# Neo-Victorianism and the New Prudery



## Secret Asshole (Dec 6, 2018)

Tumblr bans porn, its primary source of income in an act of suicide. Sony of America shines censors cleavage in a bikini that wouldn't even be PG-13 rated. Female character designs have been getting uglier and abandoning their feminine shape for something more gender-neutral, not even androgynous. So we ask: why?

Pop culture is shaped by capitalism. Capitalism, at its core, is a basic, Pavlovian system. Its a system of incentives. Do good, get rewarded. Do bad, no reward or bad thing. A lot of it is reactionary by nature and thousands of people spend thousands of hours a day analyzing this shit to make the most money. In some cases, ideology trumps this, but get woke, go broke is real because this isn't fucking communism. So, lets remove ideology and replace it with pure corporate greed. Sex sells, so why aren't companies selling it anymore? In short, the Pavlovian response of people beating it whenever they do. So they don't. But sex still sells, and this loses companies money. They view the loss of money as an acceptable trade-off for no bad press. But as time moves on, the money trade-off is shrinking. Eventually you can only take so many losses before you go down.

But why cater to outrage mobs? Well, because for the past....shit, 20 years now, media has been dominated by a left-wing ideology that has grown more extreme and more and more authoritarian. In general, its a typical political cycle in America. You have a dominant power that begins to wane. In order to keep control of that power, its at first passive. Then it grows more and more active. Then it cultivates fear and division. And eventually, it all falls apart. Cycle begins again. 

The problem with the left is that it won. It won all of its struggles, all of its objectives. I'd say the left completed all its objectives with the legalization of gay marriage in 2015. And in doing so, it amassed a lot of money and power. Problem is, after that, there was nothing left. You could only go smaller, not bigger. So their causes got smaller and smaller. Which risked their money and power getting smaller. But people found a way to perpetuate them forever: a perversion of morality. If you take something that's moral, you can twist it into a coat and do what you want under its moral guise. You twist seemingly small and insignificant problems into large scale ones. Then you use this cloak of morality to control society. Or at least, attempt it. Essentially, this is what they're doing. And this is what the Victorians did too. This time, without the religious flavor.

*What was Victorianism?*
The Victorian Era was shaped by one of manners and modesty. This wasn't because they were all prim and proper. This was because they thought without manners and modesty, men would turn into savage animals and fuck and rape everything in sight. Loose women were evil and viewed as tempting men into a life of vice. Also nobody gave a fuck about them, really. You also had religion into the mix as well. It was basically a bad time all around and a lot of people kept everyone on leashes, early lacks of knowledge about human biology and sexuality were exploited. Bad old times.

*What is Neo-Victorianism?*
Basically it is what it sounds like. Victorianism was done to protect women from men (of course, it was under the guise to control women and men both). This time around, that's its stated goal, but it really isn't. Its still all about control of society through a twisting on morality. Except there's no religion in the mix this time, just secular moralism. Make no mistake, this seeks to control women as well as men under its umbrella. You've seen it all before. Women who 'betray' feminism are treated like dirt, get death and rape threats. Same shit as the loose women in Victorian times. (Well, this time around we've got actual laws to stop the shit that happened back then happening now. We've kind of advanced). Like in Victorian times, if you did not go with the flow, you were un-personed, and your special protected status is viciously yanked from you. You see this happen to black, gay, Asians and others who don't toe the line.

And like its predecessor, intentional lack of knowledge of human biology, psychology and sexuality were exploited. This time around, for political, economic and social power. No just religious authority. Bad new times.

*Where does the new morality come from, if not religion?*
Good question, imaginary asker! Victorianism's cloak of morality emanated from its Protestant origins. Its was basically seamlessly interweaved inside of it to keep everyone socially dominated and nicely controlled. 

So where now? Simple: Universities and the erroneous idea of tabula rasa. You can blame post-modernism for some of it, but without tabula rasa, this shit wouldn't ever exist. What tabula rasa postulates is simple: There are no human behaviors that are biological. None. Every single behavior is learned socially. When I mean every, I mean e.v.e.r.y. This includes thumb sucking and reaching for the nipple. They don't classify these as behaviors but as 'instincts' (they're the same). The very foundations of social science relies on this aspect being true. Its the object permanence theory applied to reality, biology and ideas themselves. If you make something disappear from society, its permanent. You eliminate it, because someone can't learn it anymore. This, by itself, is insane. It requires a vast amount of power and authority to do. You wonder why the left resorts to violence? Its the only way this would work. Big is beautiful. Ugly is sexy. Fat is healthy. Take away the ideas of the opposite, and these will magically come true. Because genetics and biology play no roles in their world. Its why they flaunt these diverse casts. They think by mystically fostering this ideology, everyone will accept it. They don't care about stories because they believe by simply pumping ideology CONSTANTLY, it will stick. Truth is, very few are going to buy into it that already haven't, unless you beat them with that stick. Then they'll believe whatever you tell them. Which is functionally, ideologically at the point of now. Don't agree? They'll fucking ruin you, because they're on the right side of history, because by eliminating you, they eliminate all of your ideas. And by completely marginalizing you, it'll be as if you don't exist. You fucking bigot.

