"If the ends do not justify the means, what in god's name does?" V. Lenin

A nuanced range of responses is required, But in the end, affordable, secure housing, better jobs and incomes, access to education and health services are critical elements. — Tom Storm

Your long experience gives you good insight.

Prior to "urban renewal", Minneapolis had a large population of older men who had been part of the heavy industry of mining and lumber. They were and were not homeless. They had housing -- flop houses providing rock bottom shelter. There were a couple of charities providing some food, and there were a lot of small cheap cafes (and liquor stores, of course). The flop houses were warehouses that had been divided up into boxes, each box having a lockable door. Wire fencing covered the open top. The spaces were not well ventilated or heated and sanitation facilities were minimal.

Starting in the 1950s, Minneapolis decided to scrape off the dilapidated blocks and build new. I've never seen any documentation about whaat happened to the several hundred old guys who had been living there. They just sort of disappeared (which, is what the city fathers hoped would happen). It took around 30-50 years for the rebuilding to occur, and there are still some empty lots.

Minneapolis didn't have a significant visible homeless problem until 2020 in the form of large encampments in public parks. Minneapolis likes its parks, and it wasn't long before the people in these camps were cleared out by park police. Efforts were made by social services to respond to this outbreak of homelessness, and for the most part, they are not visible again. I was downtown yesterday and there were a few panhandlers on the main street. This was during a brief warm day between very cold weather. One of them was 'sunning' on the cold wet sidewalk. I've seen him around downtown before. He's part of the "tolerable level" of rock bottom poverty. (He's inside somewhere -- he wasn't dressed to survive the winter outside.).

The city and and developers--sources of money--do not want to build housing for the explicitly homeless. (Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Charities have built a little, and the Ojibwa Tribe of Minnesota has several buildings for homeless tribal members.). Where to put it and how to run it seem to be insurmountable difficulties. Having formerly homeless people next door is about as popular as having a group home for serial rapists in the neighborhood. Not going to happen.

The magic formula seems to be to find some unattractive land or build in a rougher neighborhood and do so 'quietly'. Homeless housing with services does work reasonably well.

Gracias.

So, the question then is, what can we, and what should we do about it? Various approaches have been tried; some working better than others. I'm not an expert on this, and what may seem like obvious solutions may not produce the desired results

Just building housing may not be enough. A program in Minneapolis houses "public inebriates" -- chronic alcoholics. Residents get a room with a bath (and some services). They do not have to stop drinking, but they can only drink in their rooms -- not the hallways or common areas. This follows the Housing First approach.

Housing First's main priority is providing shelter; once shelter is in place, additional services aimed at dealing with their other problems comes into play. Opposite this approach is Treatment First. Addicts (drugs, alcohol) first go to treatment. If they are successful, then other services follow, such as housing. Neither approach is magic and there is a failure rate--not sure what it is. The traits that lead to and maintain addiction do not result in highly responsible behavior.

Criminalization is another approach. Drug and alcohol addicts are jailed. This might serve as both treatment and housing, but such a happy combination doesn't generally happen in prison. Plus, prisons are not drug proof, and they are hardly healthy environments.

Neglect is a time honored method. Let them rot. If they become too much of a nuisance (like collecting into large encampments in downtown or neighborhood areas), chase them out and burn everything. This approach will satisfy the affected property owners as long as the homeless don't return.

Neglect is the cheapest approach for a city and county -- the levels of government generally dealing with the homeless. The expenditures for housing units and treatment may not yield a monetary return, either for the city or for the GDP. A chronic addict may never become productive. Wait, aren't people more important than money? Well, for budgetary purposes, no. There is only so much tax income to go around and cities and counties--even wealthy ones--generally don't have cash laying around.

Prevention. Great idea. How do we go about that? A lot of homelessness is the result of chronic alcohol and drug abuse. So far we haven't found a very good way to prevent people from becoming alcoholics and drug addicts. [Most adults who use drugs and/or alcohol won't become alcoholics OR drug addicts. But some will--millions of them.]

