It's not the ship, it's the motion of the ocean, and besides, everything is relative. \

I've only come across rather old and decrepit stinkhorns and those not recently.

Pollock - a big flopping fish? Polock or Polack? A flopping person from Poland? Either would work.

Once upon a time I ate a lot of sesame seeds. The next day, when I went to the toilet (to do a dirt, not a wee as Borat would say), I saw that my stool was covered completely in those sesame seeds. I can swear that I've never seen a more disgusting scene than that — Agustino

Sig Freud!

You'd better come into the office and lie down on the couch right away. You're a very sick man.

It is interesting that you wouldn't mind standing next to someone who was smelly, but wouldn't want to be seen by others as having tolerated their smelliness. Shades of other-directedness.

At some point, life becomes easier when we come to terms with our own shit, literally. Raising children (which I haven't done) and raising dogs (which I have) are effective at busting up our cleanliness obsessions, and alleviating the shock of the stool -- that what goes in comes out and in sometimes quite identifiable condition. Once our young dog got into the dog food and stuffed herself. A bit later, while I was sitting on the back step, she crawled into my lap and vomited up an enormous Science Diet slushy. Yuck. But, because it was OUR dog, I wasn't freaked out--as I would otherwise have been. What she ate was sometimes quite identifiable when I picked up her stool for disposal. Like bits of raw carrot. Chewed up and swallowed bits of fabric. Wild baby rabbits swallowed whole were still whole.

Why feed a dog expensive dog food? Because it promises to produce a very firm, drier stool -- easier to pick up. Turned out to be true.

Having chronic bowel problems has helped many people understand that unexamined shit may not be worth excreting. Stools are a window into our bowels -- a place we do not want to go ourselves.

Excellent example of the created need/want. More: Downy, Airwick, Glade, and other odiferous products. Running shoe$ (for people who would die if they ran 2 blocks to catch a bus); all lawn care products; pick up trucks (for people who might haul 3 bags of mulch from the hardware store); and on, and on...

But surely a diamond is only valuable because it's hard to get — Agustino

You would find it profitable (possibly) to dip into the career of Edward Bernays, November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995). He was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda. He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations.

It isn't just diamonds. Companies who manufacture rather ordinary commodities also think about the herd and their various instincts. They don't do this because they are wicked (well, they may be wicked, but we'll discuss that elsewhere) they do it because their corporate existences depend on selling more stuff than their competitors. If they are honest, they will only manipulate the public with artificial wants. If they are crooked, like the recent example of Volkswagon, they'll also lie and cheat to get their products sold, or poison the public (like the bastard who was cutting costs in Flint, Michigan).

We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology. We seek to ... strengthen the tradition of the diamond engagement ring -- to make it a psychological necessity capable of competing successfully at the retail level with utility goods and services....

Very glad you pulled out the information on diamonds--excellent example of manufactured want. "Diamonds are forever." Well, no more than H2O is forever, or the lead pipes it is delivered through.

in 2015, 135,000,000 carets of diamonds were produced (mined and exported), or 59,526 pounds. The grade of all this carbon gravel varies, of course. (Google, the usual source).

As Ms. Monroe sang so memorably,

Men grow cold as girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end
But square cut or pear shape these rocks don't lose there shape
Diamonds are a girl's best friend

Behold, the Stinkhorn Fungus The fungus site was too prudish to mention it's obvious phalic shape, except to mention its name, Phallus impudicus. Looks like a big white dick to me. It does note that it is covered by slime, sometimes. But who and what isn't?

I have a friend who is always talking in terms of philosophies of life. — Rachel

You understand, I would guess, that you are addressing a room full of people who are "always talking in terms of philosophies of life". You are probably making a couple dozen souls jittery just by bringing up the topic of unproductive philosophizing.

The guy likes to talk. It's a way of being in the world, his shtick. Maybe he needs new material--more interesting content, better jokes, improved delivery.

While some of the world's problems are the result of people who are all talk and no action ("All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing,") most of the world problems are caused by very efficient and effective people who are very good at doing things, whether they talk about it or not. Like Donald Trump, for instance. He's one busy guy and a royal pain in the body politic, par excellence.

On the other hand, I assume he is not holed up in a basement closet playing video games and reading Plato. It is good for people to engage the physical world -- do something, run, walk, swim, climb, dig, lift, pile, build, destroy -- something.

What does he do all day?

