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What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex/Hedonism?[W:165]

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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Yup, look what happens when you are brought up in a sexually repressed way. So many right wing pervs out there.

And a bunch of closeted ones. They go around telling everyone how bad it is to be gay, yet behind closed doors they do all the stuff they are supposed to be against.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Of course to you, philosophies like atheism, hedonism, and nihilism would all be interchangeable,

They are not "interchangeable," but they do certainly tend to overlap quite often when it comes to the discussion of particular modern ideologies.

No surprise either that you cannot grasp the diff between "promoting sex" and encouraging *choice* in sex. Either you fail terribly at it or you want to deprive people of choice, only explanations i can see

Without a doubt, what the modern cultural Left does is promote sex, and sexually promiscuous behavior. They often do so quite blatantly, only paying lip-service to the supposed element of "choice" mentioned above.

That's not even really up for debate.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Hysterical drama-queening over a cartoon about wieners

Classic Gath

Typical Gath cry for help.:roll:
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

None of the liberals you're having a conversation with here live or believe anything like this.

Sure they do. See below. :shrug:

Your silly, exaggerated caricaturing aside, as others have pointed out the difference between the right's and left's views on sex is very simply that the left is shedding itself of silly puritanical fears (as is the right, but more slowly). People are waking up to the fact that premarital sex or having an edible or eating meat on friday isn't going to ruin their life or condemn them to eternal hellfire as our ignorant, superstitious ancestors supposed. Once you free yourself of these delusions there are fewer reasons to avoid such things. People don't need to be indoctrinated by an ideology to want sex; millions of years of evolution has done a fine job of that, as you are such a shining example.

And there we go right into the dogma, again. :lol:

Dude, you're talking about not needing to be "indoctrinated into an ideology," right before parroting off, almost verbatim, the exact tag line of an ideology. After all, you didn't come up with all of that by yourself, right?

Yeah, it's called projecting. And virtue-signalling.

It's also called simply paying attention to the world around you.

Look, man. I like sex as much as the next guy. However, to hear a lot of more vocal Left Wingers talk about it, bumping uglies is basically going to "save the world," or some such nonsense.

With such an exaggerated amount of emphasis being placed on such a mundane biological function, I really can't help but be a bit puzzled by it.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

They are not "interchangeable," but they do certainly tend to overlap quite often when it comes to the discussion of particular modern ideologies.



Without a doubt, what the modern cultural Left does is promote sex, and sexually promiscuous behavior. They often do so quite blatantly, only paying lip-service to the supposed element of "choice" mentioned above.

That's not even really up for debate.

so just bad at sex then was the correct guess?
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Sure they do. See below. :shrug:

Stop confusing "believing that people don't burn in hell for premarital sex" with "believing that we should just ****, party, and live purely for one's self without, giving a second thought to things like "settling down" or being productive with one's time".

There are different words there thomas.


Dude, you're talking about not needing to be "indoctrinated into an ideology," right before parroting off, almost verbatim, the exact tag line of an ideology.

:roll: People don't need to be indoctrinated into an ideology to want sex. Of course I subscribe to ideologies. So do you. :shrug:

It's also called simply paying attention to the world around you.

Look, man. I like sex as much as the next guy. However, to hear a lot of more vocal Left Wingers talk about it, bumping uglies is basically going to "save the world," or some such nonsense.

With such an exaggerated amount of emphasis being placed on such a mundane biological function, I really can't help but be a bit puzzled by it.

It's textbook projecting and virtue-signalling. I think it's obvious to everybody who reads these threads that they are a product of some serious sexual hang-ups.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

What you see below is the "dogma" in question.


Smoke's posts contain examples as well. Hell! So do your own.

The whole idea of "sexual repression" in the first place, and that it necessarily must be overcome with free acceptance of sex and hedonism, is basically a modern "dogma." It's something we invented. Previous generations either took pretty much exactly the opposite stance, or just plain didn't think that deeply about what they were doing at all.

As I said before, people have always screwed around, and there have always been periods of greater and lesser morality and social conformity in this regard. Such periods often bounce back and forth off of one another in a reactionary fashion, in point of fact (More Liberal 1920s giving rise to a more Conservative 1950s, for example). That's not really tied with religion, per se, in one way or another. Catholic Renaissance Europe was, by all accounts, actually one of the most depraved places around, and that's why the Syphilis epidemic ravaged the place so hard (said Syphilis was also one of the major reasons why they cleaned up their act a bit... Until the next surge in loose behavior, at least).