Would fewer people become addicts if society were better, nicer, more humane, more ... all sorts of things? Maybe. But, cocaine, heroin, meth, alcohol -- even tobacco -- are highly addicting. I was addicted to tobacco. I started smoking way after it was well known that smoking causes cancer, lung, and heart disease. I quit on my own, as most people who quit tobacco do. Some hard drug addicts are able to quit on their own too, and for others, treatment is quite successful.

What will work? I don't know.

Good point! "Poor" and "poverty" do indeed have gradations quite apart from "relative poverty" (feeling poor because your friends have more money than you do).

First, class. The middle (entrepreneurial or professional) and upper 'kept' classes are not 'poor'. The working class can be divided up into four parts of various population size

Upper Working Class - steady employment, wages sufficient to avoid the stresses of poverty, but are not "comfortable"; they usually have minimal or no savings.

Middle Working Class - intermittent employment and wages insufficient to avoid periodic periods of economic distress (poverty).

Lower Working Class - intermittent and low wages which entail the continual stress of poverty.

Lumpenproletariat - destitute; not employed; may subsist on low government payments; immiserated; living outside of most social networks; homeless; unhoused (living on the street); unable to overcome their circumstances.

Add mental illness and drug addiction to anyone in the Working Class, and they may plunge into the abyss of destitution at the bottom, below the lowest rung of the ladder of success.

Over the last 40 to 50 years, long-term economic policies have reduced the wealth that was held by the working class. Job losses, stagnant wage growth, and steady inflation are to blame. The wealth drain has pushed millions of workers downward toward the middle and lower levels of the working class. Those who were formerly lower working class have been sunk into the abyss.

So, poverty exists on a gradient and is dynamic -- who is poor, and how poor they are changes over time.

I predict that the AI machines will turn out to be another bunch of ungrateful bastards.

It may be that, as Jesus said, that "The poor you will always have with you" but the circumstances of being poor, poorer, poorest, homeless, starving, and then dead vary from place to place. There is one set of causes for being poor in very remote areas. There's another set of causes for displaced people and refugees. And so on.

Capitalism is another cause of poverty, expanding and contracting the unemployed -- and thus potentially impoverished -- as it needs. Liberal social policies tend to provide more substantial support, and reduce the frequency of extreme poverty (and homelessness). Neoliberal social policies are much harsher, placing the responsibility for survival largely on the victims of the system.

Drugs -- meth, opiates, cocaine, alcohol -- facilitate the plunge into the abyss of homeless encampments. It is very difficult for anyone to get back onto the lowest rung of the ladder once one has fallen off. Drugs pretty much guarantee one will not get back on the ladder. And who profits from the illicit drug industry?

It takes time to become homeless in industrialized countries. It's like a shakedown racket, gradually sifting down misfortune all the way to the bottom. This may take decades. It may happen much faster.

Does being upset indicate something is wrong and out of alignment. — Andrew4Handel

Yes, it could. But being upset when things are out of alignment is a sign that you are normal.
Many people were upset by the 2020 US election results. From the perspective of both right and left, something seemed to be (nay, was) very out of alignment. Some people are still torqued out about it. In the world there are many purveyors of falsehoods, misrepresentations, errors, and the like. People lie. They fail to see things clearly. Lots of people are befuddled. None of us are ever at peak performance all the time.

Another reason for being upset is that we often extend our emotional tentacles out to where they can be easily stepped on. They do get stepped on and we get upset. Pull those pain sensors back in a ways.

Also, at various times in life we may be emotionally fragile. We are an open sore into which every possible irritant will find a way. The more this happens, the more reactive we get. Before long, we're angry, agitated, and anxious all the time. People start avoiding us.

None of this is about you specifically -- it's more about my own unpleasant states of mind and the states I have seen other people in.

I don't feel 'that way' any more, for which I am thankful. How did I bring it about? I can't claim credit. I was in a bad way, life changed, and I have been much better for the last 12 years.

I do think a change of life circumstances is sometimes the answer. The Radical Therapist motto was "Therapy means change, not adjustment." The problem is perceiving the necessary changes and then engineering them.

If you can eliminate a major source of personal abrasion, that might help.

