importance or power or emotion for you to handle, maybe they act unpredictably (because they’re people or something), maybe they’re inherently and magically mysterious.
A lot like your parents when you’re a little kid, really.
Uh-huh. Where I come from, the prevalent culture is very much not to regard sex as sacred in that sense.
Attempt at explanation:
That’s how that culture “wants” people to think (believe-in-belief) - because sex-in-itself has largely the “taboo” + “big” + “powerful” factors for it so people shrink from thinking too much about it; while the “importance” and the “emotional charge” factors are attached to the intersection of sex and romantic love/marriage/childbirth. Thinking about sex with those attachments is easier in such a culture than thinking about sex-in-itself.
Presumably to make sex without those latter attachments less desirable/less of a goal on a memetic level, but keep the overall cover of sacredness.
Sounds plausible/falsifiable enough within MixedNuts’ model, doesn’t it?
You can rescue any theory with a furry of auxilliary hypotheses.
Fixed that for you.
I stand by this answer.
I used to find gay man-man kissing (or any form of intimate touching between males, really) very gross despite a very strong conscious understanding and notion that it was just as “right” for them as between a man and a woman.
Then, as I noticed and saw more of it, it got normal.
Now I don’t find any of it the least bit gross or off-putting anymore, except in rare cases that evoke specific memories.
The just-so hindsight explanation that makes the most sense is that I believed-by-default everything I was told as a child about such things being “bad”, “gross” and “disgusting” or even outright “evil” by my peers. However, that’s only the slightly-more-likely out of many possible explanations, and I don’t have real data.
I don’t think so. I think that everything vile, disgusting, and repugnant got normal, not just gay sex.
I say this from observation of people who have conditioned themselves for a politically correct lack of disgust reflex. They also have a non political lack of disgust reflex: Observe, for example the “no pressure” video, and the cannibalism video
I predict that you are also no longer disgusted by poop eating, cannibalism, or the malicious infliction of painful and destructive injury.
I predict that if you watch the “no pressure” video, or the cannibalism video, you will wonder what the fuss was all about.
Someone who quite genuinely does not find feminists disgusting, is likely to be sincerely astonished when lots of people who piously pretend that they do not find feminists disgusting react with outrage at the “no pressure” video.