The cloak of neo-victorianism is spun in tabula rasa. If you see it, it will affect you negatively. This will alter you morally. And we will protect you from that. Tabula Rasa is the house on which everything is built. Without it, _it all falls apart. All of it._ I don't need an hour to debunk Anita Sarkeesian or some feminist saying that videogames or movies or whatever turn you sexist. All you say is 'Tabula Rasa doesn't exist, hasn't existed and will never exist no matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you paid for your degree you spent. Behavior is an intertwining of genetics and nurture. It is almost impossible '. Our behavior is a product of genetics and nurture. We're not sure on the mix, but both play a big word. The key word here is both. 

How do you know that the predisposition for sexism is genetic? You don't. How do you know the predisposition to morality itself is genetic? You don't. How much is someone's sexism genetic and how much is learned? Almost impossible to untangle. So you can never concretely say something makes someone amoral or sexist, because it could be simply a person's predisposition and they'd be that way anyway. And with that, millions upon millions of dollars comes tumbling down into the gutter. Dissertations, books, careers and institutions reduced to rubble. 

Fundamentally, like the Victorians, what you have is a denial of our basic humanity in order to keep up this illusion of ideology. Ever wonder why progressives flock to science, but never really seem to go into genetics or really into behavior all that much? And even when they do go into biology, its so superficial? Like describing genetic diseases as a spectrum of gender and shit? Yeah. Science is their enemy. Make no fucking mistake about it.  

*So, what can we do about it?*
These moralistic ideologies are not about morality, they never really have been. They're about the current, decaying forces gripping power as hard as they can before the world leaves them behind. Victorianism followed on the heels of the industrial revolution; the world was radically changing and the forces of religion wanted to have a strangle-hold on an increasingly secular world. Ultimately, it failed and the Victorian era was remembered as a backwards time of repression, censorship and human misery.

The information age brought an influx of new ideas, eroding the power bases of medias and monopolies and the control on information, thought and language. Progressive politics, which has basically held sway for a long period of time, is now in danger of losing ground. Ohio is rapidly no longer becoming a swing state. Generation Z is becoming increasingly conservative despite progressive parents. More and more companies focusing on 'wokeness' are going broke. As a result, you have the intensity of rhetoric and ideology increasing, because grips on power are decreasing. This is why you have fake news narratives, corporate 'progressive' censorship and increasingly authoritarian measures all in the name of tolerance. The rise of the right wing is a natural state of being, as every force in nature produces one equal and opposite. Humanity is no different. The only way dying ideologies persist is through violence. And even then, that only prolongs their grip on power only for so long.

What we can do is vote with our wallets and speak our minds. Don't give in to ideology wrapped in fake morality that wants to control you. And ultimately, the wheel will turn once again.


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## Kamiii (Dec 6, 2018)

It's okay with me if furries are losing their fap material.


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## A Hot Potato (Dec 6, 2018)

I love everything you post.


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## Frogasm (Dec 6, 2018)

You gotta look at least SOME at apple's involvement in internet stuff. Apple are famously prudish as a company and because of iphone and app store that has hugely affected stuff coming to people through apps. companies need to cut out porn if they wanna be on the app store, and they choose money over porn even if they aren't prudes themselves, because apple is prudish. That's part of why tumblr recently changed things. They want to stay on the app store. They want the apple market.

Apple definitely isn't the ONLY part of changes in attitudes around sex and pornography, but it think that it big enough that it has swayed things and it can't be ignored


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## JambledUpWords (Dec 6, 2018)

The movie trend you mentioned is so annoying. By trying to operate on feminism and social justice, the roles women play on television and film are becoming so boring. In Disney’s case, they make it so a woman can’t be a truly evil villain anymore, she has to be misunderstood or made more sympathetic. For a woman that is cast as a hero, she  can’t have many faults, if any, because having a character with flaws is considered “problematic”.


