That is the question i want to ask you, who are you? Who have you become in the past year? The past month? The past five minutes? Life is all about change, growth, new things. Every single time something happens to you it changes you, sometimes in the tiniest way possible, but it changes you.
That sandwich you ate for lunch? It changed you. It has become part of you in various ways, its energy became yours, its structures became yours. You become a piece of it. And the world circles on, never noticing because in the end no matter how much you change or grow it doesn't really matter.
And yes i am aware i sound all pissy and depressing. But let me explain, no matter what you do in which way or form it will not stop the universe from working or the world from turning. Instead you can do whatever (or whoever) you want and the world keeps going. It keeps turning on and on, and if you give yourself time your life will too.
And where i am at in life is a place where you are supposed to grow and change and realize more of who you are as you grow into yourself. Which is great, which is what i think needs to be done in every single person's life. You need to learn and grow and be open to change. You need to be ready to shift with things as we learn more.
But i find myself to be solid, kind of unchanging. I have learned a lot over the course of this year, but i haven't really changed. A little more outgoing, a little bit wiser and smarter. A little harder of heart, but who i am? Still the same. Still no change.
And as people around me realize who they are and learn and grow they develop i wonder who i am and when it is my turn. Instead i feel like i have traveled down a road and passed a fork i should have turned at. And now i have to figure out where it is before i travel too far and can't turn back...
22.3.10
Oblivion
So here i go to continue my theme of sleep. I have to write this post out to all of you because my mind literally got hijacked at one point today and i stopped thinking about what i was doing, and instead thought out a possible way to write this post. It was very interesting, one second thinking about the homework i have to do, the next my mind becomes consumed with thoughts of oblivion.
Yes, you read that right, i am writing about oblivion. Sleep, unconsciousness, fainting, being knocked out, all make a reference to oblivion, or at least they have when i have read them. It is in a way true that sleep is a form of oblivion, you can't really consciously percive anything that is activly happening in the real world unless you happen to be some kind of prophet or seer (in which case care to send me the lottery numbers for next week?).
Sleep is a time for refreshing and restoring yourself, it is the time where your brain makes connections to learn new things and incorporate new experiences into who you are. Dreams have been shown to help learn new things and ingrain a number of different thoughts into your mind.
But now i want to take sleep and turn it into a metaphor for interpersonal reactions and life. There is a quote that i can't completely remember or where it came from, but it goes something like there are so many people just wandering through their lives in some kind of stupor like they are asleep and need to just wake up.
This is truly a wonderful thought on life, people need to wake up and experience things instead of just dreaming them and treating them if they are not real. I am going to use myself as an example here so be well aware that this means i will most likely sound preachy and self righteous, you have been warned.
Anywho why am i in university? Because i was told to by my mom or else. Yes, that is why i am here, blame her. Anywho though what kind of degree am i getting? A double major in psychology and philosophy with a minor in Anthropology or Indigenous studies to balance it out. I also am planning on taking at least a few biology courses. Why am i doing all this, when i know that it will send me into a giant pit of debt that i doubt i will ever escape? Because i want to experience life and learn about all the things that interest me.
That is what being awake in life for me means, being able to be myself and learn all i can. It means taking the experiences life offers me and running with them for as long as i care to. It means acting when it is time to act and holding back when it is time to hold back.
But then there is a way i am oblivious, and i choose to be. That is with my actions with other people, i choose to be oblivious of things if people don't come and talk to me about them. I truly believe in the idea that if it is important come talk to me about it, and if it isn't then it doesn't really matter.
As well if i think i see something but know that it isn't important for people enough for them to act on it then i wont, instead i choose for other people to move and bring up things. I instead keep things easier by not bring up things with other people that i could and let them instead.
I guess my recommendation from this is that if there is something you want to talk about or think you need to talk about then do it. If you don't think it is important enough then play oblivious.