What makes the modern cultural Left somewhat unique is that they've built this whole self-serving, and self-justifying, ideology around the thing, which actually allows them to view themselves as being the "good guys" for messing around.

I think the general improvement of the standard of living may have had something to do with it. It made it harder for Marxists to point to economic disparity to encourage people to destroy bourgeois, capitalist society. So in time, they began to explore other ways to destroy it. One of these was to attack the conventions that underpinned that society, including sexual conventions. One form that effort takes today is the support of sexual deviance of almost any sort, which involves attempting to blot out distinctions between the two sexes. Another related form is the effort to promote the notion that anything goes--that almost no conduct, sexual or otherwise, should be considered shameful, even conduct that most Americans would have considered immoral and unacceptable even in the 1960's or '70's.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

To make things clear right off the bat here, we're not discussing whether this view is necessarily right or wrong. I'm simply asking if anyone has any knowledge as to this - in my opinion, rather peculiar - belief system's "family tree," so to speak.

The idea that sex, given freely, and paired with a generalized lack of "inhibition" on the part of the greater population concerning personal conduct, often going so far as to glorify and promote hedonistic extremes with regards to things like recreational drug usage, partying, lax social attitudes, and etca, etca, will somehow create a "better," or even possibly "utopian," society is pretty damn close to being universal in the thought and value systems of the modern ideological Left. Hell! I just saw the movie "Sausage Party," and it was basically a giant, thinly veiled, parable trying to push that very idea - i.e. "the Gods" (humans) are evil, and the belief systems and inhibitions foods have built around them are all a lie, so the food ultimately rebels and kills "the Gods" (again, humans) in order to free themselves from all of that, and they celebrate by having a giant pan-sexual food orgy, which makes everything right with the world.

Sure, it's comedy. At the same time, however, you can't tell me that the message being pushed there isn't very much indicative of how the person behind the writer's pen actually views the world at large, even outside of their work.

I'm sorry... But the simple fact of the matter is that the whole thing seems like a Hell of a lot of innate ideological and psychological importance to place on the simple act of a couple of (mostly) hairless primates rubbing their meaty bits together for a couple of minutes in the interests of pair bonding and procreation. The narrative surrounding this is almost like a dogmatic "gospel," of sorts, accepted on the basis of faith more than anything else among the ranks of those who believe it.

How did that come to be? Where does this mindset originate? What pre-existing assumptions must be in place to give the world view in question the logical grounding its adherents clearly believe it to possess?

I would be inclined to chalk the phenomena up purely to Marxist thought and impulses, given its general focus on "tearing down" conventional institutions, and replacing them with (what, 'true believers,' at least, believe to be) some sort of "Revolutionary" new framework. In that regard, it falls within the confines of broadly defined "Cultural Marxism" rather well.

However, at the same time, Marx really didn't have much to say about sex. Most self-avowed "Marxist" societies, in point of fact, have actually tended to be pretty damn prudish and restrained. To the contrary, this apparent fixation on the "pleasures of the flesh" appears to be something rather unique to the Left of the "Capitalist Peeg" West, and the United States in particular.

Is it Freud who is at the heart of the matter then? Are these simply the cultural after-echos of his own (long since discredited) views regarding neurosis as being in almost all cases tied to so-called "sexual repression?"

Is it Freud by way of Marx, basically? With the perceived "neuroses" of society as a whole being blamed on the supposed "mass sexual repression" imposed by more traditional social institutions, and society as a whole therefore requiring "revolutionary" intervention to be rid of them as such? Has that view simply been mixed with good old fashioned Capitalist Yankee materialism and decadence, resulting in the "anything goes - if it feels good, do it," cultural consensus seen among the ranks of the "Pop Left" today?

Or... Does it go even deeper than that?

Walt Whitman and a number of other 19th Century bohemian radicals actually had some rather hippie-ish views regarding "free love" and other such things as well. Did that influence die with them, or did some sliver of it remain (most likely combined with the other three factors mentioned above) to shape the sea-change in the social values the American ideological Left experienced from the 1960s onwards?

There are really quite a few directions a person could take this analysis, when one stops to think about it.


