The internet as a means for exploring the facets of humanity

Hey everybody.

I'm sorry if I didn't make much sense when I talked about "the documentary on SBS some time in the last week" in our tute today. I looked it up and found that the doco was broadcast at 10pm on Friday night. I haven't yet found an especially informative webpage about it to share with you, but I did find this short blurb about it:

10:00 pm DOCUMENTARY - THE CLITORIS - FORBIDDEN PLEASURE
Topics about female sexuality are growing in popularity. Magazines and talk shows all discuss it. Yet a fair percentage of women are said to suffer from female sexual dysfunction. While male sexual problems have traditionally received the most publicity, only recently has research begun into the problems that plague female sexuality. This film looks at the medical, cultural, psychological and relational reasons for women's dysfunction and explores female arousal and its anatomical basis. (From France, English subtitles) MA (S,N,A,) (Rpt)

The doco addressed the issue of sexuality, women's sexuality in particular, and argued that, in this day and age, there's not much point in trying to suppress or deny women's sexuality, as all humans are sexual creatures (although this conflicts with another doco aired on ABC that proposed some people's brains are more wired for religion than sex, but that's a whole other kettle of fish -- I wish I could find a more informative page than this). Women's sexuality, like so many other facets of humanity, does exist, and suppressing or denying that isn't doing us any favours.

Point being, as far as ethics on the internet are concerned, perhaps the internet is an ideal medium for exploring, revisiting, and expanding our ideas, including those ideas that aren't traditionally socially acceptable. For me, the real controversy lies not in the content of online material, but in the ramifications this content may have offline, and this raises the question of morality. For example, graphic images of a brutal murder online may be perfectly ethical, particularly if these images are completely synthesised; what is non-ethical, however (in my mind, at least) is a person's enactment of the murder scenario in the physical world.

This is what I was getting at when I said that the ethical soundness of the effects of online material come down to individuals' morality -- it's a matter of what the individual chooses to do with the ideas presented to them. Personally, I think it's important to not suppress or deny any facet of our humanity; to acknowledge, accept and deal with every facet in whichever way we see moral, and I think the internet is a suitable medium to explore these facets (as long as otherwise 'unethical' things do not find themselves in the physical world).

I hope this makes a bit more sense than my incoherent babble in the tute.

Peace out.