Light and Water for the Trees

Temperance not only is one of the four Cardinal Virtues of Catholicism (and one of the five Precepts of Buddhism), it’s also the name of a specific movement gathering steam throughout the 19th century, mainly in anglophone countries, aiming to reduce the consumption of alcohol.

In the US, much of the Temperance Movement was religiously inspired (although by Protestantism rather than Catholicism or Buddhism), and much of it was led by women (such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873 and still around today).

The most obvious way to ‘temper’ the consumption of alcohol is not to drink it at all; so the call for Temperance escalated into pleas for Abstinence. But the personal choice not to drink at all is much easier if there’s no temptation around. And thus the Movement moved inexorably from demanding Temperance through advocating Abstinence to pushing for Prohibition - “an intemperate denunciation of temperate drinking,” as G.K. Chesterton once derisively described it.

Temperance, now in the guise of Prohibition, was spread with a religious zeal bordering on the fanatical. In 1851, Maine became the first Prohibition state; four years later, there were already 12 ‘dry’ US states. In 1919, the 18th Amendment extended Prohibition to the entire US. Jubilant Temperance zealots were predicting the end of crime, and prepared to promote the benefits of Prohibition in other countries.

But this is where the Temperance wave crested. Far from reducing crime, Prohibition actually gave organised crime a serious boost - e.g. Al Capone and other ‘classic’ American gangsters. Prohibition was not only impopular, but eventually untenable. The 18th Amendment is the only one to have ever been rescinded (in 1933, by the 21st).

You're alive. The world is alive. Life is joyous. The rest are arbitrary things we make up in our heads, and then take waaay too seriously.
-- me

"Things that a culture doesn't want to talk about, that culture makes it cumbersome to talk about. One mechanism for creating that cumbersomeness is to keep the vocabulary for talking about those things severely limited, so that when people try to talk about them they have to "go on and on and on," so that their listeners grow restless and start demanding that they "get to the point."
--Dr Elgin

I don't think the question here is one of arcane vocabulary or meanings negotiated specifically within the context of the conversation. The vocabulary can be very extensive and still make it cumbersome to talk about things society doesn't like to think about, by loading all variations and synonyms with the narrow accepted meaning. This makes it cumbersome for anyone to challenge the "accepted wisdom" or talk about alternatives. The vocabulary establishes a context of preconceived notions that is very hard to escape from, leading to elaborate and cumbersome qualifications and disclaimers that will often be met with disbelief. So a person will be forced to use constructions like "sodomy without connotations of divine wrath that ruins cities" or "romantic relationship where sexuality is not the main focus, no really" or "pedophilia that is not child abuse" or "feminism that recognizes the right of women to put their family before their career without being made to feel guilty about it" or "poor through no fault of their own nor lack of effort nor inherent personality flaw" and so on.

Societies that provide infants with a great deal of physical affection ('tender loving care') are later characterized by relatively non-violent adults. When the exceptions were investigated, it was found that the violence of all but one could be accounted for by the absence of premarital sexual behavior.

"Body pleasure and the origins of violence" by James W. Prescott

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html

Clearly, if we consider violent and aggressive behaviors undesirable then we must provide an enriched somatosensory environment so that the brain can develop and function in a way that results in pleasurable and peaceful behaviors. The solution to physical violence is physical pleasure experienced within the context of meaningful human relationships.

For many people, a fundamental moral principle is the rejection of creeds, policies, and behaviors that inflict pain, suffering and deprivation upon our fellow humans. This principle needs to be extended: We should seek not just an absence of pain and suffering, but also the enhancement of pleasure, the promotion of affectionate human relationships, and the enrichment of human experience.

If we strive to increase the pleasure in our lives this will also affect the ways we express aggression and hostility. The reciprocal relationship between pleasure and violence is such that one inhibits the other; when physical pleasure is high, physical violence is low. When violence is high, pleasure is low. This basic premise of the somatosensory pleasure deprivation theory provides us with the tools necessary to fashion a world of peaceful, affectionate, cooperative individuals.

The world, however, has limited time to correct the conditions that propel us to violent confrontations. Modern technologies of warfare have made it possible for an individual or nation to bring total destruction to large segments of our population. And the greatest threat comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and which are most repressive of sexual affection and female sexuality. We will have the most to fear when these nations acquire the weapons of modern warfare. Tragically, this has already begun.

Lack of feedback is why people believe they are reliable character judges:

Manuals discriminate truth tellers from liars through numerous verbal and nonverbal behaviors, often linked to involuntary physiological responses. Partly contradicting this literature of interrogation expertise, experimental studies find that the short-term success rate of professional lie catchers—police officers, detectives, prison guards, customs officers, and the like—falls mostly in the 45% to 60% range, where 50% is the chance rate. In these experiments, professional lie catchers only differ from nonprofessionals in their high level of confidence! The professionals’ unwarranted confidence has been traced to lack of feedback in the workplace regarding the accuracy of their judgments and to their false reliance on behavioral signs of deceit, such as gaze aversion. In fact, behavioral signs of deceit differ across liars and constitute only a small effect.