If you can alter your mindset about something very irritating, that might help.

If you can find a way to accept the world as a very fucked up place, that might help.

If you can't, maybe you can find a good drug that will help you get along with less turmoil. (Psychoactive drugs can help, but they don't usually solve problems, alas.)

Holy men used to talk about "being in the world but not of it". Is that just more crazy talk? Well, not entirely. The world is an unsatisfactory place from many perspectives, and we're stuck here. IF, and it's a big IF, we can find a way to distance ourselves from all the crap we might be able to cope with it better. To some extent, acceptance of what is is the key. It helps us stop expecting the world to be very different. It helps us maintain psychological distance. It helps us lower our expectations of others to a more reasonable level.

Sadly, all this is easier to do if one has already started to feel better. Otherwise, it's just more irritating salt.

Often what's upsetting is the suppressed possibility that the other might be right. — Baden

No; that couldn't possibly be the case, he said... sarcastically? Ironically? Paradoxically?

Are you wondering whether colors have inherent meaning? They might.

The Lüscher color test is a psychological test invented by Max Lüscher in Basel, Switzerland. Max Lüscher believed that sensory perception of color is objective and universally shared by all, but that color preferences are subjective, and that this distinction allows subjective states to be objectively measured by using test colors. Lüscher believed that because the color selections are guided in an unconscious manner, they reveal the person as they really are, not as they perceive themselves or would like to be perceived. — Wikipedia

The book was published in 1969; I used the test more as a parlor game, and as such it produced results that the subjects found interesting. Validity? Reliability? Probably zip, but the idea is interesting.

A second interesting title is Painting By Numbers by Komar and Melamid, two Russian-born conceptual artists (now in their 80s). Their works tend to be provocations, but this particular book is a serious examination of what kinds of art are the most popular, and among popular types, what are the most desired colors. Results vary across cultures. Orange or pink, for example, are not highly sought after. Pink is a very rare flag color.



The two books support the idea that colors have at least some inherent meaning to humans. This seems like a reasonable idea to me, as long as we keep the word "some" in mind. Colors may carry a 'code' but we don't want to get carried away interpreting it.

Is this anywhere close to what you are thinking about?

\ I collected a few sex hygiene manuals published around 1900. They weren't so much for young men and boys as they were for their parents. pastors, and advisors. There was very little lewd lasciviousness and a lot of preachy verbiage.

Did anyone benefit from the cleanliness lectures? Precautions again self abuse (masturbation)? Did anyone come away any wiser about their burning desires? Most likely not. These books were, after all, written for the comfort of the advice giving past-their-prime elders, not for the needs of the actual subjects of the books.

The advice boiled down to exercise, fresh air, "cleanliness", avoiding any kind of temptation or unwholesome stimulation (like rubbing cloth), and getting married ASAP. What were girls advised to do? Practice chastity protection by gripping thin coins between their knees, I suppose. They developed powerful abductor muscles.

In our efforts to do effective HIV/AIDS prevention work in the gay population, we put together sexually explicit messages and handed them out in the baths, bars, adult bookstores, and so on. Quite reliably, some kid would find one of these messages on the sidewalk (or in whatever back alley they were poking around in) and bring home the prize. Mother then would call the Health Department to complain about the fascinating obscene, perverse, and extremely well-designed objects their children had found so interesting.

They would call us and warn us to be more careful. Well sure, we are careful, we'd plead. The guys in the bars, though, who take this filth from our hands, tend to be reckless, sex-positive militants. What are we to do?

I can find deteriorating neighborhoods in Minneapolis; you can probably find them in your city, too. But in a healthy city, deteriorating neighborhoods are the exception, not the rule.

Where the core city (Flynt, for example) is the core of the region, and the core is rotting, there can't be much hope. The whole economic landscape is gradually sinking, and a revitalization is extraordinarily unlikely. The long manufacturing boom which began 100 years ago isn't likely to be remotely approximated again.

Thus, those on the bottom in places like this have no prospects. Is it a surprise that physical and existential pain-reducing drugs are epidemic?

