And let me watch, too. 
When I say “sex is a need,” I mean, “sex hormones are a part of us, whether you like it or not.” Sure, it’s possible to live and just clumsily deny parts of yourself that really exist, and that’s likely to lead to a lot of, well, lack of pleasure for one thing, but more importantly, existential despair, because you feel so distant from God, which is really to say, you feel so distant from yourself. You take refuge in your opinions, in your ideas, and wage a constant battle against your body and your sins. I think the goal of true morality is to unify these fighting forces inside yourself, not only so you can be filled with pleasure all the time, but because it enables you to truly love others, and love the world you live in, since you’re not expending so much energy fighting yourself, trying to shape yourself. You’re already shaped, dude, and you’re always BEING shaped, and the sooner you can realize that, the greater control you’ll have over your own life. THese are my philosophical beliefs, anyways.
Edit: CH, my bad, I’m the one that’s overthinking here, but it’s because, you gotta understand, I can’t quite wrap my mind around “doing stuff cause it feels good,” without an analysis of what exactly is feeling good. I said so in my post to xwing, that…these are things which I have, for most of my life, thought of as sinful, and these thoughts do not come as second nature to me.
That is a mighty fine Avatar you have there, DT
And TubaMute said it while I was typing, damn your hide TM!
Sorry ClothHat, you’re just too slow. But it’s good to see I’m not the only one who thinks this (secretly thinking: Yeah, I’m not insane).
When I say “sex is a need,” I mean, “sex hormones are a part of us, whether you like it or not.” Sure, it’s possible to live and just clumsily deny parts of yourself that really exist, and that’s likely to lead to a lot of, well, lack of pleasure for one thing, but more importantly, existential despair, because you feel so distant from God, which is really to say, you feel so distant from yourself. You take refuge in your opinions, in your ideas, and wage a constant battle against your body and your sins. I think the goal of true morality is to unify these fighting forces inside yourself, not only so you can be filled with pleasure all the time, but because it enables you to truly love others, and love the world you live in, since you’re not expending so much energy fighting yourself, trying to shape yourself. You’re already shaped, dude, and you’re always BEING shaped, and the sooner you can realize that, the greater control you’ll have over your own life. THese are my philosophical beliefs, anyways.
To each his own, I guess. However, I believe inner turmoil makes us stronger and wiser. If we give up and except life and ourselves as it is, a part of us dies. It’s like surrendering to fate. I believe life is just one big struggle against fate, so essentially, by excepting ourselves as we are, we become dead inside. We are all born with our pro’s and con’s, and life is just one big struggle to overcome these bad hands we’ve been dealt. It’s hard to change ourselves, and I see the conformity achieved from trying to perfect oneself, but we can’t just give up. Life isn’t about pleasure, it’s about making a difference. If we except things as they are, change never occurs. Although it’s fruitless to try and achieve perfection, we can still make the world a better place. As long as we don’t hurt others along the way, self perfection is just one small way to do this.
What feels good? Your penis feels good. It’s obviously a very sensitive area, and the act relaxes any sexual tension that normally builds up. Now while it’s true that you will not grow as a person at all from that, it’s also not hurting anyone. And Jesus! I can’t even go on, I can’t have a philosophical conversation about masturbation in a thread titled porn without becoming too shocked from the sheer ridiculousness of it to continue. Can someone please reduce the why of masturbation to more scientotifical terms so we don’t have to ruminate on whether or not it’s actually a function of an underdeveloped id or some shit.
You religious people are looking at it from the wrong slant.
Firstly, I never said give guys sex when they need it. Neither have I been advocating give guys sex when they want it. I have been advocating that sex is a natural part of life. You wanna know why its necessary tubamute? Because without sex, there is no freakin’ way life will propage. If plants don’t reproduce (although they don’t all need sexual reproduction - but if that stops, they’ll follow through with everyone else), they die. When the grasses, and small plants die, the animals will quickly follow and since they won’t have any offspring, they’ll go extinct and since we won’t have any food because our food will have died or we’ll have eaten it, we’ll die too and so will the last people having been born within a short amount of time. What will be left are mitotically dividing cells like the ones that live in our colon and all will be nice and happy in the world.