Have you read that book, The 7 Habits of Not Very Effective People? I wrote that.

What you say is generally true, but it isn't the whole story. Marriages fail, but people apparently want to be married and they remarry at very high rates. That's one thing.

Another is that one does see deterioration in the capacity of individuals to conduct a well-organized, effective relationship in which they can be relatively happy and raise children successfully. Some of this connects with what you said. More is owing to the circumstances of employment, income, and various forms of insecurity the a lot of people are exposed to: unemployment, under-employment, temporary employment, precarious finances, debt, food and shelter insecurity, inadequate education, drugs/alcohol, bad childhoods, and so on. All this used to be big city, urban problems. Now one finds very disrupted families, unstable living set-ups, and so on in the once rock-solid rural communities.

These circumstances alone can combine to wreck marriages and relationships--never mind immature, screwed up people who aren't ready to enter into adult relationships successfully.

The marriages of successful, middle to upper class people fail for different reasons than lower working class marriages, where life is just much tougher.

Yeah I share your position, except that I also add sex to the mix. For example my wife cheating on me alienates her from me. This is just an inevitable event - part and parcel of the cheating itself. So sexual habits do - whether you like it or not - play a role in alienation. How many couples and relationships break up because of sexual habits? A lot. — Agustino

We are, clearly, not talking about the same thing. Relationships breaking up because of cheating is one thing, alienation is something else altogether different, even if the term "alienation of affections" is used, which is what you are talking about. People usually feel very bad when they are abandoned (by a spouse or lover, quite legitimately, and seek various forms of relief. Some drink excessively, some self-isolate, some become very depressed, some become promiscuous... and more, and in combination.

Alienation, as I am employing it here, means:

the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved: unemployment may generate a sense of political alienation.
• loss or lack of sympathy; estrangement: public alienation from bureaucracy.
• a feeling of disconnection from the larger society; of life being meaningless (whereas it one time had seemed meaningful; purposelessness where one previously had felt purposeful
• (in Marxist theory) a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited by economic forces.

Advertising featuring sexually attractive people in various forms of suggestive deportment is like a target -- centered on a particular group (males between the ages of 18 and 32, for instance), but being seen by many others (like females between the ages of 65 and 85) who are not the target. Old ladies are a vanishingly small portion of the market for motorcycles--no zero, but close to it. Visa versa for moisturizing skin creams with floral fragrance.

BUT the kind of advertising aimed at 18-32 year old males and 65-85 year old females may have very similar functions -- not to sell sex, but to sell a real product with altogether illusory properties to reduce alienation (and no advertiser uses that term in ads) -- the feeling of disconnection, irrelevance, and so on.

But advertisers play a crooked game, for whatever and to whoever they direct their attention.

Card player to the Dealer: "Is this a game of chance?"
W. C. Fields (the dealer): "Not the way I play it, no."

Here is a fundamental difference between your thinking and mine: Sex isn't the means by which people are alienated from each other. What is alienating is the abrasive competition for status, access to status, and goods; what is alienating is the meaninglessness that most people find in their work life; what is alienating is locating the meaning of individuals in their capacity to consume, or their low worth because they can not consume (enough stuff).

Sexual advertising works because people salivate like dirty dogs watching it. They fantasise about it day in and day out, otherwise why would they advertise like this? Because it works! They know that secretly this is what most people want. — Agustino

Rather than people being OBSESSED with sex, I think people LONG FOR warmth and sharing (intimacy). It is to this LONGING that advertising appeals are made, and no product advertised as fulfilling this longing will ever do so. People buy the suit / car / motorcycle / jewelry / bicycle / or whatever it is, thinking that this will make them more appealing to someone. It yields a little satisfaction. Sure it does -- nice suits, good cars, high-tech bicycles, etc. are a pleasure to use, to wear, to drive, to ride... Bit they don't give us love, caring, intimacy, warmth, sharing.

Is sex in short supply? Probably not by much, but we are a lonely crowd; we want and need love, affection, sharing, warmth, intimacy... and these are in quite short supply. Nothing new there -- the alienated quality of life under capitalism has been noted for quite some time.

One aspect of celibacy... In the west it grew out of medieval thinking and practice and about monks, nuns, and priests being "married to God'. This period followed something like a thousand years, give or take a couple of weeks, where clergy were married and where nuns and monks were fewer in number, less cloistered, and so on. Celibacy became part of a more rigorous spiritual practice.

