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07/11/2007: "Without guidance, most people become whores"

The liberal revolution of the 1970s is now accepted even by most modernising conservatives. It has allowed transgressive identities such as 'being gay' to be expressed as integral to persons on their own terms. It ended an atmosphere of repression, prejudice and stereotyping. The price, however, was that anyone with (say) gay inclinations came under increasing pressure to make a choice between being gay, being not gay or choosing some third identity (such as bisexual). A whole range of new sexual identities emerged in a constant attempt to 'fix' complexity.

Similar processes of defining identity took place in other areas of formerly
forbidden discourse . in alternative religion, in gender politics and in
'race'. But, in the real world of ordinary folk, few people actually belong to
any fixed single category for very long. So, this was only relative
liberation, of the dominant part of a person at the expense of the whole
person, freeing individuals only on condition that they chose a category of
their own instead of a category chosen by society.

What Lynn implies in her own experience of some rather innocent cyber-sex is
that people, taken out of their normal social context and left free to be
themselves with minimal risk, are immensely fluid and have complex sexual
drives and multiple identities. If allowed to do so, people will shift their
behavior quite radically in different contexts. Research on 'evil'
increasingly indicates that context is vitally important in determining when a
person will do an 'evil' act in the real world.

[ Not all people follow the whore model, but what they're saying here is that without a social context, people become purely selfish and dramatic, and act without any clear goal for the sake of drawing attention to themselves. So then you have a society of three hundred million different kinds of "unique" that can't unite to save themselves, and the barbarians at the gates have an easy time of it. ]

http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=461