John C Wright is an absolutely delightful person whose blog posts have given me endless hours of enjoyment and who has recommended many excellent short stories (admittedly, by talking about how they are the Morlockian death of science fiction, but a good recommender is a good recommender, even if it’s wired backwards). I have recently discovered an old blog post of his which purported to lay out natural and worldly reasons why a rational atheist should follow Christian sexual morality. As an atheist libertine, I find this a tremendously interesting proposal and wish to argue with it.
Part 1 and 1.1 are merely explaining Stoicism, so I do not have a response to him. I take up the argument on
1.2, On The Subjectivity of Morals
We can dismiss the claim that moral judgments are all subjective merely by inquiring whether or not we ought to inquire into the claim.
Ought we to inquire whether or not all moral judgments are subjective?
If the answer is no, the question is closed.
If the answer is yes, then ought we to make this inquiry honestly, or dishonestly?
If the answer is that we ought to make this inquiry dishonestly, then (a fortiori) we are not bound the results. For a dishonest thinker is under no moral obligation to accept a conclusion to which his logic drives him; even if he loses the argument, a dishonest thinker is not under a duty to change his mind or mend his ways. For what will impose the moral duty upon the dishonest thinker to conform his thoughts to the conclusions dictated by reason? Why must he be truthful even to himself? Why listen to his conscience?
If the answer is that we ought to make this inquiry honestly, we necessarily thereby acknowledge at least one universal moral duty: the duty to think honestly. This duty is universal because the only other possibility, that we have no duty to think honestly, is not something we honestly can think.
My moral system, I-do-what-I-want-ism, has perfectly satisfying answers to those questions. Whether one ought to inquire whether moral judgments are subjective depends on one’s goals. If one is curious about questions of metaethics, afraid that one might be violating objective morality, or a moral philosophy grad student looking to get tenure, then naturally one should inquire about whether moral judgments are subjective. If, however, one is curious about differential calculus, extremely sleepy, or trying to build their software consulting business, inquiring about whether moral judgments are subjective will not help one reach those goals.
As to whether the question should be pursued honestly: well, if one’s goal is to find out the truth, pursuing questions honestly is generally an effective way of finding out truth. If, however, one’s goal is to prepare a case for a debate with the premise “Resolved: Moral Judgments Are Subjective” or write an essay that will please a philosophy professor known to give A’s only to people he agrees with, it behooves you to approach the task in as dishonest a fashion as necessary. (Naturally, this creates some interesting epistemic problems about whether you should change your mind based on the arguments of debaters, but those are resolvable.)
And why should the moral subjectivist be truthful even to herself or conform her thoughts to the conclusions dictated by reason? Well, why should she lie to herself or fail to conform her thoughts to the conclusions dictated by reason? Because she wants to. There is no point going around doing things you don’t want. And a moral subjectivist with a solid, consistent desire to find the truth is as trustworthy as anyone with a moral duty to do so.
1.3 defines the four cardinal virtues– justice, moderation, prudence, and courage– and defines chastity as the four cardinal virtues applied to sex, thus perhaps creating the only definition of ‘chaste’ in which the word can be fairly applied to me. 1.4 explains the importance of social stigma in enforcing laws and customs, and I agree with it. Section 2 explains the libertine position on sexuality well enough (although I myself would include the necessity of discerning for oneself what sex life contributes most to one’s eudaimonia) and correctly explains that libertines need self-control as well (for instance, to prevent STI transmission and control oneself around desirable people too drunk to consent). Section 3 explains the matrimonial position, in which the only permitted sexual acts are those within the boundary of marriage.
4.1 Is Marriage A Contract?
Mr. Wright holds that marriage is more than just a legal contract.
The first doubt concerning the Libertine position surfaced when these conclusions intruded itself onto my reluctant awareness. In theory, the adultery of Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden should have worked out to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Instead the opposite happened: Rand and Branden became bitter enemies to the end of her life.
It did not work out in that particular case, nor in any similar case that can be brought to mind. Why not?
Well, polyamory is working out quite well for me and my friends so far. Admittedly, there are bad relationships– as was Rand and Branden’s– but it is not like there are no monogamous relationships that end with people becoming bitter enemies for the rest of their lives. The existence of one bad poly relationship does not mean that all poly relationships are bad, any more than the existence of one bad monogamous relationship means that all monogamous relationships are bad.
