Should We Expect Same Moral Standards?

And thus Catholics can not get divorced.

As I said the difference is subtle. If marriage is a unbreakable sacrament, then no secular authority can end it. But of course secular authorities grant divorces all the time.

Thus people who happen to be Catholic are given divorces.

That's a tricky one. In real life, if your partner tells you 'I have been having unprotected sex with a notoriously promiscuous friend' you ARE going to feel different from if they say 'I have been having fantasies about about having sex with someone else'. Aren't you? I'm sure I would. In SL the boundary between thinking and doing IS defined differently from RL, not for reasons of morality but for reasons of physical reality.

And it's not so easy defining the rules clearly at the beginning. You don't know what they are then, or what you want them to be. Sometimes that only becomes clear over a period of experience, love, probably some mistakes. You BUILD the rules as you go along.

Anyway, I thought I'd tell the you other side of the story about Jig's bug from her former partner, because I was the one who accidentally became its owner: it started sending me emails of every word spoken within earshot - that had previously gone to him. I asked him about it. 'Delete it, it's evil' he said, appearing shaken by his own experience after setting it up in the first place, and that's absolutely right. Such an invention is pernicious, corrosive, brings out the worst and most obsessive and most vulnerable sides of our worries. It can make an Othello out of anybody. It is worse than a proof of distrust, it is a killer of trust.

The fidelity she and I now enjoy is by choice, not rules, and its precise definition is a work in progress. Strangely enough, the great differences in our ages, geography, profession, milieu, networks and lifepath have helped, in SL, in a way that I can't imagine would have been possible in RL. Though at root it's real life culture we share - literature and music and art and history. How clever that the imagined practice of a real sexuality can discover all that.

The kettle's on for a cuppa when you get home, petal. Or a saucer of milk by the back door, depending...

It means you're a misanthrope and think women are basically stupid evil creatures.

This is about "cheating" on someone in RL with someone on the computer through SL? Clear cache and relog, fill out a support ticket (maybe a Linden can give you free marriage counseling via email), and check the blog for details. It always works for me when I "cheat" on my wife.

And you're highly depressed and suicidal.

No this is about cheating on someone in SL with another someone in SL.

Yup. And that is why saying that the reading of ONE book at the age of 15 shapes one's entire ethical and moral attitude is just silly.

Unless it is Dianetics.

oooh I forgot about Dianetics. And The Bible. Well, leaving those two out, if you read a NOVEL and then base all your morals around it, you're silly.

Well .. I would say if you do that around *one* novel, it can lead to a pretty limited view. But in my own mind, it's far more sensible to base one's moral ideas around literature in general rather than something like the Bible. I personally find that the writings of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, etc., resonate more with me in terms of ethical and moral thinking than anything I read in the Bible as a child.

Very much agreed! But to state that you believe that cheating on your significant other is okay because you read Wuthering Heights as a teen and are therefore different from everyone else doesn't make much sense.

[Edit: I am in no way condoning or condemning "cheating" in SL. I'm just arguing semantics. ]

I think you'd still be silly to base all your morals around either of those.

Or the Quran, or the Torah, or "On the Origin of Species"

Oh I don't know. Forgetting the smiting, pillar of salting and that whole creepy lazarus escapade, I always found the Don't Kill, Don't Steal, Honor thy Parents part , a pretty good way to live.

I think "Catch 22" should be "The Book." Or perhaps "Clfford, the Big Red Dog".

Oh I agree. I still don't get the Wuthering Heights reference myself. My takeaway from that gloomy tome was that you are better off pursuing a true love, and leaving it unrequited can lead to tragic consequences. I don't see anything in Wuthering Heights that would justify philandering of any sort. I would think that someone looking for a justification, if there is one, for that kind of approach would look more towards something like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, to be honest.

But thoroughly unoriginal as well and not unique to the Bible. Human civilization has condemned those things more or less universally without regard as to whether it was using the Bible as a norm.

True but most of us get it from the Bible, or it's equivalent at an early age, either directly or from our parents. But I guess that's changing now.

I was thinking "The Darwin Awards"

Actually, re: some other thread this week about women looking for the ideal partner(s) (or was that earlier in this thread?) you could argue that "Origin" is actually the ONLY place to find your morals. We're all human, therefore we're all driven by the urge to procreate and spread our own genes in the best possible way, so if cheating is what it takes, then heck, why not?

Meow babe - I be home at dawn (keep pet door open) I went to library to borrow Charlotte's Jane Eyre - there's something in it about older men! Jiggy.

Yes, in fact the argument can be made that monogamy is highly unnatural and contrary to the most efficient progress of the species from the genetic point of view, and hence highly immoral on the genetic level. Personally I think monogamy came about as a result of the desire to preserve property rights by settling firm(er) lines of inheritance for property within familial groups.

I read Hamlet at 14 - it still guides my heart and soul. Not silly to say one book shapes morals. That is why such texts are the literary Canon. In each of us is a kernal of truth that a valid and perceptive writer can awaken in a single book, a chapter or poem, a single phrase or line. Literature is truth at the heart of all of us - as Donne wrote, "No man is an island .. " - a reverberating phrase that for many of us should shape our entire lives.

Hopefully you didn't kill your uncle.

you don't have my parents then =)

::has differing views on theft for survival and a few other examples::

PS that's don't murder, not don't kill, killing is all good and dandy according to that book if it has the right justifications =X

By observation, people worldwide seem to have a built-in tendency to put their primary affection and loyalty on one permanent partner and any children with them - and to have a tendency to fool around on the side, especially men. This makes more sense biologically: concentrating attention and resources on certain descendants to help assure their survival - plus scattering some wild oats for an extra shot at successful reproduction.

Makes life messy, for sure, but then, as we all know, Mother Naature is a bitch.