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ManOeuvre -> Dispositional Dissonance (7/4/2016 10:30:11 PM)

What are the philosophical contradictions you hold with respect to BDSM, S/m, M/s, kink, lifestyle, etc? Are there principles that you hold closely in your mind which are antithetical to each other?

How do you deal with them?

For example, I have a profound love of freedom, and regularly quote the greats, like Locke, Jefferson, Lincoln and Prime, and yet I'm comfortable with irrevocable TPE with genuine captivity.

I consider religious worldview to be at best epistemic failures and at worst celestial dictatorships, and I abhor them, yet I am intensely attracted to the principles and expressions of sartorial modesty practiced for almost entirely religious purposes.

I feel these are not conflicts between any sort of expectations and outcomes, but I may be wrong.

Examples of that sort would be the difference between my expected support for the spirit of BDSM ecumenicalism, YKIOK, etc based on my being on a 'community' site contrasted with the 'one twue wayism' that I practice and express to my more like minded associates.

Outside of the BDSM there is of course the being a Canadian who happens to like guns, or being a bicycle rider who owns a pickup truck.

These are just outcomes not lining up with stereotypes and expectations.

I really think that the first two are conflicts which really exist at a fundamental level in my mind, and while I have some strategies for dealing with them, I'd love to hear first if others have analogous, issues before I share my strategies for putting the two halves of my brain back together.


_______________________________

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.



JeffBC -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/4/2016 10:51:09 PM)

Yay for Canada!

I reconciled the differences I had. Mostly those centered around the question, "By what right do I take authority over Carol?" It took me a few months to get to the stupidly simple answer... "Because I can and because it makes a happy marriage." Oddly, I didn't have a hard time with blood spatters and tarps and whatnot nor did I have a hard time "hitting a girl" when I experimented with some Sadism/masochism.

Freedom is a fascinating concept in and of itself... a word that is often used and seldom understood. In general I interpret it as "I have the range of actions and choices that I think I ought to have". In that sense, Carol doesn't feel that she is "not free" even though sometimes my directions annoy her. This is much the same as me not feeling not-free when a cop pulls me over for speeding. Driving erratically is not a right I expect to have and it's not a right I want. So even though it annoys me to get the ticket I approve of the entire transaction.

I'd be curious about your "irrevocable TPE with genuine captivity" concept but not enough to derail this one... perhaps a different thread?



DaddySatyr -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/4/2016 11:47:52 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ManOeuvre

What are the philosophical contradictions you hold with respect to BDSM, S/m, M/s, kink, lifestyle, etc? Are there principles that you hold closely in your mind which are antithetical to each other?

How do you deal with them?

For example, I have a profound love of freedom, and regularly quote the greats, like Locke, Jefferson, Lincoln and Prime, and yet I'm comfortable with irrevocable TPE with genuine captivity.

I consider religious worldview to be at best epistemic failures and at worst celestial dictatorships, and I abhor them, yet I am intensely attracted to the principles and expressions of sartorial modesty practiced for almost entirely religious purposes.

I feel these are not conflicts between any sort of expectations and outcomes, but I may be wrong.

I really think that the first two are conflicts which really exist at a fundamental level in my mind, and while I have some strategies for dealing with them, I'd love to hear first if others have analogous, issues before I share my strategies for putting the two halves of my brain back together.



I can relate. I think you and I have some similar (if not: parallel) thoughts/dilemmas in this vein.

Re: your first example: Jefferson is one of my heroes and I am quite sure that Locke was one of his.

I always had an issue with the appearance of exerted patriarchal (in its worst sense) dictatorship. I came to learn that there are ladies that are emotionally enslaved to me (notice I didn't say " ... enslaved by me). The paradox is: It's by their choice that they are so entwined. By their own free will, they choose to follow the precepts that I espouse.

I don't demand their obedience. However, I do expect, once submission is offered. I have to give a rather long example.