One example should suffice to show the difference [between marriages and contracts]. Suppose Mr. A makes a deal with Mr. B that, starting noon on Monday, Mr. A will buy lumber from and only from the lumberyard of Mr. B, forsaking all others. Mr. A buys a load of lumber from yard C that same Monday, but at eleven o’clock. Is he in violation of any provision of the contract, or by the word or the spirit? Has he betrayed or wounded Mr. B in any way? Can Mr. B make any claim for which relief at law can be granted? The answer is no.
By coincidence, this same Mr. A was planning to marry Miss D that same day, also at noon. Five minutes before the wedding is scheduled to take place, Miss D walks in on her promised bridegroom. He is standing with his trousers around his ankles vigorously coupling with one of the bridesmaids, Miss E, whose skirts are about her ears and her ankles about his ears. If the marriage were a contract, Miss D would have no more right to criticize or condemn his behavior than does Mr. B the lumberman. And yet no one of ordinary prudence would suggest she continue with the wedding at this point: we might even think her emotions insincere or unrelated to reality if her reaction were calm and understated.
But this is absurd! While they have yet to engage in the legal contract of marriage, Mr. A and Miss D presumably have made an agreement to be exclusive, even if implicit. (If Mr. A and Miss D have not made an agreement to be exclusive, one would expect her reaction to be more along the lines of “What are you doing? The wedding is about to start! You can fuck Miss E at the reception!”) Not even the most fervent libertine says that it is only unwise to break a legal contract, and one may go about breaking promises with impunity without anyone being angry at you or not trusting you. Now, of course, Mr. A has not violated the legal contract of marriage; if Miss D’s prenup says that she will receive $100,000 in the event of a divorce caused by Mr. A’s adultery, she will not receive $100,000. But he has still broken his word to Miss D, and she is likely to be quite angry at him.
The real question is whether Mr. A has done something wrong if he sleeps with Mx. F before he and Miss D agreed to only see each other. Of course, this is not the case; only a very unreasonable person would say that having a date from OKCupid on Friday night means it is unethical for you to schedule one on Saturday.
In fact, far from proving his point, Mr. Wright’s example proves the opposite of his point! Miss D, though unmarried, is likely to be angry if Mr. A has sex with someone else, because as part of their relationship they are exclusive. The relationship exists before and after they’re married. The only thing that necessarily changes for Mr. A and Miss D because of marriage is their contractual obligations (for instance, Mr. A’s duty to give Miss D $100,000)– which is exactly what you would expect if marriage is a legal contract!
4.2 How Pliant Is Human Nature?
I am somewhat confused by Mr. Wright’s argument in this section. As best as I can figure, he’s arguing that there is such a thing as universal human nature and libertines believe that it is changeable by dint of negotiating a different contract; libertines believe that if you are upset about your partner committing adultery and negotiate an open marriage, you will magically no longer become upset by it.
But that’s not my libertine position at all! Mine is that, when it comes to deciding what things are and are not harmful to me, I have the most motivation to get the answer right and access to special knowledge (my feelings) that other people do not except through my self-report. For that reason, in most (although admittedly not all) situations, the individual is best at working out what is best for them. Which is not to say that they’re infallible, simply that broad social consensus is worse.
I think the crux of our difference here is that I think human nature is much more diverse than he thinks it is. Naturally, there are generalizations: most people are hypocritical and heterosexual. But when a person is making her own life choices, she’s not making them for everyone; she’s making them for herself. Most people being heterosexual is not actually useful information if you yourself know your heart beats only for women.
He concludes that it is possible for someone to have an obligation to someone they have not met (e.g. to be a virgin on your wedding night). While I don’t believe in obligations, I do quite agree that if one’s goal is to be a virgin on one’s wedding night then one must refrain from sex even before one has met one’s future spouse. (And this is an example of how eliminating the obligation framework makes confusing questions much simpler.)
4.3 Is Sex Entertainment?
My Christian friend’s comment about the nature of the sex act, that it was merely passing entertainment, was not merely false, it was the closest thing my atheist heart could call a blasphemy. He was saying, in effect, that him jacking his juice into some half-drunk frail whose name he might not remember the next day was the same as my selfless adoration to my better half, my mistress of mistresses and mother of my children.
