I have had periods of hallucinations before. (From more than one reason, and no illicit substances were involved.) But I remember clearly that hallucinations are not always visual. The visual ones usually follow a trend. Like clothing that is piled on the floor seeming to move out of the corner of the eye suddenly becoming your cat. People who actively seek hallucinations usually do so in darkness, as the visual cortex when overstimulated can morph the hazy darkness into anything, and does so by its very design. It is all a matter of your visual cortex trying to make sense of what it perceives. Certain patterns can make it easier to do this, or at least to get it started. A word of advice: DO NOT SEEK TO HALLUCINATE! It can work out in an enjoyable way, but a bad trip is equally likely and can trigger horrors that your subconscious usually knows better than to permit. If you ever see that pile of clothes in your floor morph into a zombie and try to eat you, you may have to live with it for a long time afterwards even if the hallucination ends in a moment. Please do not take my warning as a jest. I am for once being serious.
I agree with that. Hallucinations (of any sort, induced by anything; this also applies to dreams but to a lesser degree, since in most cases we are capable of waking up if everything goes scary) can make us experience things which we consider to be fun, but they can also be things which will leave us scared of something, or worse yet, frightened of ourselves. Remembering something you'd rather not have remembered and reliving it with additional visual effects a few times isn't something you want, people. The least disturbing (for readers) one I remember was the one where I just did normal things but my hands were constantly covered in blood, no matter what I did.
I've never taken any sort of drug (barring a bit of totally legal alcohol) recreationally, but I have had hallucinations. I've hallucinated a couple of timeswhen I've been sick usually when I've had a very high fever -- those were almost exclusively audio hallucinations, where I've heard, for example, my mom's voice when she's not been around. I've also hallucinated when I was right on the edge of sleep/wakefulness. The scariest hallucination I've had was, no joke, while I was driving home dead-tired. One evening when I was living in Columbus, OH, I had been working late and had lost track of time. At some point I realized I could work no longer, and wanted to go home to go to bed. As I'm driving home on this relatively dark street, I see the lights of this big industrial/laboratory complex (for some major company who's name escapes me atm). Suddenly, it pops into my head that this looks awfully like I'm driving towards my High School in New York. And I'm there.... I swear I saw my High School (Which is odd, since there's no angle like that in reality where you can drive straight at it, but whatever). For several seconds, I was not in Ohio anymore, but in New York. That scared the hell out of me, and from then on I swore to never work that late again. I promise you that a hallucination while driving can scare the living daylights out of you. So yeah, lack of sleep as well as fevers can cause anyone to hallucinate.
My favorite hallucination was while I was younger and coming up from general anesthesia. Seriously seriously flying purple spotted green giraffe elephat leopards. They were all 3 at once. And that made sense.
It's a silhouette. It's perfectly fine if children see it, even in America, unless you have a strict religious family. She's actually BOTH going clockwise and counterclockwise. Please note the Double slit experiment, and observing it through image editor will prove that neither is happening, but without the image editor to help, both are actually happening. The nuts do not move. Keep your eyes still on any spot of the picture and you will see this. The nuts will only appear to move if you move your eyes.
My mother would call that porn. Lol. Strange as it sounds, even religious people are more open to this than most people from earlier generations. (With vast variances depending upon prospective and age.) Yeah. I could and should have said that better. Well put my Android friend.
To this day, I have no idea what religious people think will happen if their kids see anything suggestive (whatever happens has already happened, I guarantee it, since you can't get away from it unless you are Amish or live in a cave). It's probably a whole lot worse to teach that it's damaging than to see a human body, naked or near naked. I think that legend of Medusa must be a metaphor for what religious people must feel happens should an innocent young man see a naked woman. Or vice versa. And even among the less religious, there seems to be a double-standard where if something is considered art, then it's ok -- somehow the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a purifying influence an a naked body. I think they have these magic rays that they radiate your brain with so that you aren't corrupted by Modigliani or any number of Renaissance or Greek or Roman nudes. Those ancient peoples must have been eunuchs, because clearly they were incorruptible.
Dangerously close to discussing religion. So I will keep this simple and brief. If a Deity made Humans without clothing, then how is is even possible for there to be anything bad about a nude Human? A person who looks upon them and chooses to see something different is another discussion. I can and have looked at nude Humans with no thoughts of evil or sin or sexuality. The "Forbidden Fruit" gave knowledge of good and evil to Humans according to all the beliefs that acknowledge such a concept. So it is the knowledge that was bad, not the body. The older cultures of the world had closer quarters for everyone. And nudity was simply something that could not be avoided. To bathe, you went to the local water source and washed there with everyone else. Bathing in a group was the safest way. (Snakes and pack animals could kill a single Human, but a group of Humans would chase off/kill whatever threatened the group.)
Then again, remember that in many ancient societies women (and children) were treated more as chattel/property. And even in some parts of our world, it's not so very different. I took a pretty good anthropology class as an elective in college. One thing that was obvious is that in some cultures, you can understand why modesty is important. Some cultures they dress their children in rags, even if the family is relatively well-to-do, because the belief is that dressing them well will make your neighbor's jealous. Now in a society where women and children are legally property the thinking behind sexual modesty may come from the same roots. You don't want your neighbor's lusting after your wives and daughters (or even your sons). It's not like some societies (not just modern ones) where people feel free to advertise their wealth, their physical beauty, and so on. If your wife is an equal companion, then you assume that she is capable of making decisions and protecting herself as she sees fit. But if your wife is property, then you protect her from prying eyes.
