Malkinius
Posts: 1584
Joined: 1/9/2004
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Tal Leonidas....
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ORIGINAL: Leonidas
Oh boy. This is going to take a while.
This is the one place where we both are in absolute agreement.
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Ok, first of all, a religion doesn't need a god at all. Buddhism, for example, doesn't have one. Same with priests or salvation. I might argue that you have accepted gurus in your chosen way of life and venerate them very much like someone would a guru, but that's a digression. Philosophies don't tell you how to run your life, Malkinius. Philosophies (even the special case of ethics) are descriptive, more than prescriptive. Philosophers inquire into the nature of abstract concepts like morality, and the definition of "right" or "good". They don't write cookbooks for how you should run your life. That is the province of religions, or more recently, self-help gurus.
Actually...Buddhism does have priests and salvation (nirvana)...and in some forms, it has gods. Guru, like Sensei, means teacher. Yes, we all have teachers in our lives. While we do value and place some teachers much higher than others, they are still humans who have knowledge and sometimes wisdom they provide to others. How much we learn and what we learn from any teacher varies a lot.
Philosophies are the roadmaps and signposts of how to live. I grant that they are not a trip-tik for how to live your life. Actually...many philosophers have written about how men should live their lives. Confucius foremost among them. However, you can go back to Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and other early as well as late philosophers such as Sartre who have written examples on how to live a life. Ann Ryand would be another good example of someone who wrote books showing how to live the philosophy she created...and one that some people try to follow and live by. So no, it does not take a religion to tell you how to live. I will also note that you seem to have found a way from the books to live your life and call it Gorean.
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Norman wrote about another place, and other cultures, mostly from earth's past. Why the past? Why not the future? He was writing about biological determinism; something better exemplified by clutures from long ago. He was saying that we aren't a blank slate to be molded by the current fashion in social engineering. That we do have an inate nature as human beings that we deny at our own peril. He was pointing out that we are living too far from our genes; creating a world in which we, with the bodies and instincts of hunter-gatherers, were never meant to live. He wrote about people living in other cultures from our own past to point out that we've strayed too far from what we are. Most people living today embrace systems of morality and ethics that are founded on the premise that our natural instincts are to be mistrusted and dishonored. A whole major religion is based on the premise that our very inate nature is sinful (oringal sin) and that we have no hope other than through the intervention of dieties. Norman pointed out that workable systems of ethics and morality can exist that embrace, rather than reject our nature as human beings. Such systems might be harder and outwardly more cruel than we are used to these days, but his premise was that such systems might bode more favorably for the future of our species than the softer systems that we have adopted.
Hhhmmm....here we agree as well. We are indeed reading the same books. While each of us may get something a bit different from them, we do agree on these points.
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So yes, being Gorean has everything to do with discovering, and being, what you are. It's about celebrating humanity, the product of countless generations of competition, and evolution rather than convincing ourselves that it would be better to be something else. I am a man. I have inate drives and desires that were honed through eons of living, and dying, winning, and losing, conquest, and subjugation. I am the progeny of the winners, and rightly so. I trust in that more than I trust in the lastest ethical fashion or attempt at social engineering and control. At the core, that is what makes me Gorean. Even saying such things outloud will cause bleeding hearts to bleed, and those who would say that there should never be winners, or losers, to bristle. They aren't Gorean, and I commend them to whatever fate that drives them toward.
Now we start to separate again. No...it is not about being what you are....it is about being what you can be. You contradict yourself here from your previous paragraph. Norman was giving an example of what we COULD HAVE BEEN...and through that what we SHOULD BE. That is very different from being what we are. Now...discovering exactly what you are now, why you are that way, and what you could become is part of understanding and mastering yourself. Such introspection is good for everyone. Goreans do tend to be the opposite of politically correct. Political correctness is an enslavement system, not an empowering one. (Sorry...getting a bit off track here. Which systems, religions, ethical systems, etc are empowering versus enslaving is a good topic, but mostly not part of this discussion.