Monks, nuns, and priests became in time the workhorses of the church -- running schools, hospitals, orphanages, universities, and so on. Having a celibate workforce which resided in-house was tremendously advantageous for the church, whatever the costs to the individuals were.

And there were costs.

Life in the convents, monasteries, and priests' residences could be pretty dreary. The orders of nuns, monks, and priests were vastly reduced during the 1960s and since. The orders didn't empty out so that the formerly professed could have sex (though many of them did marry). They left because the orders had become too dissonant to the spiritual and psychological health of its members -- and not merely sexual needs.

So, while celibacy could be an advantage, could be a blessing, it could also be part of a repressive system under which the very well educated, hard working, devoted professed members chafed to the point of being ready to leave--and they did.

I shall recount a few stories from my nights on the Minnesota AIDS Line.

a. After defecating, a woman reported that she washed her derriere off with water from the flushed toilet. Not really sexual, but she was wondering whether she could get AIDS that way. I suggested she stop doing that. My sincerest hope was that she neither worked nor ate at any restaurant I had ever or would ever, visit.

b. A guy reported getting off chewing on used tampons. Could he get AIDS that way. This one actually grossed out the staff, who were paid to not be shocked.

c. Some guys were injecting cocaine into their penises. OUCH! So, how well does that work, I asked.

d. One guy reported falling out of a tree while getting a blow job. I suggested he keep at least one foot on the ground at all times.

We were so happy to get these weird calls, because most of the people who called in wanted to know whether they could get AIDS from using a store's fitting room that somebody with AIDS had used. earlier. Yes, if it's at K-Mart, almost certainly. Macy's, not so much.

Have you never felt such a desire arising in you? — Agustino

Sure. I've enjoyed some fantasies about the demise of some people. As (maybe the famous American lawyer Clarence Darrow) said, "I Have Never Killed Any One, But I Have Read Some Obituary Notices with Great Satisfaction."

One difference between people who enjoy reading some obituary notices and people who commit mass murder is the ability to discriminate between fantasy and reality. Another difference is a stable personality that puts a lid on one's hostilities. Normal people suppress the kind of murderous urges to which our species is heir. For most people, good urges overwhelm bad urges.

Certain offenders, like Dylann Roof, should be presumed insane until proven otherwise.
— Bitter Crank

Are you sure that's not simply because you don't want to contemplate the idea that someone could be so willingly evil? — Wayfarer

You have identified a problem in my thinking. Yes, I guess I am reluctant to consider "evil" as an explanation for really really bad actions. Maybe part of my problem is that in distancing myself from Christian thinking, I lose some moral clarity. On the one hand, I tend to assume that people are good, but on the other hand, it is obvious enough that some people are not good at all. So, why? Are they clearly evil or are they sick, malformed, or damaged?

I need to work this out. Clearly.

Why would he not be guilty (or responsible) if he's insane? — Terrapin Station

There is no doubt in Roof's case that he is responsible for the murders. Eyewitnesses, forensic evidence, and his own statements all confirm his role. Insanity doesn't mean that a defendant is considered to NOT have done something for which he is being tried. Insanity means that the defendant is not guilty. Not guilty because their mental state rules out a rational process.

Insanity is a usually not a successful defense, because of the way the law regarding insanity has been written and practiced. I would prefer a more inclusive standard of insanity, perhaps including extreme psychopathy. Bernard Madoff didn't kill anybody, he certainly seemed sane by any definition, but his willingness to selectively ruin mostly members of his own Jewish community would indicate a failure of normal psychology. He seems like a classic psychopath.

If Bernie Madoff had been ruled insane and psychopathic, what would the outcome have been? Pretty much the same: the only difference would be the address of his long-term incarceration, and the nature of his daily activities. Were he housed at a secure psychiatric facility, he would be the subject of more intensive scrutiny and therapy (if any existed). He wouldn't be free to roam any sooner. John Hinkley, who was hospitalized as insane for attempting to kill Ronald Reagan in 1980, has just recently been allowed to have some limited freedom of movement away from the hospital, 36 years later.

An insane Dylann Roof wouldn't be sent to a country-club prison; he'd be packed off to a secure psychiatric hospital. Were he imprisoned, he would have to live in isolation for his own protection; otherwise he'd most likely be dead shortly after arriving at the prison. Or, they'd send him to a prison where white supremacists were the ruling gang, rather than black supremacists.

