I can already hear someone arguing that she is entitled to conduct her relationships or alter her appearance as she sees fit. However, I have not denied this at any point in the preceding argument, directly or indirectly, so such a rebuttal is a diversion, not a response.

In this decade, a very funny idea has taken hold. Well, more than a few, actually, but one of them is this : that to be entitled to have the freedom to do something is to be entitled to be shielded from the consequences of doing so.

For example ... We agree that someone is entitled to decide for himself what his personal limit on alcohol consumption will be, even if he's drinking himself into a stupor. Fine and almost dandy. Any suggestion that he shouldn't be allowed to do so is met with outrage. OK ... However, once he has freely elected to do so and rendered himself incapable of holding a steady job (or even taking care of himself) through his own free and informed choices (the effects of alcoholism are no secret), what happens next?

The demand goes out that people sacrifice their free time, however little of it they may have, to do his household chores for him. That they sacrifice their discretionary income (and even some of their food budget, sometimes) to help support him, now that he can no longer support himself. That they turn the other cheek when he flies into an irrational alcoholic rage.... and so on. The unreasonable burdens that taking care of this man place on the "volunteers" are defended on the basis that they are left free to say "no", but this is not quite honest. Those who have the sense to say "forget it" will tend to be subjected to large amounts of self righteous preaching about their "selfishness", and smug, holier than thou posturing from those who've caved in to these demands, about how they "believe in caring about other people", as if the others did not.

The person who elects to do something stupid and self destructive finds that it is the consensus of the society around him that a tolerant response to his choices is his due. Should someone else, however, decide to weigh his own needs at least as heavily as our alcoholic's whims and refuse to make heroic sacrifices to protect the alcoholic from the consequences of his own freely made bad choices, that oither (more responsible) person is not granted the same level of tolerance by any stretch of the imagination.

What is wrong here, and one can easily see it in such an extreme and now decreasingly fashionable case, is this. There is a choice that must be made here and none of the options are pleasant. Either the "volunteers" must accept unreasonable burdens at the cost of living much less than full lives (and let's not pretend that one's own individual pleasure is not part of one), or the alcoholic must find his needs unmet. There is no third option. The "volunteers" had no control over the fact that such a choice would have to be made. The alcoholic had all of the choice in the world. If we take the position that he is to be shielded from the consequences of his choices, then we give him the power to deprive others of their freedom and the chance to fully satisfy their needs, really, without their consent - should we establish this as a moral imperative. This imperative would deny one of the most basic of human needs - the need to have control over one's own life. The need for real freedom.

If, however, we take the position that the responsibility for his own truly free and informed choices lies, not with those around him, but with him, himself, freedom remains. He is free to decline to abuse himself. Nobody is holding a gun to his head and forcing him to do otherwise. It is his fault and it is his problem. So, we must rule it to be. To do otherwise, will leave us the slaves of an ever growing population of parasites, creating a world in which the only sort of freedom remaining would be the freedom to choose which brand of misery to wallow in.

"Well, yes", someone might reluctantly say, "but isn't that kind of extreme? What does this have to do day to day life". In response, I would say that it can be instructive to consider such extreme cases, because the absurdities of much of what we take for granted stand out in such bold relief as to force us to notice them. Once done in an extreme case, it is easier to do so in a milder one. This notion, that others are obligated to subsidize one's choices through self sacrifice, is not limited to those on the fringes of society. There is the couple that puts off having children until the wife reaches menopause and then tries to play on the sympathies of someone who has been taught to feel guilty, or at least inadequate, if she says "no", hoping to persuade her to have their children for them. There is the wealthy man who squanders his fortune, and then complains of the callousness of a society than would think of denying him his social security checks. There is the laborer who declines to study in school, deciding to party nonstop instead, and then, years later, expects his obsolete job to be kept open, when the lack of the skills that he refused to develop, render him unemployable.

Bringing us to our case, here, though there are better ones, but given how long this has been running, we can leave those for another time.

Someone, as a matter of "self expression", or, more likely, caving in to a fashion that others have elected to create, elects to do something that reduces her desirability to most prospective mates - and then expects them to not hold that choice against her or to reject her because of it. To be sure, it is her choice, and she is, no doubt, entitled to make it for herself. But if she thinks that they are being intolerant or shallow selfish or stupid for saying "no" to her on this, she's wrong. They're as entitled to their preferences as she is to her choices. For one of them to ignore those preferences and be with someone that he is not attracted to, living a lie, would be for him to deny himself one of the greatest pleasures in life, just so she wouldn't have to accept the consequences of her choices (lost opportunities). Possibly, for the rest of his life.

As for one who would refer to the "stupidity" of those who care about what a woman looks like and believe that the more intellectual wouldn't care about such things, I'd have to say - that person doesn't know too many intellectuals, does she? As a group, they tend to be MORE pleasure loving than everyone else, not less. Asceticism, as a philosophy, does not tend to stand up under scrutiny.

The selfishness? No. It is one thing for a man to leave a woman because the passage of time has caused her looks to fade. She has no control over that. But a woman (or a man) who voluntarily reduces her attractiveness, does not merely reduce the sexual pleasure that she can offer her mate. She ELECTS to reduce it, an act that is, at best, selfish and uncaring, and is at worst, openly malicious. It is not merely a reflection of her outward form, but of the person who resides within it. In a case like this, the question to be asked of her is not "Are you the most desirable one around?", but "Are you the most desirable one that you could have been?". In other words, did she do her best? If the answer is "no", then should she expect any more consideration in return?

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