Your posts are like a mine field that can explode at any moment. I think that one has to consider the great variety of cultural sexual norms and behaviors across space and time. Some cultures are or have been more permissive than others in certain sexual matters but not in others. Engaging in sex and dealing with the consequences that go along with it is a life altering decision, especially for young ones. In western culture, we have decided to extend childhood by delaying sexual maturation (at least in theory). As you said, technology influences what we see and hear, so we're charting new territory as far as sexual development is concerned.
I find extending childhood extremely problematic. To give you the chain of my thoughts: When you raise kids by the practice that everything else but biology comes first, you end up with adults who are at high risk to stay in an infantile state of mind, since they were put in the situation to avoid the responsibility to lead a household, to manage finances or the numerous other tasks like taking care of other family members.
The extended childhood leads easily to a false sense of entitlement and to adults who then, well over their thirties and forties, still expect their parents/or government to take care of their needs (and demands).
... I would not call it "new territory" though, but a territory in danger of becoming too narrow and closed up. One, which will be avoided on top of what we already got, if you allow children and teens to not only delay puberty but make it impossible through puberty blockers and irreversible surgery. And to take only their own word for it.
Let me ask you a question: When you were a kid and your parents said "no" to one of your whimsical desires, how do you judge it from your present perspective?
My question of course implies that the desires of the pre-pubescent are all but mature, since the maturity to become aware of ones self centered desires, is to undergo puberty in full. So that at the end of that painful process you built up enough self esteem according to your man- or womanhood. The brain of the child and teenager is not fully developed, either. Would you give them the responsibility to decide what "social gender" they want to be? Adults, who think that way, are themselves stuck in immaturity, I suppose.
... I think I might know your overall position, please correct me if I am wrong. My man (who you resemble in my mind), has the attitude to see the great picture and to have trust that things will balance them out. Still, you need something/someone to balance those things. While he is often enough right, he often enough is wrong in the detail (same counts vice versa). To spare the intimacies ;)
To delve a bit further on this, I am talking about a phenomenon that has been observed in human and non-human species. It is called Neoteny. This is a biological concept that refers to the retention of juvenile characteristics by mature individuals such as floppy ears in dogs and curly tails in pigs. At the behavioral level, it appears that when the environment becomes too complex, animals delay adulthood by extending the "play" period of infancy. This allows the species to adapt to the complexities of the new environment. Physiological neoteny is also seen human (large head, flatter face, small arms, and slow development), and I think that we can make a good case that retention of juvenile characteristics extends to the psychological-behavioral domain. We now live in a technologically complex environment, and it is therefore necessary to retain juvenile characteristics to be able to adapt to it. So, extending childhood appears to be currently the evolutionarily adaptable thing to do. This is what I mean by extending childhood.
The fascination with changing people, genetically, surgically and psychologically, is a phenomenon that has been around for a long time. I don't approve of any of these three methods and clearly don't subscribe to them. As far as a change in mentality occurs gradually and I hardly notice it, so be it. That is the way of things. But I don't give much credence to the doomsday scenarios, nor do I believe the vaunted progress. In my opinion, both are exaggerated.
That's why our interests here are divergent and, just as you can't inspire me much for neoteny, I can't inspire you for traditional lifestyles.
I split my response into two comments (for it hat gotten longer than I expected).
Cheers and greetings!
It's too late. You already show signs of neoteny. This blockchain network is a part of the new complexity of the Web3 environment. As it is with new tech, it's mostly used by younger people, but we also see some older users playing around with this new blockchain technology. By using this technology, those older Hive users are behaving as if they're young and are therefore extending their juvenile stage. So those of us Hivers who are over 25 are showing signs of neoteny- rejuvenation. You see, neoteny is biological reality, it happens whether you agree with it or not. So welcome aboard, @erh.germany! 😎
Damn, I lost all the contents of the second part of my comment. Meh. Don't know if I will be able to formulate that again. Will see.
:D LoL. Why would you think that?
Let me consider. I do not believe that pre-modern man thought primarily in theory about his sexuality and would boldly claim that pre-modern people had certain practices in common with regard to the manhood and womanhood of their adolescents. These in turn, I would agree, differed significantly from one another, which I attribute to factors such as climatic and geological conditions, i.e. the localities to which people were confined.
Mountain peoples had different rituals to coastal peoples, nomads different to sedentary peoples, which I consider to be the greatest distinction in the lives of pre-modern people, since that was also their economies. Accordingly, their cultures formed around their living conditions. Some may have been more permissive than others, and again I see the climate as a major factor in this, not exclusively of course. In the tropics, nudity is normal, but not in cold climates, for example. Certain practices had to do with hygiene and/or which plants and animals people mainly came into contact with (though they may have attributed it to their Gods, as well). Where people lived in border areas with other foreigners, they influenced each other and so on.
I think that you allude to something that is very interesting. What exactly do we know about how different cultures now and in the past arranged their sexual systems?
In our current western cultures, monogamy is the rule. A child growing up in such an environment will be exposed to certain acceptable behaviors in regard to interaction between the sexes. In other cultures where polygamy is the rule, a man takes on multiple wives. Children raised in such a home will be exposed to behaviors not seen in a monogamous culture. Melvyn Goldstein describes still another practice that while less common it still persists: polyandry.
In the marriage system developed by some Tibetan people, two or more brothers take on a single wife. It used to be the parents who arranged the marriage but over time, it changed to this system of fraternal polyandry. All the brothers participate as providers and sexual partners to the wife. Children under such a system of polyandry experience a different reality than those in monogamous systems. For instance, the very young brothers do not participate in the marriage until they reach their mid-teens. The older brother is usually the one who has direct access to sexual congress with the wife, but all brothers have the opportunity to sleep with her. Such an arrangement creates a unique environment in which these children mature and develop.
This example of Tibetan polyandry is one of many marriage systems that anthropologists have looked at across various cultures in time and place. So, this is what I mean about taking into account the social norms and customs across the globe and history. To be able to create a theory of how sexual development is occurring now in modern times, we need to be able to put it in the context of what we actually know based on grounded research.
For me, broadly speaking, I think that technology is now playing a key role in our sexual development. How exactly? It's difficult to say, but it is a topic that arouses much curiosity in me. ;)
Resource:
Melvyn Goldstein. 1987. When Brothers Share a Wife
Yeah, while that is the case, it need not sound like prison or a scary thing to face, for example. If you mean pregnancy and parenthood with long term consequences?