I don't like it, but it seems reasonable that when the "opiate of the masses" no longer works, real opiates will be sought after.

There's an interesting Frank Lloyd Wright church in Oconomowoc, Greek Orthodox. The sanctuary is bowl shaped, I believe -- based on the post card. The day we arrived the staff was too annoyed by previous unscheduled visitors to show the place. Understandable.

Lake Michigan is something — Wayfarer

This is extremely true. Lake Michigan is... something.

Do your relatives live in or near Madison? The capital of Wisconsin is unlike the rest of the state so it is more interesting. I haven't been there recently, but it used to be a sort of east coast outpost on the prairies.

Do they involve cheese? — frank

Well, yes, I suppose. Cheese is important. Do you have something against cheese? Who doesn't want to visit an ice castle made out of cheese curds? Kohler, WI is famous for making toilets and Green Bay is the toilet paper capital of the world. That's where "splinter-free toilet paper" was introduced in 1935. Then there is bratwurst and beer. Milwaukee has Pabst, Miller, Schlitz, and Blatz breweries.

In Wittenberg, WI, you could buy some really fine apple wood smoked liver paté, bacon, ham, or wieners at the Nuesky plant.

What more do you want?

Hey, let's not be denigrating the upper midwest. Wisconsin has several points of interest.

The 50 states are not allowed to print money or to operate at a deficit. This can produce happy outcomes. Minnesota (my state) has collected $17 billion dollars more than it spent. To governor and legislature are busy arguing about what to do with it. We have a rainy-day fund of a few billion, which is drawn on when tax collections come up short. Some of the surplus will go into that. Some will go into education. Some will probably be rebated.

A surplus this big is unprecedentedly large. Minnesota is a high-tax state. Consequently, we have better schools, better health, and better social services than many states. Our roads aren't good, but that's the fault of cold winters and hot summers.

A share of federal spending is good, of course. If the feds collected all the taxes that are due, if they spent less subsidizing industries that would still do just fine without it, and similar measures, the federal budget could come closer to being at least balanced on a year to year basis.

Our state Republicans are currently outnumbered in the legislature and the governor is a Democrat. It's the way things ought to be.

I'm a thrifty individual, and I would prefer the government have exercised thrift more often than it has. 32 trillion dollars is a hell of a lot of debt. On the other hand, only a mad man would think it should be dealt with in one fell swoop. Entitlements (like Social Security) and interest on the debt are not deferrable (unless you are a crazy nihilist). So, in order to pay down the debt we would need to reduce military expenditures and quite a bit of civilian discretionary expending, It would be pretty painful.

Will the government become thrifty? I doubt it very much.

Will Congress eventually raise the debt ceiling? Oh, probably -- at the last possible minute.

The debt ceiling was created by the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. The law was not intended as a means to paralyze the government. Rather, it established the plan whereby the government could undertake new borrowing to cover expenses. Yes, it could have been done differently, but it wasn't.

The national debt stands at what? 31 or 32 trillion dollars. A large hunk of that was accumulated during the governments support of the economy during the 2010 crash and then during the Covid 19 pandemic. In 2010 the national debt was at 13+ trillion dollars.

The GDP is currently -2022- around 20 trillion dollars.

Democrat and Republican congresses have both raised the debt limit. This year it will probably be a prolonged battle because some members of the far-right are what David Brooks calls 'nihilists'. They seem to be prepared to see the government burn down. There are not enough Nihilists in the House to definitely block a higher debt ceiling. There are enough, that they could force the government to default IF the rest of the republicans fail to vote for override.

Default would be bad for government employees, Social Security and Medicare recipients, Disability program recipients, military employees, suppliers, and all the US bond holders around the world (like China) who might want to cash a few million of the bonds in. A default would seriously damage the US Government's credit rating.

If they block raising the debt ceiling, then we might hope that the congressional nihilists will all have some kind of an unfortunate accident. It's not that many, maybe... 15.

The possession of physical beauty is a real advantage, along with height. I wouldn't know from personal experience, but my guess is that IF the beautiful and the tall feel entitled, it is because many other people have treated them as 'special', desired.

