200 College Students

naked in a pond.

Why didn't the security guard just join them?

We have a really warped attittude about the human body in this country, as well as a real problem with reality. It occurs to me that nudity or near-nudity on television, advertising spreads in national magazines, film, is, to most people, mildly titillating but less and less of a big deal. When it's a bunch of college kids skinny dipping, it's A Problem. People might think Impure Thoughts, and even have Sexual Impulses.

I run into this occasionally when I'm looking for models. Dancers and other artists are the least reluctant to pose. (And dancers tend to be the best models, for obvious reasons.) "Normal" guys get nervous and defensive because they're going to be Naked. (Kenneth Clark, in The Nude, made a distinction between "nude" and "naked," and felt that modern nudes, especially in photographs, were beneath consideration. Needless to say, I think Kenneth Clark was full of beans and simply didn't understand anything that happened after the Napoleonic Wars.)

This all has to do with our ridiculous attitude about sex, which has probably done as much damage to this country as anything else. I find it interesting that those who object most strenuously to nudity are the ones to seem to focus on sex the most. Even I, who am not noted for lack of interest in sex, can be in the company of nude men and not immediately think about tupping them. (In fact, I think I had a model or two who were somewat disappointed, but in that situation, it's all about the picture. If I hadn't been so focused, though, things might have been different.)

It occurs to me that there's a tie-in with my ongoing discussion with GayPatriotWest about morality here: I don't think promiscuity is, in and of itself, bad or immoral. In fact, I think (and there is much evidence to support this view) that for men, in particular, it's normal. (See this post.) (Not that I'm buying into the "women are programmed for monogamy" trope. It's just that, looking at it from a purely biological point of view, males of any species fulfill one purpose: sex. In most cases, aside from that, we're pretty much superfluous.) Sex is, without context, value-neutral, and like so many other things, its value is dependent on what you bring into the mix. Do you have to be willing to marry everyone you have sex with? I don't think so, but I think you have to come to the situation honestly, and that honesty applies to what you are hearing as much as to what you are saying. Nor can it be all about you: you're not the only one involved here.

This ties in with my idea that real morality is something rather more complex than a three-thousand-yearl-old list of tribal taboos from a band of nomads. There are people who claim to live their lives based on those taboos, and some of them even do (although they seem to pick and choose a lot). I suppose if you're that comfortable with rules that someone else imposes, that's fine, but I don't see why anyone should feel that their choices in that matter should apply to everyone. (Yep, you guessed it -- I don't respond well to authority.)

Strangely enough (or maybe not), fiction presents these issues more clearly than any other means I've seen. And even more strangely (or even less), two fantasy writers that I can think of present what is to me the clearest definition of evil: Anne Bishop, in The Black Jewels Trilogy, and C. J. Cherry, in The Fortress Series, both come to the same conclusion: evil, i.e., immorality, is the misuse of power over others. It is self-referential, accepts no authority and no limitation, and is heedless of consequences to those it affects. By inference, morality is careful of others, imposes its own limitations on behavior, and is ever aware that every action has consequences for which responsibility must be assumed.

That seems to me to be a realistic and workable definition, because it completely discards such concepts as sin, temptation, and god and puts the onus squarely where it belongs: on us as individuals. Pragmatically, it's a definition that applies equally to any religiously based morality or to the sort of public morality that we need to subscribe to in order to survive as social animals. And I think the results are as praiseworthy as any from more "traditional" definitions. To me, one of the major flaws of "traditional" morality as espoused in this country is that, aside from subjecting one to ridicule for making one's favorite political slogan a moral dictum, it removes itself from any meaningful discussion of consequences. "You're going to Hell" is not something that I can take seriously, since I don't believe in Hell, and it is once again completely self-referential: the message is not dispproval for abdication of one's responsibility to one's fellow creatures, but simply the fear of being punished for breaking the rules.

(I want to make a contrast with the basic rule of Paganism (about our only rule, actually), which, fully stated, is: "If it harms none, do what you will." That's it -- it's on your shoulders. No one's going to tell you what "harm" is -- you have to figure it out and act accordingly. You actually have to think about what you're doing and the possible fallout. I need to consider this some more, but I think in essence that's what I want to say; I'm just not sure yet that I'm correct.)

This is not at all what I intended to write, but life is like that.