RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Community Discussions] >> General BDSM Discussion



Message

mistoferin -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 11:46:32 AM)

quote:

'Core Motivators'? Do you think you could expand on that


Sure angel, I will take a stab at making it make sense. Core motivators (at least in the sense I am referring to them as) are the way we feel in our own heads, in our own souls, at our core. They are the reasons that we choose to act in the manner we do, the reasons we choose to be in the relationship dynamics we are in. They are how we identify internally. They are the reason we have chosen to walk the path that we do.

Internally at my core I am submissive. My need in life is to develop a relationship with another person(s) that allows me to feel free to express who I am at my core. That does not mean that I am submissive to everyone and it does not mean that I am incapable of dominant acts. I am quite capable of acting in a dominant manner, but I would not be satiated or fulfilled at the core level without developing a relationship that allowed for the expression of my basic nature.

Make any more sense?



mistoferin -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 11:50:04 AM)

quote:

I think erin was referring to those basic needs that are at the root of our predilections to explore either dominance or submission or both.


Exactly....thank you Domtimothy for your eloquent abilities.



Faramir -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 12:00:02 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ShiftedJewel

quote:

enganing in solo humilaition play.


That would be engaging and humiliation....... Please, dictionaries are cheap... online dictionaries are free.

Jewel

edited to add.... if you are going to try to insult me, please do it intelligently.




Oh - did you correct a typo? How precious. I hope it gave you a little crumb of comfort.

PS Typographical accurancy doesn't = intellect - see, that's another painfully stupid error on your part.



mistoferin -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 12:12:41 PM)

quote:


quote:

ORIGINAL: ShiftedJewel

quote:

enganing in solo humilaition play.

That would be engaging and humiliation....... Please, dictionaries are cheap... online dictionaries are free.

Jewel

edited to add.... if you are going to try to insult me, please do it intelligently.




Oh - did you correct a typo? How precious. I hope it gave you a little crumb of comfort.

PS Typographical accurancy doesn't = intellect - see, that's another painfully stupid error on your part.


Talk about knee-jerk reactions... Your actions here on these boards are painting a very clear picture of the differences between dominance and arrogance. Perhaps you should refrain from posting until you can get your emotions in check "Sir". Spare those of us who are here to try to garner a bit of wisdom from these boards the agony of your inane dribble. Not to mention that you are very clearly in violation of the TOS, which perhaps you may wish to read.



Faramir -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 12:26:43 PM)

hey mist...

make me [:D]



mistoferin -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 12:32:27 PM)

quote:

hey mist...

make me


Well gosh, that was mature. Need I say more? Case closed.



Noah -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 12:56:31 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: lonewolf05

the only tangible word i get in here is ======faith.?

i am not one of the church people so deities are out. but that is in faith, right? there is no solid proof, of after life.

so if i get close to target here.....faith in a Dom/me and they have faith in the submissive....each one accounting of their own acts....in faith? help me out here.


Lonewolf, I bolded that part of your quote above because I think it paints a compelling picture of one vision of BDSM relationships, no big words needed. Thanks.

I think that this may be a big part of what what it is about for me, as opposed to being about the acts themselves.

Some people may focus on the black rubber underpants. That's cool. Some people seem very taken up with a sort of Inspector Gadget level of gear use and production. Or maybe I should say Thomas Edison level. For some people it may be the sheer exercise of power for its own sake, on top, or the being used, like a thing, on the bottom.

Another possibility I’m interested in exploring (another thread, maybe?) is a sort of aesthetic of submission and/or dominance. I’m sorry for the three dollar word but I don’t know another way to refer to it without writing a whole paragraph. After a some number of years and interactions I realized that with some people I am just struck by how beautiful—or sometimes ugly or just aesthetically uninteresting--their submission is. Not how beautifully they do this or that in particular. And it has nothing to do with their clothes or gear or physical attributes. It is more of a "whole thing." I can’t define it. Maybe it rings true for you or maybe it doesn’t. Anyway I think that this submission aesthetic has a bigger affect on my choice of partner than it does on my overall choice of BDSM as a set of activities to engage in.

I’m sure that’s not clearly said because it isn’t clearly though out yet so I‘ll move on.