Option a) above is in real situations, repellant.

How porn sites stack up against other sites

I'm surprised that Amazon's retail site doesn't attract more visits, and that Yahoo attracted so many.

@wayfarer; Over the last 150 years, give or take a few, huge changes have occurred in society. Electricity, telephone, radio, automobiles, film, and television. The society has been becoming increasingly liberalized in many areas of 'private life'. Among others, contraception; birth control pills; the sexual revolution; women's lib; gay lib; black lib; etc. Abortion became legal. The society continued to be mobile in a variety of ways, some good, some bad. There were two world wars, and several local wars. There were significant changes in class structure. The economy has changed drastically.

So, into the last 150 years of change and shifting values, pornography developed from a tiny industry, producing images on glass photo plates; to paper photographs; to silent film; to sound film; to video; to the Internet. It began, and remained, in the cultural margins until changes in the law during the 1960s lifted the bans on distribution (in the US). Just a few years later, the industry had thousands of outlets across the country. At some point in the 1990s, the internet widened the channels of distribution. New gadgets--cheaper computers, tablets, and smart phones finally allowed pornography to become ubiquitous.

An assertion: the vast changes that occurred in society during the previous century and a half are far more significant than any one particular development over this time. Television was / is significant, but it is just one of many disruptive influences. Sexually explicit material was / is significant, but it is just one of many disruptive influences.

Society was already quite disrupted (compared to 1923 or 1953, say) by the time it became available across the internet. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Yeats said. If we look for ultimate causes, we will only find one contributing factor after another. Society may seem to have become one big pile of manure. If that is so, it took many loads from many places to achieve the present state of dysfunction.

O

for whatever reason these places exist on the margins. Never in the center — 0 thru 9

There are reasons.

1) Low overhead is one of the hard-core values of marginal businesses. It wouldn't pay to have a store in between Macy's and Neiman Marcus. The rent would be too high.

2) Urban renewal is a factor. Locate your porn shop in an area that is likely to be bought up and bulldozed, and you can probably get a pretty good price on your property by refusing to sell, unless the price exceeds the market rate.

3) The Law, in many cases, requires that porn stores be located a certain distance from desirable or sensitive locations. That forces them into marginal territory.

4) The margin isn't a disadvantage. Customers often prefer to patronize dive bars and porn shops that are in out of the way places, so that they will not be seen coming and going by 'respectable' people.

5). Porn is profitable, and so is tax evasion. Better to run a down at the heels operation that doesn't look like it is successful, then to have a fine store that requires high profit to maintain. At least in the good old days, porn stores operated on a cash basis--no credit cards, no checks. Easier to hide profits that way,

6) Mobility. An operator wants to be able to shut down an unprofitable operation without losing much on the closed up property.

With all due respect, BC, your opinion is essentially meaningless here. — Noble Dust

Now, now; let's not be dismissive.

If my personal taste in porn hasn't changed much in in 50 years, that doesn't mean I haven't observed any developments in the products available outside my own interests.

Yes, I am aware of extreme presentations of torture (real or faux), assault and rape; cheating; incest; animated porn; faux-or-not teen age porn--even bestiality. I've observed extreme behaviors in bathhouses and sex clubs, and I've heard reports from participants in various 'scenes'. I've also read a few reports.

↪BC Your posts crack me up. — Tzeentch

Make 'em laugh.

I do like to get a laugh, and there are a number of topics, like porn which are serious enough, but not so serious that humor must be avoided. the 7-11 victims murders in California this past weekend (Lunar New Year) are not appropriate topics for humor.

Sex is clearly an impossible topic if one must be 100% serious.

It's too late for me to look for references, as well. Yawn. However...

I don't think the addiction model applies to most porn users. Most users just want some degree of fresh imagery -- not the same videos or photos again and again. Which isn't to say that a particular title can't effectively satisfy a given user many times.