His argument was that the value placed on sex was a matter to be decided by the will of the parties involved. I was free to treat sex as a paramount and significant part of a long-term relationship if I so willed, but he was also free to treat sex as an entertainment only loosely related, or even unrelated altogether, to any tender emotion, friendship, romance, or devotion.
Well… yes?
Consider the musical Rent. (Art is surely one of the highest purposes of the human soul, so I assume Mr. Wright will not find my analogy blasphemous.) Rent is an extremely important musical to me. I have spent an amount of money I prefer not to think about seeing it live; I can sing large parts of it from memory. It has grown with me, my opinions on its themes and characters shifting as I age, and I look forward to see what new layers upon layers of meaning it will have as I age. I have sung it to myself in times of great trouble, and it provides me comfort and succor.
For other people, Rent is a fun, forgettable night out.
Are people who consider Rent to be a fun night out taking something away from my experience of Rent? Are they somehow saying their experience of it is the same as my own? Would it be reasonable for me to say that no one should watch Rent unless their lives are changed by it?
Obviously not. Clearly, different people can have different experiences of the musical Rent, and your forgettable night out takes nothing away from my source of comfort and joy. Similarly, someone else’s sex as entertainment takes nothing away from your sex as devotion.
It was not clear whether he meant (1) this was a mutual decision between him and his lovers, or whether (2) he could decide without consulting her that sex had no meaning, whereupon if she ascribed a deeper meaning to it when he did not, this was merely her tough luck.
He did not say, but I have my suspicions. My suspicion is that the lovers sought by such men are being deceived fundamentally, even if no word is ever spoken. She assumes the sex is meaningful: that she is sharing her inmost soul, and expressing her absolute devotion, and he takes advantage of her tender emotions, which he may or may not share, merely to release some organic pressures.
I suppose my question here is whether the women in question are, for instance, hooking up with men on Tinder, or getting drunk and taking them home from bars, or propositioning them with “so, what kind of bondage do you like?” at the Citadel. I certainly disapprove of people leading others on and saying that they love them when really they do not. But if you are going around sharing your inmost soul and expressing your absolute devotion to some guy you met thirty minutes ago at the bar, then I kind of think this is your own fault, and perhaps you should recognize that casual sex is not for you.
I have listened to locker-room talk from those of my friends who were lady’s men in their youth. One of my best friends—a fellow atheist—joked that not only did he not want to see a girl with whom he had copulated in the morning, he did not want to see her the moment after ejaculation, but would have, if he could have gotten away with it, merely pushed her out of bed and onto the floor the moment his lusts were sated…
If the Libertine position is correct, however, both my casual friend and my contemptuous friend were entirely right, and entirely within their rights, to treat their paramours casually or contemptuously, and the young ladies had neither recourse nor right to complain.
I do not think this is true! After all, most libertines include “informed” as part of “informed consent.” Did he inform the women in question of his desire to push them out of bed immediately after the sex finished, or behave in a manner consistent with this desire? If you seem to appreciate and like someone’s company before you have sex with them, they have a reasonable expectation that you would continue to appreciate and like their company afterward, and if you knowingly don’t inform them of how differently you are wired you are doing something quite wrong. If you want to not interact with someone ever again after the sex is over, that is a perfectly fine and legitimate desire, but you must find someone who shares this desire and not mislead people into thinking more is on offer than it is. (I admit that being on the wrong side of this is one of my failings, and I’ve had to work hard on communicating openly with people about it.)
Thing of Things 
OK, I have to say, this dialogue seems…kind of disingenuous. On all sides.
Being maximally charitable to Wright (or at least trying to be), based on his own words: he isn’t talking to you. In his heart of hearts, he probably doesn’t believe that people like you even exist, at least in significant non-fluke numbers. His anti-promiscuity pro-marriage arguments are patently, and obviously, not designed to tangle with any kind of sincere principle-driven pro-promiscuity stance. And lo! his imagined interlocutors, not to mention his anecdotal examples, don’t look like anything like sincere principle-driven Poly People.