Anyway lots of other possibilities suggest themselves too and I’ll bet that for most individuals there is a nice mix of ingredients to their motivations and ways of finding meaning in BSDM.

For me I think that the other things are mostly ways and means of getting to the experience of what you might call faith or you might call by another name if you have a rule against using words that religious people use (not that you personally seem to suffer that kind of self-imposed handicap.) And yeah--in line with Gemeni’s suggestion in his more general comment--my personal motivations and meanings might arise from some insecurities in me. I’m cool with that. I suspect though that once again the answer is not simple and one-dimensional.

Would I give up the aesthetic bit to get the faith bit? That question is too analytical for me. Let Norm and the mailman hash that out over some Molson XXX at Cheers. I’m just trying this approach as one among many to get a clearer view of something that has a degree of importance for me.

quote:


some acts i would guess could-be dominant ones...but isn't this up to each person's viewpoint?
some acts i would guess could-be submissive ones...and up to each person's viewpoint?


i do not know of any that can be clearly defined by a court of law of bdsm judges. whom would we appoint? on what grounds?


I think you and I pretty much agree about acts. And if I get your implication then we agree very well about the judges business, not that we couldn’t find some volunteers around here.

quote:


i am trying to understand these long posts but so many BIG words and i have trouble trying to grasp it all. i'm no college boy, evidently to you, but isn't all this just opinion? viewpoint?

help me out here, huh?

thanks
wolf


I wonder why some people speak as though they see any college educated male as a boy?

As for your question about opinion and viewpoint: I posted in search of other people’s opinions (as well as facts they might want to share) with a goal of improving my view of these things. So here too I think your comments are insightful. I think it is very much a matter of opinions and viewpoints. For my part I do suspect that there are some facts in the underbrush here; whether they can be settled is another question.

And facts are great things. Apparently some people here have a fetish for them. I like them and make use of them but they don't make my nipples particularly hard.

If I ask my friend which CD he would recommend between these two in my hand, he might offer me the fact that one has outsold the other ten to one; was made with more expensive equipment and had won a Grammy. These facts wouldn’t have much decision-making value for someone like me. My friend might instead offer me the opinion that the playing on one CD seems really professional and technically perfect while the playing on the other CD seems kind of unskilled; peculiar, but soulful. I’d thank him more for his opinion than for the facts he shared, and I’d make my decision. Maybe I’d decide to buy both recordings. Each obviously has some strengths.

It is a fact that my thinking has been illuminated by some of the responses here, including yours lonewolf05, so thanks.

Noah



Lordandmaster -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 1:49:58 PM)

I have to wonder what kind of jollies people get out of insulting strangers on an anonymous internet site.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Faramir

another painfully stupid error on your part.




Faramir -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 1:54:47 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mistoferin
Need I say more? Case closed.


Well to be strictly accurate, you haven't said dick - just had a temper tantrum.

s'ok though - I had a good chuckle on my way to the gym - kthanksbye.



Gemeni -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 1:56:00 PM)

LAM?

He's an attention troll. and he knows there is no ignore feature here-best to do it the old fashioned way-with self control.

Please don't feed the monkey.

(and by the way MO,I'm ignroing you-again. it's tragic that an intelligent guy burns so many bridges by being so childish-but so be it. I pity the men you command. )



Lordandmaster -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 1:58:33 PM)

There is an ignore feature. See the bright red hand in the lower left corner? It's well hidden, but I'm told it works wonders. (Haven't ever tried it myself.)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gemeni

He's an attention troll. and he knows there is no ignore feature here




Gemeni -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 2:01:29 PM)

Then maybe it is time we tried it.

It won't go away as long as we feed it's inferior ego.

Editing update-it works! I have two or three more to add-arguing simply for the sake of argument gets very old. Discusssion is great,*dick sizing contests* aren't.

Thank you collarme!



Noah -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 2:07:46 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mistoferin
…
I think that Emerald has a very valid point. mastery and submission are not about acts, although I don't necessarily agree that any act can be either dominant or submissive. The act of surrender ( the surrender of one's will to another, whether that be physically or mentally) for example, I see as a purely submissive act. I see Mastery and submission as more of a cumulative process. Each and every act taken singly can be viewed seperately as being dominant or submissive. When you view them cumulatively as a whole that is when the picture of mastery or submission begins to form.


