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Leonidas -> RE: Strange fasiation aboute Gorean lifetyle. (2/9/2005 4:49:52 AM)
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Hi Alexander,
Nice to see someone who knows what they are talking about. I have written in various places for years about the basis of our way of life being ethical naturalism. John Lang's PhD Thesis, in fact, was entitled "In Defense of Ethical Naturalism", though in it, I think he was defending Hume against GE Moore, rather than commenting directly about Aristotle.
My take on Aristotle is that his basic premise was that it's good to be what we are. With respect to freedom, if one is capable of freedom, they should stand and be free. If their nature is that of a slave, it is right and good that they submit to the collar. As you said quite well, those who came later weren't really all that intersted in a sincere inquiry into what the nature of right and good might be. They wanted social control. What Aristotle saw, simply, as "nature" became "sinful nature"; something one must fight to overcome, rather than celebrate and make the basis of one's ethos.
Where I don't agree is with the notion that every philosophical premise to be found in the books came from Aristotle. Aristotle didn't understand evolutionary biology, and the notion that natural selection should proceed unimpeded in mankind underlies much of what Norman wrote. Spinoza wrote that the business of a species is it's own survival. If you take that as the standard by which you define "right" you might just end up with an ethical system like what you find in the Gor books, where people who play with things like guns and bombs are summarily dispatched, and men are even distainful of weapons like crossbows, because with one a weak man can kill a stronger man without pitting his strength speed, and skill against him. Such a world is brutal, and unfair, and dangerous in the small, meaning that a given individual might be exposed to more risk. If, on the other hand, your underlying definition of "good" is "what is most fair and equitable to each and every man, and what brings the most possible comfort and ease to all", you'll end up with a world like ours. Cushy and "fair", docile and polite, but overpopulated, polluted, and dangerous in the large; where life is more "fair" and comfortable for any given man, but where the liklihood that our entire species, or at least large parts of it, will die in mass is much greater.
These aren't easy questions, and there aren't really right answers. Every answer has its own set of consequences. Goreans like me, as you pointed out, come down on the side that says our nature is good, and that survival of our species is indeed our business, and the basis of what is "right".
To the points that you stressed:
1. Among women very few will be natural submissive. 2-5 percent is probably accurate.
This is oft misquoted. In one book Norman mused that a relatively small percentage of the female population were slaves. What he had to say about submission was something different. He postulated that just about all women are potentially submissive. The only question is "to whom?". Goreans belive that every woman has competing drives. One drive is to seek out a partner to whom she can be an equal. The other drive is to seek out the champion, to whom she can only be a slave girl. We could spend a lot of time discussing why this might be so from a socio-biological point of view, but there you go.
Earthmen are stifled and repressed. Victorian society god bless em, neutered most men
I thought everyone knew that. Is it just we Goreans? <grin>
A true submissive is infinitely more interesting to men then a free woman
Ever noticed how men talk about the things they own more than they do the women in their life? What if they owned the women in their life? Something to ponder.
The concept of "love slave" true match, mirror, and "the one' do exist. In modern society you can easily die trying to find them.
Well yes, but the trying is not without its own rewards.
To your original question, nella, our way of life, or "lifestyle" if you prefer, proceeds from these philosophical premises. The things that we value; strength, honor, commitment to home and community, freedom (and its counterpart, slavery), and love of the natural world can all be traced back to it. We own slaves, and we celebrate female slavery especially as something beautiful. That's really where the similarity between Goreans and the D/s community at large begins and ends.
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