Beth has worked for the same company for fourteen of fifteen years. In fact, she was the owners "gal Friday" and was instrumental in building his business, from the beginning. A few years back, her boss hired a scumbag that promised to bring production numbers up to where they belonged and to set the company on a new path to success.

One of the first things he did was to target and fire a long-time employee that did absolutely nothing wrong on company time (there was a personal issue with another employee). I warned Beth that this guy was up to no good. I know the type and I knew he'd come gunning for her. I told her that with her experience/resumé, she should just cut her losses and find something else.

She'd come home, almost in tears, every day and I would continually advise confronting her boss or looking for other employment.

Beth had convinced me to go ahead and go to school and I had agreed, but told her that if I did so, there would be some responsibility on her to maintain a portion of the household bills in order for me to be able to finish my degree. So, her decisions and actions were going to (sort of) affect me.

She dragged her feet about finding new employment and continued to tolerate the mental anguish her job was causing. Finally, about a year and a half into this asshole's tenure, he managed to get her written up (the first time in an over 30 year working career) for an incident that happened while she wasn't even there (she was on vacation) that was the fault of one of her subordinates.

Not only was she written up, but the wording on the document was: "If Elizabeth continues to exhibit ..." as if it wasn't the first first time this issue had come up.

Well, I blew my stack and finally insisted that she contact a lawyer and really start looking for another job. You see, to this point, I hadn't demanded obedience, but I was certainly expecting it.

Contacting the lawyer was the beginning of the end for the asshole, but I was fumed and warned her that if she allowed a similar situation to happen, again, there'd be hell to pay.

Her freedom and my love of the principle of freedom allowed an issue to arise that almost torpedoed our relationship. However, the incident strengthened us and she realized that following my guidance would have saved her a metric shit-ton of irritation.

I can really relate to your second example because I consider myself to be religious and it is the only aspect in my life that I would describe as submission. I submit to the spiritual principles that I consider to engender the Higher Power of my understanding.

That said, I also understand that the world doesn't operate on these principles and to expect it to would be foolhardy, but I can conduct my own affairs, guided by my spiritual beliefs, while balancing the fact that I needn't submit to the crap that the world lays down for me. So, my expectations of certain outcomes aren't clouded by expecting my beliefs to sway others, but how I react to the world around me is guided by those principles.



Michael



ResidentSadist -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 1:50:14 AM)

My compliments, nice topic.

I am morally flexible and resolved any conflicts long, long ago. I read the Marquee de Sade's letters from prison where he describes morals (principles) as being a product of geographical location. For example, in the Middle East thievery is despicable and the lowest of crimes. Here in the USA we hold up bank robbers like icons. We make movies about Al Capone. Bonnie & Clyde and the James Gang is a symbol of independent free spirit.

I was 13 years old when I realized we were not born with morals, there is no inane deep sense of morality built into us. We are condition (by our environment/geography as de Sade put it) to have morals. So I shed all my morals and rebuilt them. By the time I was 15, I had owned and embraced my sadism, my kinks and my dominant nature. As Alister Crowley said in the Book of the Law and The Law is for All, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

So that is how I dealt with it.



DesFIP -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 8:13:03 AM)

I'm confused about why TPE means captivity to you? In my reality, because I can go to him to solve problems, I feel more free and less stressed.
In exactly the same way I cheer about police stopping traffic to make sure all cars have inspection/registration stickers. There's a temporary delay during which I listen to the radio and in exchange I get to feel safer about the other cars on the road.



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 9:07:30 AM)

Thanks, RS.

I'm as averse to overworked phrases as I am to fast food, and if I had a quarter for every time I've seen the phrase cognitive dissonance written or heard it spoken, I'd have enough to beat pac-man.

I half disagree with you with respect to the notion of geographically dependant morality. I think there are certainly cultural window dressings that are applied to the concept, for example, I would also disagree with you about thievery being the lowest of crimes in the middle east. It seems to me that any crime against an imagined deity gets top billing. In any place where thievery costs you a hand, outright blasphemy will cost you your head. The idea of a geographically dependent morality seems to me to only apply to the cultural accoutrements which are themselves local to an area.

