A lot of people make comments about age gaps like the rule that you should half your age+7.
Some people go on about age doesn’t matter between consenting adults but refer to adults to be both people aged 25+. Some people believe relationship when people are in the same life stage and don’t work when they are at different life stages. What are your thoughts on that?
What do you think of this age gap rule that many people make
Re: What do you think of this age gap rule that many people make
Anyone that has those views should receive lethal injection.
I support AAMs and MAPs. Personally I am a romantic GL but I support loving relationships between people from infants all the way up to the elderly.
Re: What do you think of this age gap rule that many people make
All of these rules seem completely pointlessly to me (which is to say that I think the goals they might actually be intended to serve are completely meaningless). I am really at odds with conventional morality.
What's the bad thing that's going to happen if a woman in her late 30s dates a young man in his early 20s? If the concern is with suffering then that doesn't legitimize stigmatizing the age gap per se, suffering is simply something that might result from it (when it does, circumstantially, the age gap doesn't cause that or even prime people to ultimately suffer for reasons that are inherent to its nature. The experienced frustration of desire does prime a negative emotional response). If it's not with suffering or even anything else that might result from the relationship then the issue is just with relationships that exist under certain conditions (i.e. an age gap), outside of noting the inconsistency (a relationship is considered fine in one scenario but not another, if a thing has no intrinsic value it can still be instrumentally good, bad or neutral in different scenarios but the argument here is just that the relationship itself is bad when the parties involved are significantly older or younger than each other; not that something bad stems from it and the relationship is basically the same as at least some relationships between similarly aged people) there's not much of a formal argument to be made against it beyond it just being a completely arbitrary value. Anti-age gap people say the existence of that gap in a romantic relationship is inherently bad (or they'll pretend that it necessarily causes suffering or implies some deeply callous disregard for the suffering of the younger party on the part of the older) and they can't justify or defend this in any way because it's built on subjective criteria.
There's no logical explanation that I can give to someone who asks, "well, what makes suffering bad?" In terms of arguments and by definition, any defense for a first principle will necessarily have to be circular, but the reason why I think that only suffering is inherently bad is because we actually experience suffering as inherently bad (all possible sentient beings have to instinctively want to avoid pain because, prior to any rational assessment, it appears to be of negative value) and unlike sensory perception or memory our experience of pain doesn't simulate some reality other than itself that it might misrepresent. So there's a non-arbitrary reason to celebrate age-gap relationships insofar as they can be a source of happiness for people and no reason to condemn something that doesn't cause suffering or deprive anyone of happiness. If that doesn't 'work' for people I don't know what else to say, people seem to treat morality like a tv show where they suspend disbelief so they can have an emotional involvement but in the back of their minds I doubt that they would be seriously outraged by challenges to their ethical ideas if I presented this point of view to them and they were honest about its indestructability (you either deny that pain feels bad or you're denying that our experience of pain is what justifies a belief about it one way or the other).
It isn't just early 20s either. People will look down on men in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who are attracted to women in their late 20s and older as well. It's so backwards but the conversation about morality has come to almost 'bore' me in large part because people DON'T BUDGE so what's the point, honestly (do you realize that all of the brilliant points that you make online will probably make absolutely no real difference in the long run? I seriously doubt that anyone will even remember my exact worldview in 100 years)? I'm 40 and I'm never going to prefer middle-aged or elderly women.
If I scroll through my memory I might think of around a dozen middle-aged women whom I'm as attracted to as I am to younger women but after 40 is when my interest starts to wane for age-related reasons (so the women I have in mind more or less look as though they could be in their 30s. I can see a woman in her 50s or older who looks it and find her pretty for her age but there isn't the same sexual interest or sense that I could be infatuated with her). My preference is always going to be for girls/women who are around 13-39; again, there are exceptionally attractive people outside of that range in both directions but outside of the approximate 12/13-39 range I'll find people who might be relatively healthy-looking or aesthetically pleasing on some level without being really attracted to them for age-related reasons (I might even say 14/15-39 but a part of me might at times downplay my attraction to very young-looking young teens or preteens to protect myself from how especially hopeless and socially taboo intimacy with one would be). The biggest factor in the mid-life despair that I feel to some degree every single day is unrequited attraction/the taboo of being attracted to younger people and the normative roles/expectations that come with being 'middle aged.' I am sick and tired of other people's rules.
As much as I can't stand the idea of dealing with people (hedonists who are moral realists who justify this under epistemic solipsism) who claim to share my ethical and philosophical principles but are as hypocritical and inconsistent as I am (they threaten what I rely on to make sense of reality; my strongest source of peace and clarity) it would be so much easier to live in a world where everyone agreed that everyone deserves happiness and only suffering is inherently bad (mind you, I imagine there are many hedonists who try to use faux hedonistic reason to justify the stigma or other things that I'm deeply opposed to, I've noticed that a lot of 'utilitarians' are really callous people in general, but I see that as separate from the worldview itself. If insincerity and ideological as well as head-heart inconsistencies aren't an issue, a hedonistic world would be 'home,' I'd be among my people).