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One more time. Being Gorean has nothing to do with sex, kinky or otherwise. Norman did not write a sexual philosophy. He wrote a philosophy about how to live your life... blah blah blah.
Pardon me, but bullshit. That is the exact equivelent of saying being a human has nothing to do with sex. It's not healthy (and certainly not Gorean) to compartmentalize yourself that way, Malkinius. The only folks who make those kinds of arguments are zelots of one stripe or another.
Actually...if you think it is only about sex, then you have not just compartmentalized yourself, you have marginalized yourself. I did not say that Goreans do not have sex. I said it is not a philosophy about sex. We are not living by the Playboy code. Ok...I don't know about you but I am not doing so. (grins)
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One of the defining features of Norman's whole argument is that natural, unrestrained human sexuality is very much about dominance and submission. In 25 books the word "slave" appears over 6000 times and the vast majority of the slavey that he describes is female slavery of a sexual nature. If you met a Gorean, as Norman envisioned Goreans, on the street and told him that being a man (he wouldn't really get "being Gorean" since he is one) had nothing to do with the desire to subjugate, posess, and enjoy the tender nature of the female of his species he'd know one thing about you immediately: You're from Earth.
You are probably right about him thinking you are from Earth as only Earthmen, or maybe Scribes, would ask such a question. However, I think you will find on closer reading that in most places where Norman talked about what it took to be a man, especially a man that others respected, subjugating females was either not there or very far down on the list. There were a few groups who considered raiding for slaves, or cattle to be a part of becoming a man. Killing someone in combat was there as well for at least one group if I recall correctly. What makes a man to a Gorean would depend on where he was from, his local culture, not just that he was Gorean.. The natural order philosophical component is not about sex. Ok...not just about sex. Sex is only one component of it. When you make that the only part you go off in directions Norman did not go. When you try to divorce the general dominance and leave only the sexual dominance you are just trying to find a justification for your own kink. They call that BDSM these days....not Gorean.
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Secondly, Norman himself would bust a gut I'm sure if he heard that what you got out of what he wrote is that he, or anyone, should tell you how to live your life. If there is an antithesis to what he was saying, that's it.
No, he did not. He did specifically state that he did not write the books intending to create a lifestyle for people to live. I don't know that he has said anything about no one telling someone how to live their lives. He may have, but not in anything of his that I recall reading. I have heard that in philosophical journals he writes about how to view and understand philosophy. That is certainly what the Cognativity Paradox was about.
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When you try to divorce being Gorean from sex, sexual dominance, and sexual submission, you turn it into something else entirely so you might just as well miss all the rest. When it stops being what you are, and turns into what you believe instead, Malkinius, it's just another dogma. There are already enough of those. Sex can only be irrelevant to you as a Gorean if sex is irrelevant to you period. If that statement isn't so about you, then Gorean isn't what you are, rather, it's a belief system that you hold. One of the very core premises of that whole series of books is that those two things aren't the same.
Actually, you could take out all of the sex in the books and all the slavery and you would have about 75%-80%, maybe a bit more, of the philosophical points he makes in the books. If you add in women being complete only when in their natural order position with a man, then you get well over 90% of them. I will grant that he spends more than half his "expounding time" on that last 10%-20% of the philosophical points. Perhaps that is because they are the hardest to get and the ones he felt most needed to be emphasized because they were some of the greatest things he saw wrong with our society at the time of his writing. You are confusing quantity with content.
Sometimes you almost get it to where we are in agreement, then you back off from it. Yes, being Gorean is a belief system that I hold. It is one about who I SHOULD BE, not who I was or am. Note the difference. If your nature is that of a serial killer, should we celebrate you for living according to your nature and call that Gorean if you put some elements from the books into your life and collar a slave? I would happily attend the celebration of your execution if that were the case. I would not call your nature to be Gorean.
