> > > Shad "How can what you say degrade my integrity? You can say or write any disgusting or immoral thing you want, and my integrity will not be violated" owfax
> >
> > If I write a disgusting and immoral thing, and you read it, will it have no influence over your conscience or character? I can't answer that for you, but for my part, I regret the way in which disgusting and immoral things, by my own choice to consume them, have degraded my own integrity.
>
> no, it will not. According to your view, if I witness someone robbing a bank, MY moral character is compromised because I was exposed to someone else doing bad things. Every time I see some jerk in traffic flip someone off, I become more of a jerk merely because I witnessed it. Every time I read about a murder in the paper, I get closer myself to killing someone because I read about it.
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*****You would seem to be arguing that environment has no influence on behavior? I thought that one was settled a long time ago.

No, there's no one-to-one correlation to reading about murder in the paper, and then actually committing one ...however, doesn't it desensitize you? Doesn't that desensitization subtly shape who you are? --along with the million other good or bad things that happen to you & around you over your lifetime?

>
> Let's take porn. Porn is always being censored. There are two types of people in the world. Those that want to look at porn, and those who do not. Those who don't want to look at porn aren't effected by the censorship at all. They'd make the decision not to view porn even if the censorship hadn't made it for them. The people that WANT to view porn are already, to use the words of the porn-censorers, "corrupted." They WANT to view porn. to WANT to see the porn means they're already corrupted. If they see the porn, it doesn't matter because they're already corrupted, so why bother censoring the porn from them?
>

*****I don't think it's such a black and white/you are or you're not issue. Degrees of corruption/vice are possible--(filtered or unfiltered cigarettes? minimum or maximum security prison? G, PG, or R?) And, I think there are actually three types of people--people who don't want to look at porn, people who do--and people who could be influenced either way ***and how accessible porn is in their environment can be the deciding influencing factor***. The third group would of course include(but not be limited to) children.


koala"fascinating thread here, isn't it?mom"