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## Coconut Gun (Dec 6, 2018)

Frogasm said:


> You gotta look at least SOME at apple's involvement in internet stuff. Apple are famously prudish as a company and because of iphone and app store that has hugely affected stuff coming to people through apps. companies need to cut out porn if they wanna be on the app store, and they choose money over porn even if they aren't prudes themselves, because apple is prudish. That's part of why tumblr recently changed things. They want to stay on the app store. They want the apple market.
> 
> Apple definitely isn't the ONLY part of changes in attitudes around sex and pornography, but it think that it big enough that it has swayed things and it can't be ignored


I think that's kind of missing the larger point of why these mega-corporations feel the need to go along with this prudishness. It's not that Apple, or some other company, is driving these things, they're just responding in the way they think is best to the screeching mobs.


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## Frogasm (Dec 6, 2018)

Coconut Gun said:


> I think that's kind of missing the larger point of why these mega-corporations feel the need to go along with this prudishness. It's not that Apple, or some other company, is driving these things, they're just responding in the way they think is best to the screeching mobs.


In the case of porn in apps, they change not because of the screeching mobs (screeching internet mobs love porn, despite what the weird second wave feminists say about it) but because they are businesses and *businesses want more money*. advertisers don't want to advertise next to porn because they won't look as good. and a lot of banks and payment processors won't handle anything with adult content. If a business wants to do the easy thing and go with the flow and make more money, they can just ban adult content.

keeping porn around and keeping advertisers and keeping money flowing in large amounts that can please stockholders is really really hard. the way things are right now, it's simply easier for them to be prudes


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## Coconut Gun (Dec 6, 2018)

Frogasm said:


> In the case of porn in apps, they change not because of the screeching mobs (screeching internet mobs love porn, despite what the weird second wave feminists say about it) but because they are businesses and *businesses want more money*. advertisers don't want to advertise next to porn because they won't look as good. and a lot of banks and payment processors won't handle anything with adult content. If a business wants to do the easy thing and go with the flow and make more money, they can just ban adult content.
> 
> keeping porn around and keeping advertisers and keeping money flowing in large amounts that can please stockholders is really really hard. the way things are right now, it's simply easier for them to be prudes


I'll concede that the specific case of tumblr and Apple is not the best example, since it was an app that allowed porn but didn't get many of the negatives that come with hosting porn somehow, so really tumblr getting rid of the porn is probably long overdue. But I think the point still stands that large companies are a lot less comfortable having anything to do with sexuality, like having conventionally attractive female characters, and that's probably because they're afraid of the angry tweets they'll get if they do.


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## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Dec 6, 2018)

So basically the rise of the right is like Neo being reborn into The Matrix?

Kind of makes sense.


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## ES 148 (Dec 6, 2018)

Why is this a bad thing?


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## Pozzingmyfilthyneghole (Dec 6, 2018)

Vrakks said:


> Why is this a bad thing?


Because I'm a degenerate and I like my degenerate sex.


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## Cool kitties club (Dec 6, 2018)

Well you know it's quite liberating for women to forced to cover themselves


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Dec 6, 2018)

Is this generally really a problem?  With youtube and some other sites, it's because many advertisers generally don't want to be associated with people ass fucking each other.  Google, despite its reputation, is a rather incompetent company on everything that isn't its search algorithm and they're not good at controlling where advertisements show, and they don't want to really host videos that eat their bandwidth and don't make them money.   Tumblr recently got bashed for child porn being hosted on their site so they need to do a PR stunt over it and they know they're too incompetent to filter it so a blanket ban is necessary.  Reddit still has a ton of porn subreddits and there's little chance of them being shut down.  There's still a lot of boomers around and sexual revolution never completely won.


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## AnOminous (Dec 6, 2018)

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:


> Reddit still has a ton of porn subreddits and there's little chance of them being shut down.



They also have mods on those subreddits who get rid of illegal shit very quickly.  There's an actual community on reddit as well as subcommunities, and they police themselves because they know if they don't, their shit is getting shut down.  Even the creepy as shit communities like /r/jailbait which ultimately got banned for bad press coverage weren't a legal liability.  They were just a PR liability.  A lot of the creepier communities were modded by a guy named violentacrez before he got doxed by Gawker, and whatever else you can say about him, he spent most of his time finding and deleting actually illegal content.

Tumblr had nothing of the sort, would routinely just outright ignore reports of flat out CP, and when they did have to do something, they would just delete it and cover it up and then ignore all the other crap going on on the site.  This is why Apple deleted them, not that there was incidental or occasional illegal content, but that it was clear they were deliberately turning a blind eye to it.

While Apple are a bunch of control freaks and their Store policies might even be antitrust-worthy, this is a case where if they hadn't dissociated themselves from the content, they might have ended up being liable themselves.

So it's ironic that much of the pious moralizing about other people's porn came from tumblr, maybe the largest platform in existence that routinely tolerated the vilest content imaginable.


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## Al Gulud (Dec 6, 2018)

All we need now is actual laws to arrest lolicons and furfags.


