Chronicles of Gor

[Chuckg]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

Fortunately, having regularly followed DC comics through "Identity Crisis", "War Games", "Countdown" and "Infinite Crisis" (edit -- and Marvel through "Secret War", "Avengers Disassembled", and "New Avengers"), I have by now lost so much SAN that the manifestation of Dread Cthulhu in my sock drawer would barely get me to go 'eh, whatever'.

 

Of course, this is perhaps the ultimate example of the cure being worse than the disease...

[Vondy]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

I found John Norman's ethical naturalism (it was his doctoral subject, incidentally) as presented in the Gor novels to be utterly repellent. It lauds the subjugation, rape, and humiliation of women; and a takes a very lord of the flies position on male interelations. Its good to kill a weak man and abscond with his woman for your personal pleasure! After all, its what she truly desires! And he deserves it for being a weak man with a beautiful woman! While it may be "naturalism" of a sort, I didn't see anything "ethical" about it. Its cloaked in a lot of pretentious claptrap about women's "true" inner desires and the benefits on a "naturally ordered society," but in the end its just a justification for killing your neighbor and stealing and raping his woman.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

"Ethical naturalism"? I don't think I've run across that term before...

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

Eh, I'm no doctor, but I think I can take a stab at this. VDM or Markdoc will be able to correct any drift, but if I'm grasping at what VDM is saying:

 

Naturalism is, by the dictionary (and the sense it's being used here) "Conduct or thought prompted by natural desires or instincts." A naturalist in the most extreme sense isn't going to work well in society because society assumes you curb those impulses in order to function. Ethics, simply, are those values we hold as conforming to societal standards. The Greeks considered homosexual relations among males to be ethical - if I remember my anthro, it was common practice. Americans as a generalization do not (there are laws against it, in many states, to this day).

 

Ethical Naturalism is simply saying, then, that these behaviors fall under the purview of acceptable societal standards, to the point where it becomes the appropriate behavior. Guy flips you off? Kill him. That's okay, because he was weaker than you. Guy has a hot chick? Kill him, rape the chick, lock her up and show her off. You're only as strong as your last battle, yadda yadda.

 

And I've never read the books, but the premise is that women are only happy when they're being controlled, having their decisions made for them, and are treated as nothing more than vessels for the satisfaction of the Gor males. The plant parody sums it up really well, actually, but Ethical Naturalism says, simply, "Do what you like without regard for others, so long as you can get away with it." Sort of like a really whacked, left field Darwinism.

[Vondy]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

Ethical naturalism assumes ethics are the result of empircal observation based on ascertainable phenomenon (physical and sociological) and that moral considerations, irrespective of their epistemological source, are irrelevant in ethical terms. From what I've read, this was the basis of Norman's doctoral thesis (I haven't read it). In the Gor novels Norman took this a step farther: he proposes that nature's unforgiving "survival of the fittest" paradigm with all of its "Lord of the Flies" nuances is not only the best basis for a society, but that it is, in of itself, moral (as seen by his protagonist). This may have been a bit of "shock-jockism," however, when one considers that he was a professor on a college campus and publishing his books in the mass market at the height of the bra burning bananza. I am, nonetheless, still repulsed by his "fiction."

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

So... was I close?

[Vondy]

Re: Chronicles of Gor

 

So... was I close?

 

I'd say so.