Sexual education

Good sexual education is learning how to discipline the body so as to pursue long-term happiness.

Bad sexual education is about how dealing with an uncontrolled body, it's about damage control.

Worst sexual education is misleading the body towards depravity, a.k.a. soul slaving by a body gone mad. It's the opposite of sexual freedom.

Good sexual education is learning about the meaningful role of sex in human fulfillment of happiness. It's about love.

Shallow sexual education is learning about body parts and bodily functions which are anyway written in instinct.

Good sexual education is about duty rather than pleasure, which paradoxically leads to pleasure.

Bad sexual education is about pleasure rather than duty, which paradoxically leads away from enduring pleasure.

Good sexual education is about using sex in pursuit of happiness.

Bad sexual education leads to sacrificing happiness to void sex.

Good sexual education leads towards enjoying sex.

Bad sexual education leads towards suffering sex, towards sex as a vice.

Good sexual education is about love for others.

Bad sexual education is about selfishness.

Bad sexual education is about not being an adolescent mother. It gives ideas about postponing which "make sense" far beyond adolescence.

Good sexual education is about not being a single mother. It gives ideas about how to start a family.

Good sexual education is about children, and becoming parent as a means. It's about giving.

Bad sexual education is about the selfish pleasure of parenting using the child as a means. It's about asking. It's about human pets.

Good sexual education is about lifetime compromise. It's about matrimony.

Bad sexual education is about good-while-rendering. It's about a civil contract useful when the expected breakup arrives. It's about planning divorce. It's cynical.

Good sexual education is about human dignity, about what makes our bodies sacred, about respecting ourselves.

Bad sexual education is about how to put on a condom as to avoid chlamydia.

Bad sexual education is about statistics.

Good sexual education is about not judging the neighbor and custody of the own eyes.

Good sexual education leads to being a good person.

Bad sexual education leads to being a bad person.

Good sexual education is about highlighting that the most natural thing is for sex to be considered taboo; this is, something which is not irreverently talked about but something intimate, special.

Bad sexual education aims at eliminating the taboo character of sex, turning it into base, mean, and coarse. That's why sexual explicitness is everywhere attached to bad manners and lack of education.

Bad sexual education is about learning to use condoms.

Good sexual education about learning not to use porn.

Bad sexual education is about looking for pleasure.

Good sexual education is about running away from danger and pain.

On the Church

I guess that it can be told with respect to the Church what Mises told about the utilitarian philosophy, that it

"does not look upon the rules of morality as upon arbitrary laws imposed upon man by a tyrannical Deity with which man has to comply without asking any further questions. To behave in compliance with the rules that are required for the preservation of social cooperation is for man the only means to attain safely all those ends that he wants to attain." The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, page 95.

Christianity as a techninque

It is absurd to judge Christianity on grounds of it imposing wrong ends on individuals. Christianity is a technique through which advice is given on how to reach final ends whatsoever. Yes, it's true that in doing this Christianity disentangles some apparent final ends and demonstrates that they are wrong means to reach truly final ends, truly being understood in a purely formal sense as anything which brings closer happiness to the individual.

A quote for reflexion on this Holy Week

"[T]he great lesson of humility which science teaches us, that we can never be omnipotent or omniscient, is the same as that of all great religions: man is not and never will be the god before whom he must bow down." (1)

(1) Cohen, Morris. Reason and Nature. 1931-Houghton Mifflin Harcourt-. Page 449. Significantly enough, this exact quote is used by Hayek to close the part one of his The Counter-Revolution of Science.

Hayek the missionary

One of the strongest cases I've found to remain Catholic is Hayek's thesis, a summary of which appears in the next text:

"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made men submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism." (1)

(1) Hayek, Friedrich. The Counter-Revolution of Science. 1952 -LibertyPress, 1979-. Pages 162-163.

Poverty and the offspring's size

Poverty doesn't arise merely from having babies but specifically from not endowing them with capital.

A not negligible part of capital is what we usually call morals.

Much of morals is learnt within the family.

A big family can perfectly be ideal for learning such values as parsimony, humbleness, collaboration, creativity, and respect to authority.

Poverty has much more to do with not teaching values to children than with the offspring's size itself.

Family is not a legal category

Everything which is really meaninful in the family, the mother's affection for his son, the son's respect for his father, the love among brethren, or the spouse's devotion are all values which are not ultimately defensible by compulsory law.

A man can be physically compelled to feed his son but not to love him, to avoid visiting a mistress but not to violate the eight commandment.

The family is based on values, thus can not be defended trough coercion but only through education on values, an education which itself can not be coercively imposed but only voluntarily accepted.

The article 51 of the Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica accurately (though needlessly) states that the family is a natural element of the society as well as its foundation, however aspires to an utopia when it declares the State as its protector.

To be sure, the one thing the government can do for advancing the wealfare of the institution of the family is to laisser-faire-et-laisser-passer. Everything else is counterproductive.

Family is not a legal category. Therefore it can not be defended through coercion, this is: by government.

Morals

Morals is information used to choose final ends.

Atheism as mere semantics

An atheist is someone who decides not to fill the term "God" with any meaning while a theist is someone who fills the term with some meaning whatsoever. The difference between a theist and an atheist is not usually a matter of morals or science but, especially among people raised in a culturally similar environment, of mere semantics.

A theist which knows scientific theories about, say, the origin of life which differ from an apparently respective, literally understood, biblical account does not need to find useless religion as a whole. Religion has a fundamental and irreplaceable role as:

1. An economizer of previously required knowledge and/or shortcut to information needed in order to morally act in specific cases.

2. An aesthetic, more palatable way of transmitting moral advice (this is: advice on final goals, as different of engeneering advice or advice on means to achieve a previously determined end).