Wow. That bolded stuff was what the fellers down to the barber shop call a fucking elegant dialectical turn. Can you do that shit on command, mistoferin? There just might be an open stall out in the barn.

Right off the bat I think that this turn you have given the conversation refines rather than invalidates Emeraldslave2’s point. I think (please correct me Emeraldslave2… I’m not too dommy to benefit from correction) that both Emeraldslave2 and I were focusing on what you might call observable acts, and *some* kinds of unobservable, internal acts. Mistoferin has put another sort of act front and center for us.

The Act of Surrender. Okay the words have the suspicious ring of the Dark Castle in the Clouds posse. Still I think there is something here that shouldn’t be overlooked. I think, now that it has been pointed out to me, that it can make sense to speak of surrender as an act. I’m thinking of a deep, expansive sense of the word surrender. I envision the act as one which might take place instantaneously or gradually—an analogy is suggested to the notions of enlightenment characteristic to the earlier vs. later, or, roughly, southern vs. northern schools of Buddhist thought. [note the din of religiophobes clicking the hell out of here. Later, dudes!] I think of it as an act that while it might be reflected in a lot of observable behavior happens invisibly in the heart or where ever the Will resides.

I guess I’m thinking of surrender as the act of acknowledging—not just intellectually but more deeply and richly--a particular or general form of subjugation. It seems to me that everyone must surrender—in this sense--or live a lie. You may see this in familiar religious terms: surrender to some God. You may say that the religious are living a lie and that logic and empiricism are the only things to which you must surrender. You may puff up your feathers and crow that as LordHighUberFountainhead you surrender to nothing but rather you enslave reason to do your bidding just like you do all the skanky hos ‘n bitches.

Some of us think it is really cute when you guys talk like that, by the way. Like Jr. leaping superheroically from his bed in his intellectual blankie-cape and underoos. So rock on.

Anyway, so how about weather? Tectonic forces? Gravity? Death? Ain’t there nothing you are subject to?

Surrender doesn’t mean curl up and die, or even be passive. We can stand up to gravity, and build ladders and airplanes and spaceships but seems to me that all of those things are still ultimately subject to gravity. And so are you. And it sems to me that if you pretend otherwise you are fucked, or pathetic, or stupid. Dylan said we all gotta serve somebody and I think he was at least metaphorically right.

And yeah, the act of surrender in this kind of grand sense I’m talking about appears to be necessarily un-dominant, mistoferin. Similarly, the sub-specie of this grand notion, kinky BDSM surrender to a dommish type, seems fundamentally un-dominant. You go, honey.

So is the following a plausible answer to my OP question for some of us?

"It isn’t about observable acts or maybe any other kinds of acts than The Act of Surrender"?

Now I know that mistoferin went on to say:

quote:

So what is it all about? I think that it is about our core motivators, whether they be natural or chosen. It is about who we are at that deeper internal level that makes us Masters or submissives....the acts are merely a physical means of demonstrating our orientation.


… but the internal Act of Surrender strikes me as more than "merely a physical means of demonstrating our orientation."

Your thoughts?

Noah



darkinshadows -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 2:43:37 PM)

yes - it does thank you!

And thanks to Timothy for explaining also.

Peace and Love



darkinshadows -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 2:47:42 PM)

quote:

Now I know that mistoferin went on to say:

quote:

So what is it all about? I think that it is about our core motivators, whether they be natural or chosen. It is about who we are at that deeper internal level that makes us Masters or submissives....the acts are merely a physical means of demonstrating our orientation.


… but the internal Act of Surrender strikes me as more than "merely a physical means of demonstrating our orientation."

Your thoughts?

Noah


I don't know about erin, and I do hope that I am not 'jumping in' on a question specific for her - ifso, then I apologise. But for me, I see a difference in 'acts' relating to surrender and the specific 'Act of Surrender' - maybe I am missing something in translation...

Peace and Love



tabularasa -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 3:09:49 PM)

Although I agree that acts can be submissive or dominant as well as neither, I think that acts are very important, especially when considering the faith question. It’s my understanding that in Christianity, faith exists in men as a gift from God that destines them for salvation. Further, isn’t it true that the faithful are inspired to good works by their faith? In other words, not everyone who does good works is faithful, but everyone who is faithful does good works. I think it’s possible to substitute some words there and say not everyone who submits is submissive, but everyone who is submissive submits (at least at some point).