What's the bad thing that's going to happen if a woman in her late 30s dates a young man in his early 20s? If the concern is with suffering then that doesn't legitimize stigmatizing the age gap per se, suffering is simply something that might result from it (when it does, circumstantially, the age gap doesn't cause that or even prime people to ultimately suffer for reasons that are inherent to its nature. The experienced frustration of desire does prime a negative emotional response). If it's not with suffering or even anything else that might result from the relationship then the issue is just with relationships that exist under certain conditions (i.e. an age gap), outside of noting the inconsistency (a relationship is considered fine in one scenario but not another, if a thing has no intrinsic value it can still be instrumentally good, bad or neutral in different scenarios but the argument here is just that the relationship itself is bad when the parties involved are significantly older or younger than each other; not that something bad stems from it and the relationship is basically the same as at least some relationships between similarly aged people) there's not much of a formal argument to be made against it beyond it just being a completely arbitrary value. Anti-age gap people say the existence of that gap in a romantic relationship is inherently bad (or they'll pretend that it necessarily causes suffering or implies some deeply callous disregard for the suffering of the younger party on the part of the older) and they can't justify or defend this in any way because it's built on subjective criteria.
There's no logical explanation that I can give to someone who asks, "well, what makes suffering bad?" In terms of arguments and by definition, any defense for a first principle will necessarily have to be circular, but the reason why I think that only suffering is inherently bad is because we actually experience suffering as inherently bad (all possible sentient beings have to instinctively want to avoid pain because, prior to any rational assessment, it appears to be of negative value) and unlike sensory perception or memory our experience of pain doesn't simulate some reality other than itself that it might misrepresent. So there's a non-arbitrary reason to celebrate age-gap relationships insofar as they can be a source of happiness for people and no reason to condemn something that doesn't cause suffering or deprive anyone of happiness. If that doesn't 'work' for people I don't know what else to say, people seem to treat morality like a tv show where they suspend disbelief so they can have an emotional involvement but in the back of their minds I doubt that they would be seriously outraged by challenges to their ethical ideas if I presented this point of view to them and they were honest about its indestructability (you either deny that pain feels bad or you're denying that our experience of pain is what justifies a belief about it one way or the other).
It isn't just early 20s either. People will look down on men in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who are attracted to women in their late 20s and older as well. It's so backwards but the conversation about morality has come to almost 'bore' me in large part because people DON'T BUDGE so what's the point, honestly (do you realize that all of the brilliant points that you make online will probably make absolutely no real difference in the long run? I seriously doubt that anyone will even remember my exact worldview in 100 years)? I'm 40 and I'm never going to prefer middle-aged or elderly women.
If I scroll through my memory I might think of around a dozen middle-aged women whom I'm as attracted to as I am to younger women but after 40 is when my interest starts to wane for age-related reasons (so the women I have in mind more or less look as though they could be in their 30s. I can see a woman in her 50s or older who looks it and find her pretty for her age but there isn't the same sexual interest or sense that I could be infatuated with her). My preference is always going to be for girls/women who are around 13-39; again, there are exceptionally attractive people outside of that range in both directions but outside of the approximate 12/13-39 range I'll find people who might be relatively healthy-looking or aesthetically pleasing on some level without being really attracted to them for age-related reasons (I might even say 14/15-39 but a part of me might at times downplay my attraction to very young-looking young teens or preteens to protect myself from how especially hopeless and socially taboo intimacy with one would be). The biggest factor in the mid-life despair that I feel to some degree every single day is unrequited attraction/the taboo of being attracted to younger people and the normative roles/expectations that come with being 'middle aged.' I am sick and tired of other people's rules.
As much as I can't stand the idea of dealing with people (hedonists who are moral realists who justify this under epistemic solipsism) who claim to share my ethical and philosophical principles but are as hypocritical and inconsistent as I am (they threaten what I rely on to make sense of reality; my strongest source of peace and clarity) it would be so much easier to live in a world where everyone agreed that everyone deserves happiness and only suffering is inherently bad (mind you, I imagine there are many hedonists who try to use faux hedonistic reason to justify the stigma or other things that I'm deeply opposed to, I've noticed that a lot of 'utilitarians' are really callous people in general, but I see that as separate from the worldview itself. If insincerity and ideological as well as head-heart inconsistencies aren't an issue, a hedonistic world would be 'home,' I'd be among my people).
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RoosterDance
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Re: What do you think of this age gap rule that many people make
It's all nonsense.