I think there are some basic concepts of morality that are universal. One of the reasons I think this is because of the lit on chimpanzees and their reactions to instances of cheating.

They don't have much in terms of artifice and circumstantial culture - they are captive chimps in a pen, yet they respond along similar lines to what you would expect if you posit some intrinsic sense of morality without the slightest hint of language or culture.

The other main reason I think so, and I admit I have a much harder time pinning this on anything, is simply that I believe that a completely objective basis for morality can be derived entirely from concepts of well-being and harm, which I think can be satisfactorily defined without reference to anything cultural.


One of the strategies I use to reconcile the conflict between the first two concepts that make strange mental and moral bedfellows (my attachment to the idea that freedom is good and my practice of an irrevocable strain of TPE with genuine captivity) stems from some motivational speaker that presented and spoke at my school when I was very young.

This man had a serious physical handicap, yet lived a fulfilled life of challenge, victory, defeat and joy every bit as full as the most able bodied man alive. His explanation for this was simply a matter of mathematics:

"An able-bodied person can do 10000 things in life. I can do about 1000 of those things. A life is only long enough to do a few things well, so I'm concentrating on those."

Of course, I'm paraphrasing and translating here, but I think I get my point across, which is that even in the narrowest of confines, in, as Atwood would call it, the most "reduced circumstances there is room enough for an extremely fulfilling life and that life is within reach given the right attitude.

Thus, I sleep reasonably well.

_____________________________

I avoid cliché signatures like the plague.



littleladybug -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 9:14:03 AM)

I don't see any contradiction between consensual TPE and freedom. For me, what it boils down to is the freedom of choice to do what one wants to do with their life.






littleladybug -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 9:24:03 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ManOeuvre


Outside of the BDSM there is of course the being a Canadian who happens to like guns, or being a bicycle rider who owns a pickup truck.



Spending time with Canadians over the course of a decade taught me many things, not the least of which is that the stereotypes are basically all false. (And it is somewhat humorous when people try to fit themselves into the stereotypical "box" and fail miserably at it.)



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 1:17:15 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: DesFIP

I'm confused about why TPE means captivity to you?


I don't consider those words synonymous. What I meant was that I'm comfortable with, and practice TPE with genuine captivity. Similar to if I practiced the art of drumming with the art of singing.

That's what I meant.

_________________________________

I put the vetic in helvetica!



LilJuly76 -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 1:58:03 PM)

there are sterotypes about us? wow who knew....... just a little after work humor it's a Canadian thing eh



ThatDizzyChick -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/5/2016 7:02:40 PM)

Yeah, I had some issues reconciling my feminism with wanting to have my Fella be in charge of the house. In the end I came to the realization that feminism is about me having choices, and therefore if I choose to let him take the lead it is my right, as a feminist.



ResidentSadist -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/6/2016 3:08:34 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ManOeuvre

Thanks, RS.

I'm as averse to overworked phrases as I am to fast food, and if I had a quarter for every time I've seen the phrase cognitive dissonance written or heard it spoken, I'd have enough to beat pac-man.

I half disagree with you with respect to the notion of geographically dependant morality. I think there are certainly cultural window dressings that are applied to the concept, for example, I would also disagree with you about thievery being the lowest of crimes in the middle east. It seems to me that any crime against an imagined deity gets top billing. In any place where thievery costs you a hand, outright blasphemy will cost you your head. The idea of a geographically dependent morality seems to me to only apply to the cultural accoutrements which are themselves local to an area.

I think there are some basic concepts of morality that are universal. One of the reasons I think this is because of the lit on chimpanzees and their reactions to instances of cheating.

They don't have much in terms of artifice and circumstantial culture - they are captive chimps in a pen, yet they respond along similar lines to what you would expect if you posit some intrinsic sense of morality without the slightest hint of language or culture.

The other main reason I think so, and I admit I have a much harder time pinning this on anything, is simply that I believe that a completely objective basis for morality can be derived entirely from concepts of well-being and harm, which I think can be satisfactorily defined without reference to anything cultural.