Submitting must, I think, involve acting in accordance with the desire of another. I think that in the context of Christian theology, the question of whether man can gain salvation solely through good works has been answered negatively. I’m curious, though, about the question of whether good works can inspire faith, or if faith can only be received from God. I think this is relevant to the discussion in that perhaps, as has been asserted in this thread, all that matters is the inner conviction of submission, not the act itself. I tend to wonder, though, if repeated acts that comply with another’s desires or commands can inspire heretofore dormant or nonexistent submissiveness that would be analogous to the faith described in the original post. Both submissive acts and an inner submissive orientation are necessary for a d/s relationship (at least the kind I envision) to occur, just as both good works and faith are necessary for salvation.

P.S. I really am very ignorant of Christian theology, so I hope that someone more knowledgeable will school me if I got it horribly wrong.



Faramir -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 5:13:05 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tabularasa
It’s my understanding that in Christianity, faith exists in men as a gift from God that destines them for salvation. Further, isn’t it true that the faithful are inspired to good works by their faith?


I belive you are confusing faith with grace.



Faramir -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 5:28:24 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mistoferin

I think that Emerald has a very valid point. mastery and submission are not about acts, although I don't necessarily agree that any act can be either dominant or submissive. The act of surrender ( the surrender of one's will to another, whether that be physically or mentally) for example, I see as a purely submissive act. I see Mastery and submission as more of a cumulative process. Each and every act taken singly can be viewed seperately as being dominant or submissive. When you view them cumulatively as a whole that is when the picture of mastery or submission begins to form.



Noah picked up on that, and he is right, it is a worthy comment - if I might add something:

The word "act" can have more than one denotation. To use Noah's earlier example of the stranger in a parking lot slitting someone's throat, we can parse it with two uses of "act."

If we mean by "act" the mechnics, the discrete event (in this case the entry of the blade into the throat) it tells us nothing nothing beyond the event itself. We don't know if this is an evil or good act, an attempt to save a life or take it - we have no context to understamd, only a datum.

If use the denotation of "act" to mean putting intent into motion, the "act in malice" sort of act, the word that carries a connotation of choice and responsibility, oh how this changes. Then we can talk not in a limited sense of a discrete, mechanical event, but the Aristotelian idea of conscious, responsible choice - to act.

I think you are using the word "act" in your example in the second sense (Noah I believe called it an "internal action") - you aren't speaking (I think) about the discrete event: "She submitsssss....hmmmmmm.......right there!" You are instead I think talking about the willful inent to lay down, to surender - to make a choice.

I tie this back into Noah's OP - it is not so much in the discrete events (laundry folding, spanking, being put in a cage/caging) but rather the contextual choices that lead to these discrete events that matter - and it is those choices I think that build up to create relationships.



mistoferin -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 9:37:50 PM)

quote:

I think of it as an act that while it might be reflected in a lot of observable behavior happens invisibly in the heart or where ever the Will resides.


Yes, the act of surrender. You have indeed explained it quite well. Thank you for making it a bit more clear than I could find the words to do.

quote:

I think you are using the word "act" in your example in the second sense (Noah I believe called it an "internal action") - you aren't speaking (I think) about the discrete event: "She submitsssss....hmmmmmm.......right there!" You are instead I think talking about the willful inent to lay down, to surender - to make a choice.

I tie this back into Noah's OP - it is not so much in the discrete events (laundry folding, spanking, being put in a cage/caging) but rather the contextual choices that lead to these discrete events that matter - and it is those choices I think that build up to create relationships.


Once again, I think this is a fairly good representation of the meaning behind my post.



ruthfw -> RE: If is isn't about Acts, what is it about? (7/17/2005 9:52:02 PM)

Wow. I haven't seen anyone cite Buber since I took Sexual Ethics back in college.

How lovely to see such a philosophical approach!



Page: <<   < prev  2 3 [4] 5 6   next >   >>

Valid CSS!




Collarchat.com © 2025
Terms of Service Privacy Policy Spam Policy
0.03125