While y'all are stopping to think, that liberal "promotion" is working rather well with attracting so many conservatives that it does. It may have changed, but a few years ago, Utah had the #1 per capita consumption of online porn. So it goes to say, that a bastion of conservatism supports high wages for women, considering the fact the porn is the only industry where women are paid more than men.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

The OP needs to be parsed in several ways.

To start... hedonism does not have a relationship to political lean. Rather, its visibility does. In America, those on the left who are hedonistic are more open about it, whereas on the right there are more closet hedonists. I don't think the times we live in has changed the sheer numbers. People of all leans often confuse increased visibility with increased frequency, which is not the case. Kind of like how people say there are more gays now, but gays are just more out of the closet.

What the right is misattributing to the left is a decline in morality, but it's as a result of an intellectual and technology polity that is outpacing morality. Intellectualism can never progress morality. The two are mutually exclusive. We live in a time where intellectual and scientific innovations are moving too fast for humanity's moral compass to compensate. As a result we have scientific, religious, political, economic and social institutions all displaying core corruption. It's across the board.

It's not exclusive to the left. Actually, hyperpartisan polarity is also part of the moral decay because it greatly erodes human compassion into singular thinking.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Yeezus this thread is a mess.

When did sins of the flesh become a virtue to the Left

THis seems to be the question you are asking Gath. I am with POS, it is not. I also think that wrong assumptions built into the question are the reason this thread is such a mess. Yes as we rapidly become a post Christian nation the restraints promoted by Christianity come off, POS is right about that also. THere is more to it though. Individualism has run amuck. People increasingly have no self control, they dont deny themselves what they want. As civilization continues to crash many decide that they might as well get what they want why they still can, that there is no virtue in restraint. Look around GATH, things rather suck, to include a very frayed social fabric making it very hard to have any hope that we are going to be able to come together and improve things. Just look at the refusal from both the R's and the D's to work together as just one example. THis is not about the Left, this is about all of us, and the sins of the flesh are not a virtue, they are the desperate attempt of generally poorly educated and spiritually crippled people(and having gone to University does not indicate education, because the modern University sucks, not occasionally making people more stupid than they started) to escape the reality of the collapsing collective.

So many people have given up on the collective, they have no faith that there is a future, so it becomes all about them and what they can get right now. To include but not limited to sins of the flesh.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Stop confusing "believing that people don't burn in hell for premarital sex" with "believing that we should just ****, party, and live purely for one's self without, giving a second thought to things like "settling down" or being productive with one's time".

Puh-leeze. :roll:

Don't try and act like the cultural Left hasn't been sexual promiscuity's "number one fan" for decades now. They freaking created the "free love" movement, for God's sakes, and they're the ones currently spear-heading support for things like the "hook-up" and "slut empowerment" cultures. They've also traditionally been, and continue to be, great champions of recreational drug usage, and a number of other things.

Frankly, they go even a step beyond that. They openly express and promote distrust of, if not outright contempt towards, things like monogamy, marriage, the family, and even more restrained personal conduct in general.

Almost literally none of that is true of the Right.

Granted, these sentiments exist as a matter of degree, not necessarily absolutes. Not everyone on the Left's as crazy into drugs as Seth Rogen and his crew (though a certain camp of the cultural Left certainly is), and not everyone on the Left's as crazy hostile towards things like marriage and monogamy as Smoke (though... again, a certain camp of it certainly is). However, this doesn't change the fact that, very nearly universally, if you run across someone expressing strong ideological support for the things I mentioned above, they're going to be Leftists. That's simply a fact.

As I said, it's basically their quasi-religious "dogma," and it's becoming more and more pronounced with each successive generation of them.

People don't need to be indoctrinated into an ideology to want sex.

No, but it certainly does require an ideology for more than half a dozen different people to all regurgitate the exact same list of buzzwords, in nearly the exact same order, working towards the exact same conclusion. :lol:

Of course I subscribe to ideologies. So do you.

Yes, and I know where mine comes from; Judeo-Christian moral codes combined with ancient, largely common sense, directives meant to avoid the spread of social ills like venereal disease and illegitimacy.

I'm not quite sure where the present ideology of the cultural Left finds its genesis, but I know I see it a whole lot, because Left-leaning persons love to flaunt it for all to see. Hence, the reason for this thread.

It's textbook projecting and virtue-signalling.

What in the Heck would I be "projecting," dude? That I'm secretly some kind of horn-dog pot head myself?

