Human Nature

[Igelfeld]

PART of the fourth is intended. Rights and freedoms. That bothers me some, but not tons. What DOES bother me is the highly modernized sexuality of especially women, but some male characters as well.

Another thing that bothers me:
The infrequency of marriage.

What time period are you referring to here? and what do you mean by modernized sexuality?

There was never a time when everyone followed some rigid code about sex. It is true that in the middle ages the topic was more hushed up than it is now, but people have never been particularly virtuous.

So you can say it is inaccurate to go around boasting about your exploits. That simply wouldn't be done in most societies (Vikings excluded?). But throughout all of time there have been philanderers.   

One of my characters (Ulrich) is a bit of a womanizer. This comes out in his RP's, never anything beyond illusion to the fact. But it is always in RP's and never in letters. RP's provide a glimpse into the character, Letters are the public face. As part of that public face nobody would ever admit to having adulterous relations, but that wouldn't mean that the person didn't have them.

So I guess it really comes down to what you mean by modernized sexuality.

[Vellos]

What time period are you referring to here? and what do you mean by modernized sexuality?

There was never a time when everyone followed some rigid code about sex. It is true that in the middle ages the topic was more hushed up than it is now, but people have never been particularly virtuous.

That is partly true. Obviously, yes, there were philanderers. But it is rare that I see RPs of conventional marriages, stable relationships, or anything like that. Every RP is some horribly complex drawn out romantic love affair. Which is just bogus.

You are right that not everyone followed their moral code, but they were mostly discrete about violating it. Consider even the Arthurian legends by Mallory: Lancelot will NEVER confess to actually banging Guinevere, and that's even in a popular hyper-romantic novelized form. Courtly love at least pretended to be chaste.

However, you are also partly wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that "philandering," or any sexual activity, is consistent across time and culture. Quite the contrary, we have good reason to believe that cultural mores play a very, very large role in regulating behavior. Does that necessarily mean the middle ages were more chaste? No; quite possibly the opposite. But to simply suggest that our sexual behaviors today would translate to previous times in terms of their functionality or frequency is untenable.

[Hyral]

My first experience in BM with something called a "tavern" was closer to a great hall created to give the nobles of the duchy a place to base their RPs and generally show off to the rest of the realm how superior their stronghold was to the capital city. From that I've always assumed that, when mentioned, "the pub" was not actually meant to be that place on the corner filled with peasants and a bar made from odd wooden planks over empty kegs?

On marriages, I think we'd have more of them if  people realized that obtaining a marriage doesn't necessarily require long months of romantic roleplays.  Treat it more like a familial alliance and the concept of marriage is much less daunting.

But, to the point, the thing that bothers me most about roleplays (and by this I mostly mean it makes me sad) is reading an OOC message to the effect of "if a noble did that-thing-you-did in the middle ages, they'd be exiled/laughed out of town/burned at the stake!!!" and seeing *none of those* attempted by the character IC. It isn't the poor RP choices that upset me, it's the way that we as players generally fail to correct objectionable behavior through in-game demonstration.

[Igelfeld]

However, you are also partly wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that "philandering," or any sexual activity, is consistent across time and culture. Quite the contrary, we have good reason to believe that cultural mores play a very, very large role in regulating behavior. Does that necessarily mean the middle ages were more chaste? No; quite possibly the opposite. But to simply suggest that our sexual behaviors today would translate to previous times in terms of their functionality or frequency is untenable.

It seems we have stumbled upon a much deeper debate than I had intended, and I am more than willing to discuss it if you like.

I admit to overstating and oversimplifying my case in the first instance, as our modern understanding of sexuality is far different than it has ever been in the past. The sexual revolution has affected our outlook on sex far more than I think we realize, and these social influences highly affect how we view sexuality. Yes, translating our current cultural habits to past societies would be highly ethnocentric.

