On detachment...

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PorcelainLark
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Re: On detachment...

Post by PorcelainLark »

John_Doe wrote: Mon Jan 05, 2026 9:44 pm I can't agree with your last paragraph.
Which part(s)?
John_Doe
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Re: On detachment...

Post by John_Doe »

PorcelainLark wrote: Tue Jan 06, 2026 12:13 am
John_Doe wrote: Mon Jan 05, 2026 9:44 pm I can't agree with your last paragraph.
Which part(s)?

I'm not sure how to put it into words, which is part of why I didn't reply (along with not having the time to). It seems to me that there's this trend, especially among-left leaning people, and also among some ethno-nationalists, to forgive people for the most brutal crimes (I mean moral errors, not necessarily legal crimes) but not from a principle of forgiveness per se being ideal but because we're all pawns in some game enacted by bigger players who are 'really' responsible for the injustice we see in the world, much of it carried out by pawns. It just seems so arbitrary to me. Obviously we are all, myself included, going to draw arbitrary lines when it comes to forgiveness (in terms of how I feel about people or how spontaneously sympathetic I am to them, I will publicly maintain that no one deserves to suffer regardless of who they are or what they've done) but it seems to me that a coherent ideal would be all or nothing. I can't accept the idea that some random guy commits some horrible crime and we should empathize with him because he's a product of the system or the culture he was raised in etc. (that, in a vacuum, isn't my issue; that's coming) but politicians or rich people; 'the big guys who run the world,' are held to a higher standard. I don't think rich people generally have the kind of power that some people think they do (if that's off-topic) and, in a democracy, average people elect fellow average people to represent them. They give that power to them so they also have some responsibility in how they exercise their power (not that everyone's individual vote makes a practical difference but collectively, voters give their leaders their power).

In theory I can kind of see where you're coming from (I don't know what LE stands for) but I don't think average people are anti-pedosexuality because they wrongly assume that most pedosexuals are a threat to children. I think they have the same bias as those researchers you have in mind. It is possible I'm overstating how hostile average people are to pedophiles (thinking that an attraction to children is wrong doesn't necessarily translate into hating pedophile's guts or wanting them to suffer/die) but even when presented with pedophiles who make it clear that they will never act on their attraction many normal people will respond with hostility, they'll scoff at the idea that we should 'go easy' on the 'virtuous' pedophiles who have sworn to never act on what they desire as if not viciously raping a child warrants a gold star etc. Data can be useful in helping us to calculate probability but what research would have to be done to show that AMSC isn't inherently traumatic? It's a philosophical question, if we can imagine a scenario in which a child didn't feel traumatized as a result of some form of sexual or erotic intimacy with an adult (by contrast, we can't imagine a square triangle because having three sides is what makes a triangle a triangle) then causing trauma isn't intrinsic to AMSC even if it's very high-risk in practice (and many people can remember having sexual feelings when they were children so a scenario where a child enjoyed it isn't anywhere near as implausible as some people make it out to be), nor are we even necessarily dispositioned to have a negative emotional response to sexual intimacy with adults as children in the way that we are necessarily wired to have a negative emotional response to the realized frustration of our desires. I think your position rests on the assumption that average people sincerely oppose AMSC because they want to protect children from trauma but even if that's a factor in opposing AMSC itself, the general stigma can't be reduced to that alone so, again, the opposition to AMSC on principle (say, because it degrades our concept of childhood innocence even in theoretical scenarios where it didn't cause the child immediate or long-term emotional distress) is a bias that average people share with those researchers, average people would be inclined to confirm their preexisting narrative if they were seen as public authority figures on the matter as well.

There seems to be this populist tendency among some people to shy away from being critical of the average person. You can be critical of, or even antagonistic to, some random one-off individual or various people here and there but people often seem to find 'misanthropy' off-putting, and to interpret 'misanthropy' from statements that are critical of average human beings. In maybe the same way that a white person can be critical of a black person here and there (even that, depending on what we're talking about, should be a no-go by the rules of the far-left; although I wouldn't say those of relatively normal white liberals) but if a white person seems critical of average black people (maybe they note certain flaws in 'black culture') they will be seen as racist by many people.
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