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## Goku 1000000 O (Dec 6, 2018)

This is a really good post, but there’s a sisgnificant issue here. Tabula Rasa is at best the intellectual precursor for social sciences’ approach toward behavior. It isn’t actually a relevant concept nowadays and is more the product of the rationalist v empiricist debate before Kant came on the scene. Hell even in the history of philosophy Tabula Rasa really isn’t that important for post-modernism’s development, the way you get to post-modernism deconstruction is through genealogy (see Nietzsche). 
You aren’t wrong in characterizing the view but you’re attributing the wrong theory. I would suggest looking into standpoint theory. It applies similar tools of deconstruction by framing it as a social construct, but it does some fuckery on an epistemological level.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/
Have fun with that rabbit hole.


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## Harbinger of Kali Yuga (Dec 6, 2018)

Goku 1000000 O said:


> This is a really good post, but there’s a sisgnificant issue here. Tabula Rasa is at best the intellectual precursor for social sciences’ approach toward behavior. It isn’t actually a relevant concept nowadays and is more the product of the rationalist v empiricist debate before Kant came on the scene. Hell even in the history of philosophy Tabula Rasa really isn’t that important for post-modernism’s development, the way you get to post-modernism deconstruction is through genealogy (see Nietzsche).
> You aren’t wrong in characterizing the view but you’re attributing the wrong theory. I would suggest looking into standpoint theory. It applies similar tools of deconstruction by framing it as a social construct, but it does some fuckery on an epistemological level.
> https://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/
> Have fun with that rabbit hole.



You're wrong as tabula rasa, while completely discredited, is still implicitly viewed as gospel among the left, who want to create a New Socialist Man and cling to their oppression narrative on why there are disparities between different groups.  Tabula rasa is alive and well in places like sociology and anthropology.  They may not explicitly state it and may deny believing in it, but good luck finding a leftist that won't attribute a difference in population to any other than nurture or oppression. 

Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, while not a very well-argued book and he misrepresents behaviorists and overstates his case as he typically does, has become more relevant since he wrote it due to the political climate.  I thought tabula rasa was on its way out then but due to society taking a hard swing left it's back.


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## Goku 1000000 O (Dec 6, 2018)

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:


> You're wrong as tabula rasa, while completely discredited, is still implicitly viewed as gospel among the left, who want to create a New Socialist Man and cling to their oppression narrative on why there are disparities between different groups.  Tabula rasa is alive and well in places like sociology and anthropology.  They may not explicitly state it and may deny believing in it, but good luck finding a leftist that won't attribute a difference in population to any other than nurture or oppression.
> 
> Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, while not a very well-argued book and he misrepresents behaviorists and overstates his case as he typically does, has become more relevant since he wrote it due to the political climate.  I thought tabula rasa was on its way out then but due to society taking a hard swing left it's back.


Tabula Rasa is just the claim that people gain knowledge about the world through sensory data, i.e. empirical means. Technically it isn’t contradictory against a view of innate behavior. Locke wasn’t concerned with behavior, he was concerned with epistemology. He made this claim as a specific rebutal towards the rationalists of his era because they made claims such as reason being the only way to obtain certain knowledge.
I understand how people can make the connection to Tabula Rasa, but it’s just not as significant or arguably as present as some are making it out to be.
I’ll go another step to say that it’s a straw man to say that post-modernists don’t believe in innate behavior. They’re stupid but not that stupid. Certain behavioral inclinations innate to a gender is what they mean to contest, and they believe that social context can be used as a better or more valid explanation for the behavior observed.


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## queerape (Dec 6, 2018)

I agree with you fully. Ironically, in a culture of liberation, we've exposed ourselves so much to the idea of sexuality that the real thing intimidates us. We have become so afraid of fucking up with our partners, because it can recoil so heavily when we do as such high emotions are involved. You are not allowed to make simple mistakes any more with your partner because those realities of sex are concealed when discussing the theory of it, and having been exposed to only theory and not reality, it causes us to overreact and make mountains of molehills. Then, because of the ostracism that comes of making the mistake, instead of learning from our mistakes and forgiving, we avoid sex entirely and retreat to the comforts of the idea of it, be it through regimented consent contracts, porn/hentai, or uwu pure tumblr culture.

We are willing to engage with sex so long as we do not have to engage with the emotions inherent in it.


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## Positron (Dec 6, 2018)

The old Victorians actually talked about sex all the time.  Just that, as Foucault observes, they channel their attention to the legislation and scientific research of sex, in order to rationalize its social control.   The ultimate aim is, of course, power (as if you should expect any different from Foucault).  By pathologicalizing loose women as "nymphomaniacs", for example, the old Victorians controlled the range of behaviors allowed to women.