But I would argue that regardless of the time or society, people are the same. The rules they will play by change but they will still seek to satisfy their instinctual desires. Just as we have people today who conduct activities that society considers wrong, so did the medieval societies. The 'evil' we see today is not new to our society, it may be desires manifesting themselves in different ways, but the conduct of people does not change.

So I guess this is a bit much in arguing for historical accuracy in philandering nobles, but hey, I don't want to be accused of being historically inaccurate.

Regarding happily married RP's I agree, it would be nice to see more of those, but I know that it is far easier to make interesting RP's about somewhat depraved individuals.

[Vellos]

But I would argue that regardless of the time or society, people are the same. The rules they will play by change but they will still seek to satisfy their instinctual desires. Just as we have people today who conduct activities that society considers wrong, so did the medieval societies. The 'evil' we see today is not new to our society, it may be desires manifesting themselves in different ways, but the conduct of people does not change.

You argue that people ARE the same. I argue that people COULD be different. Burden of proof on you.

[Indirik]

I, personally, am not comfortable roleplaying marriages because my RL wife would find that objectionable. That's why my characters either have an NPC spouse, or no mention of the subject.

The one character I have that had an IC relationship and marriage was female. My wife helped me write the RPs. 

[Vellos]

The one character I have that had an IC relationship and marriage was female. My wife helped me write the RPs. 

She's a keeper!

I've had two characters get married. Neither was very awkward. Then again, one of them was basically a completely political marriage (Hireshmont and Retravic).

[Igelfeld]

You argue that people ARE the same. I argue that people COULD be different. Burden of proof on you.

I don't know what rules of engagement you are referring to but my position cannot be proven just as I cannot prove the sun will rise tomorrow. I can make very strong inductive arguments about it, but an inductive argument never constitutes a complete proof. Uniformity cannot be proved, but it can be disproved.   

What would be proof would rest squarely on your side as if you could prove that at some point in the past people were different than it would mean that they have not always been the same.  You could use deductive arguments which are by their nature proof establishing entities. 

I can provide a preponderance of evidence for my viewpoint, but proof is only in your court.

[Haerthorne]

Argument in support of people not having changed very much at all in the past 1000 years:

This sort of argument about logic and rhetoric could be taken directly out of any university or academy from Pre-christian Rome to medieval Paris to renaissance Bologne.

Argument in support of people having changed a fair bit of the past 1000 years:

The chances of one of you cleaving the other in half with their sword is, from rudimentary observation, far smaller.

[Vellos]

National Survey of Family Growth indicates that, even in the last five years, rates of sexual activity have changed significantly; notably abstinence in the US has risen, while exact preferred sexual acts have also changed.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm

Change is confirmed in data from National Survey of Sexual Behavior:

http://www.nationalsexstudy.indiana.edu/

QED.

[Igelfeld]

National Survey of Family Growth indicates that, even in the last five years, rates of sexual activity have changed significantly; notably abstinence in the US has risen, while exact preferred sexual acts have also changed.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm

Change is confirmed in data from National Survey of Sexual Behavior:

http://www.nationalsexstudy.indiana.edu/

QED.

This change can be attributed to a wide variety of factors, chief among them economic considerations. You also have abstinence education being taught in more schools. These kinds of societal influences will change the way people behave but will not change their nature, and if the culture reverts back to the way it was five years ago, so will the populace. As I stated earlier, culture and social norms highly influence the way people act, and what you have just provided is an example of that.

To look at the kind of sexual change you have indicated simply shows that people's behaviors change over time, it does not show that their nature changes. The sex studies are micro level changes in society and what you would need to demonstrate to show that people change is a macro level change, something that wouldn't revert back if the surrounding culture changed. Show me a time when most of the people in a society didn't have sex, that would be a proof. 

Here are some other areas that demonstrate how people have always been the same: Morally, people have always thought it best to not be strictly selfish. The culture in which a person resides will go a long way in influencing their beliefs about who one should be unselfish towards and to what level, but selfishness has never been seen as a good trait. Along those same lines, people have always thought that one should look after their offspring and care for the future generations. Honesty has always been considered a virtue, and cheating another person is never so. These are the kind of things that underlie human nature and they are the things that simply do not change.