Yes, you read that right, i am writing about oblivion. Sleep, unconsciousness, fainting, being knocked out, all make a reference to oblivion, or at least they have when i have read them. It is in a way true that sleep is a form of oblivion, you can't really consciously percive anything that is activly happening in the real world unless you happen to be some kind of prophet or seer (in which case care to send me the lottery numbers for next week?).
Sleep is a time for refreshing and restoring yourself, it is the time where your brain makes connections to learn new things and incorporate new experiences into who you are. Dreams have been shown to help learn new things and ingrain a number of different thoughts into your mind.
But now i want to take sleep and turn it into a metaphor for interpersonal reactions and life. There is a quote that i can't completely remember or where it came from, but it goes something like there are so many people just wandering through their lives in some kind of stupor like they are asleep and need to just wake up.
This is truly a wonderful thought on life, people need to wake up and experience things instead of just dreaming them and treating them if they are not real. I am going to use myself as an example here so be well aware that this means i will most likely sound preachy and self righteous, you have been warned.
Anywho why am i in university? Because i was told to by my mom or else. Yes, that is why i am here, blame her. Anywho though what kind of degree am i getting? A double major in psychology and philosophy with a minor in Anthropology or Indigenous studies to balance it out. I also am planning on taking at least a few biology courses. Why am i doing all this, when i know that it will send me into a giant pit of debt that i doubt i will ever escape? Because i want to experience life and learn about all the things that interest me.
That is what being awake in life for me means, being able to be myself and learn all i can. It means taking the experiences life offers me and running with them for as long as i care to. It means acting when it is time to act and holding back when it is time to hold back.
But then there is a way i am oblivious, and i choose to be. That is with my actions with other people, i choose to be oblivious of things if people don't come and talk to me about them. I truly believe in the idea that if it is important come talk to me about it, and if it isn't then it doesn't really matter.
As well if i think i see something but know that it isn't important for people enough for them to act on it then i wont, instead i choose for other people to move and bring up things. I instead keep things easier by not bring up things with other people that i could and let them instead.
I guess my recommendation from this is that if there is something you want to talk about or think you need to talk about then do it. If you don't think it is important enough then play oblivious.
21.3.10
Sleeping and Waking up
Hi there faithful readers (all 4 of you) here i am blogging again because i was home working all weekend and as such my mind is now full of useless chatter, so y'all get to listen to it!
Anyways i was working back at that wonderful place called the stupid-store where i have worked so long that i don't really have to think while i am there anymore. Instead i get to let my mind wander wherever it may go. Though this time they didn't really wander so much as drunkenly stumble. For some reason over the course of this past week i began to suffer from insomnia which just sucks.
The first day i had to work i literally got 3 hours of sleep plus the various naps i had during the day, there was the one i had on the drive home, the one when i got home, the 3 at work, and then for some reason that night i could not pass out and tossed and turned until sometime after 4 am when i fell asleep at last.
And actually i had this whole big thing planned out that i wanted to write about my inter-personal reactions and my view on things but now... well i just hopped over to Jason Mraz's blog and now i have to write a totally different post on something else that just completely inspired me.
This thing he links to in the post about where you would wake if you could made me feel so warm and fuzzy and just awesome that now i feel like sharing this with you. It neat because i am starting a series on sleep and this will be the first one. See my favorite answer given was by the guy in the first one, cause he felt so embarrassed with the only answer that occurred to him.
He spent a while just thinking about it and couldn't come up with anything, instead he just said his girlfriend's bed. Now to me this is amazing, as well as the number of people who thought about it and said back where they were, because they are where they wanted to be. The other thing (steph is awesome) is the people who want to go somewhere that they can't somewhere impossible, like back in time or to correct a mistake.
The thing with this is that getting caught up in moments like this is a bad thing because getting lost in the past and in the moments of the mistakes forget to move forward and grow into your life and into yourself.
