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Padriag -> RE: Like Gor? Love Klashaan! (5/21/2006 7:10:23 PM)
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I get the notion of it being more presentable, more engaging. We live in an age of entertainment rather than Enlightenment. People have short attention spans and if it isn't fun and entertaining they have little patience with it.
And that's part of my problem with the whole concept. Follow me on this a moment.
I take being dominant seriously, enough to want to be my personal best. To that end I've done my best to educate myself using a variety of sources. I've talked with more experienced dominants and submissives over the years. I've read a wide range of literature within the lifestyle. I've read broadly in psychology and particularly in applied behavioral psychology. I've written my own essays on the lifestyle, most of which began as a personal exercise in examining various aspects of it, a way to help me understand things better by examining them and to put my thoughts down on paper. I've put a lot of effort into it because its important to me. I've done my best to base everything I learn on either direct experience or credible sources of information... but all of it based firmly in reality.
Now I'm presented with people who come to this lifestyle basing what they know on a work of fiction (take your pick there are several varieties around). I am confronted with people who passionately argue that slaves should be thus and thus... and masters should do thus and thus... because a fiction book said so. And what's worse they genuinely believe what they are saying... as though it has never occured to them that their idea, the concept they are espousing was based not in reality but in fiction. And even when confronted with someone like myself, someone grounded firmly in reality and direct experience... they cling to that fictional book like it was their personal bible.
No not all are that bad... but I doubt there is a person who reads this who doesn't know and probably has personally encountered the type I speak of. I wonder about the sanity of it. Of someone weilding a whip based on what they read in a fictional story, punishing someone else because that person didn't adhere to a fictional ideal (which may or may not be entirely impractical). Gor has often been the target of criticisim for this very reason... that at its root, its based on fiction and that leaves so much of it suspect. Even in regards to those "Goreans" who have long since dismissed much of that fiction themselves and turned to reality for practical ideas, lessons and concepts (which makes you wonder if they can still be considered Goreans). Any other such group is going to face the exact same criticism, in perpetutity for exactly the same reasons... so why set yourselfs of for it?
It does leave me wondering, if the idea is so popular then perhaps there is merit for a work of fiction based on real life BDSM practices, real behavioral psychology, real models of D/s and M/s relationships in the modern world. I do get some of the appeal of Gor and other "societies" like it. As you say, behaviors are defined, roles are defined, its all very predefined and outlined and structured. That can certainly be attractive to someone trying to figure out "okay, so I'm a dom, what in hell do I do now?"
If I sound critical, even a bit contemptuous (and I'm really making an effort not to, this is not any sort of attack, just honest commentary), its because with all the effort I've put into getting to where I am today in this lifestyle, its a bit hard for me to accept someone who claims to be a "Master" modelled on something the read in a work of complete fiction that was never based on or in this lifestyle to begin with. And when that person purports their knowledge of a series of books to somehow be equivalent to the years I've spent gaining direct experience, the long hours reading Skinner, Adler, Maslow, Festenger, Branden, Miltenberger, etc... you'll pardon me if I have trouble taking them seriously. And theres a point to be made in that, about the ongoing "conflict", friction and mistrust between "BDSMers" and "Goreans" as to why exactly that conflict exists. Now I'm getting visions of yet another such conflict, and probably a three way as BDSMers, Goreans and Klashaans all square off in their respective corners.
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