[Vellos]

This change can be attributed to a wide variety of factors, chief among them economic considerations. You also have abstinence education being taught in more schools. These kinds of societal influences will change the way people behave but will not change their nature, and if the culture reverts back to the way it was five years ago, so will the populace. As I stated earlier, culture and social norms highly influence the way people act, and what you have just provided is an example of that.

Doesn't matter WHY they changed. Only matters THAT they changed. People respond to, as I said, cultural mores and institutions. Economic considerations can drive changes in behavior, duh. That's what I said. You disagreed.

I'm quite unsure what you mean by a person's "nature." Perhaps you could define it more clearly, apparently without reference to behavior?

Here are some other areas that demonstrate how people have always been the same: Morally, people have always thought it best to not be strictly selfish. The culture in which a person resides will go a long way in influencing their beliefs about who one should be unselfish towards and to what level, but selfishness has never been seen as a good trait. Along those same lines, people have always thought that one should look after their offspring and care for the future generations. Honesty has always been considered a virtue, and cheating another person is never so. These are the kind of things that underlie human nature and they are the things that simply do not change.

Apparently you don't read much anthropology.

Some (admittedly few) cultures glorify simple selfishness, consider lying a gift, exhibit wildly different child-rearing practices, have different mores regarding murder, etc. I have a hard time imagining any moral precept to which all cultures in all times assented. All had SOME moral precepts, had SOME idea of right and wrong, a sort of moral nature... but there is no central "human" moral compass on which all cultures can agree. Even supposedly basic instincts like truth-telling and kinship bonds are conditional based on cultures (evinced by the fact that some, admittedly very rare, cultures have extremely different moral and social conventions for those things).

Finally, my point was not that people's behavior would completely reverse. My point was that it would be different. You can't seriously be telling me that you think the moral behaviors of Medieval people are readily analogized to those of modern people. We just don't believe the same things, and our beliefs actually do have an influence on our actions. Now, maybe not enough to make a society of 90% adulterers become a society of 5% adulterers, but a shift from, say, 60% to 40% is significant and plausible, given that we have seen shifts of comparable size in just the last 60 years.

[Hyral]

When considering the percentage of population that acts in accordance with the morals of the time period and place, regardless of  what they are, if we are talking about 40% versus 60%, or even 20% versus 80%, it somehow seems wasteful to be upset about the habits of a fraction of 1% of the population?

[Vellos]

I pulled those numbers out of thin air; and you could call "nobility" the population of concern.

[WarMaid]

PART of the fourth is intended. Rights and freedoms. That bothers me some, but not tons. What DOES bother me is the highly modernized sexuality of especially women, but some male characters as well.

Another thing that bothers me:
The infrequency of marriage.

This relates to what I alluded to in the topic on Noble dress:  if you grant a society that has complete equality of men and women, you can't then just plug real life medieval mores onto it and say that's how life /should/ be.

Is it more or less likely that an equal society would have "modern" views on sex?  Consider particularly how much of historical "rules" about sex related to the concept of wives as property and being sure that some other man's baby didn't inherit.  How might those things be treated differently if (most) inheritance doesn't run through the male lines only?

A big part of the reason that I believe that the sexual mores would be more relaxed than those of medieval Christendom is that it is unlikely that BM's equal society could have developed unless there was some method of highly effective, readily available birth control.  Effective birth control may not necessarily lead to greater sexual permissiveness, but it certainly seems to have been part of that trend in the modern era.

As I said in another thread, I've seen quite a number of marriages on the FEI and been party to several.  Likely there would be more, but RPing relationships makes some people uncomfortable (or makes their partner uncomfortable!)  It would be nice to see a bit more being made of the opportunity to gain politically by marriage, though.  I don't think that people really usethe idea of allying with another house enough.