Well, again, personal responsibility vs. environmental determinism. You can't just wave away people's faults by saying, "well, they weren't raised to do the right thing in this situation." Otherwise child abusers wouldn't be at fault for what they do since so many of them were abused themselves, and Islamic fundamentalists couldn't have their views criticized since they were raised that way, right?
I
already responded to this very long ago. There are reasons to hold someone responsible for someone and react to the harm they do in a meaningful fashion even if what they've done was indirectly caused by poor influences on them, as well as ways to do it. I'm not going to restate them.
That is not necessarily true in any way whatsoever. You think people aren't capable of looking at fashion magazines without changing their standards of beauty and feeling inferior? I have female friends who do that all the time...
I'm saying the industry would be different, not that fashion magazines wouldn't exist. They currently rely on the sort of idolization that would lead to people taking them too seriously in the first place. If this weren't true, then yeah, they'd still exist, but they'd be different and wouldn't be as popular with the general public.
Not necessarily
Care to back that up?
Well, me. I hereby predict that men's interest in women will stay primarily focused on looks, and on personality in long-term relationships, and that the wealth of the woman will remain a minor factor, which if anything, is a NEGATIVE if the woman makes significantly more than the man.
I've provided reasons why this assumption could easily be based in history alone and needn't be true in the future given how current trends are and how they compare to what's happened before. You're stating predictions as brute fact here.
People do usually marry within their own status, but as for mating, it's also common that a woman can mate up in status based on her looks, but a man has to GET the status some other way. Also, that ignores the prediction that men AREN'T looking for economic status in a mate, and women are, which has been borne out by plenty of research.
Again, I consider this largely an artifact of traditional gender roles, which still exist to a large degree, as do their effects, yet will not necessarily always exist and are already starting to dissipate to some degree.
Well, as long as a feature is present in all societies then it's a universal. If it disappears from one society then it's not a universal.
There are reasons why something may have been "universal" in all cultures prior to a certain point in history, yet may not be universal for all time. The world hasn't even been
industrialized for that many generations yet.
SUVs fuck up the environment and promote an ideal of self-indulgence at the cost of giving a shit about the common good.
Yet they also have a legitimate market for people who actually need them. However, I do consider it harmful for them to be marketed towards people who don't, or for people to buy them who don't.
Computer games can be addicting.
So can a lot of entertainment and other behaviors; it still serves a valid art/entertainment function. A lot of things
can be harmful when used improperly or in the wrong hands; what matters is whether or not the producer is irresponsible about it, encourages this effect, and if that effect is related to serious widespread social ills to begin with.
Pornography can cause marital problems.
I'm not really sure where this comes from. I mean, I guess it can have some issues with it if you have problems separating fantasy from reality, but that's a whole other problem that isn't encouraged by porn (or other fantasy) itself.
OK but personal responsibility again. Is BUYING cigarettes wrong? SMOKING them? Also, plenty of people smoke cigarettes occasionally and in low amounts and with little to no negative effects (like me).
Did you try to understand what I was typing?
I'm aware that some people smoke recreational, on an occasional basis, but it's no secret that cigarette addiction is serious fucking business, is extremely widespread (moreso in the past), and that the habit has been glorified in the past. We've had tobacco representatives
testify that cigarettes don't cause cancer, and tobacco companies have had ad campaigns designed to try to get people hooked on them as early as they can (I already mentioned this). None of this is a secret; the cigarette industry is an extremely dirty one, and they've knowingly and willfully exploited the addictive potential of the stuff for decades while denying it left and right. This isn't even controversial information.'
So, is selling tobacco in itself wrong? Some people might say so, just because of the addiction potential; I don't think I'd go that far. But the way the companies have
treated it is quite wrong, and they've been busted on this account several times in the past, to the point where they've
had to tone it down drastically. So yes, tobacco companies have acted very, very morally reprehensibly in the past (and to some degree in the present, surely; they've still got lobbyists about!), and that's the point I'm making, not a point so much about cigarettes themselves.
Yeah, but you have to draw the line somewhere. ALL forms of media and speech affect people. And on this topic, there are certainly more things causing bad body image than just Cosmo and Vogue. Among those things are pressure from other people, friends, parents, whatever.
Of course.
Are you going to assign them equal responsibility?
Of course I'm going to assign people responsibility for encouraging bad body image or anything else that's harmful. I'll also blame whatever influences helped cause them to think that way in the first place.
Are you going to assign men equal responsibility for being attracted to a certain type of women in the first place?
That's trickier. Obviously you can't really blame someone for being attracted to something, but I've seen men act pretty horrible towards women before. You can only hear people of completely normal weight get called "fat" so many times before you just want to hit the guys. In that sense, yeah, a lot of guys act morally irresponsible too. For that matter, there's a lot of pressure placed on them to
be attracted to the "right" type of girl, even if they only play up the fact that they do for peer acceptance.
Here's the thing, ALL products can have bad effects. Remember that gag about "dihydrogen monoxide?" If you ingest too much of it you'll die! It can cause all these other problems if it's released into your home and not properly contained! Oh God! Ban it!
Food makes you fat if you don't eat right and exercise. Computer games make you an addict if you don't have the willpower to stop playing or a life that makes you want to stop playing. Sad movies can make you depressed and maybe even push a suicidal person over the edge.
That's why any argument that the maker of some product is at fault for all its negative effects becomes so shaky as soon as you apply it to all its logical analogues.
Except you didn't take into account
most of my argument, where you have to actually consider how responsibly the producer of the product is handling it, and whether or not they're
exploiting whatever detrimental effects might exist.
OK, so video games and addiction. Who's at fault for WOW addicts? Blizzard, or basement-dwellers who choose to play WOW instead of going outside and looking for jobs or friends?
Blizzard arguably encourages that with the game design, but on the other hand, they seem to be aware of the fact that people do this, and take at least some measures to prevent it or make people aware of it.
From TVtropes:
World Of Warcraft rewards time logged out with a short period of increased XP after you log back in. A loading screen tip reads, "Take all things in moderation, even World of Warcraft." In addition, raid dungeons can only be done once every few days by a given group.
This sort of thing at least shows that they're trying to be responsible about it, know that some people are being stupid about it, realize it might be a problem for some of these people, and try to do what they can to not make it worse (or make it better). So I think they're doing a better job of it than I would have though at first glance.
unfortunately; how many people listen to talk radio, after all?
Deluded space cadets, which is the point I made....
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Thing is, it's actually a surprising number of people now who buy into things like the Obama conspiracy theories and so forth. Normally stuff like that is way out on the fringe, but between the "Obama's a Muslim" crap, the "Obama's not a natural-born US citizen" crap, and so forth, it's amazing how many people can wind up buying into what, for whatever that's worth.
So really, it seems like the number of "space cadets" isn't even static; people can certainly become more or less gullible or influenced depending on circumstances affecting/around them.
Honestly, part of me feels like you're trying to have a decent discussion of this, but the other part of me feels like you're misrepresenting my arguments (see above) in order to say I don't have a leg to stand on, because you seem to missing my points a lot, intentionally or not. If I'm going to have to continually repeat myself just to get my point across - which I've been doing for long enough - I don't really see the point in continuing this. It's getting tiresome anyhow.