One of the strategies I use to reconcile the conflict between the first two concepts that make strange mental and moral bedfellows (my attachment to the idea that freedom is good and my practice of an irrevocable strain of TPE with genuine captivity) stems from some motivational speaker that presented and spoke at my school when I was very young.

This man had a serious physical handicap, yet lived a fulfilled life of challenge, victory, defeat and joy every bit as full as the most able bodied man alive. His explanation for this was simply a matter of mathematics:

"An able-bodied person can do 10000 things in life. I can do about 1000 of those things. A life is only long enough to do a few things well, so I'm concentrating on those."

Of course, I'm paraphrasing and translating here, but I think I get my point across, which is that even in the narrowest of confines, in, as Atwood would call it, the most "reduced circumstances there is room enough for an extremely fulfilling life and that life is within reach given the right attitude.

Thus, I sleep reasonably well.

_____________________________

I avoid cliché signatures like the plague.

Maybe you can just look at it like you have the freedom to practice an irrevocable style of TPE?

Well I agree that there is always a way to find a fulfilling life. And I agree that crimes against the various deities carries a higher weight than thievery in the Middle East. I meant that "thievery is despicable and the lowest of crimes" [plural as in among several crimes that are lowest], not the lowest crime [singular]. My bad, that could have been phrased better so it only had one interpretation.

Yes, de Sade was talking about geographically dependent morality gained local cultural. In his day and age they didn't have the internet or jet age. To bring it up to date and clarify further, he was saying our morals are a product of our external environment, not from some natural internal source. He felt morals weren't natural and we should shed as many of them as we can to find our true nature.

Developing objective, disassociated or natural internal morals like "concepts of well-being and harm" leads me to the problem of how you would define well-being or harm without external environmental reference? A child doesn't know it's 'harming' the screaming puppy by pulling its tail too hard until we teach it... or until the puppy bites and teaches a lesson. Either way, the lesson is an external source. Hence my inability disprove the concept "we* are a product of our environment" over the past 50 years I have thought about it.
*personality, traits, morals, id and etc

I look at a beautiful breakfast on the table with a bouquet flowers and I see violence, slaughter and death. I see a bouquet of severed plant genitalia, its reproductive organs in bloom as it is slowly dying in front of you, unable to procreate. I see the unborn spawn of chickens that will never hatch, their eggs cracked open and fried. I see the many seeds of wheat that will never sprout, ground to flour dust and made into toasted bread. I see the seeds of the coffee plant that were dried and died, ground up and drenched in boiling water until their unborn essence bled out and flavored your drink with their death. Holy jebus... how many dozens of children from these beautiful life forms must we kill and mangle to get some breakfast and a cup of coffee?

Most people don't admit or even see their participation in such violence... because their environment taught them to be blind to it. I want to believe there was some inherent independent set of morals native to being human, some kind of spiritual or moral compass, an instinctive sense of right and wrong. But nope, always seems to trace back to environmental influence. So when I read de Sade and how morals were more a measure of your geography than your humanity, it struck a cord that that rang true for me.

I am glad you half disagreed with me about environmentally dependent morality. It made for your good conversation. Thank you for you in-depth reply and sharing your perspectives.



shiftyw -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/6/2016 4:14:40 PM)

I struggle on a few levels.

A) I'm a feminist (don't tar and feather me...I'm not gonna go too far down this wormhole on the only thread with any substance posted in the last couple months)- However, as I see it BDSM is all about choice. And if I LIKE him degrading me, its just ME specific- I wouldn't apply that shit to everyone. And really its a celebration of choice, my freedom of choice. I'm not into certain kinks because I can't see them as things that don't apply to the whole world- for example- race play- I never really believe that someone who is into nazi stuff or black slavery stuff doesn't really want the world to be like that. I am open minded, and I hear you...but I'm just not there yet with those kinks. (I don't use the word slavery in regards to anything we do either, intentionally so, I can't personally rectify it with my own morals), Others can do whatever they want, though. I just can't see female or male supremacy, or race play, like that, for me, right now.

