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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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I feel like it depends on the context and how hard they go.

While I really struggle to understand the professors enthralled by light flirting or the guys that did women's homework for barely even that, I do feel like people might not appreciate how hard it can be to say no when you're directly sexually propositioned by someone young and attractive in a context where sex clearly is an option and you're drunk.

It is clearly possible to control these urges but I don't think it's easy. I don't think it's typical minding going on here as much as it's an experience that many people have not had (or only very rarely and not as intensely) and therefore cannot fairly evaluate the difficulty of.

"And you're drunk" is a hell of a caveat. Self-control is strategy. Internal emotional strategy and external material strategy. Self control is about having the experience required to avoid and/or mitigate mind-controlling influences in situations where their effects may be catastrophic.

I don't think this is easy either to be clear. Right Action is teleological. Results oriented. The unwise are always going to make myopic mistakes in the process of learning their lessons, and all new humans start out unwise.