They look like, well, non-theorists. They look like stereotypical arch-bros, who are interested in having lots of sex, who revel (privately and socially) in their conquests, and who are explicitly appalled by the idea of having to dampen their fun with icky thoughts of philosophy and morality. And, like, those people are real. We all know them, or at least we did back in high school when we didn’t get to select our own social bubbles. They exist in large numbers. They vastly outnumber the sincere principle-driven Poly People, even today.
Whenever Wright talks about Not Following His Sacred Principles, the picture he paints is the picture of a douchey horndog. This whole post is a Letter to the Douchey Horndogs.
And, like, yes, it is Not Remotely Fair for him to be lumping people-who-act-like-you in with people-who-act-like that. And it is doubly unfair for him to do so and then claim that he’s made some kind of slam-dunk argumentative coup de grace against views like yours. He hasn’t even begun to engage with views like yours, not really. (I want to say “and he’d surely admit it if you pressed him on the subject,” but…maybe that’s not true. This is John Wright we’re talking about here.)
In his defense, though, sincere principle-driven Poly People are pretty hard to find in the wild, out there in the “normal” “mainstream” world. They’re uncommon even now, they were much less common back in 2009 when this was written, and they live in enclaves. I would bet money that…in Wright’s actual personal experience, at least as of the writing of this post…the people who spout off on the Fine Philosophical Underpinnings of Promiscuity are in fact almost always douchey horndogs, spinning bullshit for the sake of soothing / attracting partners, or perhaps for the sake of defending their own reputations. You know, like the amateur sex theorists from the Bad Old Days of the 1960s, when women across America were told that psychic liberation meant they had to get their tits out.
So…he’s arguing disingenuously. He’s (presumably) reading positions like yours and saying you don’t seriously believe that, no one does, either you’re a con artist or you’ve been conned. Let me address myself to the actual thing that I perceive to be going on with you. Which is a super dick move, rhetorically speaking.
[You can tell, because I’m doing it too, right this very moment, to John Wright. This is not ethical well-rooted discourse, folks! And if I thought that this comment might plausibly lead me to engage with Wright, or with anyone who sincerely agrees with Wright’s thinking here, I would be doing this very differently!]
But if you accept that reading, then you’re being kind of disingenuous too. The real question is not whether Wright’s logic beats yours, but whether it beats the “logic” of the douchey horndogs to whom he’s talking. And…maybe it actually does? I dunno. I’m in no position to judge. I can certainly believe that sincere loving monogamy, even couched in Maximally Pretentious Wright-Speak, affords massive psychological/spiritual benefits when compared with a life of desperately seeking to fuck people while not caring about them. From his perspective, I imagine, what you’re doing here is basically the equivalent of proving that paperclip-maximization is a coherent consistent ethical stance. Yes, very good, very clever, now let’s confine ourselves to the actual problems that shape human society.
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I dunno. From my perspective, it looks like Wright has written a slam-dunk argument showing that a paperclip maximizer is no worse, on a moral level, than a century or two of colonial exploitation, which, well, “Yes, very good, very clever, now let’s confine ourselves to the actual problems that shape human society.”
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To be clear: I mean the paperclipper itself, as an agent, not the act of creating one.
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(With apologies — I left a very long comment, just now, and it disappeared when I hit “post comment.” Did it go into a moderation queue? Did it just disappear, due to some maximum length requirement I didn’t know about? Please feel free to delete this at such time as it becomes irrelevant.)
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Sorry, WordPress decided you were a spammer trying to sell me SEO optimization techniques. 🙂
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I can’t say I agree with Wright’s argument, but he does have a nice turn of phrase. I particularly enjoyed this line:
“He was saying, in effect, that him jacking his juice into some half-drunk frail whose name he might not remember the next day was the same as my selfless adoration to my better half, my mistress of mistresses and mother of my children.”
I’ll have to study his whole essay in greater detail, but the parts that I’ve read so far give me the same impression that I normally get from reading intelligent reactionaries. There are always some well-reasoned arguments and interesting things to take away, but the authors tend to be operating from strange premises and taking things for granted that seem fairly implausible to me, or at least not anywhere near self-evident.
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I find his turns of phrase clever, but vile. There’s an intellectual tradition in Christian apologetics that treats religious life as wonderful and pure and deep and meaningful, and non religious life as wretched and carnal and filthy. It’s self satisfied hatred.
