#Ethical Questions

[omegaphilosophia]

The Relationship Between Cyberpunk and Posthumanism

Cyberpunk and posthumanism are two interconnected paradigms that explore the implications of advanced technology on human identity, society, and the future. Both address themes of human augmentation, the blurring of boundaries between human and machine, and the socio-political ramifications of technological advancements. Here's an exploration of their relationship:

1. Technological Augmentation and the Human Body

Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk narratives frequently depict a world where humans enhance their bodies with cybernetic implants and other technological modifications. This genre questions what it means to be human when our physical form is increasingly defined by technology.

Posthumanism: Posthumanism critically examines how technological enhancements can transform human identity and capabilities. It challenges traditional notions of the human body and mind, proposing that technology can fundamentally alter human existence.

2. Identity and Consciousness

Cyberpunk: Characters in cyberpunk often grapple with their sense of identity, especially when their consciousness can be uploaded, transferred, or altered by technology. These stories explore the fluidity of identity in a technologically advanced world.

Posthumanism: Posthumanist theory delves into the philosophical implications of such scenarios, questioning the nature of consciousness and identity. It posits that identity is not fixed but can be reshaped by technological and biological changes.

3. Socio-Political Implications

Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk worlds are typically characterized by vast socio-economic divides, corporate dominance, and a dystopian society where technology exacerbates inequality. This genre highlights the dark side of technological progress and its impact on society.

Posthumanism: Posthumanism engages with these socio-political issues, critiquing the power dynamics and ethical considerations that arise with advanced technology. It explores how technology can both empower and oppress, depending on its use and distribution.

4. Blurring of Boundaries

Cyberpunk: A key theme in cyberpunk is the dissolution of boundaries between human and machine, reality and virtuality. Characters often exist in hybrid states, part human and part machine, challenging the clear-cut distinction between the two.

Posthumanism: Posthumanism philosophically supports this blurring of boundaries, suggesting that the human experience is inherently intertwined with technology. It advocates for a more integrated understanding of humanity that includes our technological extensions.

5. Ethical and Existential Questions

Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk narratives frequently raise ethical and existential questions about the implications of living in a world dominated by technology. Issues such as privacy, autonomy, and the essence of humanity are central to the genre.

Posthumanism: Posthumanism provides a theoretical framework to address these questions, proposing that we rethink ethical norms and existential meanings in light of our evolving technological landscape. It emphasizes the need for ethical considerations in technological development.

The relationship between cyberpunk and posthumanism is deeply intertwined, with cyberpunk providing a narrative exploration of themes that posthumanism examines philosophically. Both explore the transformative impact of technology on humanity, identity, and society, highlighting the potential and pitfalls of a technologically enhanced future. By engaging with both cyberpunk and posthumanist thought, we can gain a deeper understanding of the ethical, existential, and socio-political implications of our technological advancements.

[ezrathescpnerd]

You guys know how some scps only have effects on children/teens (Basically anyone under 18) so the foundation has to use minors in these experiments

Yeah where the fuck are they getting all these kids from?

[what-the-actual-wizardry]

On Cowardice

Not a witchcraft post, but one that deals with a bit of ethics mentioned in my grimoire- the way people view cowardice has always bugged me. I've run away from a lot of things. That doesn't make me a coward. This is how I would describe the experience: A person who starts a fight and runs away is a coward. A person who starts a fight and finishes it is honorable. A person who didn't start a fight and runs away is a reasonable human being. A person who didn't start a fight, but finishes it, is a badass. Replace fight above with conflict/project/drama, etc. Just a musing.

[leadingincontext]

Talking About Ethics (Part 4)

By Linda Fisher Thornton Talking about ethical values engages associates, helps them find meaning and improves the organization’s metrics. This week I want to explore what the conversation should include.  You may be surprised to learn that it’s not all about what WE COMMUNICATE about values – it’s their questions that will help us bring values to life. Our carefully crafted messages about…

[trendynewsnow]

Concerns Over Research Misconduct in Columbia University's Cancer Surgery Division

Concerns Arise Over Research Misconduct in Columbia University Cancer Surgery Division This week, a significant development occurred in the realm of cancer research as Dr. Sam Yoon, the chief of the cancer surgery division at Columbia University, faced the retraction of five research articles. Additionally, a sixth article has been marked with an editor’s note, highlighting growing concerns about…

[blueskittlesart]

sharing mana

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[aflamboyanceofflamingos]

Jason, mildly concerned as he watches silent tears stream down Tim’s face: …You okay there?