I'm unenthusiastic about capital punishment for several reasons. Innocent people are sometimes executed, as you mentioned; the process of appeal is painfully slow; most states do not execute criminals (whether they could or not). Life imprisonment, especially in our prisons, is a very severe punishment, worse in many ways than being executed, and its severity is sufficient.

Certain offenders, like Dylann Roof, should be presumed insane until proven otherwise. Roof seems to have started entertaining delusions relatively early on--not that he was about to commit mass murder after dropping out of the 9th grade, but within a few years he seems to have developed a lot of delusions. One might argue that he is just stupid and not deluded, or that he is wicked and not deluded or stupid, but that's hard for outsiders to determine.

If it were up to me, I'd pack him off to a secure mental hospital for a long evaluation, and possibly treatment. He can always be transferred to a prison if he proves to be sane.

there's your answer — Wayfarer

When people do things about which we say, "no sane person would do such a thing," why do we then treat them as sane and act accordingly?

Suppose Roof was a psychopath; quite a few psychopaths have committed crimes as horrible as this crime. If one believes that psychopathy is not an option but a biologically imposed circumstance, should they be found guilty and sentenced to death (or life imprisonment), or should they be placed under care in a secure hospital? And if we place them in a hospital, do we think there is no cure possible, such that is not even worth considering?

Above a Georgia attorney
a drone armed with chili con carne
took aim at a maiden’s target.
A command was sent from HQ
and the gut bomb landed so true.
But this was not final ending,
for no drones were now forfending.

This forum of dry philosophs
pour their thoughts into a long trough
Where concepts dement and grow moss.
All sorts draw from these deep reserves:
Hogs, scholars, some rebels, our pervs.
Those who swill too much of our draughts
Often sound like wits sliced in halfs.

Sorry -- no offense meant. Need another towel?

dafuq? — Heister Eggcart

Fucking bitches"...a bitch is a female canine, no? :s — John

"Yes, Virginia; a bitch is a female canine. Like, "bitch, re, me, fa, so, la, te, bitch. "Bitch, a dog, a female dog, ra, a drop of golden sun; me, a name I call myself; fa, a long long way to run; so, a needle holding thread; L. A. the land of Hollywood; te, a drink with jam and bread, which brings us back to you, you fucking bitch!" Maria von Trapp sang. But then they cleaned things up and rewrote the song.

John, you really have to stop reading everything so literally.

"Dafuq" and "fucking bitches" are coded words with layers of meaning. "Dafuq" for instance, has a layer of proletarian bluntness on top -- "da" in place of "the"--always a proley give away. "fuq" is a kind of hipster spelling of fuck. "Fuck" is a multi-functional word providing noun, verb, adjective, intensifier, etc. functionality. "Dafuq" (which spell check wants very badly to change to "daft" is code for "I'm sorry; I don't understand what you are saying." Or "I'm sorry, but what you are saying doesn't make any objective sense to me." So, "fucking bitches" is adjectival (something unappealing about bitches") or verbish (something so and so is doing at the time) or both at once. Referencing a female human as if she were a female canid is an ancient insult, and adding "fucking" deepens the slur to reference said bitches as unusually promiscuous and atrociously vindictive.

And so on.

Margaret Atwood, the distinguished Canadian Novelist, ended the Madd Addam Trilogy by explaining to human beings' successor species what "Fuck" is. They had been hearing the almost disappeared old-design homo sapiens using the term and they wondered what it meant.

"Fuck is a god. Pray to Fuck in times of need and adversity, like we do: Oh Fuck! etc..."

You will be free to complain when you yourself can pack so much dense meaning into words as efficiently expressive as "dafuq" and "fucking bitches".

but you see the place is set up in order to keep them isolated — Agustino

Which is why bars where 80% or 90% of the inhabitants are standing are much much better than bars where everyone has to be seated. People on foot mix readily.

The thing I really don't understand about coffee shops is "How do they make money on the large amount of space occupied by a few asocial people who aren't buying that much coffee and are at the same time soaking up WiFi and heat (or AC) and sitting there for hours? Are these people like duck decoys--attracting more profitable live birds in off the sidewalk? Are there secret fees being paid to sit there? Are they acquaintances of the owner who would rather these lumps stay at the shop than coming round to his house to bore him to tears? Are they in a witness protection program -- hiding in plain sight?

no one goes to PC cafes — Agustino

I see all sorts of people sitting in coffee shops with a screen in front of them, but they don't socialize. It strikes me as dysfunctional. It's a way of being "less alone" I suppose.