Fortunately it’s almost maximally unconvincing. The putative target audience has reasonable access to their own emotional states. So any apologetic for a belief system that relies on telling others how they really think is vulnerable to instant refutation simply via introspection.
Wright is an author, and uses more florid language than others engaged in this same tactic. But if you read his works you’ll notice that he also has one major weakness as a writer- all of his characters either think the way he does, or are cardboard cutouts in the background. He has no empathy, in the literal sense of a capacity to imagine how others might think feel. So he can’t adjust his argument to actually address real people’s internal states.
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I didn’t much like that line at all because I immediately recognized it as exactly the same as all those “How dare you compare your pain to mine!” arguments I hate (except that it was about pleasure instead of pain). Very similar to the sort of thing you encounter in toxic SJ, actually.
Plus it was maximally uncharitable about his friend’s state of mind, which is another one of my berserk buttons. And another common toxic SJ thing.
I think John C. Wright is actually a near-perfect right-wing version of an SJW. He does all the same horrible meta-level things SJWs do, except in the service of right-wing beliefs.
I think that all Anti-SJ people should read Wright, not because anything he writes has any truth or substance, but because he’s a right wing person you can point to who does the same bad stuff SJWs do. If someone accuses you of only caring about meta-level principles because you hate SJ, simply point to Wright as someone else you dislike because he violates those principles.
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I eagerly await Part the Second.
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Regarding 4.3, I think Wright’s argument (or perhaps assumption) is that the sort of people you’re talking about don’t exist. At least, that’s my reading based on the conservative Christian teen dating books my parents gave me, which spelled this same argument out in greater detail. According to them, the act of sex has a strong emotional influence on you which inevitably, to some degree, tends toward “sharing your inmost soul and expressing your absolute devotion” even if, objectively, it’s “to some guy you met thirty minutes ago at the bar.” Casual sex, to them, is impossible – given the way the human body and mind are set up, it can’t stay casual. Even if you can squelch this powerful emotional connection afterwards (e.g. by a very messy breakup), it still leaves a scar, so you’re better off not doing it in the first place.
Is this true? Well… I’m still a virgin, so I can’t say based on personal experience. And Ozy et al prove at least some people can deal with these emotions without a lifelong relationship. But there’re enough other stories out there which convince me the human body and mind really do have some tendency toward this, however people want to deal with it.
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Yeah, annoyingly, this is both obviously false as stated and statistically more true than hedonistic-individualism-as-ideology wants to admit.
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It’s — well — complicated. I certainly know people who feel little after sex. Myself, I feel something, but then I’m poly and tend to have sex with people who at least want some kind of emotional connection.
Which doesn’t always work out, of course. Sometimes life involves pain. Sometimes you give your heart out, and you find you just tossed it into a black hole.
But this happens to monogamous people also. This happens to married people.
I say leap before you look, and then take all the pain, cuz at least you got to live.
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There’s another option, though (which I think Veronica may have been alluding to?): some people may find life better if they commit to multiple partners. Once you let that into the hypothesis space, it’s no longer a matter of yes-casual-sex vs no-casual-sex.
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I know a girl who is playing in the “hypersexuality” space, and look, she’s obviously processing trauma. So yeah. But the trauma is there. It’s the real hard shit. She’s dealing with it. Pretending that Jesus exists or that God cares how we cum — that ain’t gonna fix her shit.
But for me, she’s the black hole into which I threw my fucking heart. So yeah.
Still, no regrets. She shook me out of a rut I was in. Live and learn.
Am I happy? Actually no, right now I’m struggling. On the other hand, six months ago I had zero romantic partners. I was drifting. Now I have at least two and maybe four, depending on how some things play out. She had a lot to do with that, in the sense that my “relationship” with her primed me to do some work on myself. I stopped being shy.
On the other hand, she made me cry a lot.
I was married for a time (different woman). It didn’t work, mostly cuz I’m trans. So yeah. Would pretending Jesus exists have helped me with being trans?
Heh. As if. Let’s not even joke about that.
So my hypersexual “friend” is trying to fuck her way to happiness. I don’t think it will work, but I don’t have any better advice for her. Getting married surely won’t help.