The reason I compare sex to thirst is because the desire for sex has evolved (oooh that’ll be fun) to be a highly useful trait to have. Individuals that have sex have more kids and those that have more kids have occupy a greater percentage of the gene pool and those that occupy a greater percentage of the gene pool will have a greater chance of meeting individuals carrying similar genes that makes them want to have sex and thus have more kids. So on and so forth and we have a population of organisms that likes to have sex because the individuals before them that liked to have sex outmated the ones that didn’t. If you have a trait that doesn’t make you want to have sex, then you might live, but you will not pass on that trait, thus your trait will not be found in the next generation. It will have been selected against. Evolution is not survival of the fittest. Evolution is differential reproduction. While drinking will help you survive, if you survive to reproduce, that’s why you’ll think drinking is good. Your body has mechanisms to make it very clear that drinking is good and thus you’ll be very well aware of that need. In analogy to that, your body is very well built to tell you you want to have sex because it is what living organisms do. I explained how evolution played a role with sex nicely. So where does masturbation fit in all this? Masturbation is you being part of that cycle of the need for sex and dealing with that need so you can get some relief which has evolved to motivate you to keep doing it. Same reason people do drugs. Neurotransmitters go off, you get a slight buzzed and the great thing about masturbating is that you can think rationally again. Its not because people don’t get the oppurtunity to have sex, like a lot of people around here (:P) that they won’t have the desire to have sex.
edit: just did, CH :P.
edit 2: before anyone goes and misinterprets what I mean when I talk about genes, I should probably elaborate on what it means for a gene/trait to be expressed. When a trait is expressed, what is seen about that trait is the phenotype and different phenotypes might differ between different individuals depending on factors affecting not only this gene, but also other traits. We are not simple machines where 1 gene has 1 function which results in the same thing happening all the time. We are big gigantic fucking messes of intertwined interactions of different levels affected by our environment on top of it. If that didn’t make sense, don’t worry. Most bio majors take a while to get it, if ever. What’s the point of me saying it? To explain that the idea of a gene having a function isn’t so simple and that you can’t oversimplify what it means to have a particular trait if you’re going to look at a behavior like sexual attraction realistically. However, that is not to say that such complex interactions don’t arise out of nowhere. They build up gradually and are fine tuned for what serves the species best in a given environment. We are all products of very long periods of time of this shit happening.
Man, it is ridiculous, I hear you and I’m like, Maz, shut the fuck up, you’re making a goddamn fool of yourself like this. But obviously, I’m still posting this long-ass ridiculousity, cause obviously, I don’t “get” it on as intuitive a level as you. It’s hilarious, I know, "how can someone not “get” masturbation? How can someone not “get” sexual pleasure? It’s not fucking rocket science. But shut up, just shut up. I bet a bunch of you guys totally don’t “get” higher math or quantum physics at all, either, but I’m not judging you, so please don’t judge me. I’m doing my best.
I just know that some part of my buddha-nature has a feeling that porn and my sex drive are necessary, so I have to get all tied up in profundities to explain why, because my intuition just isn’t there.
Fate has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you jack off. I find it funny that you call it surrendering to fate because if its fate that you masturbate, are you really surrendering to fate? Or are you doing what you’re fated to do? It means nothing for you to be not masturbating because maybe you’re fated to not masturbate and only think that you’re doing something good by not masturbating because you’re supposed to think so. Yes we all have faults and its our job to deal with them. However, masturbation doesn’t hurt anyone except the millions of sperm we send to their grizzly death. Which would happen during a night time ejaculation anyway. Which is a natural thing that happens in case you didn’t know.
I’m not making fun of you Maz, I was just laughing at the direction the thread took. And I don’t get Quantum physics at all, but I’m not arguing that quantum physics are simply an illusion created by Histrionic personalities.
Sinistral, I would like evidence that says desire to masturbate is a genetic trait. It’s been proven that intense desire to masturbate can be due to psychological damage, so it’s at least partially psychological. Meaning even if what you’ve said is true, you can still reduce your sexual desires. I have to hand it to you though, it’s a well-thought out theory. And I don’t associate myself with religion, just my own philosophical beliefs. It just happens some religions agree with me. And once again, nature is pure and innocent. Nothing is crueler than nature. This goes with my whole going against fate theory. And your justifying your guilt through survival and genetics is scary. You remind me of Hitler, with his whole Master Race Plan. He used survival as an excuse to murder millions. Some of the worst crimes are done in the name of survival. There is more to life than survival. It’s not enough to just survive. Do human emotions mean nothing to you?
Fate has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you jack off. I find it funny that you call it surrendering to fate because if its fate that you masturbate, are you really surrendering to fate? Or are you doing what you’re fated to do? It means nothing for you to be not masturbating because maybe you’re fated to not masturbate and only think that you’re doing something good by not masturbating because you’re supposed to think so. Yes we all have faults and its our job to deal with them. However, masturbation doesn’t hurt anyone except the millions of sperm we send to their grizzly death. Which would happen during a night time ejaculation anyway. Which is a natural thing that happens in case you didn’t know.