For example ... I never even knew what ejaculation was until I was 12, when I accidentally found out and got scared >:O and then researched online to see what the hell had actually happened! Then I tried to do it again and make it happen out of curiosity. Then I started to research and investigate these matters, and then got into pornography etc. — Agustino

I often wonder what it would have been like to have had access to the 2017 internet when I was 12 in 1958. There were many things I wondered about for which there was no information available (to me). And not just sex questions. Radioactive fallout from the Nevada above-ground atomic bomb test sites drifted over much of the US, and information about it was sparse. We worried about it. I remember a map in the Weekly Reader showing bands of higher and lower radioactivity. The northern US was under a band of high radioactivity (relative to low levels).

There were civil-defense pamphlets about building fallout shelters; I couldn't quite fit the drawings in the pamphlets into our dirt-floored cellar. There was extreme right-wing propaganda being passed around, published in newspapers, shown in school. Communism was out to get us, like some kind of slithery monster crawling out of the sewers. There was no contrary opinion offered to us, for the most part. I was obsessed with mushrooms at the time, too (don't know how that happened) and quickly ran out of information in encyclopedias. Google would have been very handy.

I do remember orgasms arriving. It was one of the sunny bright spots amid all the gloom and doom.

Limericks are usually along the lines of

A bather whose clothing was strewed
By winds that left her quite nude
Saw a man come along
And unless we are wrong
You expected this line to be lewd.

Yours could be a limerick, but the rhythm needs to be tightened up. The 'beat' or emphasis doesn't fall on the words naturally and there aren't enough syllables in some of the lines.

CHANGE

I easily understood it,
but I chose not to declare.
It's obvious enough,
and not very tough,
the failure lies elsewhere.

TO

Twas easy to grasp the small thought,
It's you whose thought comes to naught.
It's quite clear enough
that you're no word buff,
and your grammar is not up to snuff.

I recognize your first poetic juice drip as haiku; is the second one in a particular form (other than abccb)?

The promiscuous nature of English is its strength. It can absorb and naturalize words from all over the globe without losing it's soul. It can put catsup on sushi, sugar on succotash, or sesame seed on salad and be perfectly appropriate.

That may be so, but after having gone through the results of a Google search, most of the results affirm that "misspelt" is the preference, or more appropriate, or more usual, in the UK, where it originates. It is also my preference; it just sounds better and more natural and appropriate to me. — Sapientia

Writing out "spelt" in American English would be unusual, but I think "spelled" pronounced as "spelt" is more common.

It's kind of embarrassing to do that, I don't understand why anyone would talk with their parents about it. — Agustino

Right. Well, I didn't talk to my parents about sex, either. Quite unimaginable. But... There has to be something better than overly frank sex talk between parent and child at one extreme, and nothing at the other. An encyclopedia was the only impersonal source of information I could consult and a 1950s encyclopedia wasn't all that helpful, either. (It was fine for anatomy, but that's about it.)

For your convenience, here are some "t for ed" verbs

1. Bent
2. Blest
3. Built
4. Burnt
5. Clapt
6. Cleft
7. Slept
8. Crept as in He crept into the crypt and crapt.
9. Dealt
10. Dreamt
11. Drest
12. Dwelt
13. Felt
14. Gilt
15. Girt
16. Kent
17. Knelt
18. Leant
19. Leapt
20. Learnt
21. Left
22. Lent
23. Lost
24. Meant
25. Pent
26. Reft
27. Rent
28. Sent
29. Shot
30. Slept
31. Slipt
32. Smelt
33. Spelt
34. Spent
35. Spilt
36. Spoilt
37. Stript
38. Vext
39. Wept
40. Went

Still cranking away. Welcome back.

Currently reading The Horse in the City. Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr. It's the second "horse book" the first one being "Horses at work" by Anne Norton Green. Both books forces on the vital role of the horse in the industrial revolution. Green's book compares the use of oxen, mules, and horses (each having advantages and disadvantages) in agriculture, especially, and the role of the horse in the American Civil War. As the title suggests, McShane and Tarr are much more concerned with urban horse use than agricultural use.