After all, who is she gonna marry? Me?
OMFG no!
Anyway, I’m doing poly now, which is complicated. It works sometimes. I’ve seen it go wrong a lot too. How will I handle poly?
Heh. I’ll probably handle it okay. There will be some drama, I’m sure. So I’ll deal with it.
Will I someday switch to mono?
Fuck if I know. Good grief, I’m trying to figure out this week.
On the other hand, next month I’m flying out to LA to spend a week with this totally hawt kinky-as-fuck friend of mine. That should be fun.
Will we fool around? I hope so. Will one of us fall in love? Oh gawd I hope not. FWB will be fine, thank you very much.
Place your bets. Spin the wheel.
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On the other hand, committing to multiple partners isn’t diametrically opposed to this view. You could just as well say to keep this powerful emotional connection reserved to the several people you’ve already got a lifelong commitment to, etc, etc; nothing in this argument says it needs to be just one person.
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I agree, but the argument is often framed as though it is.
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I think a large part of it is that, regularly having sex means you’re regularly hanging out means you’ll either grow closer or grow tired of each other.
I base this on having had several one night stands and one serious boyfriend.
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Well, as a libertine myself, I will provide my introspective anecdata. I find that the act of sex usually has a strong emotional influence on me, especially when it is any good, and so that frequently sex when there is no prospect of anything further is a source of heartbreak. But I usually think it’s worth it.
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Huh, this-all is making it occur to me how *weird* part of this whole sex argument thing is in a way I don’t think I’ve thought of before!
Like, Wright is contrasting himself, who finds sex super meaningful etc, with his friends who don’t. But it’s then kind of entirely unclear why he think this means they should do the same thing he is. (Sidenote, he also seems to clearly have influence from the ‘women find sex meaningful and men just want to get their dicks wet’ side, except again, he’s contrasting his friends with himself and also apparently arguing they should do what he does, so I’m not sure how exactly this fits together in his mind).
Like – some people make the argument that actually everyone has the baring-your-soul thing with sex, so casual sex just hurts the people doing it. But Wright doesn’t seem to be doing that – worrying that his friends are hurting themselves is clearly not what he’s doing here.
So for whatever reason he might ascribe this to, he is, ultimately saying that some people find and treat sex as very meaningful and some people totally don’t. Why on earth does he think group two should then be getting into monogamous marriages like his?(!). Like – he’s talking about how not giving a damn about your partner while they want a deep connection with you is mean to a one night stand, but given what else he’s saying it seems he should find it considerably *more* horrible to do that to your exclusive life partner. (I’d imagine that it would strongly upset him if his wife told him she found sex with him simple fun and wanted to kick him out of bed immediately after (which, to be clear, people have every right to see sex this way, as ozy notes this is an honesty and compatibility issue)).
Does he think that people will just switch to his experience of sex if they get monogamously married? Why/how?
And like, this doesn’t seem to make sense from *any* perspective. From a ‘well, this is just a thing people experience differently’ perspective (which this discussion has also given me new thoughts on, which I appreciate) ok, so, clearly the ‘meaningful’ people and the ‘fun’ people should just have sex with other people in their own category.
From what seems to be his ‘my way is in order with the order of the universe and their way is blasphemous’ perspective, it would seem that the conclusion would be that these friends of his are *bad people* (out of tune with the order of the universe and all that). In which case, I could see why he’d be interested in projects to say, reform them, but not clear on why he thinks ‘they come ‘live among’ the good people’ is a good thing to have happen, nor why he’s writing an essay aimed at people like that, given that it seems he’s describing them as ‘bad and don’t give a damn’.
I guess maybe he’s aiming it at people who – haven’t decided yet whether to be bad or not? In which case, I feel like a more central point here might be how he thinks that works, and the argument should be structured differently.
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It occurs to me that, as a devout monogamist who believes everyone would be happier engaging in monogamy and is mistaken if they believe otherwise, I still object much less to someone openly engaging in casual sex with a large number of sex partners than I do to someone engaging in serial monogamy with a small number of sex partners who they falsely lead on to believe are intended to be life partners. In short, though I certainly identify as traditionalist with regards to sexual morality, it seems clear to me that the sexual behavior of Ozy and their ilk is more ethical than what is mainstream in our society – men and women pretending to look for a mate while secretly seeing the opposite gender as dupes.