The required stimulus needs to be stronger and stronger, which translates to harder and harder core porn. — Noble Dust

It seems like this model would lead the producers of pornography into absurd sexual territory. How far can 'harder and harder core' go? My preferred style of porn has stayed within the same range for 50+ years. The hard core of 2023 is pretty much the same as the hard core of 1973. But then, I haven't been looking for ever more extreme imagery,

Children should be taught early on, to never get into bed -- alone or with somebody else -- while wearing street shoes. It's just unsanitary. Hard core pornography all too often glorifies sex while wearing shoes or boots--boots, especially, with heavy socks. And not nice fancy books, either--it's dirty working boots, typical of working class men. We'll discuss proletarian porn later.

Boots in bed are one of the mysteries of pornography. Why do naked people have sex with their shoes or boots on? This bizarre practice is really quite perverse, and should be vigorously suppressed. Workboots in bed are far worse than candy-red spike heels. That one can understand, but shit kicking boots?

Look at the document below! Granted, this is weak tea, but he is naked, so it counts. No genitalia revealed, not so much as one pubic hair displayed, moderators please note.

The perplexing question:

Having engaged in an orgy, is he putting his shoes on before he gets dressed, or is he taking his shoes off after having gotten undressed before the orgy? It's intolerable, either way. Children should not be exposed to this sort of perverse imagery, because it will inevitably lead to discomfort and injury during sex. It also leads to illogical dressing habits. Pants on first, then socks and shoes, Socks and shoes off first, then the pants. Shirts can be removed independent of boots and shoes. That's the way God intended it to be.

One can only hope that the orgy was conducted with a better sense of propriety.

Gambling and pornography involve somewhat different principles. The major risk in looking at the next picture of one's preferred naked body is that it won't do much for one. Meh! Next. Every play for a gambler involves the potential of material loss or material gain. The stakes are higher, with the pain of loss or the adrenaline and dopamine rush of winning more intense. Plus, the stakes are always staked against the player.

What may happen to some pornography users is that they become desensitized to sexual images, and have to increase the volume they look at to find stimulating material. I don't know that they have to see more extreme material, but they at least have to see new, unfamiliar material.

That's what keeps the adult film studios busy.

I wasn't making much of a moral equivalence case for habituated behavior. Of course, heroin or meth addiction is much worse than coffee or 'soap opera addiction'. Heroin and meth cause intensely strong addictions, coffee a weak addiction, and soap operas no addiction at all. Habits aren't addictions, but are significant aspects of behavior. Habitual use of pornography may not be a significant factor in the life of one person, but may be quite troublesome in someone else's, depending on all sorts of other factors.

The first time The Philosophy Forum (or Philosophy Forum?) crashed, I was a bit discombobulated because a morning habit of checking in was frustrated. It got better after a few days. Dessert after dinner is a pleasant habit; not getting dessert won't result in mass suicide (one hopes).

Masturbating with on-line pornography can be a habit, but if the Internet goes down, one will survive without a crisis. He might even be forced to use his imagination.

Song from the early 1960s

Shawn: I supposed Peterson was against it, yes?

Everything that is true about 20th/21st century culture, media, entertainment, advertising, business, regulation, religion, social and private behavior, and more is also true about pornography. Pornography doesn't exist on a separate dimension from the rest of society. It's a piece of the whole. It's been a piece of the whole since before photography, when pornographic scenes were drawn and painted for an elite audience who could afford such erotic luxury.

Art, music, drama, film, etc. have been democratized; it's accessible to anyone with the minimum cost of a ticket or access to streaming services. Porn has also been democratized and production is by the latest technology and distribution systems. Children routinely access sophisticated information sources I would not have thought to access at their age, sources far beyond the local public library's print collection.

Naturally -- and it is natural -- they also access sexual material. What is more alarming than 12 year olds looking at pornography, is 12 year olds looking at pornography without having had any education in sexuality--personal sexuality, and interpersonal sexuality.

Should they have such instruction? Of course they should. Before they reach 12, curious children are investigating sex with their peers. Peer-led sex instruction, though normal, is likely to be somewhat less than ideal.

