Friendship and relationship are not transactional processes. The whole frame of selecting for these traits in friends and bed fellows as if that time of the year had come along and the Bureaucrats at central relations brought out a slate of potential friends and partners and for some reason your selections should hold some kind of judgemental significance at the expense of the unchosen candidates. Friendships and relationships are dynamic symbiotic relationships that develop because you both find value in each other's company. The level of navel gazing required to decide your friendship is so obviously inherently valuable to other people that there are ethical implications based on whether you deny it to someone because of an intrinsic characteristic is incredible. Yes, I will only be sexually interested in some subset of my chosen sex and my sexual interest is not removable from the process that makes a sexual or romantic relationship useful to either partner. This is a fact, not a matter of ought.
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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
Friendship and relationship are not transactional processes. The whole frame of selecting for these traits in friends and bed fellows as if that time of the year had come along and the Bureaucrats at central relations brought out a slate of potential friends and partners and for some reason your selections should hold some kind of judgemental significance at the expense of the unchosen candidates. Friendships and relationships are dynamic symbiotic relationships that develop because you both find value in each other's company. The level of navel gazing required to decide your friendship is so obviously inherently valuable to other people that there are ethical implications based on whether you deny it to someone because of an intrinsic characteristic is incredible. Yes, I will only be sexually interested in some subset of my chosen sex and my sexual interest is not removable from the process that makes a sexual or romantic relationship useful to either partner. This is a fact, not a matter of ought.
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