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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why they all did that in the late XIX, early XX century? The communist/socialist revolutionaries also wanted to burn society to the ground by encouraging cruelty and unrestrained sexual passions (glass of water theory[1]).

Some of them succeeded and did exactly as advertised.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_of_water_theory

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A number of comments have put "cruelty" and "unrestrained sexual passions" next to each other as if they were linked, but without actually expressing the linkage?

I would put both the guy in the original article, in his context of colonial America, and Communist revolutionaries in Russia, in the context of people who were excluded from the possibility of power by heredity rather than sex per se. The Southern states did this by race and Imperial Russia was literally a feudal society. Both also spectacularly cruel in their own way.

I suppose the unbridled id?

If i want a cheaper iphone, im pleased for u to face slavery if it gets to me cheaper and quicker (cruelty)

Same with unrestrained sexual passion. For instance if i add to the end of that sentence "on a minor." If u don't like that addition; well then u are against unrestrained sexual passion

Which i would say good thing

A suggestion:

Love your neighbor, is getting replaced with love yourself

U are welcome to disagree

> For instance if i add to the end of that sentence "on a minor."

You get a different sentence?

I guess what parent is saying is that 'unrestrained' means you can add any word after the "with a ________", since it's unrestrained. I have to disagree, though. Haven't we, as a society, been restricting (rightfully so in my opinion) more and more those sexual passions which we deem to be very harmful to the ones being sexualized?

Thanks both of u for being kind to me. I realize it is a hard issue to converse on, so i wont say too much

But since you're kind :)

Yeah. I suppose without sex, there are no children, and without children eventually there is no sex

So completely restrained is also wrong. Sex has it's context, and should be restrained within it. Children have their context and should be restrained within it

Which is what you're probably saying; to me "unrestrained sexual passion." doesn't mean that. So yeah, we're kinda in agreement, and questioning where the balance falls. That's a good place to be in

My suggested balance: focus on your spouse's benefit. That leads to _much_ more enjoyable outcomes. I have worked with prostitutes in the past (mostly trafficked women), and i can say forced sex, or unrestrained passion irrespective of another's feelings -- completely removes enjoyment -- unless the person doing it is also cruel

So my balance would be "love your neighbor as yourself."

I realize people can be unhappy with that for many reasons, but i suggest it is at least worthy of discussion

So thanks

I actually meant "grandparent" instead of "parent". So I'm actually agreeing with you. "unrestrained sexual passion" can then mean almost any kind of sexual passion, since it's 'unrestrained', which will lead to sexual practices that we, as a society, have deemed to be very destructive to the individuals on the receiving end of that 'passion'.

> the ones being sexualized

when it comes to minors, people usually conflate rape and sex, as if having sex with a minor must necessarily be rape.

Many if not all children are ready for sex when they are around 9. I for one would have loved doing sexual things with older women I found attractive, I remember very clearly daydreaming of this.

That turned out to be a good thing after all, because they mostly used that power towards cruelty. Countries where power is still in the same hands (Japan, USA, Britain, even Germany) are all comparatively better off than ones where it changed hands via street violence (China, Soviet Russia, Iran, and arguably even the modern example of Ukraine).

It's not like they took power to open cafes serving pumpkin latte.

Maybe the limiting of your power is cruel, but killing (starving, forced labor) you is much more cruel in my opinion. And at the end of day, 99,9% of people are still powerless because there's too many people and only a limited number of positions of power.

> Countries where power is still in the same hands (Japan

Absolutely insane example to use in the context of an article about Paschal Beverly Randolph (b. 1825), given that since 1825 Japan went from feudalism -> forcible opening of the country by US gunboat -> industrial colonialist empire -> democracy imposed by US gunboat

> ones where it changed hands via street violence

Ireland? France? Arguably, the United States?

Japan still had mostly the same people near the top during all of these transitions. They only changed form without changing the essense.

France lost a great deal due to their revolution. They still have to praise it because that's the foundation of their state, but in fact they has lost huge number of their best people (murdered or defecting to their competitors) and were dethroned as the country controlling Europe. And you can see their neighbours who did not do that costly mistake and now comparatively better off (caught up where they were previously incomparable).

Ireland had national independence movement - these fare better than plain "I win, you lose" revolutions.

Isn't drinking water essential to survive though?

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