People get hooked on phonics--a desirable addiction. They also get hooked on Crispy Creme donuts, Coca Cola, coffee, Diet Pepsi, work, McDonalds, the New York Times, shopping at Neiman Marcus, fishing, working out at the gym, watching soap operas, and so on. We will, in due course, become hooked on porn too -- if we happen to like it. Will spending too much time at work negatively affect your relationship? Yes, it will. Can Crispy Creme donuts ruin your life? Yes, if you eat enough of them. How watching football all the time? Heard of 'football widows'?

Investing too much of one's extra time and energy in watching porn will probably affect your relationship, along with all the other things that one can do too much of (work, watching football, becoming obese from eating too many donuts, becoming narrow minded by reading the New York Times exclusively, etc.

:100:

One problem I have with children and pornography is that when I was a child (let's say, 12 years old--1958) pornography of any kind was simply not available where I grew up. I had, therefore, no personal, subjective experience with encountering sexual material. What I did do, along with millions of other boys, was mine every possible source -- Sears catalogues, encyclopedias, National Geographic, etc. for any imagery related to sex, however distant, that I could find. Pornography wasn't generally available to me until the last 1960s, early 1970s. By that time I was an adult.

The first encounter I did have was exhilarating. Seeing several pictures of naked men in print was intensely exciting, not because I hadn't seen naked men before, but because this was a 'product for sale' which meant that there was a market of other men who liked this. If, at that time, I could have gone on line and seen 10,000 pictures of naked men and men having sex, I can not imagine how that would have affected my psychosocial development.

It certainly was the case that in the isolation of Podunk Village, USA I was yearning for exactly this information.

One thing though, is that there were plenty of articles about straight sex in popular media which were very available. As a young teenager, the content of these articles wasn't very healthy or helpful because it was out of context. I was trying to draw conclusions from stories about adult sexual relationship problems which had no bearing on my life (at that age). Some of my conclusions were just plain weird.

gross — Mikie

All sorts of normal, common human activities can be presented as "gross", of course. Sometimes the difference between pleasing and disgusting is a matter of minor adjustments in the filming. But some producers do seem to go out of their way to include footage that has to appeal only to a very narrow range of 'taste'.

The Waters film Pink Flamingoes isn't pornography IMO, but at several points, Waters' usual merely 'bad taste' crossed into 'shocking tastelessness'--just a few seconds worth.

Endocrine disruptors of various kinds have become ubiquitous. Very bad. In addition to endocrine disruptors, there are the various chemicals that disrupt genetic expression and development in egg or womb. And then there are the various carcinogens--which doesn't exhaust the list.

All part of our multidimensional environmental disaster!

If maintaining the reproductive viability of the species is a moral imperative then it's probably a good idea to reduce the consumption of pornography in society, but that's not happening. — punos

The reproductive viability of the species appears to be intact on a global level. Are we to suppose that super-stimulating pornography is the cause of less-than-replacement-reproduction-levels? Or is super-normal economic stimulation perhaps the problem?

BTW, probably no sensible person thinks it is a good idea for children to spend much time looking at adult pornography.

Not to me.

May I observe there are a number of different kinds of pornography. Many people consume interior design material the same way others consume sexually explicit material. There are also sports pornography, military pornography, fashion pornography, ad infinitum.

Ok, ok, so I realize you are raising the issue of sexually explicit pornography

One of the problems of a teenager viewing porn is that he will see a lot of unrepresentative body types. In gay porn, at least, an average-looking male is hard to come by. The subjects have uniformly buffed bodies -- every muscle group is at least fairly well defined. (I'm not speaking of bodybuilder models, here.). This is a distorted image of what a large portion of potential sex partners will look like.

The same probably applies to straight porn, which as a gay man, I've spent very little time viewing. Both representative body types of women and the sexual styles which most women would probably prefer appear to be few and far between.

I'm an objectifier. I do look at other men as sexual objects -- in addition to looking at other men as multilayered complex beings. However, if someone is thinking about fucking, multilayered complexity isn't the approach they are going to take.

The sex drive wasn't designed in a feminist sensitivity and diversity workshop. It's pretty basic by itself. When men and women are guided by the sex drive alone, the results are effective, but not necessarily grace filled. We often (but not always) couple our sex drives to our drives for affection, love, nurturing, comfort, and so on.