We were born with desires. We were destined to masturbate because these sexual desires ordained it. Maybe we are destined to not masturbate, it doesn’t matter. I define fate as the path laid before that I’m expected to take based on the conditions life has given me. Life’s given me sexual desires, it’s my job to go against these desires.
HEIL SINISTRAL!
Tubamute, I could listen to you insult my friends all day.
Just because the need for sexual gratificaton is partly psychological, and thus it can be mentally engineered (brainwashed) out of you, does that mean it should be done? There are cults that brainwash people to have complete reverence for the leader, who then tells them all to commit suicide (true story). I’m not convinced. I…think sexual desires get in the way of other things which are much more important, but I also think that the way to overcome desire is not to quash it down, because it’ll always keep springing back up hatefully. Hating something gives it as much power as openly endorsing it, that’s why you gotta find a way to accept your desire to masturbate emotionlessly (because it’s not an emotional thing), and only then will your mind be free from the potentially harmful effects of sexual desire (because they do exist, I agree with you on that) - since they just won’t affect your mind.
That’s a Buddhist way of looking at it anyways, and one which seems a lot more true than the Puritan way which I’ve totally become accustomed to, which basically says that if you quash all self-pleasuring actions, that you’ll automatically quench your desire as well. But that’s not true - they’re still there. They’ll always still be there, only they’ll resurface as like, psychological problems down the line. Read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter - that’s what that book is all about. Plus it’s just a really excellent work of literature.
Masturbation arises out of the desire to have sex. The desire to have sex is a gentically based trait because we have systems that are designed to affect our perception. Sex hormones flow through our veins to influence the development of certain structures and to promote certain behaviors. How else can I show that the entire need to have sex is based on interactions between genes which results in interactions between cells? Evolution by natural selection occurs if 3 conditions are met: phenotype varies (there’s nothing to select for or against if 1 thing isn’t selected more for or more against than another thing), this phenotype (ie trait) must have an effect on survivorship and fecundity (the amount of kids you have) and finally this trait must be heritable (ie genetically based because that’s the only thing you pass on to your offspring). Individuals that have sex have more kids and those that have more kids have occupy a greater percentage of the gene pool and those that occupy a greater percentage of the gene pool will have a greater chance of meeting individuals carrying similar genes that makes them want to have sex and thus have more kids. So on and so forth and we have a population of organisms that likes to have sex because the individuals before them that liked to have sex outmated the ones that didn’t. If you have a trait that doesn’t make you want to have sex, then you might live, but you will not pass on that trait, thus your trait will not be found in the next generation. It will have been selected against. Evolution is not survival of the fittest. Evolution is differential reproduction. Because these traits are so widely distributed, the only logical possibility is that these traits were selected for.
When a trait is expressed, what is seen about that trait is the phenotype and different phenotypes might differ between different individuals depending on factors affecting not only this gene, but also other traits. We are not simple machines where 1 gene has 1 function which results in the same thing happening all the time. We are big gigantic fucking messes of intertwined interactions of different levels affected by our environment on top of it. If that didn’t make sense, don’t worry. Most bio majors take a while to get it, if ever. What’s the point of me saying it? To explain that the idea of a gene having a function isn’t so simple and that you can’t oversimplify what it means to have a particular trait if you’re going to look at a behavior like sexual attraction realistically. However, that is not to say that such complex interactions don’t arise out of nowhere. They build up gradually and are fine tuned for what serves the species best in a given environment. We are all products of very long periods of time of this shit happening.
“It’s been proven that intense desire to masturbate can be due to psychological damage, so it’s at least partially psychological”
Nothing is proven in science. Who says masturbation arises from psychological damage? Does that mean that the billions of people that masturbate have damage? How would this same damage occur to billions of people in drastically different environmets? Yes behavior is obviously psychological because you consciously choose to do something. Why you choose to do something might have reasons like why it feels good. Masturbation is you being part of that cycle of the need for sex and dealing with that need so you can get some relief which has evolved to motivate you to keep doing it. Same reason people do drugs. Neurotransmitters go off, you get a slight buzzed and the great thing about masturbating is that you can think rationally again. Its not because people don’t get the oppurtunity to have sex, like a lot of people around here (:P) that they won’t have the desire to have sex.