You can see a parallel with our new Victorians: they too talk about sex all the time, but frame it as an issue of "human rights" and "inclusivity".  By claiming what kind of sex should be allowed, and branding dissenter as "bigots", "transphobes" or "terves", they are trying to gain power and control of what normal people should do (or at least, should let them do).

What is different from the olden Victorian days is, of course, now we have the mass media propaganda machine, and we understand that kids should start to be fed propaganda when they are young.  While our adult space (such as Tumblr) is being de-sexualized, children space is getting increasingly perverted.  Cartoons like _Steven's Universe_ celebrate gender bending and same-sex attraction, and it looks like the new She-Ra is set to be a queer potpourri.



queerape said:


> I agree with you fully. Ironically, in a culture of liberation, we've exposed ourselves so much to the idea of sexuality that the real thing intimidates us.


This is also Foucault.  More talk  → more rules  → more surveillance against rule breakers  → more repression.


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## Vlad the Inhaler (Dec 18, 2018)

Let me say that I categorically support women becoming completely 19th century, old school prude, proper, frigid, and extremely repressed. That way, all the stuff we do with our clothes off becomes that much more degenerate, unholy and depraved. And *that's* why it kicks major ass.

It's like this incomprehensible new trend to use the word "cuck" as some sort of pejorative. If you are doing this, you're probably 14 years old and haven't yet figured out how sex can be both a team and a spectator sport.


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## Slap47 (Dec 19, 2018)

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:


> Is this generally really a problem?  With youtube and some other sites, it's because many advertisers generally don't want to be associated with people ass fucking each other.  Google, despite its reputation, is a rather incompetent company on everything that isn't its search algorithm and they're not good at controlling where advertisements show, and they don't want to really host videos that eat their bandwidth and don't make them money.   Tumblr recently got bashed for child porn being hosted on their site so they need to do a PR stunt over it and they know they're too incompetent to filter it so a blanket ban is necessary.  Reddit still has a ton of porn subreddits and there's little chance of them being shut down.  There's still a lot of boomers around and sexual revolution never completely won.



The Communist Party of France went out of their way to ban sex-doll brothels because they exploited women.

"Family-friendly" is just their way of getting the right wingers to side with them. Sex-negativity is the dominant strain of thought in feminism. As far as they're concerned sexual fantasy is dangerous, sex work is inherently exploitation and men must be controlled.


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## millais (Dec 24, 2018)

I must admit I am a little disappointed to come into a thread about "Neo-Victorianism" and no one is shitting on steampunk enthusiasts. Ban fat cosplayers in corsets!


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## Slap47 (Dec 25, 2018)

millais said:


> I must admit I am a little disappointed to come into a thread about "Neo-Victorianism" and no one is shitting on steampunk enthusiasts. Ban fat cosplayers in corsets!



Victorian steampunk or whatever has always been bad.

The whole point of that century is efficiency and they spit on that idea with their nonsense designs. Worse, games and films with the ugly style completely disregard the themes of the era and make it harder for actual stories from the period to be taken seriously.


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## millais (Dec 25, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> Victorian steampunk or whatever has always been bad.
> 
> The whole point of that century is efficiency and they spit on that idea with their nonsense designs. Worse, games and films with the ugly style completely disregard the themes of the era and make it harder for actual stories from the period to be taken seriously.


let's not pretend the Victorian era itself was all that great. The air pollution and public sanitation in the urban centers of UK was probably on par with modern day China, and the average working class people didn't have indoor plumbing until after WW2


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## Slap47 (Dec 25, 2018)

millais said:


> let's not pretend the Victorian era itself was all that great. The air pollution and public sanitation in the urban centers of UK was probably on par with modern day China, and the average working class people didn't have indoor plumbing until after WW2



And steampunk never represents this.

Class, pollution, colonialism, sexism, modern weapons, mass production... so many ideas and themes wasted.


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## AnOminous (Dec 26, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> And steampunk never represents this.
> 
> Class, pollution, colonialism, sexism, modern weapons, mass production... so many ideas and themes wasted.



The Difference Engine was about all that shit.


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## Snuckening (Dec 27, 2018)

Harbinger of Kali Yuga said:


> You're wrong as tabula rasa, while completely discredited, is still implicitly viewed as gospel among the left, who want to create a New Socialist Man and cling to their oppression narrative on why there are disparities between different groups.  Tabula rasa is alive and well in places like sociology and anthropology.  They may not explicitly state it and may deny believing in it, but good luck finding a leftist that won't attribute a difference in population to any other than nurture or oppression.
> 
> Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, while not a very well-argued book and he misrepresents behaviorists and overstates his case as he typically does, has become more relevant since he wrote it due to the political climate.  I thought tabula rasa was on its way out then but due to society taking a hard swing left it's back.