Tim, who would rather die for than admit that he was crying because he was trying so hard not to laugh at memes of satosuguru breaking up outside of KFC: …Eddie…uh…died?

Jason, having no clue how to respond to this: uh…Who’s Eddie?

Tim, realizing he can’t use the uncle excuse because Dick and Bruce already know it’s bs: …My turtle

[cherrywhite]

every single time (template from @mhuyo)

[claitea]

my one question about stardew 1.6 so far is Why do you get spouse portraits from the Traveling Cart. how did she get a picture of sebastian. why is she trying to sell a picture of my own husband to me for thirty thousand gold

[readontheinternet]

[formulanni]

Sponsors as The Devil:

This card represents being seduced by the material world and physical pleasures. Also living in fear, domination and bondage, being caged by an overabundance of luxury, discretion should be used in personal and business matters.

Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil

Tag list: @st-leclerc @rubywingsracing @saviour-of-lord @three-days-time @the-wall-is-my-goal @albonoooo @ch3rubd0lls @brawngp2009

[crimeronan]

i've seen a couple people in the notes of this very good post about fictional polyamory by @thebibliosphere say things along the lines of "oh, i've been doing it wrong :(" or "how do i know if i did this right??" or "i should probably give up and start over, i wrote this badly :(" and. no!!!!

(i AM seeing far MORE people say "oh, this clarified and helped me so much, i think i know how to fix issues i've been having with my own story" which. YES!!!!)

listen. if you're a monogamous person who's writing a polyamorous relationship, and you've been focusing mainly on The Triad and All Three Together All The Time as the endgame, that's literally fine. that's a perfectly acceptable and strong starting point for your plotting, imo. you do not need to give up on a story that you've started like this.

but the things discussed in the post Can and Should improve your execution!

you can keep the same plot beats and overall relationship arc 100%. polyamorous relationships are infinite in their formations, every one is unique. "basically a monogamous romance but with three people" Does exist, as a relationship type. you're not hashtag Misrepresenting (TM) poly people with it

BUT i do think it will help to read up on some poly people talking about how their relationships Differ from monogamous ones.

so i have outlined some basic important concepts about polyamory.

MORE IMPORTANTLY though, i've broken down some questions that you can answer throughout the writing process to strengthen your individual dyad relationships, your individual characterization, & your characters' individual feelings/experiences. this is a writing resource have fun

future kitkat butting in to say i spent over two hours writing this and it definitely needs a readmore. it is also NOT comprehensive. but everything should be pretty simple to follow! feel free to reblog if you find it helpful yourself or just want to reward me for how gotdan long this took KSLDKFJKDL.

i've grabbed quick links for a couple of the important concepts, some have SEO pitches in them but the info largely seems to be good. (if i missed anything Egregiously Gross on these sites i should be able to update the links with better ones later, since they're under the readmore.)

sidenote: this is NOT meant to be overwhelming, despite the length. if you can't read all of this, that's Okay. you do not need to give up on your writing.

here we go:

compersion!

compersion is a BIG thing in a lot of polyamorous relationships. it's joy derived from seeing two (or more) of your partners happy together, or joy derived from seeing your partner happy with someone else.

compersion is really important as a concept because it highlights that every individual relationship within a polycule is different -- and that that's a GOOD thing. it's sort of the inverse of jealousy.

by the "inverse of jealousy," i mean that instead of feeling left out and upset and possessive, you feel happy/joyous/content.

i can use personal experience as an example: it's a Relief for me when my partners receive joy/support/sex/romance/etc that i can't (or prefer not to) give them. and i love seeing my partners make each other laugh and be silly together.

it's 100% okay for a poly triad not to be together 100% of the time, it doesn't mean that the third member is being left out or not treated equally when two people do things alone together.