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If you discount what Norman said (ad naseum) about the nature of human sexuality, then yes, the desire to posess a female slave, and her corrisponding desire to be posessed has nothing to do with being Gorean. I'm wondering how, exactly, you decided that you were empowered to do that for anyone other than you? What makes you think that you can discount certain things that he described as pervasive, essential charactistics of Goreans, deciding that they don't matter, in favor of other things that are more attractive to you? If you want to pick and choose and come up with your own philosophy based on your narrower intepretation, maybe you want to call it by some other word, rather than hyjacking someone else's intellectual property. Similar to how we have "Lutherans" today, and not "True Catholics".
Actually....I am the one who is being more inclusive. So far you are focusing only on the sexual aspects of being Gorean and leaving most of the rest of it behind. I know that most of the time you don't do that, or at least don't always write that way. Why are you doing it now?
You are correct that there is more than one major strain of Gorean thought. You can divide the two of them that we represent into being Gorean as a way of living which may include consensual slavery and a D/s lifestyle that has something of a philosophy and shared cultural background attached to it. I shall leave it to the readers to decide who argues for which form. I will note that even Catholics have a number of versions of that religion. In this case, its more like me being a Catholic (which I am not) and you being a Mormon (which you are probably not).
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Being Gorean is about who you are and what you believe. It is not about what you own. You don't have to own a BMW to be Gorean either. Why should any sort of property define your moral and ethical base?
I'm not Gorean because I own slaves. I own slaves because I'm Gorean. The distinction is important, but it in no way implies that one has nothing to do with the other. Slave ownership doesn't define me. It is an actualization of me; a human male who happens to have the tendency to establish territory. Not all human males have that trait (the tendency to dominance), by the way. For them, owning a slave wouldn't be an actualization of what they are. It would be a sexual perversion, which is something else entirely.
Interesting. You have been arguing here that being Gorean is about sex and slavery. Now you say that it is not? I thought I was the one arguing that slaves had nothing to do with being Gorean? Now you are saying your nature is someone who has a tendency to establish territory, not own slaves? I have often said that most people can not be, and should not try to be Gorean. It seems that we at least partially agree on this point.
I am going to ask the big question. One you have never answered.
In your view of what it means to be Gorean, can someone be Gorean and never own a slave?
This one can be answered with a yes or a no. It is a defining point about what we believe it means to be Gorean. I eagerly await your answer.
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Yes, being Gorean is about being who and what you are, and believing that your nature is inately good, rather than sinful. Part of that, Malkinius, is embracing, rather than questioning, rejecting, or marginalizing your desire to own, and assert dominion, if that is indeed in your nature. Repudiating those drives in yourself as irrelevant because you think it's somehow noble to do so is exactly the behavior that Norman was arguing against .
Now we go back to some agreement. The parts about being good rather than sinful and about asserting dominion as you put it I agree with. Norman did not write against doing something you think is noble. He did write about doing what you think is right and taking the responsibility for your actions, right or wrong. He did feel that sacrificing yourself for your beliefs or your friends was a noble and admirable thing to do. He did write that putting your group/city/state above yourself even to extreme levels was praiseworthy. He did say that Goreans do not like being told lies and deal rather forcefully with those they believe have lied to them. And yes, he did say how pleasurable it is to completely possess a female and bring out of her all she is capable of giving.
I will easily admit the sexual nature and usage of the slaves who were the main characters in the books. Did you notice in your reading that Norman did say that most men on Gor did not own a slave? Did you notice the descriptions of large factories and farms, as well as the mines, where many of the slaves were actually used. Did you read the quote about how less than 1 in 40 women on Gor were enslaved? Why should we as Earth Goreans be any different than those of the books. They lived according to their natures without owning a slave. We do the same. Well....at least those Goreans who want to be something more than just another BDSM kink do. Those who live a life, not a lifestyle.
Be well Leonidas
Malkinius
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RE: Gorean..what brought you to it? - 
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