Posts by Tom Beard
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"a man enslaved to the urges of a warped mind" - Dr Grossman on Dr Kinsey.
I might usurp that as my Twitter bio.
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Kyle MacDonald,
This goverment simply hs no clue about the reality of poverty, mental helath and disability.
Not a f**king clue!An absence of either clues, or fucks to give.
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Hard News: If wishing made it so ..., in reply to Idiot Savant,
Psychological or psychiatric conditions 41.5
Musculo-skeletal system disorders 15.2
Accidents 7.7
Cardio-vascular disorders 5.3
Pregnancy-related conditions 2.2
Other disorders and conditions 28.2I'm pretty sure that in Talkbackistan that translates to "70% of sickness beneficiaries are malingerers and workshy layabouts".
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Meanwhile on Courtenay Place
Johnston St, actually: not the usual haunt of munterdom, but it's near the Stadium and it was Sevens weekend.
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Later: I'm off to get thoroughly, non-violently, uproariously, inadvisably and unapologetically drunk. Because it's fun.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I thought you meant this longer article. Opium den reference at para 4.
I was particularly amused by this quote:
"The bar has been popular with Korean students, who have grown up in a culture that combines singing, food, and drinking to excess."
So, pretty much the kiwi drinking culture, but with singing and food.
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Hard News: Sub Mission, in reply to Lilith __,
Stop, stop, you people make me laugh so much it hurts.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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I really should stop now: there's so much argument at cross purposes that I doubt we'll get anywhere. In many ways I agree with Fineman that marriage should be deconstructed into a suite of rights and responsibilities that can be chosen to suit the needs of any combination of adults who choose to adopt them. But there's one thing that I can't let go, regardless of the definition of marriage: your argument that because poly relationships divide a finite time resource among more people, they cannot deliver the fulfillment and intimacy (F&I) of a two-person voluntary love relationship (VLR).
a) Even if F&I were strictly proportional to time spent, how much is "enough" to make it equivalent to a two-person situation? I'd suggest that two-person relationships would structurally (if not realistically, given the other requirements of life) offer the potential for far more time together than is needed to generate F&I. Two-person marriage offers a structural overcapacity of potential shared time, so that unless work and family stresses take over, most partners in real-life relationships fill up their F&I tanks after a while, and then go fishing or shopping. Thus, there's potential for the finite time resource to be divided among more people and still give every pair all the time required to give them F&I. Some people take up golf; some take a lover.
b) The argument about obligations and having someone to come running has some weight, but only if you assume that the relationship has to be completely self-contained. I've never known a single relationship that matches that model. In reality, emotional and practical support is offered and shared among much wider networks (family, friends, drinking buddies, Twitter). You don't have to be in a VLR with someone before you come running to their aid: you just have to care about them.
c) Your time calculus also breaks down on this point: while people might be in a VLR with a certain number of people, unless it's a strictly polyfi arrangement it's quite possible that those who are "missing out" (on time, sex, cuddles, support and backgammon) might actually be getting it elsewhere.
d) Throughout, you assume that people who might choose a PM have exactly the same criteria for F&I as everybody else. However, have you considered that for a poly person, a strictly monogamous relationship might never be fulfilling, no matter how much love there is between those people and how much time they get to spend together? Poly folk don't have to be "magical critters free of all resources constraints" to have meaningful relationships with more than one person, and in fact that may be a prerequisite for fulfillment rather than a barrier.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Stephen Glaister,
Granted some very basic assumptions (which you and many others aren’t prepared to grant me) that fulfillment/intimacy work like time/attention/focus,
I think it is incumbent upon you to demonstrate why those assumptions are valid. That demonstration would need to demonstrate some engagement with psychology, sociology and anthropology that's at least as rigorous as your engagement with graph theory. It could also involve some empirical, qualitative research with poly people about what fulfillment and intimacy mean to them ... if you hadn't already dismissed their experience with "people are very good at kidding themselves".
"I think it’s reasonable to look at interpersonal matters in terms of fixed flows of resources": I think we have very different definitions of the word "reasonable", and that you are so busy applying a strictly abstract ideal of pure reason that you ignore the common English interpretation of "reasonable", and dismiss the idea that le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. Pure rationalism has its place, but before reducing all interpersonal relations to "resources", it might do to apply some empirical observation of those relations.
It's hard to tell what or who you're quoting at times, and in what context, but I found it intriguing when you said that it is "gratuitously risky (and vaguely Year Zero-ish) to actually try to sink marriage-like relations without trace in much more general pools of personal relations/bonds". This sounds remarkably close to the conservative argument against SSM that it "cheapens" traditional marriages. Are you saying that all these deluded polyamorous sluts are planning to sink real "marriage-like relations" with their promiscuous unfulfilling Ms Moderne arrangements?
Your prioritisation of Rationalist mathematical ideals over the needs and choices of slutty polyamorists is putting Descartes before the whores.
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Up Front: Sex with Parrots, in reply to Steve Parks,
Thank you. My post is open to many voluntary love relationships, though of course the more people that love it, the less fulfillment and intimacy each of you will feel.