Anyways i was working back at that wonderful place called the stupid-store where i have worked so long that i don't really have to think while i am there anymore. Instead i get to let my mind wander wherever it may go. Though this time they didn't really wander so much as drunkenly stumble. For some reason over the course of this past week i began to suffer from insomnia which just sucks.
The first day i had to work i literally got 3 hours of sleep plus the various naps i had during the day, there was the one i had on the drive home, the one when i got home, the 3 at work, and then for some reason that night i could not pass out and tossed and turned until sometime after 4 am when i fell asleep at last.
And actually i had this whole big thing planned out that i wanted to write about my inter-personal reactions and my view on things but now... well i just hopped over to Jason Mraz's blog and now i have to write a totally different post on something else that just completely inspired me.
This thing he links to in the post about where you would wake if you could made me feel so warm and fuzzy and just awesome that now i feel like sharing this with you. It neat because i am starting a series on sleep and this will be the first one. See my favorite answer given was by the guy in the first one, cause he felt so embarrassed with the only answer that occurred to him.
He spent a while just thinking about it and couldn't come up with anything, instead he just said his girlfriend's bed. Now to me this is amazing, as well as the number of people who thought about it and said back where they were, because they are where they wanted to be. The other thing (steph is awesome) is the people who want to go somewhere that they can't somewhere impossible, like back in time or to correct a mistake.
The thing with this is that getting caught up in moments like this is a bad thing because getting lost in the past and in the moments of the mistakes forget to move forward and grow into your life and into yourself.
19.3.10
Hi
Hi there, whats up late night world blog-o-sphere? Ya, it is a few days from when i did last, maybe a week... Or possibly more from when i last posted. I don't really recall when it was. I remember what it was about but i don't remember when. Anywho back to the post. What will i write about? Hmm....
Well there are a few things. Like, for example, what the hell am i doing up at 4:52 am? Honestly i have no clue, i mean sleep is this wonderful thing that erases time until other people are awake and we can hang out. And be alert in classes and stuff...
Plus you get to have these really cool things called dreams where you get to do anything. You can fly, you can shape shift, you can destroy the universe or make your own! It is amazing, plus it is when you learn and when you sleep your brain makes all these cool new pathways to bring in your new info. AKA sleep is very very extremely, incredibly IMPORTANT! And today it seems like i wont be getting any sleep, as it is now 5:08, i have class at 10, and work at 3 till 11.
And instead i can't sleep so i sit up watching TV on my laptop and writing a rambling blog post. And this show gets me thinking about inspiration. I mean watching the show i know it is nothing more than a piece of manufactured pop culture designed to appeal to kids around my little sister's age and yet i watch it and can't help but admit that they did a very good job on it.
So many fracking parts of it end up resonating with me that it makes me think back to this quote i read once, it goes "if opportunity doesn't knock then build a door". This gets me thinking on writing and other art forms. If you watch TV shows obsessively like i do (for the massive amount of character development that they can do which puts every single movie out there to shame) you see a lot of shows that feature artists of some kind, whenever they fall into a slump they end up sitting around in their boxers watching crappy pop TV for hours on end (wow i can currently relate...) when suddenly something hits them and they sit out something that simply completes whatever they were working on.
And yes i know it is easy to solve the problems in a flash like this in media forms where writers are god simply placing the solution directly into the protagonist's hands. But by the same token the reason it is used in so many different situations is because it happens in life so many times.
Anywho what i am saying is that inspiration and insight can come from many different sources, so be open to it from wherever it may come, don't close yourself to it, and if all else fails go out and find it.
Well there are a few things. Like, for example, what the hell am i doing up at 4:52 am? Honestly i have no clue, i mean sleep is this wonderful thing that erases time until other people are awake and we can hang out. And be alert in classes and stuff...