I think there should be a country where women are allowed to vote and own property, but men are not. Also, have men become women's property. It's only fair to reverse the sexism before we can truly have balance of the sexes. Also, I consider most to all porn as Nudist/Sexual Art. Their value is not merely just stimulation for pleasure, there's also a certain aesthetic, especially in Pinup pieces(but not so much in rape pieces)
Well I could see how that might be both educational and appealing to some, but no... just no. In a free and fair society, one where everyone is free to make their own choices without economic or social pressures, then yes, I agree. When the choice to participate in creating such things comes out of choice, uncoerced by social and/or economic pressures, then I totally 100% agree. That said, I remember reading an article (I wish I could remember where -- it was either "Psychology Today" or one of the two "Scientific American" magazines. I assume that this research was based on heterosexual males but it could have been males and females -- I don't recall. And it was dealing with American males (I'm not sure whether this would hold up completely if this were done in different cultures). But the claim was that the degree to which one individual (let's say a heterosexual male) viewed a female as a human being on an equal footing, was inversely proportional to the amount of skin being displayed by that female. In other words, at our core, we still are those ancient people wanting, needing to propagate the species, and the more skin we see, the more we are reduced from modern people with modern ideas about equality to our caveman selves. In other words, men are attracted to naked women in a sexual way. (Put like that, it seems so much more obvious).
BTW, I don't work for this company so if you consider this spam, I apologize. But it's one of my favorite stores on the web. Feast your eyes, guys and keep this away from the kiddies. You don't want them corrupted: http://www.art.com/products/p12342067/product.htm?RFID=217825&ProductTarget=51022315856 BTW, I've purchased 4 pictures from them so far, and am running out of wall space (3 were Eschers, one was a film poster from The Beatle's "Yellow Submarine", and all are adorning the walls of my bedroom.
Edit: Deleted. Reason: Haldurson was offended. Reddit: Personally I know nothing on Wicca's beliefs. It really does makes me sound dumb. I feel there's something wrong with me ever since I started playing the game Corruption of Champions. I need to rethink my life.
I hate to hear their argument against murder. I have to just say that this makes Wicca sound kinda dumb, and I suspect that that's not entirely accurate. That said, If that's your primary argument against 'defiling' a human body, then there's something deeply wrong there. How about respecting your fellow human beings so that they can pursue a life as they wish, free from fear. How about creating a civil and fair society that allows women a say in who they choose to have relations with.
Pretty much what Haldurson said. Leaving criticisms of Wicca and its legitimacy aside, it's not about "defiling". It's about physically attacking someone to assert your dominance and power over them. Rape is something done by the strong to the weak in *any* of its meanings. It leaves mental (and occasionally physical) scars that may never leave the victim. My body isn't sacred. It's a jumble of bacteria, fleshy things, decay, growth, fluids and - well - many things. It's an evolutionary quirk, a mix of toxic chemicals that somehow congeal into a complex, but flawed, mess of wetware. It's not sacred. My body is not a temple to be worshipped or to be held above other things. It's an accident. A messy, sticky, smelly accident.
Then I guess since our bodies are flawed, we should probably either improve them or die. Or maybe possess an artificially created set of bodies that are more practical for social life. Edit: as I edited earlier, I am completely uncertain if Wiccans believe in the sacrament of the human body. I may have just made it up without knowing. Reddit: I fear that my soul has been corrupted by Furry Lust Demons(which have absolutely nothing to do with Religion). I need to read the bible.
I can't actually talk about Wicca without foaming at the mouth, so moving on... But no. We can't "improve" our bodies because, well, ethics, y'know? We only better ourselves if we can make peace with those voices inside our heads (or temples, if you're a religious sort). And what do we gain by living longer, healthier and by eliminating, say, disease? Oh, yeah, we'll just cause more death and destruction on this planet. Then we'll go to the next planet and do the same. And the next. And the next. And the next. Unless we can utterly overhaul our instincts, our ways of thinking, then we've got no chance at all of improving. And even if we do then there's nothing to say we'll even survive, or whether we'll just end up like the dinosaurs.
We are who we are. That's not to say that we cannot change, but we need to come to grips with some of it, and keep working at the rest of it, and act with both rationality and sensitivity to others that we share the world with. Some things are just not going to change (drastically) within any of our lifetimes, but that doesn't mean that we need to give up. And there are things that can change, and may be on the verge of change. There will be wars and persecution and fear and hatred, and the powerful taking advantage of the weak, and so on, maybe until the end of our days, or even the end of sentient life in the universe. That doesn't mean that we should just throw up our hands and not try, because every little thing adds up. Some battles seem endless and what's achieved sometimes does feel insignificant. But you have to look at the fact that there ARE places that are made better by our actions, even if those changes are only short-lived. And we need to accept when the battles have no upside, so decide to choose those battles more wisely And you repeat as necessary and always try to find a better way.