(http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/jscope/arrigo03.htm)

Found an awesome (NSFW) picture blog:
http://disabledpeoplearesexy.tumblr.com

We are presently enjoying an unannounced renaissance in creativity made possible by the tools of technological empowerment... This is why, when Gail Dines argues that the internet has made men addicted to porn, and influenced men’s sexual fetishes until they make perverse demands on women, who themselves never enjoy porn and thus are free of sexual fetishes, I laugh until I can’t breathe.

(Previous link to be contrasted with http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html gloom and doom)

What does real good sex need? There are three things! They all begin with C so it is easy to remember.

I used to think that cats don't exist, since they aren't mentioned in the Bible. However, a newly discovered chapter in the Book of Genesis has provided the answer to Where do pets come from?

Adam and Eve said: Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day. Now we do not see you anymore. We are lonesome here and it is difficult for us to remember how much you love us.

And God said, No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourselves.

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam and Eve. And it was a good animal. And God was pleased. And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and Eve and he wagged his tail. And Adam said, Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.

And God said, No problem. Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG.

And Dog lived with Adam and Eve and was a companion to them and loved them. And they were comforted. And God was pleased. And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that an angel came to the Lord and said: Lord, Adam and Eve have become filled with pride. They strut and preen like peacocks and they believe they are worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught them that they are loved, but perhaps too well.

And God said, No problem! I will create for them a companion who will be with them forever and who will see them as they are. The companion will remind them of their limitations, so they will know that they are not always worthy of adoration. And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam and Eve.

And Cat would not obey them. And when Adam and Eve gazed into Cat's eyes, they were reminded that they were not the supreme beings. And Adam and Eve learned humility. And they were greatly improved. And God was pleased. And Dog was happy. And Cat didn't care one way or the other.

Couldn't have said it better myself:

My selling photos of my naked body to raise money for a cause I believe in is automatically part of the commodification of women… but your attempt to enforce the standards of modesty has nothing to do with women’s physical and sexual suppression? Your choice to scold me, and the other women who posed in this calendar, is somehow magically free of this sexist culture, the culture that treats women’s bodies as shameful, the culture that reflexively abjures women to cover our nakedness, the culture that demands that women share our bodies only with the men who rightfully own them, the culture that reflexively slut-shames women for enjoying our bodies and our sexualities and making our own decisions about it? I am a cog in the machinery of this culture… but you, magically, have freed yourself from it?

And as a result, you have earned the authority to tell me what I should and should not do with my own naked body?

I have heard arguments like yours many times, aimed by women at other women. “You should never sell images of your naked body — we live in a culture where female bodies are commodified, and even the consensual display of female nudity contributes to that.” “You should never have consensual sadomasochistic sex — we live in a culture of violence against women, and even consensual SM contributes to it.” “You should never have sex with men — we live in a culture of deep power differences between men and women, and even a consensual heterosexual relationship can’t escape them and contributes to them.” And yet the women passing these judgments, the women demanding that other women make complicated choices about their bodies based on someone else’s rigid ideology, never seem to say to themselves, “You should never shame other women about their consensual choices with their bodies — we live in a culture of relentless slut-shaming, in which women are not seen as having physical and sexual agency, and these judgments contribute to it.”

The punny title "faith in mind" may refer to the observation that we are constrained to trust in the essential soundness of our own mind, because if we can't trust our mind, we can't trust our distrust either. Reductio at absurdum.

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I got a CD full of Tarantella music as a present :) The liner notes were fairly interesting.

Tarantella: A remarkable example of early music therapy that originated in the region of Taranto, a city in southeastern Italy, in the 15th to 17th centuries. There it was believed that the bite of the tarantula spider caused a dire affliction called tarantism that was characterized by profound melancholy, a sense of imminent death, stupor, madness, and convulsions. The stated belief of the time was that victims needed to engage in frenzied dancing to prevent death from tarantism. Only dancing to a special type of music could cure the victim. The dancing was typically energetic and went for 3 or 4 days. The music to which the victim (and others) danced was the tarantella, a fast piece in 6/8 time with a lively and turbulent rhythm. The tarantella was performed on appropriate instruments, often with a shrill timbre. The music was selected to be in tune with the particular temperament of the victim. Thus, the tarantella was a type of music therapy tailored to the individual patient.

Many of the victims of the affliction manifested a distinct tendency towards exhibitionism. Bedecked with garlands of rushes and coronets of vine-leaves, and more or less naked, they behaved with frenzied abandon, making obscene gestures and movements improvised by a subconcious completely liberated from all prejudices.

Dancing the tarantella alone was said to be unlucky, and thus it was always a couples dance, involving either a man and a woman, or two women. The music is generally led by a mandolin. Goethe describes the dance as, "Three girls, one with a tambourine (with bells on it) and castanets are used by the other two. The two girls with the castanets execute the steps. The girls steps are not distinctive or even graceful, basically they step in time and spin around in place using the castanets, when one tires, she trades places with the tambourine Girl. (They do this for fun for hours, 20-40 hours at times.)"

Many people have suggested that the whole business was a deceit to evade religious proscriptions against dancing. It is suggested that ancient Bacchanalian rites that had been suppressed went underground under the guise of emergency therapy for bite victims.