Plus you get to have these really cool things called dreams where you get to do anything. You can fly, you can shape shift, you can destroy the universe or make your own! It is amazing, plus it is when you learn and when you sleep your brain makes all these cool new pathways to bring in your new info. AKA sleep is very very extremely, incredibly IMPORTANT! And today it seems like i wont be getting any sleep, as it is now 5:08, i have class at 10, and work at 3 till 11.
And instead i can't sleep so i sit up watching TV on my laptop and writing a rambling blog post. And this show gets me thinking about inspiration. I mean watching the show i know it is nothing more than a piece of manufactured pop culture designed to appeal to kids around my little sister's age and yet i watch it and can't help but admit that they did a very good job on it.
So many fracking parts of it end up resonating with me that it makes me think back to this quote i read once, it goes "if opportunity doesn't knock then build a door". This gets me thinking on writing and other art forms. If you watch TV shows obsessively like i do (for the massive amount of character development that they can do which puts every single movie out there to shame) you see a lot of shows that feature artists of some kind, whenever they fall into a slump they end up sitting around in their boxers watching crappy pop TV for hours on end (wow i can currently relate...) when suddenly something hits them and they sit out something that simply completes whatever they were working on.
And yes i know it is easy to solve the problems in a flash like this in media forms where writers are god simply placing the solution directly into the protagonist's hands. But by the same token the reason it is used in so many different situations is because it happens in life so many times.
Anywho what i am saying is that inspiration and insight can come from many different sources, so be open to it from wherever it may come, don't close yourself to it, and if all else fails go out and find it.
4.3.10
Sex-Part 3
So i have decided to write this post because... well because sex is on my mind right now due to my being grilled on my thoughts of sex tonight before my psych lecture (loads of fun, i assure you). And also the fact that when i logged onto my account to create a new post this was sitting here, an empty draft that i meant to write ages ago.
See my last two posts before this were on the idea of sex is wrong but selling other parts of yourself somehow is ok. Now my main justification in the other posts was that there was a lacking of logic in the westernized views on sex. What i didn't do however was explain my view.
So while this post might be a little bit shorter than normal, it is purely my thoughts, no one else gets a comment in here. The one link i am going to give you is to a post on another blog if you have an issue with what i write (why defend what i write when she does it so much better?)
So sex, the word that was the He Who Must Not Be Named of my childhood, instead we spelt it out. They were talking about S.... E.... X! There was this idea that there was something wrong with it, something to be avoided but no one really explained why except for the fact that it was something you did with girls and they were gross (i never really understood that either but majority rules apparently).
I lived a very long time of my life in this kind of mindset, that whatever the majority thought was obviously right, i mean i was just me, what value could my opinion have? I knew that i was allowed to have it but it didn't matter if it wasn't the same as everyone else. I have always been an insanely amount curious, but that is just me, however i didn't always fight for my opinions or even try and justify them (ya, that is right, i didn't always argue with everyone...).
But then something changed, and i don't know when or why it happened but blame it for every time i fight and argue with you because i love this thinking for myself and finding reasons for my actions.
Anywho, as i got older sex became more important (something to do with raging hormones and a drive of some sort...). With this interest in sex and the not just assuming that my past ideas are all correct i thought about it. I mean what do you expect a teenage guy to do...?
And what i concluded is that i really can't see anything that would create sex making it bad in its very nature. I am gonna call on your logic now, why would one thing be made bad in every instance except one? Animals aren't, people aren't, substances aren't, but sex is wrong unless it is with one person whom you have married... I am sorry to those who believe otherwise but i just can't see it.
So now you also need to see that i am not someone who was ever really content following any church or dogma. I now am a Zen Buddhist Practitioner (when i have time to meditate...) which means that i get to read and interpret the teachings of the first Buddha, which all fit with my view of the world (but this isn't a post about my theology). This is my pointing out that i had no conflict with there being nothing wrong with sex in my world views.
So now i have shown why i personally think there is nothing really wrong with sex and currently i am dancing around what i think sex actually is because, well, saying that is hard to do.