Pornography is good at depicting basic sex. That is what it is for. Complex cultural works (film, fiction, drama, poetry, opera, dance, etc.) are capable of capturing the complex human experience above and beyond basic sex.

One thing about basic sex, though: there is no such thing as meaningless sex.

One other thing: Early and thorough sex education coupled with emotion education would help people a great deal.

There are "great films" and there are Films we like the most. They may not be the same.

Low Brow Comedy Favorites

The Meaning of Life
High Anxiety
Twelve Chairs (Brooks)
The Producers
Pink Flamingos
Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Midbrow Comedy Favorites

What about Bob
Bob Carol, Ted, and Alice
Play It Again Same
Throw Mama Off the Train
Annie Hall
Love and Death (Allen)
Wizard of Oz

highbrow film

Midnight Cowboy
Casablanca
The Graduate
Annie Hall
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
Godfather
The Last Detail
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest
The Last Winter (Film Board of Canada)
The Boys in the Band
The Seventh Seal
Koyaanisqatsi
Dr Strangelove
On the Beach
Z (With its dark view of Greek politics and its downbeat ending, the film captures the director's outrage about the junta that then ruled Greece
Brokeback Mountain
Notorious
Dim Sum: A Piece of Heart (Wayne Wang)
Gone With the Wind

Australian

Breaker Morant
A Town Like Alice
Gallipoli
`
And a few dozen others.

Forgot "Cabaret"

now that we are living longer, social pressures brought around by rigorous and longer education, establishing social and financial security, are pushing the average reproductive age later and later in life, which applies pressure for those that maintain health and reproductive viability into their 30s and 40s. — Benj96

True enough, but the age of reproduction affected by social factors (like education and the economy) is a short term factor, too short for evolution to have had any consequences.

BTW, at the present time, roughly 1/3 of industrialized populations will die of cancer, 1/3 from heart disease, and 1/3 from circulatory defects in the brain (stroke). Infection doesn't presently play so large a role in developed economies. Low death rates from infection are not guaranteed, however. Evolution is working on the short time scales of microorganisms. Infection may have a very bright future, unless we find a solution to antibiotic resistance.

But it may also serve as a reason for our propensity for cancers. — Benj96

Do we have a propensity to develop cancer? In 1901 the leading cause of death was infectious disease -- endemic infections like tuberculosis, and acute infections like staphylococcus. Sulfa and antibiotics reduced infections, allowing cancer a greater opportunity. Better food and sanitation led to greater longevity, which gave us more time to develop cancers and heart disease.

we're relatively fast evolving - from apes to humans in, what?, 2.5m years? — Agent Smith

We evolved through a series of species in stages. Some of those stages, like from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens maybe took 2.5 million years, but there were several steps before then. I don't know why the total number of years would be between the first branch of our last common ancestor and us.

Not for nothing do we fit the definition of "a plague species", like rats.

IF what I said in the post above about language being able to start riots is true, should we then forbid people to talk that way?

There is the principle of free speech; there is also the principle of prior restraint. The state can't forbid something from being said on the basis that it might possibly be libelous, criminal, or provocative.

I am probably a free-speech absolutist, in practice. I haven't heard anything recently that I thought should be censored. (Maybe 50 years ago I would have been willing to ban some speech.). I'm pretty opinionated, and other people have all kinds of ideas I think are really bad, dead wrong, and all-round stupid. I don't think they should be enjoined from saying what they have to say. I want to be able to say whatever is on mind, therefore, I'm in favor of free speech.

It's at the border of acceptable ideas where free speech becomes "dangerous". Some people are in favor of sexual relationships between adults and older children. Endorsing man-boy love is pretty much a reputational suicide in polite society. Homosexual activity was, once upon a time, "the love that dare not speak its name." Now it won't shut up. Being a Communist in the USA was verboten in the late 1940s and 1950s. Now it's not a hot topic.

There is no risk today in calling Donal Trump a fraud. What is acceptable changes over time, and with it the contested boundaries of free speech.