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Hang on, I don’t think that is typical. I think what’s typical is looking and then not finding, and perhaps realizing this asymmetrically. Genuinely and deliberately duping someone into a relationship is regarded as malicious by pretty much everyone.
There are some people who are just not looking, and they need to be clear about that, but they aren’t necessarily culpable for simple communication failures (eg most high school relationships).
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TBH this did not really convince me that Wright’s views were worthy of consideration from an opposing standpoint. I am astounded that someone would pose a moral trilemma to moral subjectivists, and fail to include “the answer is subjective” as an option. Seriously, that should be pretty obvious even if you’re totally unfamiliar with the beliefs of moral subjectivists.
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MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR BOOKS YOU MAY NEVER READ
John C Wright once wrote a series of sci fi/ fantasy novels featuring, among other characters, a nearly emotionless robot from a universe that ran on purely deterministic logic and reason. The robot held all of John C Wrights moral views because, as a purely deterministic robot driven entirely by analytic logic, it’s entire culture unanimously determined that John C Wrights moral views were logically correct. At the end of the last book when the female protagonist had to finally choose between the Two Hot Guys (like ya do) she picked the robot because of his superior world view… a world view that saw her as an excellent reproductive organ for perpetuating the robots genetic and memetic code. The other option was a guy from a universe powered by love, emotions, and dreams, who actually cared for her on a personal level, and also had a two foot long penis.
Full disclosure- the books aren’t quite as dumb as that summary made them sound, and in fact they include some really good parts, and in fact could be the Genesis of a really good graphic novel if the writing of said novel was passed off to someone else and Wright was not given editorial control… but all of those are actual features and Wright’s writing is always weakest when he uses it to preach his world view, which is often, and increasingly often as he ages.
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Eek! Well, that’s some major anatomical incompatibility right there. Maybe that’s why the poor lady chose to settle for Patriarchy-bot.
Thanks for the fun summary 🙂
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Heh. Well, there MAY be a few contextualizing details that I omitted.
Wright is a really creative and reasonably smart guy who unfortunately has his brain eaten by a small Catholic subculture that is basically like what Catholicism would be if Ayn Rand had written the gospels.
The Orphans of Chaos series is structured like a very good superhero comic book. You’ve got five teenage protagonists with special powers, each based on their ancestry. They grow up unaware of this and become friends, until they discover their powers and are thrust unwillingly into a five way secret war between powerful superheroic and mythical figures. There are very strict rules about how the powers work. Conflicts are detail rich and well imagined, and the outcome of conflict stems logically from the way the respective powers work. A lot of cool fights and less cool teen angst occurs as the protagonists explore the hitherto unknown fantastical world, until they learn that they, as rare members of these secret factions who actually have friendships outside their respective clans, can make use of teamwork and synergy between their abilities to be more powerful than the selfish warring tribes ever expected.
It’s by the numbers in terms of structure, but that’s because it’s a good structure that’s worth it’s classic status. In fact it’s a structure that’s so common in fantastical writing that it almost deserves to be listed alongside mythic archetypes like The Heroes Journey. And since Wright really is a smart and creative guy, the non political, non sociological world building and action is excellent.
Unfortunately Wright can’t write teen angst to save his life, because his religious beliefs won’t let him. He intellectually understands the sorts of things that belong- five teenage friends of mixed genders are hanging out on a boat all the time, there should be sexual tension- but he’s completely against the idea that unmarried teenagers could have actual sexual thoughts. So his descriptions of how they interact when these issues arise are uncomfortable, describe nearly adult teens who behave like twelve year olds who get sweaty at the idea of seeing a bra strap, and just have this huge vibe of a middle aged man wearing his baseball cap backwards and trying to convince teens he’s “hip.” An on top of that he gets on a soap box every so often, and while the politics that he slips in USUALLY (not always) aren’t actually bad in the abstract (consent matters, and did you know men can be raped?) the fact that they’re being shoved at you do transparently is off putting.
