Diplomacy 101, sign me up please

[Talon87]

One of my immediate regrets -- one I've only realized in the last 30 minutes -- is that I never took a course in diplomacy at college. And when I say diplomacy, I mean like "Captain Picard"-calibre diplomacy. Learning the subtle art of words which allows one to make his enemy become his willing ally. And why?

Because this recent debate at HongFire has got me really depressed and filled with a lot of doubts about some of the things I hold as true.
1 - That all humans possess the capacity to do good and to be decent.
2 - That all humans, ultimately, act selfishly: to live and to live happily.
3 - That all humans possess the capacity to understand the Golden Rule.
* by "humans," I preclude the braindead, the severely mentally handicapped, the clinically insane, etc.

Debating with lolikons (or, as one of their leaders put it, "fans of loli art forms") is really tiresome work. It really eats away at you. You feel like you're debating with a demon, and every second you spend in his presence is a second spent inhaling his toxic fumes, being burnt by his flaming-hot skin. Ultimately, you come to the point where you realize something: no matter what I say, I can't convince these guys they're wrong. So I'll just have to fight them. Fuck diplomacy. I will crush them under my heel.

And that makes me really sad. So sad, in fact, that I was shocked by the fact that I thought such a thought. " 'Fuck diplomacy,' you say!? BULLOCKS!" I realized that I had failed. I realized that, perhaps if it had been Captain Picard instead of me, there might have been a way to convince the lolikons to see things my way. To make them realize that jacking off to pictures of grown women is okay (if perverse) but that jacking off to drawings of small children is outright WRONG.

*sigh* I think I've spent so long online that I've fooled myself into believing that all the arguments, all the flames, even all the "intelligent debates" I've had over the years have amounted to some sort of worthwhile experience in rhetoric. Now ... I'm not so sure. If I can't even win as simple a debate as "Should drawings of small children in sexually-explicit circumstances be banned?" (OF COURSE!), then I don't know what I can really say for my rhetoric skills.

Am I doubting myself too much, and these guys really are "beyond all hope?" Ought they to be purged from the planet for the sake of the children?
Or am I being too quick to draw my sword? Is the failure mine? Could I have approached them in any other way, some way which would have allowed me to show them the light?

[Sylar]

Let's make sure that history never forgets the name Enterprise!

^^

Sorry, I saw Picard and just ignored everything else. >>; I'll give a proper response later when I've read it. xfd

[Kasumi Violet]

There's no accounting for taste. I don't think that lolicon people really choose to have the complex through rational thought... so logically trying to convince them that they shouldn't like lolicon anime isn't going to do anything... It's be like trying to convince a gay person that they're really straight. (Note: I view people with lolicons are sad, as their type of attraction can never be fulfilled without someone getting hurt)

[PiccoloNamek]

It's funny that you should mention Picard's diplomatic skills; I have always wanted to have those kind of skills in diplomacy.

But anyway, yeah, it doesn't work that way in real life. Welcome to reality. There is no such thing as diplomacy, and might makes right.

Anyway, I think lolicon stuff is pretty nasty, and those guys are pretty creepy, and people who harm children should suffer repeated bouts of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irukandji_syndrome) as punishment. However, I don't think the drawings themselves should be banned, or the artists punished. After all, they're drawings, not real children, and nobody was harmed in the making of them.

[GrJackass]

i agree with namek on this one. although i morally opose loli art (i barely caught that i wrote "loki art" which is in fact sexy) the drawing of children having sex, though disgusting, is in fact a victimless crime

and dont give me that bullshit that it incites that behavior
because then people who play and enjoy GTA actually go out and run people over with cars and strangle hookers? of course not, its a ridiculous claim and again, its a victimless crime to shoot an animated person

[Talon87]

Do all chemicals cause cancer? No. But some do.
Do all cars use gasoline? No. But some do.
Do all humans love beef? No. But some do.

Just because some behaviors do not encite criminal behavior does not mean that all analogous behaviors are safe, too. I 100% agree that ...
- it's the people who kill one another, not the gun
- it's the people who kill one another, not the video game

But I am truly suspicious about H-loli. I really don't see how it CAN'T be any other way, that if you start to enjoy H-loli, the chances are that some day, sooner rather than later, you are going to sample "the real thing."

The number of kids who play violent video games is in the hundreds of millions while the number of men who enjoy H-loli is certainly much smaller than that. Only a handful of cases are reported each year in which kids "went off the deep end" and incidentally were also huge GTA dorks; but it seems like there is a much stronger basis for fearing that H-loli causes people to become interested in real child pr0n rather than it being a mere coincidence.

[Doppleganger]

My advice to Talon; "One cannot suffocate a fish in water. One must reel that fish far onto dry land".

...

I've had more success that way.

[Skrusti]

that if you start to enjoy H-loli, the chances are that some day, sooner rather than later, you are going to sample "the real thing."


So, if I enjoy killing people on Halo, does that mean that some day, sooner rather than later, I'm going to make myself armour like the Chief's and go sample the 'real' thing?

Or if I enjoy Grand Theft Auto games, does that mean that some day, sooner rather than later, I'm going to go jack cars from people, beat up old ladies and steal their money, blow up crack houses, and get a whore to get my 'health' back up if I get shot?

Personally, I'm indifferent to Loli art (And like Gr, I almost typed Loki :P And like Gr, I think that would be sexy) as a whole. Drawings are just that, Drawings. It gives loli-ists the chance to work out their feelings towards it. If, however, they viewed REAL pictures, with REAL PEOPLE, not just DRAWINGS, being forced to do acts no kid should do, that's where I get tough.

Before you go after Loli-ists, go after REAL rapists who think child sex is the best thing ever. They're the ones who are the problem, not the ones who view cartoons.

[Another Fan]

Well, I don't think Talon meant for this to be a discussion about lolicon, rather a discussion of well, diplomacy obviously. However, I seem to see that most people here don't know a thing about it, myself included, so I ask Talon whether the shift of topic is preferable in this case.

Oh right. Skursti, Talon meant "the real thing" as in real child pornography, not raping childern. Cause if he meant raping children, then he is being rather silly today.

[Talon87]

Yeah, I'm tired of discussing this, so if you guys want to, you can, but I'm done. I'm pretty much tired out over at HF, too. -_-; AF was right -- I wrote this hoping to talk about the need for learning to be more diplomatic, not to debate lolikon.

[SulcataIxlude]

I dislike any form of child porno, even if it's just drawings (and the kids being drawn are not being molest or anything), because the whole concept of it really sickens myself. Since people can't simply flay alive folks who molest children, or make artwork of that nature without invoking the police or other law officials to defend the purpotrator or whatever, the best thing to do is just to ignore them, because if you only know these guys on the net there is not really much that can be done. But if you know then irl, then thrash the shit outta them or something to get those nasty thoughts out of their heads.

*Turns into a chicken, and becomes ayam sate.* ;) :15

[Holy Emperor]

Child molestation is pretty much 100% guarenteed to permananly destroy a person for the rest of their life.

That being said, a person can't really choose what they like. You can't just go "Oh well today I decide that ______ turns me on". It's not something you just choose. I see drawn loli as something that harms nobody and "gets the job done" so to say, because you're not throwing away people to make it.

I don't know who's side I'm on in this argument, but I don't like loli really. But some people do and I'd rather have them fapfapfap to something drawn then actual child pronography.

[GrJackass]

but would everything be allright if the children had mustashes?