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Originally Posted by
Sherman90 
No offense taken. I enjoy discussing these types of issues with others, and I've always admired your tact around here.
"What-ifs" serve to assist reasoning by analogy. The point isn't to draw a direct inference, it is to see how two related ideas - however distant or near - inform each others' content. In this case, the "what-ifs" apply to the extent that they illustrate how harm CAN flow from purely passive behaviours/hobbies.
Someone might consider discovering that their mate sits around all day pricking holes into an effigy of their mother "harmless". I say what a person spends a majority of their time doing says a lot about that person's character - whether its sexual, violent, or whatever in nature. Sitting around jerking off to people shitting on each other is a miserable waste of time - and I feel no lack of compassion saying it.
I understand what an analogy is, but not all analogies work. My point was that comparing the two acts is pointless. It would be -- to use an analogy of my own -- like saying swating a mosquito is comprable to shooting your neighbor. It just simply isn't by any reasonable measure.
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There isn't a thing we do that doesn't impact our lives. Behaviours feed behaviours; patterns of thought congeal and become difficult to break; fetishes are satiated and then transform into other, more bizarre fetishes.
I think people are naive to think that the basic laws of our world don't apply to the realm of the mental. You are what you think. I don't deny that I have some seedy elements in my psychology - I assure you I do, far more than I probably know - but I spend my time contemplating and trying to understand those elements, not feeding them. I think that is the only thing that distinguishes a man from an animal-man. The former contemplates and exercises his will; the latter is simply a tool for his lusts.
As for what I do with MY time, of course I waste it. But there are wastes and there are wastes. I think we can safely say that lusting after shit is not the same as what I do on here, or elsewhere for that matter.
As hard as it might be for you to accept this, I am not passing "judgment" on this bloke. The Christians rightly say that we're all "born into sin" - that is, we all basically suck. I am merely attempting to rebut the view that a woman SHOULDN'T feel upset upon learning that her partner or romantic interest spends a great deal of his time doing stupid things, however "private" the sphere of his activity might be.
You're giving far too much power and credence to the idea that "you are what you think." There are thoughts, and there are thoughts. Your take on thought/free will also gives rise to beliefs that, for example, there are no accidents (where people are concerned, anyway). Well yes, there are. And just because a person experiences a thought does not convert it into some sort of instantaneous reality.