Ok, so i think sex is a time when you shelve your inhibitions, by choice instead of using something like booze to do it for you. Instead you find someone that you are comfortable enough with to toss it all aside and in a society where we coat ourselves in synthetic substances all day long and welcome them into our body.
I also have always had this issue with the connection between the body and the soul, why do they have to be separate? The body affects the mind and the mind the body, it makes more sense that they are one thing the same way that your hair is part of you even though it is separate from the rest of your skin. They both still exist if you split them up but hair doesn't survive without the body.
Anywho it is this welcoming, this joining of comfort that i think sex really is. Now what about virginity? Yes, that is a part of sex, meaning that i need to talk about it now. There is a line from one of my favorite books about death which is that death is a door you need to walk through on your own. There is no one who can go with you but you don't have to be alone on either side.
Virginity is the same thing, you lose it by yourself even though it takes another person there. You are the one who loses it, who gives it to another person but they don't have to be a virgin to have sex with you meaning they don't have to lose it with you too. It is up to you to choose who you want to be around, and who you want to have with you there, or how many people.
In conclusion i think sex is wonderful and amazing if done with thought and people you care about. I think it should be talked about openly and publicly, and that people should feel free to share their experiences with people they are close to. I have had several friends who know about my sex life and i know about theirs and we are very close. I think that it is something everyone should experience at least once so that they know how it can feel when they are ready and that if it is something a person you never want to experience again then you know.
See my last two posts before this were on the idea of sex is wrong but selling other parts of yourself somehow is ok. Now my main justification in the other posts was that there was a lacking of logic in the westernized views on sex. What i didn't do however was explain my view.
So while this post might be a little bit shorter than normal, it is purely my thoughts, no one else gets a comment in here. The one link i am going to give you is to a post on another blog if you have an issue with what i write (why defend what i write when she does it so much better?)
So sex, the word that was the He Who Must Not Be Named of my childhood, instead we spelt it out. They were talking about S.... E.... X! There was this idea that there was something wrong with it, something to be avoided but no one really explained why except for the fact that it was something you did with girls and they were gross (i never really understood that either but majority rules apparently).
I lived a very long time of my life in this kind of mindset, that whatever the majority thought was obviously right, i mean i was just me, what value could my opinion have? I knew that i was allowed to have it but it didn't matter if it wasn't the same as everyone else. I have always been an insanely amount curious, but that is just me, however i didn't always fight for my opinions or even try and justify them (ya, that is right, i didn't always argue with everyone...).
But then something changed, and i don't know when or why it happened but blame it for every time i fight and argue with you because i love this thinking for myself and finding reasons for my actions.
Anywho, as i got older sex became more important (something to do with raging hormones and a drive of some sort...). With this interest in sex and the not just assuming that my past ideas are all correct i thought about it. I mean what do you expect a teenage guy to do...?
And what i concluded is that i really can't see anything that would create sex making it bad in its very nature. I am gonna call on your logic now, why would one thing be made bad in every instance except one? Animals aren't, people aren't, substances aren't, but sex is wrong unless it is with one person whom you have married... I am sorry to those who believe otherwise but i just can't see it.
So now you also need to see that i am not someone who was ever really content following any church or dogma. I now am a Zen Buddhist Practitioner (when i have time to meditate...) which means that i get to read and interpret the teachings of the first Buddha, which all fit with my view of the world (but this isn't a post about my theology). This is my pointing out that i had no conflict with there being nothing wrong with sex in my world views.
So now i have shown why i personally think there is nothing really wrong with sex and currently i am dancing around what i think sex actually is because, well, saying that is hard to do.
Ok, so i think sex is a time when you shelve your inhibitions, by choice instead of using something like booze to do it for you. Instead you find someone that you are comfortable enough with to toss it all aside and in a society where we coat ourselves in synthetic substances all day long and welcome them into our body.