B) I was raped BEFORE I was into BDSM. This one is a lot harder. I don't do rape play. I think consent is sexy, and I don't mess around with CNC. I have to wonder if I was raped because I had a taste for BDSM or if I'm into BDSM because I was raped. OR if they're just things that happened to me, separate entirely. For me being ok with this part of myself comes and goes. Again, I like choice, and I can turn it into a celebration of consent. But also there's a whole "but what if maybe...I'm just really fucked up?" and obviously I have a few darker thoughts, I don't really want to get into that shit here.
This is hard to come to terms with and I'm not sure I ever will. I don't do CNC or rape play, and don't put myself in a position to witness such things.

I dated a guy for a long time who told me that I never "fought back enough" or "ran from him enough" when we were engaging in this stuff. I could only ask him why I would fight something I specifically wanted from him? Wasn't the point of what were doing that I was submissive? The submitting to his will is what I like? So on some level I see that stuff as just...an extension of my consent. But thats the closest I've ever come to putting all that together.




Wayward5oul -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/6/2016 4:45:24 PM)

Great post shiftyw...this mirrors a lot of my own thoughts. I'll also add that there are some things that I don't think I will ever be able to reconcile for myself, and there are some things that frankly I don't want to reconcile.

Personally, I think a certain amount of dissonance might be healthy, at least for some. For me, it forces me to regularly self-reflect, to question, to consider my choices and my fears. Which helps me to grow.



crazyml -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 1:08:47 PM)

First... thanks OP for a fucking marvelous thread.

I recognise the question, but I'm very reconciled to the fact that I don't see a real conflict here.

Some time ago, I was removing a nipple clamp from a playmate's clitoris... my finger slipped and it clamped back... causing a huge cry of pain. I was fucking mortified and full of remorse. She ended up laughing, largely because moments before i'd caned a very pretty, livid, grid onto her buttocks with a cane. For me there's a mutuality about d/s relationships... and provided that the fulfillment of needs is balanced, there's no conflict.

The question about TPE, and also the question of feminism and d/s is ultimately about freedom... freedom is often completely moot until you give it up....perhaps freedom is the ability to make choices... to bindnyourself?



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 2:15:09 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ThatDizzyChick

Yeah, I had some issues reconciling my feminism with wanting to have my Fella be in charge of the house. In the end I came to the realization that feminism is about me having choices, and therefore if I choose to let him take the lead it is my right, as a feminist.


Indeed. I can't help but see that the incongruity could come to a head during a disagreement. It seems to me that for the most part, a couple's interests and desires will align. If there is a decision that cannot be agreed upon, where the extra weight he has taken on as HoH hasn't quite enough force to make it unstoppable enough move a nearly unmovable feminism, then a genuine unresolvable may come up.

A healthy couple could probably live together 600 years without ever considering it outside of the academic.



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 2:57:08 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: shifty (truncated by Manoeuvre)

I struggle on a few levels.


I think that's the best part.

quote:


I'm not into certain kinks because I can't see them as things that don't apply to the whole world- for example- race play- I never really believe that someone who is into nazi stuff or black slavery stuff doesn't really want the world to be like that. I am open minded, and I hear you...but I'm just not there yet with those kinks. (I don't use the word slavery in regards to anything we do either, intentionally so, I can't personally rectify it with my own morals), Others can do whatever they want, though. I just can't see female or male supremacy, or race play, like that, for me, right now.


I certainly sympathize with the reluctance to engage in certain racial directions. I used to have quite the hangup.

For a tiny bit of background, I answer to Canadian, Native, Aboriginal, Métis, but generally only ever am accused of being caucasian or afrikaner.