That allegation doesn't even make sense.

I think it's obvious to everybody who reads these threads that they are a product of some serious sexual hang-ups.

This is another one of those intellectually bankrupt tactics basically meant to squash any thought a person happens to dislike which I mentioned earlier. I.E. "If you disagree with me, there must simply be something wrong with how you relate to sex."

Sorry, dude. The fact is, I'm fine with sex. I'm simply critical of modern, pre-dominantly Left Wing, culture's take on it.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

To start... hedonism does not have a relationship to political lean.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsensical. The Left created the "free love" movement, and have continued to be its greatest champions ever since. As I noted previously, they're also rather in love with things like recreational drug usage. One could make the argument they actually created that movement as well.

The Right is not even remotely in the same ballpark with regards to any of these things.

Rather, its visibility does. In America, those on the left who are hedonistic are more open about it, whereas on the right there are more closet hedonists.

That's not a "visibility" issue. It's an issue of completely different mindsets, and value systems.

Sure, people on the Right screw around. However, they really don't even try to justify it. Most of us acknowledge what we're doing as being less than ideal, or maybe even wrong. We've simply decided that we don't care at that particular moment, and that we'll pick up the pieces of whatever we happen to break after the fact.

The Left, on the other hand, has a tendency to want to try and idealize and romanticize their misbehavior. To try and spin it around so that the situation not only isn't "less than ideal," but that they're actually doing the right thing, damnit, and shame on you if you think otherwise! Grr!!

Again, that's really the gist on my question in OP. Where does that second mindset come from? It is a fairly well codified ideological position, so it's got to have some sort of progenitor.

What the right is misattributing to the left is a decline in morality

Uhhh... No, that's undeniably something for which the cultural Left holds the lion's share of responsibility. They deliberately tried to tear down pre-existing social mores which they found inconvenient to their desires, and, in many regards, they succeeded. What we're seeing today is the fall out of that.

However, that is ultimately a completely different topic than that specified by the OP.

Yeezus this thread is a mess.


THis seems to be the question you are asking Gath. I am with POS, it is not.

Again, I'm sorry, but I've got to disagree. All we've got to do is look over the historical record here. It's pretty clear which side of the "culture war" has traditionally (well... since the 1960s, at least) been more in favor of generally hedonistic and "uninhibited" attitudes towards things like sex and drug usage.

I mean... The Left created the "free love" movement, and have done nothing but talk it up and glorify it ever since. That fact's not just going to go away.

I also think that wrong assumptions built into the question are the reason this thread is such a mess. Yes as we rapidly become a post Christian nation the restraints promoted by Christianity come off, POS is right about that also. THere is more to it though. Individualism has run amuck. People increasingly have no self control, they dont deny themselves what they want. As civilization continues to crash many decide that they might as well get what they want why they still can, that there is no virtue in restraint. Look around GATH, things rather suck, to include a very frayed social fabric making it very hard to have any hope that we are going to be able to come together and improve things. Just look at the refusal from both the R's and the D's to work together as just one example. THis is not about the Left, this is about all of us, and the sins of the flesh are not a virtue, they are the desperate attempt of generally poorly educated and spiritually crippled people(and having gone to University does not indicate education, because the modern University sucks, not occasionally making people more stupid than they started) to escape the reality of the collapsing collective.

So many people have given up on the collective, they have no faith that there is a future, so it becomes all about them and what they can get right now. To include but not limited to sins of the flesh.

I actually think we are mostly on the same page here. The issue isn't just that we seem to be becoming a "post-Christian" society. It's what's moving in to fill the vacuum.

The point we seem to be disagreeing on is just how large a role the Cultural Left has in driving that process. Quite frankly, I think they're the primary culprit behind it. Everything you're talking about is either something the Left wants, or did want at some point in the past, and has finally managed to achieve.

As I told Northern, however, this is getting a bit beyond the scope of what the OP was actually looking to discuss.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

The Left, on the other hand, attaches "righteousness" to slutting around and basically behaving like a hedonistic ne'er-do-well... Because "feels," or something.

That's really kind of unique, philosophically speaking (at least on the kind of scale our society sees today). Hence, the reason for this thread inquiring into its philosophical origins.

And this is the logical fallacy known as a 'straw man'. There is this thing known as 'personal choice'.. but attaching righteousness to the concept is .. well, odd to say the least.