Yeah, tabula rasa underlies buttloads of the most rctarded beliefs of sjwism; all that "[x] is just a social construct" shit- which is the foudation of the idea that you can just switch 'genders' (actually sexes) on a whim, or that any statistical disparity between sexes, or between racial groups, _can only_ be caused by cultural beliefs (cultural beliefs that are completely arbitrary and formed in a vaccuum, and never reflect any underlying biological reality).

Even just _questioning_ that assumption of tabula rasa, and suggesting the possibility that inherent differences between the sexes, or between racial groups (even just in terms of group-wide averages- accepting that individuals in those groups vary wildly) is pretty much taboo in many circles these days, even though the data isnt even in doubt about the fact these differences exist.

And its not just the left/sjws-  More and more MRAs and anti-feminists are copying the feminist playbook (and not always deliberately- often it's just their genuine belief, assuming, say, that the massive diffence in male vs female violent crime rate _must prove _that the courts/cops have an anti-male bias (and have no relationship at all to the proven fact that testosterone is causally linked with aggression, or the fact that women have other ways to get money than violent crime, etc). 

That tabula rasa stuff is getting baked into people's heads, to the point where its an unspoken, unquestioned assumption that they arent even aware theyre making.


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## Stock Image Photographer (Dec 27, 2018)

Snuckening said:


> That tabula rasa stuff is getting baked into people's heads, to the point where its an unspoken, unquestioned assumption that they arent even aware theyre making.


I think the reason that people roll with the assumption of tabula rasa is because the the logical conclusions of natural, unchangeable, biological differences can be terrifying. For example, the link you mentioned between testosterone and aggression. If we know that to be true, and we know that aggression is linked to violent crime, then people will want to do something about it. A particularly extreme solution to this problem might be mandating that all males above a certain age take testosterone blockers, or something else equally authoritarian. In broad strokes, people are scared of the society forcing change on them, so they assume tabula rasa and try to force change on society.


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## queerape (Dec 27, 2018)

Stock Image Photographer said:


> I think the reason that people roll with the assumption of tabula rasa is because the the logical conclusions of natural, unchangeable, biological differences can be terrifying. For example, the link you mentioned between testosterone and aggression. If we know that to be true, and we know that aggression is linked to violent crime, then people will want to do something about it. A particularly extreme solution to this problem might be mandating that all males above a certain age take testosterone blockers, or something else equally authoritarian. In broad strokes, people are scared of the society forcing change on them, so they assume tabula rasa and try to force change on society.


There's the worry that having certain inborn traits as opposed to a tabula rasa could be used to justify dangerous policies. Under tabula rasa, every one is equal IQ at birth, but if there isn't tabula rasa, it becomes possible to say or prove that, for example, blacks have a lower IQ from birth. Then, one can use that to argue black people are inferior and need to be restricted.   This potential is maybe why liberals are afraid of approaching nature and assume tabula rasa- no one likes what the possibility of inborn inferiority may invite.


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## AnOminous (Dec 27, 2018)

Stock Image Photographer said:


> A particularly extreme solution to this problem might be mandating that all males above a certain age take testosterone blockers, or something else equally authoritarian.



Good luck to a bunch of low-T soy boys forcing the people with the testosterone to do anything they don't want to do.


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## Secret Asshole (Jan 9, 2019)

I didn't mean to let this thread linger without responding to it, but the holidays and all that plus getting sick....well, you know. I realized I might have left people with the assumption that tabula rasa was an 'old' concept. It is the literal and figurative basis for the root of the vast majority of social sciences, boutique subjects and scum academia we see now. 

I wish I could fucking find the article, but there was an article that discussed how prevalent tabula rasa is in the social science to the point where that social scientists objectively fear anything else. 

Ever wonder why there's this endless, really shitty marketing to consumers? Well....they don't consider biology. Tabula Rasa is endemic in marketing:



> In most instances, marketing scholars have largely ignored that consumers are biological beings and have instead assumed that consumers are strictly socialized into their preferences, desires, and choices (see also Saad, 2008).
> 
> Consumers are apparently born with empty minds that are subsequently filled with advertising messages, media images, Hollywood stereotypes, pornographic plotlines, sexual song lyrics, etc.
> 
> ...



This is the article in Psychology today, which was written six years ago: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/201210/the-mind-blank-slate-hopeful-wrong

Unfortunately, I can say she failed. 