I also have always had this issue with the connection between the body and the soul, why do they have to be separate? The body affects the mind and the mind the body, it makes more sense that they are one thing the same way that your hair is part of you even though it is separate from the rest of your skin. They both still exist if you split them up but hair doesn't survive without the body.
Anywho it is this welcoming, this joining of comfort that i think sex really is. Now what about virginity? Yes, that is a part of sex, meaning that i need to talk about it now. There is a line from one of my favorite books about death which is that death is a door you need to walk through on your own. There is no one who can go with you but you don't have to be alone on either side.
Virginity is the same thing, you lose it by yourself even though it takes another person there. You are the one who loses it, who gives it to another person but they don't have to be a virgin to have sex with you meaning they don't have to lose it with you too. It is up to you to choose who you want to be around, and who you want to have with you there, or how many people.
In conclusion i think sex is wonderful and amazing if done with thought and people you care about. I think it should be talked about openly and publicly, and that people should feel free to share their experiences with people they are close to. I have had several friends who know about my sex life and i know about theirs and we are very close. I think that it is something everyone should experience at least once so that they know how it can feel when they are ready and that if it is something a person you never want to experience again then you know.
3.3.10
Sex-Part 2
So here is the secondary part of the post i began last night (though technically it was so late that it was just REALLY early today). And now i continue it late at night when i REAAAALY want to go to sleep. It would be so nice to just go upstairs and curl up in bed and float away in my dreams. Instead i am writing this because i said i would.
Yesterday i explained my thoughts as to my prostitution is wrong with the basis of why sex is wrong because of the western mindset of the mind being divine and the body being profane. As such the body is wrong in this view meaning that selling something the body wants or selling the body is wrong.
Now i want to offer another thought, what is selling books? Or articles in newspapers and magazines. These are thoughts which come from your mind meaning they are divine. You are selling the divine to whoever can pay.
Add in the way that thoughts and words have to be in some way consciously planned out and as such mean more. But you don't give them to just any one do you? Well for some reason giving away divine to anyone who could pay, whether they could afford it or not doesn't seem to strike anyone as divine prostitution but rather just the way things naturally should be.
Why? Selling thought to anyone despite if they can appreciate it or even understand it is somehow acceptable. I guess then what you need to decide is does this blog make me a whore or not.
And is it ok for me to be, or are all forms of prostitution wrong?
Yesterday i explained my thoughts as to my prostitution is wrong with the basis of why sex is wrong because of the western mindset of the mind being divine and the body being profane. As such the body is wrong in this view meaning that selling something the body wants or selling the body is wrong.
Now i want to offer another thought, what is selling books? Or articles in newspapers and magazines. These are thoughts which come from your mind meaning they are divine. You are selling the divine to whoever can pay.
Add in the way that thoughts and words have to be in some way consciously planned out and as such mean more. But you don't give them to just any one do you? Well for some reason giving away divine to anyone who could pay, whether they could afford it or not doesn't seem to strike anyone as divine prostitution but rather just the way things naturally should be.
Why? Selling thought to anyone despite if they can appreciate it or even understand it is somehow acceptable. I guess then what you need to decide is does this blog make me a whore or not.
And is it ok for me to be, or are all forms of prostitution wrong?
Sex-Part 1
So tonight it is time for another post. Why you may ask, i mean i just posted one recently and it was awesome, why should you have to read through another so soon? Well because i had a cultural studies class tonight, and in it i used an idea that has been floating around my head recently. This idea is totally different from western thought, as is my usual.
What i am thinking about now is prostitution. What exactly is wrong with it? Yes, i did just ask you what is wrong with it. In theory the problem with prostitution is that it is the problem with sex. See the only way that sex can be wrong for money is if there is something wrong with it in general. Think long and hard about it (long and hard, hee hee), is there anything else that is both illegal for when it is charged for and legal when it is free? Other than sex.
