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Homosexuality in the ancient world

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
Another way to look at this topic is In terms of the brain's firmware, which is the operating system for consciousness. There are three basic levels of brain firmware .Each level processes data differently and the results will have an impact on our perception.

The lowest level firmware are connected to our biological natures and instinct. If we feel hungry, this firmware processes the feedback from the body and mediates the feeling needed for consciousness to act. The middle level firmware in males is connected to firmware associated with relationship. This helps us define how objects, actions and people relate to us and to each other. This level of firmware can be subjective. While the highest level firmware in males is connected to firmware associated with meaning. This is similar to the middle level but more objective.

The firmware in females are complimentary to the male but not exactly in this order. In females the last two levels are in opposite order; meaning is middle and relationship is higher. I can speak better from the POV of a male.

Since this firmware is how the unconscious processes data for consciousness perception, depending on which firmware is being used can impact our perception of reality. Transsexuality in men can happen if there is too much use of middle level firmware, that lacks balance from the lower and higher level firmware.

The lowest level firmware is connected to the needs of the body. The firmware's feedback loop is connected to the biology of the physical body. It is not based on willpower and choice, but feedback from chemicals in e body as it is. If a person lived only by the lowest level firmware, there would be no such thing as transexual, since the feedback and subroutines is not about willful choice, but about practical and tangible biological reality.

The middle level firmware is less connected to biology feedback and much more connected to willpower and choice and how things relate to one another. This can be human relationship, as well as object and action relationships. Rituals make use of the middle level firmware. How the cupboard is organized or how the family does the holidays, is based on how all these various things relate to each other. This does not have to be rational but can be subjective. Subjectivity allows for choices.

This firmware could theoretically support transsexual inducement, since the conscious mind can use this firmware to impact it how it relate to itself and the opposite sex, even though the body is different and the body may not coordinate at the lowest level firmware. Since the middle level firmware is higher in hierarchy than the lowest level, it can override the lower level, via will power and choice.

The highest level firmware is connected to meaning. This is similar to the middle level firmware, in terms of relationships; mathematical and statistical, but it is more objective and has a connection to practical reality and reason. These firmware are less connected to the subjective rituals of relationship, which can be arbitrary and subjective, and more to connected to rational and spatial relationships that stem from logic, inference and reason. Objectivity places practical limits on choices, subjectivity does not.

As an example of the contrast, at the middle level we can be content to mimic the family rituals, that have occurred for many generations. These define how the family relates to each other and to various things in various situations. If we simply copy this, all we need are middle level firmware, to help organize behavior into the subroutines of the rituals. Upper level firmware seeks objective meaning for why we do what we do. There may be a practical reasons for these rituals, or it may be no more that a means to develop middle level firmware. It may have no rational basis.

As a loose analogy to transgender, consider a young male who gets his drivers license and then get his first car from his parents. This car is the old family sedan. The car as is, is an analogy of the lowest level firmware. It is a large heavy family car with moderate power and soft handling. Driving this car, in terms of feedback, means touring, hauling and taking it easy.

The young male is building self esteem, so he subjectively see himself as being a race car driver that other males will admire and the females will swoon He relates to the car, not as it is, but how he would like it to be in terms of his middle level firmware. He does not wish to be a middle age man in a sedan, but a rebel of the road in his hot rod. In his mind, the car is a race car and he drives it that way. He spends his money decorating the car with decals and modifying the motor and suspension system. It is can never be a race car, but this is how he relates to it, since he cannot see it for what it is, since neither the lowest level and highest level feedback is fully conscious.

Also he is young and does not yet have much development in his highest level firmware; wisdom of age. He cannot yet reason practical reality and separate this from wishful youthful thinking. Instead he wishes people relate to him a part of culture and as a person, in this other way.
 

onevoice

Member
No need to invent a definition...
ho·mo·sex·u·al·i·ty

NOUN
  1. the quality or characteristic of being sexually attracted solely to people of one's own sex.

So then by the definition you provide if those engaged in these practices employed them as a release of hetrosexual tension that wouldn't result in progeny then they aren't homosexual acts but merely birth control
 

sooda

Veteran Member
So then by the definition you provide if those engaged in these practices employed them as a release of hetrosexual tension that wouldn't result in progeny then they aren't homosexual acts but merely birth control

LOLOL.. No.. that's your claim not mine.
 

onevoice

Member
LOLOL.. No.. that's your claim not mine.

And that's exactlyt it; you claim those acts are homosexual and that is just a claim, I have not made a claim but shown that your claim is not necessarily true. In order for you to show it to be true you would need to show that such acts were carried out purely from desire from the same sex
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
And that's exactlyt it; you claim those acts are homosexual and that is just a claim, I have not made a claim but shown that your claim is not necessarily true. In order for you to show it to be true you would need to show that such acts were carried out purely from desire from the same sex
This seems to border on sophistry. I don't see a real argument.