At best, it is not attaching shame and degradation to the act. That seems to be the so called 'social conservatives' hang up. Sexual repression is one of the biggest causes of hypocrisy there is.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

And this is the logical fallacy known as a 'straw man'. There is this thing known as 'personal choice'.. but attaching righteousness to the concept is .. well, odd to say the least.

Please. You people aren't fooling anyone, and haven't been for quite some time. Just give up the damn game already. :roll:

You may pay lip service to the notion of "choice," but it's rather clear what most of you view as being the "correct" choice. Ultimately, you're just as willing to judge and "shame" people over making perceived "incorrect" choices as anyone in the traditionalist camp ever was.

Hell! Just look at any interaction between Beef and myself if you want proof in concept.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

You might find this article interesting, especially the part about Herbert Marcuse and his 1955 book "Eros and Civilization" about three-fourths of the way through it. I haven't read the article carefully enough to comment on the author's conclusions. But he shows a pretty thorough knowledge of the people who were either part of the Frankfurt School, or who influenced it, or were influenced by it.

Schiller Institute—THE NEW DARK AGE The Frankfurt School and "Political Correctness"

So you are a larouche follower??
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Please. You people aren't fooling anyone, and haven't been for quite some time. Just give up the game already. :roll:

You may pay lip service to the notion of "choice," but it's rather clear what most of you view as being the "correct" choice. Hell! Just look at any interaction between Beef and myself if you want proof in concept.

Not fooling anybody??? If you think that is the case, you are very strongly mistaken.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Again, I'm sorry, but I've got to disagree. All we've got to do is look over the historical record here. It's pretty clear which side of the "culture war" has traditionally (well... since the 1960s, at least) been more in favor of generally hedonistic and "uninhibited" attitudes towards things like sex and drug usage.

I mean... The Left created the "free love" movement, and have done nothing but talk it up and glorify it ever since. That fact's not just going to go away.

.

GATH, the sins of the flesh are not so much promoted as tolerated, because at this point we dont have either the leaders or the ideas to get anywhere if we wanted to, so the elite take the tack "Hey, go back to having fun, everything is just DANDY!". These things that are warning signs and threats to the health of the collective are just flat out ignored.

Since you seem to be a Christian I will say right now so that you dont misunderstand me, I take the failure of the Church (and I mean all of christianity) to be at least as important in this as is the failure of the University. I was a political radical till I decided that our problems are so profound that the political system, especially our long ignored held in deep disrepute nearly completely not working political system, can not get us to where we need to go. It simply does not have the gas. I moved on to the more at the root problem, the crisis in faith, the collapse of spirit, the collapse of morals, the collapse of hope....that is to say to matters of the soul. Dont forget that I am Zen, I was never a Christian and never wanted to be, so dont think that I think that we need to all be Christians again, because I dont.

We cant currently solve our problems, we are too primitive, we need to grow, and grow fast. And what I mean by that is often in the complete opposite direction of where the progressives think that we need to go (Do they even bother to think anymore? I often wonder), jsyk. In the eyes of this Zen Socialist the modern day Left and the modern day Right are nearly equally found to be without good ideas.

AND leaders.

NO!

:surrender
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

The roots of the American obsession with sex are in our religious beginnings, with a big nod toward the Puritans. Religion in this country has done more to promote the obsession with sex than any other institution. The more they say no, the more people say yes.

Don't punch yourself in the face! Do NOT do it!!!
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

To make things clear right off the bat here, we're not discussing whether this view is necessarily right or wrong. I'm simply asking if anyone has any knowledge as to this - in my opinion, rather peculiar - belief system's "family tree," so to speak.

It's probably the advent of birth control pills and other methods of contraceptives combined with easy access to, and lack of stigmatizing, safe (for the mother anyways) abortions.

When you remove many of the natural consequences then it's going to result in a significant shift in dynamics.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

The Right is not even remotely in the same ballpark with regards to any of these things.

Maybe you should google the word "Hedonism" and read the basic Wiki entry on it. It's far older than any free love movement.

That's not a "visibility" issue. It's an issue of completely different mindsets, and value systems.

You might as well just talk about Hedonists, rather than make it about leftism. The "left" is a broad political spectrum covering many perspectives, including left leaning moderates. Your constant references to leftism keep your point sufficiently vague, which is symbolic of a highly emotional argument.