This is the absolute basis for EVERYTHING that is preached by the authoritarian left. We need censorship because our minds our empty. We need it to be hidden. I want to stress, this is an old concept, but it is very much the foundation for soft science. You have to remember, neuroscience as a field is basically coming into its own. Its about 15 years old, and tabula rasa dominated before hand. The problem is behavioral genetics, neurology, biochemistry and neurochemistry have blown it a new asshole. Herein lies the problem: the social sciences are terrified of biology. In biology, you have to prove relationships. 

There are tons of articles about Tabula Rasa and the absolute denial of humanity. 



Goku 1000000 O said:


> Tabula Rasa is just the claim that people gain knowledge about the world through sensory data, i.e. empirical means. Technically it isn’t contradictory against a view of innate behavior. Locke wasn’t concerned with behavior, he was concerned with epistemology. He made this claim as a specific rebutal towards the rationalists of his era because they made claims such as reason being the only way to obtain certain knowledge.
> I understand how people can make the connection to Tabula Rasa, but it’s just not as significant or arguably as present as some are making it out to be.
> I’ll go another step to say that it’s a straw man to say that post-modernists don’t believe in innate behavior. They’re stupid but not that stupid. Certain behavioral inclinations innate to a gender is what they mean to contest, and they believe that social context can
> be used as a better or more valid explanation for the behavior observed.



I don't think you understand. Its not a straw man. They literally seperate out instincts, like the thumb sucking instinct as something completely different. They absolutely do not believe in innate behavior. Dr. John Money, the monster who made gender as a basis for a social construct, believed that we are born gender neutral no matter our chromosomes and possessed no innate behaviors. He believed you could take a baby of any gender, do a sex change, and raise it as the opposite gender and it would work. I'll give you a hint, it didn't. His subjects killed themselves. 

You really underestimate how prevalent tabula rasa is and its foundations in the soft sciences. 

From 2014: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01212/full


> There can be no doubt there is serious resistance to evolutionary psychology (EP) as a theoretical paradigm from both within the field (e.g., social psychology) and in other disciplines (e.g., social sciences). Numerous researchers (Harris, 2003; Eastwick et al., 2014) appear to have made it their objective to show how predictions made and studies conducted by evolutionary psychologists are flawed (and even outright sexist).



From 2018: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-57934-001



> Quizzing the social psychologists on their views of evolutionary theory, Buss and von Hippel found that they overwhelmingly accepted the principles of Darwinian evolution and also that it applied to humans, but when it came to whether evolutionary theory applies to human psychology and behaviour, the sample was split, with many social psychologists rejecting this notion.
> 
> Digging deeper into the survey results, there was no evidence that the social psychologists were averse to evolutionary psychology for religious reasons, but many did reject the idea that humans might be inherently violent (in certain situations) or that some people are widely considered more physically attractive than others due to universal evolved standards of attractiveness – perhaps, Buss and von Hippel suggested, this is because “they dislike the implications regarding the dark side of human nature.”



I think I've made my point. Just look at everything we see now. It can all be traced back to this. Why do we need diversity? Because if we don't show it, people won't become accustomed to diversity and become racist. Why do we need to hide attractive women? Because all men will believe all women will look like that. Why do girls in videogames need to be ugly and 'realistic'? Because boys and girls will think that's what women are.

Everything leads back to tabula rasa. Why don't we dump it? Because then social scientists would have to deal with this horrifying fact: We're all human. Not some weird object permanence machine where if something disappears we stop wanting or doing it.



millais said:


> let's not pretend the Victorian era itself was all that great. The air pollution and public sanitation in the urban centers of UK was probably on par with modern day China, and the average working class people didn't have indoor plumbing until after WW2



That and the chimney sweeps developed scrotal cancer.


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## KimCoppolaAficionado (Jan 9, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> Everything leads back to tabula rasa. Why don't we dump it?


Because all of contemporary Western culture is built on Enlightenment ideas of egalitarianism, which in turn rely on tabula rasa.  "All men are created equal" could be argued away if you threw it out, and we'd backslide into tyranny and feudalism.
That's the fear, in short.


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## Secret Asshole (Jan 9, 2019)

Senior Lexmechanic said:


> Because all of contemporary Western culture is built on Enlightenment ideas of egalitarianism, which in turn rely on tabula rasa.  "All men are created equal" could be argued away if you threw it out, and we'd backslide into tyranny and feudalism.
> That's the fear, in short.



Sure, there's the fear that we'll go back to Social Darwinism and Racial Science. The problem is that you're getting philosophy vs. science. Modern day scientific ethics takes care of that. Ethical rules have become more and more stringent since the 1960s. The protection we have now, the peer review process, plenty of things to prevent that.

And all men aren't created equal. Its an ideal, not a reality. Some men are born rich and make sure to crush and divide all other men. Some men are born cruel and violent, and there's not a fucking thing you can do to change that. That's just reality. Its an ideal we strive for.