It also seems to suggest that humans have changed in this one particular way over the past few thousand years. In all other ways we are just like the homo sapiens that precede us, but only more recently have a few begun taking an actual interest in same-sex relationships. There certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence for such a thing, so I see no reason to suppose it to be true.
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
No need to invent a definition...
ho·mo·sex·u·al·i·ty

NOUN
  1. the quality or characteristic of being sexually attracted solely to people of one's own sex.

Part of the problem with these conversations is the dictionary.
The authors write definitions to help people understand what is usually meant by a word. But for many words, especially concerning the human experience, the definitions are just too simplistic to really capture humans and their complexity.

"Religion", is another such word, and it creates similar problems.
Tom
 

MJFlores

Well-Known Member
Africa
Women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned long term, erotic relationships, named motsoalle. Male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely took on boy-wives between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in sex with their older husbands.

Americas
Homosexual and transgender individuals were common among other pre-conquest civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs, Mayans, Quechuas, Moches, Zapotecs, and the Tupinambá of Brazil.

Ancient Asyrria
In the ancient Assyrian society, homosexuality was present and it was also not prohibited. Religiously, there was nothing amiss with homosexual love between men. Some ancient religious Assyrian texts contain prayers for divine blessings on homosexual relationships.

Ancient China
Homosexuality has been acknowledged in China since ancient times. Nearly every emperor in the Han Dynasty had one or more male sex partners.

Ancient Greece
The ancient Greeks did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identifier as Western societies have done for the past century. Greek society did not distinguish sexual desire or behaviour by the gender of the participants, but rather by the role that each participant played in the sex act, that of active penetrator or passive penetrated.

Ancient India
Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian treatise on love talks about feelings for same sexes. The Laws of Manu, the foundational work of Hindu law, mentions a “third sex”, members of which may engage in non-traditional gender expression and homosexual activities.

Anient Rome
The “conquest mentality” of the ancient Romans shaped Roman homosexual practices. In the Roman Republic, a citizen’s political liberty was defined in part by the right to preserve his body from physical compulsion or use by others; for the male citizen to submit his body to the giving of pleasure was considered servile.

Homosexuality in the Ancient World

About 3,000 years later....


Means of transmission
Among males, the dominant mode of transmission (84%) was through male to male sexual contact. The next common modes were male-female sex (11%) and sharing of infected needles (4%). Among females, 92% was through male-female sex and 3% through shared needles. For both sexes, mother-to-child transmission occurred in 153 cases.

HIV/AIDS in the Philippines - Wikipedia

Rising numbers

The number of people living with HIV/AIDS has increased in the previous year. UNAIDS estimated about 36.9 million people suffering from the disease in 2017 – a record slightly higher than 2016 (about 36.7 million). Majority of those infected were adults.

35.1 million adults (15 years and above)

1.8 million children (below 15 years)

9.4 million unaware that they were living with HIV

Of these, about 1.78 million cases were newly acquired.

Globally, 69% of estimated affected individuals come from Africa with an estimated 25.7 million individuals diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. This is the highest among all regions in the world.

Asia and the Pacific, where the Philippines belongs, comes second with an estimated 5.2 million HIV cases, while Western and Central Europe and North America have about 2.2 million.

IN NUMBERS: Global HIV/AIDS cases still on the rise

Excerpt from Bohemian Rhapsody
by Freddie Mercury - Wikipedia

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye everybody I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, oh oh (anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to die
Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

 

sooda

Veteran Member
About 3,000 years later....


Means of transmission
Among males, the dominant mode of transmission (84%) was through male to male sexual contact. The next common modes were male-female sex (11%) and sharing of infected needles (4%). Among females, 92% was through male-female sex and 3% through shared needles. For both sexes, mother-to-child transmission occurred in 153 cases.

HIV/AIDS in the Philippines - Wikipedia

Rising numbers

The number of people living with HIV/AIDS has increased in the previous year. UNAIDS estimated about 36.9 million people suffering from the disease in 2017 – a record slightly higher than 2016 (about 36.7 million). Majority of those infected were adults.

35.1 million adults (15 years and above)

1.8 million children (below 15 years)

9.4 million unaware that they were living with HIV

Of these, about 1.78 million cases were newly acquired.

Globally, 69% of estimated affected individuals come from Africa with an estimated 25.7 million individuals diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. This is the highest among all regions in the world.

Asia and the Pacific, where the Philippines belongs, comes second with an estimated 5.2 million HIV cases, while Western and Central Europe and North America have about 2.2 million.

IN NUMBERS: Global HIV/AIDS cases still on the rise

Excerpt from Bohemian Rhapsody
by Freddie Mercury - Wikipedia

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye everybody I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, oh oh (anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to die
Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all


Before HIV there was syphilis and gonorrhea.
 

onevoice

Member
This seems to border on sophistry. I don't see a real argument.

It also seems to suggest that humans have changed in this one particular way over the past few thousand years. In all other ways we are just like the homo sapiens that precede us, but only more recently have a few begun taking an actual interest in same-sex relationships. There certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence for such a thing, so I see no reason to suppose it to be true.

Can we at least agree it is a logical possibility?
 
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