(i have individual dates with my partners all the time! PLUS larger 3-and-4-person date nights.)

if the third member DOES feel jealous or left out, then the polycule can have a conversation to figure out what needs/wants aren't being met, and solve that. this happens semi-regularly in my polycule, as it will happen in any relationship (including monogamous ones)! it's just part of being an adult, sometimes you have to talk about feelings.

metamours!

a metamour is someone who is dating your partner, but ISN'T dating you. this may not be relevant for people writing closed three-person romantic sexual triads, but it's a super helpful term to know.

the linked article also lists different types of metamour relationships with some fun phrasing i hadn't heard before. the tl;dr is: sometimes you'll be domestic cohabitation friends, sometimes you'll be buddies with your own friendship, sometimes you might not interact much outside of parties, every relationship is different.

there's no one-size-fits-all requirement for metamour relationships. sometimes polyamorous people will end up dating their metamour after a while (has happened to me), sometimes polyamorous people will break up with one partner for normal life reasons, but remain friendly metamours.

the goal of polyamory is NOT for EVERYONE to fall in love. it is 100% okay if this happens in your story, it happens in real life too! but it is also 100% okay for characters to be metamours without ever becoming "more than friends."

(sidenote: try to kill any internalized "more than" that you have when it comes to friendship. friends are just as important and special and vital as partners.)

of course there are a million ways for messiness to occur with metamours within a complex polycule, exactly like with close-knit platonic friend groups. however this post is not about that! there's enough "here's how polyamory can go wrong" stuff out there already, so i'm focusing on the positives here :)

open versus closed polyamorous relationships!

i'm struggling to find an online article that reflects my experience without directly contradicting at least SOME stuff. so i'll give a quick rundown

google has a bunch of conflicting definitions of open relationships and whether open relationships are different from polyamory. the general consensus seems to be that an open relationship prioritizes one partnership (often a marriage), but that each partner can have extraneous flings or long-term commitments (most often sexual in nature).

this is not typically how i use the term wrt polyamory. the poly concept is pretty simple. a closed polyamorous relationship is one with boundaries like a monogamous one. there are multiple partners in the polycule, but they are not interested in having anybody new join said polycule.

an open polyamorous relationship tends to be more flexible -- it just means that IF someone in the polycule develops mutual feelings for a new person, it's fine for them to become part of said polycule if they want to! the relationship/person is open to newcomers.

some groups will need to negotiate this all together, others will just go "haha, you kids have fun." just depends on the individuals!

with open AND closed polyamorous relationships, the most important thing is making sure that there's respectful communication and that everyone is on the same page. but there's no one-size-fits-all way to do that.

i wish i could give you guys a prescriptive "You Must Do It This Way" guide, but that's.... basically the opposite of what polyamory is about, HAHA.

feelings for multiple people!

i was gonna tack this on to the previous section but decided it warranted its own lil bit.

a defining feature (....i'm told?) of monogamous relationships is that a monogamous person only has feelings for One individual at a time. they only want a relationship with one individual at a time. or, if they DO have feelings for multiple people simultaneously, they're still only comfortable dating one person at a time & being exclusive with that one person.

this is perfectly fine!

the poly experience is generally different from this. but once again..... polyamorous people all have different individual perspectives on this.

for me, i have never been able to draw hard boxes around romantic vs sexual vs platonic relationships, & i love many people at once. my personal polycule lacks many strict definitions beyond "these are my chosen people, i want to forge a life with them indefinitely, whatever shape that life takes"

some poly people feel explicit romantic or sexual attraction to multiple people at once, some poly people feel almost no romantic or sexual attraction at all. i'd say that MOST poly people feel different things for different partners, which is not a bad thing!

some poly people are even monogamous-leaning -- they have just chosen one romantic partner who is themselves part of a larger polycule. (so this monogamous-leaning person has at least one metamour!)

or alternatively, they might have one romantic partner AND a qpr, or other ways of defining relationships. (this is a factor in my own polycule!)

i made this its own point because if you're writing a straightforward triad, this is unlikely to come up in the story itself -- but it's worth thinking about how your characters develop/handle feelings outside of their partnerships.

like, is this sort of a soulmateship, 'these are the only ones for me' type deal? in which they won't fall in love with anyone else, and can be fairly certain of that?

that's pretty close to typical monogamous standards but you Can make it work. just be thoughtful with it

alternatively, can you see any of these characters falling in love Again after the happily-ever-after? and how would the triad approach it, if so? what would they all need to talk about beforehand, and what feelings would everybody have about the situation?

it's worth considering these questions even if the hypothetical will never feature in your actual canon, because knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand all of the individuals & their relationship(s) MUCH better.

i've been typing this for nearly two hours and there's a lot more i COULD say because... there's just a lot to say. i'll close out with some quick questions that you can ask yourself when developing the dyad dynamics within your triad

first, take a page and create a separate section for each individual dyad. then answer these questions for every pair:

how does each pair act when alone?

how do they act differently alone compared to when they're with their third partner?

are there any elements of this dyad (romantic, sexual, financial, domestic, etc) that these two people DON'T have with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

are there any boundaries or hard limits within this dyad that aren't shared with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

partner 3 goes out of town alone for a few weeks. what are the remaining two doing in their absence?