Tabula Rasa, biologically, does not exist. Each of our neurons is plotted and planned out by our genes. Our brains are structured by male or female androgens and are not gender neutral. We have preset patterns imbued onto us. We have neuro-plasticity in that we can shift our neuronal structure, but plastic will still retain a basic shape. We cannot reform it. If your brain structure dictates you will get schizophrenia, you will get schizophrenia and no amount of nurture will prevent that.

Same with standards of beauty. Beautiful people are typically symmetrical. Look at everything beautiful. See how its symmetrical? That's how nature is, right down to the structure of molecules. You think you're going to change that by hiding beautiful women? No.

What is happening is a fundamental denial of humanity. Tabula Rasa denies it. It assumes we can all be these perfect creatures if we just had the right society. This is patently untrue. Some of us are just broken. Some things are just written into us. We will still rape, still murder, still kill, still be xenophobic if all those things are censored in our culture. Because that's what humanity is: imperfect, unfair and in some cases, immutable. When you try to control reality, when you deny humanity and human desires and truths, that's where you get Victorianism and Authoritarianism. Do you think progressives treat men, women, minorities and LGBT as human, or different species living together that can't understand each other? We know where this leads to.


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## KimCoppolaAficionado (Jan 9, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> Sure, there's the fear that we'll go back to Social Darwinism and Racial Science. The problem is that you're getting philosophy vs. science. Modern day scientific ethics takes care of that. Ethical rules have become more and more stringent since the 1960s. The protection we have now, the peer review process, plenty of things to prevent that.
> 
> And all men aren't created equal. Its an ideal, not a reality. Some men are born rich and make sure to crush and divide all other men. Some men are born cruel and violent, and there's not a fucking thing you can do to change that. That's just reality. Its an ideal we strive for.
> 
> ...


I'm not saying I _personally_ believe that: you asked a question, and I tried to answer that.
Personally, I believe we won't see the fading of the _ideal_ of equality or _tabula rasa _(that is, trying to treat everyone equally regardless of background) in American society, at least, anytime soon.  It's so deeply embedded into the memeplex of America that nothing short of a total collapse and restructuring of society could get rid of it within the next couple centuries, at least.


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## Positron (Jan 9, 2019)

Secret Asshole said:


> And all men aren't created equal. Its an ideal, not a reality.


"All human beings are created equal in whatever way you assess" is a hypothesis to be proven (and has been proven repeatedly to be false), not an axiom to be declared by fiat.


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## KimCoppolaAficionado (Jan 9, 2019)

Positron said:


> "All human beings are created equal in whatever way you assess" is a hypothesis to be proven (and has been proven repeatedly to be false), not an axiom to be declared by fiat.


The ideal is "no man should be treated as inherently greater or more worthy than any other by circumstances of birth alone", and was a reaction to the massive amount of corruption in the feudal system at the time (things like _primae nocta_ and _droit de prélassement_ were mostly exaggeration, but the flaws in the feudal system were clear at the time of writing).  And while it is true that we'd probably all be better off if the "best" people ruled as semi-divine overlords and the rest of us as meek and humble serfs, good luck devising a system that can do that, sustain itself, and doesn't rely on the idea that all humans are rational and perfect agents.
To paraphrase Mark Twain: "Egalitarianism is the worst social philosophy besides all the others."


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## ICametoLurk (Jan 9, 2019)

Literally all it is is that people who make money wanna sell shit to 99% of the rest of the World that believes in Stone Age level shit.


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## Terrorist (Jan 10, 2019)

I like how you frame it in terms of cycles, instead of the more common "analysis" where eeeevil SJW cat lady stereotypes are going beyond the pale of any censorship ever seen before by taking away gamer cummies, because they're just that evil or jewish or whatever. Restricting speech by whatever means (law, social ostracism, etc.) is a tool used pretty universally by dominant groups to enforce control, not something unique to liberals/leftists at all.

If kf existed in the 60s, where hippies and shit were the BRAVE FREE SPEECH WARRIORS, there would be a thread on Kennedy Derangement Syndrome (papist man bad) and a john birch society subforum. Maybe in 40 years or so somebody will post about the neo-neo-victorianism of the people who want to make ben shapiro height jokes and kneeling for the national anthem into hate crimes.

Idk about capitalism as a way out though. "Get woke, go broke" isn't really true most of the time, except for companies who made being woke their primary thing. Starbucks, Nike, etc. are still going strong. People think corporations are primarily beholden to the average consumer, but if anything it's the other way around. And as always I'm skeptical of the Gen Zyklon hypothesis. Still, great stuff.


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