The second problem that is easy to identify with your OP is that "hedonism" is not the same thing as "free love". Hedonism places personal pleasure and its pursuit as front and centre in every aspect of life. It's all Hedonists care about it. It's a philosophical choice they're knowingly making -- to be a Hedonist. People's interpersonal relationships and sexual values are a different story. It doesn't make them Hedonists if they live non-committal sex lives. You're using the word "Hedonism" to polarize a complex issue.

You're conflating things like polyamory, sexual promiscuity, fluid relationships, and Hedonism together. They are not the same thing.

They deliberately tried to tear down pre-existing social mores which they found inconvenient to their desires, and, in many regards, they succeeded. What we're seeing today is the fall out of that.

Who tried to tear down social mores? Which social mores were torn down?

Again, I'm sorry, but I've got to disagree. All we've got to do is look over the historical record here. It's pretty clear which side of the "culture war" has traditionally (well... since the 1960s, at least) been more in favor of generally hedonistic and "uninhibited" attitudes towards things like sex and drug usage.

Hedonism didn't start in the 60's and won't end there.

I disagree that there's a culture war. Right and left wing moral values co-exist to this day. Nobody is winning or losing.

I mean... The Left created the "free love" movement, and have done nothing but talk it up and glorify it ever since. That fact's not just going to go away.

I agree that the free love movement was part of the American left. Not sure what that has to do with Hedonism.

The point we seem to be disagreeing on is just how large a role the Cultural Left has in driving that process. Quite frankly, I think they're the primary culprit behind it. Everything you're talking about is either something the Left wants, or did want at some point in the past, and has finally managed to achieve.

I think this is a more complex topic than you're making it out to be. American society, in general, is obsessed with sex and beauty. OBSESSED. If you go back to the beginning of the consumer capitalist era, it started with advertising and the selling of products. Industry owners (mostly right wing, btw) pushed the envelope of what was socially acceptable in order to play on people's repressed values, so they'd buy ****.

But if you go back even further... the 1950's would've been seen as "very liberal" compared to the values of the 1920's, and most of us look at the 50's in hindsight with a conservative tint. We are much more liberal today than anything in the 60's, institutionally. It's all relative. Conservatives of today are liberal compared to conservatives of the past. That's not because of leftism.

I don't see a cultural war happening, in terms of left vs. right. I think moral decay is happening everywhere, across the spectrum. We see Republican leaders caught in scandals regularly... caught with children, with sex workers, etc. The right wing seems to be under the delusion that they are the salt of the Earth, when all they're doing is trying to suppress the truth with a moral social veneer that is barely working anymore.

I have no bone to pick with the left or right. I think our society's morality, in general, is crappy right now. I don't blame it on culture wars, I blame it on our consumer capitalist way of life which has fueled our utter greed and gluttony to our own detriment. EVERYONE is behaving selfishly. We live in an instant gratification culture.

The more you focus on it being a "leftist" issue, the more dishonest you look. It's like looking at a rotten tree and saying only half the branches are to blame. You're not looking at the whole organism, the entire problem. Your bias is blinding you.

And deeper than this... you have failed to expound upon why Hedonism should be rejected. What's wrong with it?
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

Maybe you should google the word "Hedonism" and read the basic Wiki entry on it. It's far older than any free love movement.

I didn't claim that they invented it. I simply noted that a strong inclination towards the praise and glorification of hedonistic behavior has become an essential aspect of modern Left Wing ideology in the Western World.

As I noted in my OP, that's actually somewhat odd, because the origins of the modern Left are basically Marxist, and Marxists have actually, traditionally, tended to be rather prudish and restrained. Somewhere along the way, the Western branch of the movement basically "mutated" away from that.

You might as well just talk about Hedonists, rather than make it about leftism. The "left" is a broad political spectrum covering many perspectives, including left leaning moderates. Your constant references to leftism keep your point sufficiently vague, which is symbolic of a highly emotional argument.

Again, the simple fact of the matter is that you're generally not going to find many people on the Right supporting the kinds of positions or behaviors under discussion here, at least not on an ideological level.

Reference to "the Left," as a generalized whole, is appropriate.

The second problem that is easy to identify with your OP is that "hedonism" is not the same thing as "free love".

I didn't say that it was. I said that the modern cultural Left tends to promote both "hedonism" and "free love."

The terms overlap, but are not necessarily interchangeable. "Hedonism" is a far more broad term. It applies to many aspects of one's life, not just sex.