(random quote from the JCR: 'I can lick you if you like')
Now my logic for it is simply the division that western philosophy makes between the body and the mind. In this separation of the two the mind becomes this golden link to the divine while the body becomes the link to the profane. The mind becomes supernatural while the body becomes simply natural.
This distinction turns everything that the body wants and needs into things to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. We eat only when we need to, we save sex until marriage so that people can then procreate. The Catholic Church created their seven deadly sins and then their virtues to match.
Note the line up : Lust and Chastity, Gluttony and Temperance, Greed and Charity, Sloth and Diligence, Wrath and Patience, Envy and Kindness, and finally Pride and Humility.
Note the way that the line up has linked something physical with something that isn't physical. I also want you to note that while i think that there are some that are right (like the overwhelming Greed that drives capitalism into its constant growth resulting in people starving, but that is a post for another day...)
But i also want to note that while this church proscribes black and white doctrine that simply makes one good and another bad both Aristotle and The Buddha instead speak of the middle path between the two points which is directly between the two.
Between Lust and Chastity is enjoying sex, between Gluttony and Temperance is enjoying your food and other things, between Greed and Charity is giving to others when you can but keeping enough for yourself. Between Sloth and Diligence is doing your work when it is time but also taking time to relax. Between Wrath and Patience is standing up for yourself based on the situation. And between Pride and Humility is taking pride in your work but not for more than you have done.
Which sounds better, a life of all sins, a life of all virtues, or a life on the middle path. I do not doubt that the hardest path would be that of the virtues, the easiest that of the sins and the middle path in the middle, which is the other reason why i wonder why people don't use it. But there is the idea that hard things are better (after all the world's hardest substance is a girl's best friend).
But anywho this has developed into a giant post all on its own so tomorrow i will continue with this theme and offer up my points on prostitution. Have fun reading!
What i am thinking about now is prostitution. What exactly is wrong with it? Yes, i did just ask you what is wrong with it. In theory the problem with prostitution is that it is the problem with sex. See the only way that sex can be wrong for money is if there is something wrong with it in general. Think long and hard about it (long and hard, hee hee), is there anything else that is both illegal for when it is charged for and legal when it is free? Other than sex.
(random quote from the JCR: 'I can lick you if you like')
Now my logic for it is simply the division that western philosophy makes between the body and the mind. In this separation of the two the mind becomes this golden link to the divine while the body becomes the link to the profane. The mind becomes supernatural while the body becomes simply natural.
This distinction turns everything that the body wants and needs into things to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. We eat only when we need to, we save sex until marriage so that people can then procreate. The Catholic Church created their seven deadly sins and then their virtues to match.
Note the line up : Lust and Chastity, Gluttony and Temperance, Greed and Charity, Sloth and Diligence, Wrath and Patience, Envy and Kindness, and finally Pride and Humility.
Note the way that the line up has linked something physical with something that isn't physical. I also want you to note that while i think that there are some that are right (like the overwhelming Greed that drives capitalism into its constant growth resulting in people starving, but that is a post for another day...)
But i also want to note that while this church proscribes black and white doctrine that simply makes one good and another bad both Aristotle and The Buddha instead speak of the middle path between the two points which is directly between the two.
Between Lust and Chastity is enjoying sex, between Gluttony and Temperance is enjoying your food and other things, between Greed and Charity is giving to others when you can but keeping enough for yourself. Between Sloth and Diligence is doing your work when it is time but also taking time to relax. Between Wrath and Patience is standing up for yourself based on the situation. And between Pride and Humility is taking pride in your work but not for more than you have done.
Which sounds better, a life of all sins, a life of all virtues, or a life on the middle path. I do not doubt that the hardest path would be that of the virtues, the easiest that of the sins and the middle path in the middle, which is the other reason why i wonder why people don't use it. But there is the idea that hard things are better (after all the world's hardest substance is a girl's best friend).
But anywho this has developed into a giant post all on its own so tomorrow i will continue with this theme and offer up my points on prostitution. Have fun reading!
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