“And once again, nature is pure and innocent”
Nature is not pure and innocent. Very. Far. From. It. There is a greater percentage of men that died because of warfare in indigenous tribes of humans than in Europe and the US in the 20th century and that includes the world wars. Dolphins enjoy sex. Bonobos have sex continuously as part of social interactions to relive tension and show affection (and I mean with EVERYTHING). Chimpanzees can team up to rip another chimpanzee alive and eat him. Walruses can crash into penguin populations and start slaughtering them for the fun of doing so. And the examples go on. You can believe in your philosophy, I’ll believe in the facts. You contradict yourself by saying nature is pure and innocent and the most cruel thing there is.
You’ll have to elaborate how I have no emotions and how I justify genocide.
I already said that its not because you have a gene that you’ll be acting on that gene. I’ve already said that a single gene will not have you behave a certain way but that interactions of genes will have certain results. Its not because Hitler went off on social evolution, which is a disproven off shoot of social science, that evolution is bad. The way things are used is bad or good. The things themselves are not bad or good. If anything possibily relating to Nazis wasn’t used, we would disallow religious beliefs and the germ theory of disease because they thought jews were a disease. We should also, along the same lines, denounce things done by the opposite political spectra, the Marxists, who also caused millions of deaths after world war 2. The Marxists believed that we were all products of society and did a lot of fucked up shit in regards to that. Cut the bullshit. Support your argument.
Fate isn’t what you’re supposed to do, but what you will do. If you go against sexual desires, you’ll never have kids and you’ll enter various frustrating relationships where your gf/wife will most likely divorce you for your problems and end up really appreciating her new husband/boyfriend. I’ve seen it happen.
No, I’m the guy telling people to shut the fuck up about it most of the time, and changing the topic to somethign non-sexual like Tacos.
i was going to say something, but then i saw sin’s post and he said it better than i could. i agree with him. tubamute needs to support his arguement as personal philosophies have no standing in science, nor should they. nor is anyone going to stop masturbating because some guy on the internet told them to.
i will say that one of my friends has a tattoo with two dolphins having sex and the words “sex for pleasure” above them. just a humorous side note. 
Is this me? If so, you’re mistaken.
Firstly, I never said give guys sex when[ever] they need it.
That was a quote from Mazrim Taim. I replied to him saying sex isn’t a need. Then you replied to me - it appeared to me, at least - saying it was a biological need. However, that wasn’t the issue, because Mazrim’s post wasn’t refering to biological need. “Need” was being used in the everyday sense of “what someone can’t live without.” Thirst qualifies as this sort of need; sex does not. This is why a comparison of sex to thirst was invalid in a reply to me.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but at the same time, it doesn’t contradict what I’ve said. I was talking about one sort of need, and you were talking about another.
Xwing1056
“You remind me of Hitler”? wtf?
As much as I would love to add something to what Sin already said, I think he was thorough enough to nail what you said into the ground, and expounding on it further would be thwacking something that’s already dead. ;p But yeah. If you feel like going against your “desires”, be my guest, but your genes won’t be long for this world.
“Life’s given me sexual desires, it’s my job to go against these desires” by your theory “life’s given me a brain and it’s my job to not use it” ;p
My argument is that a need is a perception and that this perception arises out of evolutionary demands. You have needs usually because they help you survive. If you survive, you get to reproduce. Similarly, a sex drive gets you to reproduce. Thus it is perceived as a need because of the wiring we all share. It is not because you have a need that you need to respond to that need. However, you are meant to think you are supposed to respond to that stimulus and thus you do.
I feel thirsty because I have genes that code for protein that interact in specific systems in my body to tell me I’m thirsty. Thus my brain registers this information and I consciously acknowledge that I am thirsty. If I did not have this method of evaluating my environment, I would not be able to evaluate whether or not I’m thirsty. That would be bad. If I didn’t have the gene for red -green color vision, I wouldn’t be able to perceive red and green colors. This is a very direct example of perception , though not one that really affects one’s fitness (ie abilty to survive AND reproduce). Thus if we feel something its because we perceive it. If we perceive something its for a reason. If something has been consistently maintained it is because it is necessary for the species involved. Sex is something that’s seen in most of eukaryotic life for A LOT of reasons. The fact it is so rampant demonstrates its importance. Without sex, we’d have the lovely scenario I presented with a world composed of mitotically dividing organisms.
Yeah dude, Sin is alot like Hitler. the young hitler, when he was thin and sexy and cool. not the old hitler that let himself go, but still thought of himself as a sex icon.