Both books focus on the horse as a 'living machine' which provided energy for all sorts of functions. Horses walking on treadmills, for instance, powered ferries across rivers, lakes and harbors; they powered equipment like sawmills (10 horses walking in a circle around a central capstan), or pumps, for instance. Horses pulled all sorts of machinery that swept streets, cut hay, and plowed the land.

A classic "industry & horse" combo was the fire wagon: A team of horses pulled a wagon on which was mounted a smoking steam engine that powered a water pump to put out the fire.

There's also quite a bit about horse diseases, (glanders, for instance) the development of veterinary science, costs of using horses, the significant value that could be extracted from a fresh dead horse, and so on. One thing is extremely clear: In the 19th century, almost everyone viewed the horse as a machine. If the horse couldn't work, it was dead meat.

Horses, were themselves, an industry. The largest horse market, in Chicago, could handle 30,000 horses.

If you referencing biology, I'd count myself as more of a foundationalist or essentialist than a constructivist. For instance, I don't think sex roles, or many gender roles, are socially constructed. I rate biology over culture here. But if you are talking about whether women should serve in the armed services or not, clearly that is culture. I say put the women out front on the firing line.

I've always preferred the essentialist approach for gay sexuality. Certain details of gay life are going to be culturally determined -- like, whether the clone look of 1972 would consist of plaid shirts, mustaches, and blue jeans, or something else--maybe green hair, black leather shirts, and kilts. But the basic homosexual orientation seems entirely biological.ººº Straight sexuality is also biologically determined.

My sister (73 yrs old) was annoyed that "the men" who lived in her apartment building had not shoveled the walk after the last snow storm. I suggested that the women in the building were just as capable of shoveling the snow as the men, which made her incensed. I'm 70 and I'm still shoveling...so... here's the shovel, bitch, dig in.

ºººThat doesn't mean that straight men can't do dead-on imitations of gay men at their campiest, or visa versa.

I'm asking the question to BC, apparently he thinks it can be discrete, and if it's discrete, it's somehow less morally wrong than otherwise — Agustino

I did not say that manners were more important than morals. I said "I generally favor morals over manners". In the judgement of people who value manners very highly, however, "discretion is the better part of valor" as Falstaff says to King Henry IV in the eponymously named play. In the past as in the present, those with lots of power and wealth to control their PR could get away with more than you could, for example. The associates of the rich and powerful almost always had a good deal to gain by (almost always) valuing decorum above legal proceedings.

he might think someone can only be hurt by what they know, not by what they don't know. So say I cheat on my wife, BC may be of the opinion that I've done no wrong, so long as I'm careful to cover the tracks and my wife never finds out. This opinion is very common actually in the public at large. — Agustino

Anyone who has worked in public health programs knows that what people do not know can definitely hurt them.

As for your cheating on your wife, especially considering everything you have said about adultery, you would be so very, very guilty of sin that possibly your burning at the stake would not be too severe. But I digress.

Sins, crimes, and wrong-doing not discovered are still sins, crimes, and wrong-doing whether anybody knows about it or not. That said, the consequences of sins, crimes, and wrong-doing might be greatly lessened for everyone concerned IF nobody new about it. For instance...

Russia and the United States spy on each other. Everybody in the spied-upon-country counts this as a very bad thing. But it continues, and is carried out between many allies and enemies. It is normal operating procedure. Spying causes real losses to the spied-upon and real gains for the spying upon. Again, SOP. The worst thing that can happen is for a spy operation to be revealed. Revelations disrupt SOP in the spying nation as well as the spied upon nation. It is better for covert operations if the two nations acknowledge (very privately) that there was a slip up, and then carry on as per usual.

Carrying on as per usual doesn't mean anybody is happy about spying; it just means that they recognize that spying is a matter that should be kept private--at home and abroad. Revealing all this stuff is just bad manners. Putin was publicly caught trying to fiddle with American Elections and the Russians have been punished, both publicly and (presumably) privately. (Nobody thinks the punishments were very painful, except perhaps to a few very inconvenienced operatives who had to return to Russia, of all places.) No more beach side clam bakes for them! Putin said the Russians would magnanimously not retaliate in kind. Does that mean that Putin is taking the high road? Heavens, no. It just means that Putin will proceed to retaliate in private. And when he does, we will probably not say anything about it.

A different case: If a child is found to have had sex with the child next door (lets say they are 8 and 10), the worse thing that can happen for the two children is for the 4 parents to go berserk on the two children that had an unauthorized sexual encounter. The parents' hysteria means that the children will never discuss sex with their parents again--ever. The consequences are worse than the "crime".