My entire adult life, I've lined up my relationships (or ambitions towards them, as the case may be) along TPE, M/f, Gorean lines, etc. I had a specific reservation with respect to race; I was only interested in practicing my brand of loving oppression on caucasian women. This had nothing at all to do with an exclusive attraction, or any specific desire to have my children look a certain way. It was entirely to do with a sense I had that I'd be 'cheating' if I let genuine oppression do some of the lifting on my behalf. I had a feeling I'd be less deserving of my harem stocked with doe-eyed concubines if I had simply bought them from their parents up some tributary of the Mekong than if I had charmed them out of their pant-suits and into collars with my basso profondo, and solid tango.

NB. Obviously the realities are somewhere in between, but I choose to illustrate with sharp reliefs, it's July after all.

My artificial aversion was so high that during the overseas component of the mandatory mettle-testing which paid the first 4 years of my schooling, I was in close contact with an interpreter who I found very attractive, and had a very mutual entendre with. Mastuda, A Farishta of my own, whom I could have had not only the joys of making swoon, but the privilege of bringing her willingly to a world half a planet away free from the least strife. Now, our interactions were of course subdued, given that the local culture made the UK look like an island of porn stars, and the consequences to her for the slightest indiscretion would have been severe. I wasn't blind to this one I'd let get away, but I willingly looked away on account of my above-mentioned hangup. She was killed shortly after I left for home, though I didn't find out until several months later. There is a parchment she gave me as a gift, which hangs in my office to this day.

If I had shed the hangup sooner, perhaps my life would have been different. Hers certainly would have.

As it turns out, I have since shed that particular hangup, and while I don't think I'd be keen on anything with white sheets or any situation involving the word plantation, today I'm an equal-opportunity oppressor.

I suppose it is one small instance of the incongruity finally ironing itself out.



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 3:10:01 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul
Personally, I think a certain amount of dissonance might be healthy, at least for some. For me, it forces me to regularly self-reflect, to question, to consider my choices and my fears. Which helps me to grow.


I certainly agree, W5. I think it helps us grow. If our brains didn't require some combing from time to time to line up the rows of thoughts, and a little brushing to at least try and get out some of the tangles, we'd probably have much rougher knuckles.

Kurt Vonnegut cautioned us against too much of a good thing, though:

“Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?”



ManOeuvre -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 3:32:56 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: crazyml

First... thanks OP for a fucking marvelous thread.

I recognise the question, but I'm very reconciled to the fact that I don't see a real conflict here.

Some time ago, I was removing a nipple clamp from a playmate's clitoris... my finger slipped and it clamped back... causing a huge cry of pain. I was fucking mortified and full of remorse. She ended up laughing, largely because moments before i'd caned a very pretty, livid, grid onto her buttocks with a cane. For me there's a mutuality about d/s relationships... and provided that the fulfillment of needs is balanced, there's no conflict.

The question about TPE, and also the question of feminism and d/s is ultimately about freedom... freedom is often completely moot until you give it up....perhaps freedom is the ability to make choices... to bind yourself?


Thanks, crazyml, I'll try not to get banned this time around.

I think your story illustrates very well just how important context can be! From time to time

I suppose the really sticky thing about TPE is the if we're being serious it seems identical to slavery, which most societies abhor. Societies do have provisions for otherwise rendering people into bondage and servitude, particularly if they voluntarily commit a crime. In some societies, and all of them at various times, civil matters could place one in a type of debtor's prison. TPE is almost in the unique position of being an entirely elective process.

Can a person opt out of the right of freedom?

Almost above is pulling double duty because I think for one thing no decision, however elective, is 100% free from compulsion, and I'm sure TPE is not the only situation that runs up against this particular black box.



JeffBC -> RE: Dispositional Dissonance (7/7/2016 3:36:54 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: crazyml
The question about TPE, and also the question of feminism and d/s is ultimately about freedom... freedom is often completely moot until you give it up....perhaps freedom is the ability to make choices... to bindnyourself?

You know, here's an interesting point. Carol and I chose to be life partners and that's proven to be a wise choice over quite some time. That means we chose not to be free of each other. She has total freedom to disobey/disappoint me. She also has the freedom to shoot herself in the foot. So far, she's chosen not to exercise either of those freedoms. I feel quite similarly myself.



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