3/07/2009

Please Don't Stop the Music

One of the most long-running debate topics (at least, in my opinion) concerns the legality of prostitution. They were talking about it then, and they're still talking about it now. I've always wanted to step back from that debate and discuss the more fundamental issue of whether prostitution is, in fact, wrong.

I've got my religious and moral paradigms well in place, and I could answer that question according to those paradigms in a heartbeat. I guess the morality of something like that is so well-accepted that questioning it is insulting, if not trite. What I would like to know is whether there is any good argument as to why prostitution is morally okay.

What makes prostitution different from other jobs or means of livelihood? Working (i.e. laboring for someone else's money) for 70 hours a week is still morally superior to one hour of sex for pay. Why?

It's not the time or the effort or the physical motions. It's the act itself. Is it the fact that sex and acts attendant to it are intimately linked to our conception? And does that give force to the argument that sex should be treated or perceived differently than, say, cleaning a window or watering a plant? I don't know.

An interesting article entitled "Can People Unlearn Their Naked Shame" was kind of getting at that, albeit in the context of clothes. Here's the gist of the article:

With the long immature period of a young human, mum and dad need to form a stable pair bond to do the looking after. But humans are more social than any other primate, living and moving in large social groups.

Psychologist Professor Dan Fessler, of the University of California, Los Angeles, says our gregariousness "poses a challenge... because those groups of course provide a source of temptation. Potentially both sexes can benefit by cheating on their partners."

That's where our shame of nudity comes in. Over thousands of generations, we've learned that showing off a naked body sends out sexual signals that threaten the security of mating pairs. And we've chosen to agree that that is a bad thing.

Interesting, yeah? Going back to the original prostitution question, do IVF and other similar technologies change the analysis?

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I spend most of my time above the ground. My office is 70+ stories up, and my home-for-now is 10+ floors high. I used to love being "on top of the world, looking down on creation." I still like it. But these days, I find ground zero more comforting.

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I have been revisiting my past blog entries, and I cringe a little bit at how revealing some of those entries are. I'm a private person by nature. And that's why my most interesting stories are tucked away in that little black Moleskine that I always keep close.

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Last thing. I was slacking while working this afternoon when I got this message: "Sorry for stopping the music, but you haven't interacted with Slacker in the last hour."

Needy, aren't you, Slacker? The myriad of people who I haven't interacted with in these past weeks haven't stopped the music. You know why? They're not music players.

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