It doesn't make them Hedonists if they live non-committal sex lives.

I would, actually, view that as being a form of "sexual hedonism."

You're conflating things like polyamory, sexual promiscuity, fluid relationships, and Hedonism together. They are not the same thing.

They are close enough, overlap enough, and all enjoy more than enough support from the generalized "Cultural Left," to merit grouping them together for the purposes of this discussion.

Who tried to tear down social mores? Which social mores were torn down?

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Are you completely unfamiliar with the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and the rise of the "New Left?"

I disagree that there's a culture war. Right and left wing moral values co-exist to this day. Nobody is winning or losing.

Again... Have you just not been paying attention, or what?

Our culture is the literally the most "polarized" it has ever been right now.

But if you go back even further... the 1950's would've been seen as "very liberal" compared to the values of the 1920's, and most of us look at the 50's in hindsight with a conservative tint. We are much more liberal today than anything in the 60's, institutionally. It's all relative. Conservatives of today are liberal compared to conservatives of the past. That's not because of leftism.

I don't see a cultural war happening, in terms of left vs. right. I think moral decay is happening everywhere, across the spectrum. We see Republican leaders caught in scandals regularly... caught with children, with sex workers, etc. The right wing seems to be under the delusion that they are the salt of the Earth, when all they're doing is trying to suppress the truth with a moral social veneer that is barely working anymore.

I have no bone to pick with the left or right. I think our society's morality, in general, is crappy right now. I don't blame it on culture wars, I blame it on our consumer capitalist way of life which has fueled our utter greed and gluttony to our own detriment. EVERYONE is behaving selfishly. We live in an instant gratification culture.

The more you focus on it being a "leftist" issue, the more dishonest you look. It's like looking at a rotten tree and saying only half the branches are to blame. You're not looking at the whole organism, the entire problem. Your bias is blinding you.

And deeper than this... you have failed to expound upon why Hedonism should be rejected. What's wrong with it?

I'm sorry, but on basically all of these points, we're going to have to agree to disagree. Most of your underlying assumptions here are so completely alien I wouldn't even begin to know how to address them.

Besides which, I might remind you again that the point of this thread isn't to discuss the merits of the Left's ideology (I've beaten that horse beyond death already). It's to discuss the origins of that ideology.

You basically seem to want to just flat out deny that ideology exists at all as an entity separate and distinct from anything else. That frankly strikes me as being more than a bit dishonest and nonsensical.
 
Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

It's probably the advent of birth control pills and other methods of contraceptives combined with easy access to, and lack of stigmatizing, safe (for the mother anyways) abortions.

When you remove many of the natural consequences then it's going to result in a significant shift in dynamics.

The getting the upper hand against the bugs, then later GLORIOUS SCIENCE gifting us the "PILL" , were both huge.

However, we look to be about to get killed by the bugs (too often literally), so at least sexually we libertines are going to have to make some painful adjustments it seems.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

I didn't claim that they invented it. I simply noted that a strong inclination towards the praise and glorification of hedonistic behavior has become an essential aspect of modern Left Wing ideology in the Western World.

As I noted in my OP, that's actually somewhat odd, because the origins of the modern Left are basically Marxist, and Marxists have actually, traditionally, tended to be rather prudish and restrained. Somewhere along the way, the Western branch of the movement basically "mutated" away from that.

The right loves and partakes of sins of the flesh, Swinger Clubs are chock full of conservatives, though it is true that as a stereotype Conservatives are more interested in pursuing the sin of greed than they are the Sins of the Flesh.

By a little.

Maybe.

:shrug:
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Dont be expecting to see me handing out awards for good behaviour though.
 
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Re: What Are The Roots of The Modern Left's Obsession with Promoting Sex and Hedonism

The right loves and partakes of sins of the fesh, Swinger clubs are chock full of conservatives, though it is true that as a stereotype Conservatives are more interested in pursuing the sin of greed than the sins of the flesh.

By a little.

Maybe.

:shrug:
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Dont be expecting to see me handing out awards for good behaviour though.

Again, what we're talking about here is the mindset, and the ideology, more than anything else.

No one's saying Conservatives don't misbehave. I'm saying that the Left is somewhat unique in that they try to play it off as not only being "not a big deal," but actually a "virtue," of sorts, which others should seek to emulate.
 
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