Sex didn't use to be a source of self-esteem in the past, among many other things, and it was taboo to discuss openly, unlike today. — Agustino

It is always difficult to grasp precisely what people did or didn't feel or do in historical periods to which we are not privy. Whether such a thing as "self esteem" exists now, or existed in the past, and whether it has any importance at all has been debated here recently. My assumption is that good sex (however the two parties defined it) has usually been pleasing to people, but not always. Individual psychology usually plays a bigger role than culture when it comes to personal satisfaction.

I would agree that manners have often ruled out open, certainly public, detailed discussions of sexual behavior. I don't know how my parents talked about sex (they were born in 1905 and 1907) because they practically never did. We children were raised in a small crowded house, so... We are all pretty sure that they didn't.

Even if some people still behaved in immoral ways, they had some sort of decency and restraint — Agustino

You may not, but I think there is a difference between manners and morals. Morals might dictate that infidelity is wrong. Manners might rule that discrete infidelity without messy entanglements (like inconvenient offspring) is socially acceptable. In saying that, I am not saying that manners trumps morality, (Donald doesn't seem to know the difference) but, for some people, manners governs behavior more than morals--and it has for centuries.

Please don't argue with me here; I am not claiming that infidelity is OK. I am only claiming that the rules of morals and manners are not the same thing. Personally, I generally favor morals over manners.

Manners have at various times been at odds with morals, and people did sometimes opt for good manners over morals -- thinking of some characters in the Canterbury Tales for instance, which Chaucer started writing around 1389. Several of the Tales are about sexual (mis?)behavior, with details (check out the Miller's Tale).

The lesson here is that including these ribald tales in the book for public consumption was OK in 1389. People enjoyed the story about the young lady who thrust her derriere out the window (in the dark) to be kissed, rather than her head, and the man being surprised that "the lady had a beard".

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) wrote the Decameron, which is like the Canterbury Tales -- it's a conceit that a group of people told these stories to each other to pass the time. There's also hanky panky there -- some of it involving nuns, as I recollect (it's been a long time since).

That I need to find a time machine and go back to the 1950's. — Question

I recommend that you set the dial on the time machine farther back than the 1950s. The 1950s were the nativity decade of beatniks, Hells Angels, rock and roll, discovering communists and homosexuals under every bush, and other harbingers of the various sexual horrors that were to come.

Skip the 1940s -- too much WWII. The 1930s were kind of bad, what with the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and massive government overreach. Prohibition in the 1920s was a great corruptor, with all sorts of people from different races and classes mixing at illegal bars--way too loose. The Klamp Down Ladies had lost their grip. The 19-teen years ended up with World War I, so you will probably want to skip that decade too.

The first decade of the 20th Century might be suitable. There was quite a bit of interesting technical innovation; the Klamp Down Ladies still had society under control what with Jim Crow and Edwardian manners. Hypocrisy was rife but sex was officially out of sight (and not the 60s "out of sight, man" kind). Alert I: the century did begin with a Presidential Assassination - President McKinley on September 14, 1901, so bad things were already happening to good people. McKinley had led America to a Glorious Victory in the Spanish American War, and had erected protective tariffs for the Good of All. Alert II: There were Bohemians in New York who practiced deviant life styles, but you'll be able to avoid them if you settle in Peoria, Illinois -- Bohemians didn't play in Peoria.

Once you leave the 20th century, you'll have to choose your times carefully. Sex reared its sultry head ever so often. Mozart wrote an opera about a famous serial seducer, Don Giovanni. It premiered on October 28, 1787.

After many, many posts, reposts, and counterposts, what have you learned--or what remains confusing?

Please understand that I have nothing against people who indulge in pleasures and such matters. However, I hold people who can master their desires and wants in higher regard to those who do not... — Question

And that is a perfectly reasonable position to take. You are entitled to hold in high regard people who master their desires, if you so wish. I too think it a good idea for people to be on top of their desires, rather than the other way around. I admire people who have been very faithful and devoted to their good political causes, even though they were pretty much lost from the get go. They may have been fools, but... so be it.

neuroticism or other psychobabble — Question

Well, the dividing line between good psycho-social theory and practice and psychobabble has always been kind of fuzzy. I think there is such a thing as good psycho-social theory, and I've heard plenty of psychobabble too.