DharmaCatLamp
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Howdy!
Humans are obsessed with filth and purity. Those two can be some of the easiest ways to define a culture. Things like Kosher, the obsession with purity by the brahmins in India, holding up ideals like chastity rather than being promiscuous.
What is interesting to me is that despite the values societies uphold there are always people exploring taboos. In the book Pimp by Iceberg Slim early on we are introduced to the idea that white fellas would pay black fellas to have sexual intercourse with their wives. This was in the 1930s at the height of racism in the United States and yet people still paid for this sort of thing. White businessmen loved the black prostitutes that would frequent the streets.
In Paid For My Journey Through Prostitution, the author talks about how when she was underage and told the men trying to use her it would excite them to no end. Some of those men were police officers who supposedly only wanted to uphold the law.
People who claim to be upstanding moral Christians still engage in media which portrays things like sex, drugs, violence and various other taboos. Often if a program includes more of this it’s considered likely to get more views. A common thing on youtube for a while was the “Gone Sexual?” pranks that littered the whole of the website.
There are also things like this Political Compass Fetishes which is a little study where a young lady asked people what their fetishes were and then matched them to their political compass results. You can find more about this online if you want to though it could also of been done a bit better I suppose.
My point is perversion is everywhere. People are horny and they love engaging in things they would condemn in public. The reverse is also happening where some people love to engage in these taboos and show it to the world. I love John Waters, more as an author than a director but still, he puts the taboo right out there. Anybody can go watch pink flamingos and see some fairly shocking things.
The thing that largely separates these two groups is perspective. John Waters doesn’t find anything truly harmful in this filth while another person might find it extremely traumatizing. Some things have more demonstrable harm like prostitution but other things do not so much.
This all comes down to me saying, is it really filth if it’s just a matter of perspective? If so many of us engage in it then why are we so afraid to talk about it in an open way? What is the real difference between the pure and the impure here?
I think of the Aghoris, they find God in what many around them would consider impure. Meditating on dead bodies, sometimes engaging in cannibalism or other rituals we might perceive as strange. Their point is that if Brahman is everywhere and is all pervasive then how can something be pure or impure? It’s all Brahman in the end, isn’t it?
Now this doesn’t mean that nothing has ill effects. The prostitution industry is not a net gain for the people being abused by it. One can’t just excuse any harm they do to others by saying “ Well it’s just like your opinion man.” There are things that harm us which we might consider filthy. Ultimately though it is not about pure and impure it’s about avoiding harming others.
I think we’ve let things like purity influence society for too long. It’s not just about things being right or wrong in many cases but it’s about finding ways to condemn the outsider. One shouldn’t be obsessed with ideas like purity and instead should focus on the end result.
IT just seems to me that obsessing over purity is probably a waste of time and more harmful than helpful.
Humans are obsessed with filth and purity. Those two can be some of the easiest ways to define a culture. Things like Kosher, the obsession with purity by the brahmins in India, holding up ideals like chastity rather than being promiscuous.
What is interesting to me is that despite the values societies uphold there are always people exploring taboos. In the book Pimp by Iceberg Slim early on we are introduced to the idea that white fellas would pay black fellas to have sexual intercourse with their wives. This was in the 1930s at the height of racism in the United States and yet people still paid for this sort of thing. White businessmen loved the black prostitutes that would frequent the streets.
In Paid For My Journey Through Prostitution, the author talks about how when she was underage and told the men trying to use her it would excite them to no end. Some of those men were police officers who supposedly only wanted to uphold the law.
People who claim to be upstanding moral Christians still engage in media which portrays things like sex, drugs, violence and various other taboos. Often if a program includes more of this it’s considered likely to get more views. A common thing on youtube for a while was the “Gone Sexual?” pranks that littered the whole of the website.
There are also things like this Political Compass Fetishes which is a little study where a young lady asked people what their fetishes were and then matched them to their political compass results. You can find more about this online if you want to though it could also of been done a bit better I suppose.
My point is perversion is everywhere. People are horny and they love engaging in things they would condemn in public. The reverse is also happening where some people love to engage in these taboos and show it to the world. I love John Waters, more as an author than a director but still, he puts the taboo right out there. Anybody can go watch pink flamingos and see some fairly shocking things.
The thing that largely separates these two groups is perspective. John Waters doesn’t find anything truly harmful in this filth while another person might find it extremely traumatizing. Some things have more demonstrable harm like prostitution but other things do not so much.
This all comes down to me saying, is it really filth if it’s just a matter of perspective? If so many of us engage in it then why are we so afraid to talk about it in an open way? What is the real difference between the pure and the impure here?
I think of the Aghoris, they find God in what many around them would consider impure. Meditating on dead bodies, sometimes engaging in cannibalism or other rituals we might perceive as strange. Their point is that if Brahman is everywhere and is all pervasive then how can something be pure or impure? It’s all Brahman in the end, isn’t it?
Now this doesn’t mean that nothing has ill effects. The prostitution industry is not a net gain for the people being abused by it. One can’t just excuse any harm they do to others by saying “ Well it’s just like your opinion man.” There are things that harm us which we might consider filthy. Ultimately though it is not about pure and impure it’s about avoiding harming others.
I think we’ve let things like purity influence society for too long. It’s not just about things being right or wrong in many cases but it’s about finding ways to condemn the outsider. One shouldn’t be obsessed with ideas like purity and instead should focus on the end result.
IT just seems to me that obsessing over purity is probably a waste of time and more harmful than helpful.