Fortunately the really bad scenes are mostly short, and the good scenes long. Unfortunately, the series ends with a bad scene. Even Patriarchy-Bot could have been totally forgivable in the context of the books, because one of the core themes is that of people with fundamentally incompatible world views nevertheless becoming friends. Patriarchy-Bot WOULD have been forgivable, up until the female point of view protagonist chooses him over the competition and ratifies his views in spite of nothing in her personality or backstory suggesting she would ever think that way, and multiple established character traits suggesting she would go for the other guy. It comes across like she literally just considers his arguments Ayn Rand novel style, recognizes his logic, and decides to become his procreative life mate. While rejecting the guy who a normal person would see as not just a viable choice, but literally the only choice… probably because the guy she reject has a world view that references a lot of what Wrights political writing most rejects.
And while it’s easy to push aside two or three pages of bad scene when the next scene is good, it’s impossible to do that at the end of a trilogy.
And when afterwards you look him up online and find out that he’s famous for quipping that if vulcans had a church they’d be Catholics… and you look back at the character he just write who is effectively a catholic robo Vulcan… Yeah.
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The quotes from Wright’s post are all silly and I don’t understand why you (or anyone else) would want to engage with them.
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Because I’m having tremendous fun, obviously.
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Not sure whether Ozy is being sincere and/or sarcastic.
(and what’s with the avatars going weird?)
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I am 100% sincere. I don’t write multipart blog posts on topics that I *don’t* find super-fun.
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I suppose my question here is whether the women in question are, for instance, hooking up with men on Tinder, or getting drunk and taking them home from bars, or propositioning them with “so, what kind of bondage do you like?” at the Citadel. I certainly disapprove of people leading others on and saying that they love them when really they do not. But if you are going around sharing your inmost soul and expressing your absolute devotion to some guy you met thirty minutes ago at the bar, then I kind of think this is your own fault, and perhaps you should recognize that casual sex is not for you.
Indeed, a stronger point can be made here — which I think you’ve made elsewhere, IIRC? — which is that there’s no reason things have to be symmetric, even, if everyone’s aware!
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Of course Mr. B may have reason to be upset with Mr. A. There is a difference between sticking to the letter of the contract and sticking to the spirit. Maybe the two intended for Mr. A to have some period of time to go on a lumber acquisition spree before being exclusive to Mr. B but it is also possible that the intention was to have an exclusive lumber relationship and they just needed to set a date for the formal contract to begin (maybe it didn’t occur to them to set a date in the past).
Someone who sticks to the letter of a contract while violating the spirit (regardless of context) will often have others justifiably upset with them. Also, based on my amateur understanding, in American jurisprudence, unless the contract states otherwise, a party can be held liable for damages if a court finds that a person violated the spirit of a contract while also finding that the same person followed the letter. There are questions of burden of proof but the concept, I believe, is sound.
To be clear, I am not equating violating promises about lumber purchasing behavior with promises about sexual behavior: two things can be wrong in the same way but to different degrees (or the same in some way and different in others)
Also, who purchases a large amount of lumber an hour before their wedding? I mean, I suppose if one got married every week that might make sense but in this situation, I think the intended point of the example loses what little validly it had.
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When necessary, US law fills in omitted terms of a contract with constructive terms based on the parties history of past dealings, their reasonable expectations, and upon the common practices within the relevant industry. For example, of a purchase contract does not specify whether the item will be picked up or delivered, the court might rule that delivery should have been done the same way it was done the last thirty times this customer made a purchase of this item from this seller, or that since the sellers advertising material says “free delivery” all over it the customer had a reasonable expectation that free delivery was part of the bargain, or that since the usual practice in the industry is to customer pickup, that’s what applies. It’s usually a fact specific and contextual inquiry.
Very few contracts are capable of being breached before they’re signed, but Ozy is entirely correct in pointing out that marriage isn’t the only agreement a couple can have. Social agreements are everywhere. Society is built upon them.
A much better test for whether something is an issue of agreement or part of the Grand Cosmic Order is whether it can be amended by the parties.
Suppose the bride has previously established that she does not expect her fiancé to follow the common social norm of fidelity, and has established that she is ok with this.
…what happens? Does the cosmic order rebel?
Nothing happens. Nothing happens unless someone involved makes it happen. The assertion that this is a matter of agreement isn’t based on some cosmic theory of truth- it’s a purely factual assertion. If everyone agrees, theres no issue.
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