So font of wisdom Bristol Palin tells CNN.
*wipes tears*
At least she goes on to say "but it's not realistic at all.
Everyone should be abstinent. The mind boggles. Truly, it boggles.
No one should have sex ever. That's what she's saying. She may not realize that's what she's saying, but that is indeed what she's saying.
We're so insane about sex, it's, well, insane. Imagine if someone went on TV and said, "No one should be laughing." Why not? You don't actually need to laugh to survive. But look at how our culture, at every turn, is tempting us to laugh. There's comedy -- blatant, outright humorous comedy! -- on TV every night. There's jokes and puns and satire and amusing greeting-card verse everywhere we turn. No wonder even our children -- our children! -- are laughing all time. We have to stop the laughter.
We would rightly, ahem, laugh that person right out of the room. But when people, even 18-year-old kids, suggest that we should stifle another equally human impulse -- except within some very narrow confines defined by a two-thousand-year-old book -- we take them seriously and nod solemnly and commend them for their wisdom.
We should laugh them out of the room.
And how do you enforce absintence, david?
I know you were being funny, but I'm serious. How do you convince people to refrain from engaging in what is one of the most basic human activities?
I guess you're trying to be funny, too, Paul. But I'm still being serious. You're suggesting that people turning you down is an effective way to promote abstinence. But you're not trying to be abstinent. So you've proven my point.
The reason some Americans are stupid about sex is because America is stupid about sex. Again, you're proving my point.
I haven't read that aldaily article, but I'd argue with the conclusion you seem to have drawn from it. We're not less "careful" about sex than we once were, we're just more open about it (but not open in the right way), and our eating wasn't "mindless," we were just less exposed to really harmful food (like high fructose corn syrup and other ultra refined carbs). I think the obesity epidemic we're coping with now puts paid to the idea that people are eating carefully... except other cultural factors are at work that make "mindful" eating hard for many people.
It all comes down to larger forces at work. When our federal government subsidizes corn *and* abstinence, you can only expect that people will get fatter and that teen pregnancies will go up. Because no one is going to stop eating or stop having sex, and when forces much larger than you put cheap crappy food and ignorance about your own body in your path, that's what's going to happen.
Most people, regardless of nationality, aren't "mindful." Most people take the path of least resistance. That's why we have to be careful about what ideas and programs we promote as a society. We shouldn't make it harder for people to live healthy lives -- we should make it easier. But that's not what we've been doing in America lately.
And I don't think we can blame Americans as individuals, per se. Because the minute the crappy American diet becomes a factor in other places, like in the U.K. and in Japan, people start getting fat and diabetic in larger numbers. If those governments started getting stupid and started promoting abstinence and limiting other information about sex and birth control, we'd see teen pregnancies going up there, too.