(doesn't have to be anything special, it's just to get a sense of how the two interact on a day-by-day basis without the third there)

what is something that each partner in the dyad admires about the other -- that they DON'T necessarily see in the third partner?

what problem do These Two Specifically need to solve in the story before their relationship will work?

how is that problem DIFFERENT from the problems being solved within the other two dyads?

doing this for ALL THREE dyads is VITAL imo. that way, you develop complex and nuanced and different relationships that all have unique dynamics.

those questions should be enough to get you started, i hope

then After you've charted the differences in relationships, you can start to jot down similarities in the overarching triad. what does one person admire in Both of their partners? what are activities that all three like to do together? what are boundaries or discussions that all three share?

but the main goal is to figure out how to Differentiate each relationship!

a polycule is only as strong as the individual relationships within it. if two people are struggling with their own relationship, adding a third person won't fix that.

(UNLESS the third person is the catalyst for those two to, like, Actually Communicate And Work Their Shit Out. i just mean that the old adage of "maybe if we just add a third-" works about as well to fix a miserable non-communicative marriage as, uh, "maybe if we have a baby-")

AND FINALLY.

if you're not sure whether your poly romance reads organically to poly people, you can hire a sensitivity reader with poly experience. if you can't afford that, you can read up on polyamorous resources like a glossary of terms & articles actually written by poly people. (and stories written by poly people!)

you can also just.... ask poly people questions, if they're open to it. i like talking about polyamory and my own relationships so you're welcome to send asks if u want, i just can't guarantee i'll answer bc my energy levels fluctuate a lot and i don't always have time.

polyamorous people are in an uphill battle for positive representation right now & so the LAST thing i want to see is authors giving up on their stories bc they're worried about getting things Wrong. well-meaning and positive stories that treat this kind of love as normal, healthy, & aspirational are So So So Needed. even if you guys end up with some funky-feeling details.

seriously, if you're monogamous then you probably don't have a full idea of Just How Nasty a lot of people can get about polyamory. i wish it DIDN'T mean so much for you guys to want to write nice stories about us, but it does mean a lot. and it means a lot that you want to do it WELL.

in conclusion. this is not a prescriptive guide, it's just a way to raise questions. and also, you all are doing FINE.

[mizaruwu]

it's complicated and ethically questionable

---

more dungeon meshi x linked universe shenanigans featuring communication fairies (and the creation of one for the image below, tw blood)

welcome to the world

[bloomshroomz]

So, we're ten days into pride month. Things are a bit confusing for me right now. I’m trying to figure out what I want, or what I need.

I know that I’m aromantic, but…

I want companionship. I want commitment.

I want to kiss someone. I want to make out with someone.

I want to cuddle and watch a movie with someone.

I want to spoil someone. I want to be spoiled.

I want to love someone. I want to be loved.

I want emotional intimacy. I want physical intimacy.

I want these things with multiple people.

I don’t see any of that as inherently romantic… Maybe it would be easier if I did? Something about that feels wrong, somehow. Why do I have to slap a romantic label on it by default, when I know that none of these things need to be confined to romance?

People aren’t usually committed to you unless you’re their partner. I’d like to have a few partners. Do I want that to be romantic, though? I mean, I know that I don’t want it to be romantic, because I don't want anything to be romantic. But, am I opposed to it?

I don’t know. I can’t tell.

Most people would call these feelings romantic. Why does it feel so much more complicated to me? Why do I have this weird disconnect?

Sometimes I feel like it would be easier if I just tossed out the aromantic part of who I am. Just being bisexual would make things so simple. But I don't think I can just flip a switch like that. Can I?

Do other people feel this way?

Is it just me?

Edit - 6/20/2024

A lot of people have been giving me the same advice over and over, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I've probably heard it before. Like, a lot of "you should look into QPRs/cupioromanticism/bellusromanticism/etc." when I've already known about those things for years.

Please read this post before giving advice or input, especially if it involves labels or attraction/relationship types. I know a lot about labels and attraction/relationship types; my struggle isn't coming from a lack of vocabulary. Thank you.

[yourhighness6]

I think this right here perfectly sums up Entrapta's character tbh