http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/08/ ... index.html

See, the guy was a Senator, family man, wife has cancer, vice-presidential nominee, wanted to be president, went to church, lost a child I think.

And then he goes and cheats. Oh excuse me, he had an "extramarital affair".

The moral of this story is that no matter what anyone's BULLSPIT faith, morals, goals, and commitments are,

WE ARE ALL ANIMALS.

And your parents will never tell you that so I will.

What makes you think someday you won't cheat or be cheated on?

I know, probably unjustified expectations given to you by societal traditions that it is good and right (and somehow possible) that society can transcend it's foul and decrepit (albeit actual) animal nature and live loftily as gods in the domain of the holiest of holy state...humanity!

End communication.

they had textual sms

.... I won't. On both counts.





@Sumisem -> Hah hah. You're funny, Miss Sumi, .... even when I have no idea what you are saying.

I'm not an animal. I'm a cartoon.

Others have also said they won't and they have. On both counts.

I'll cheat on anyone, everything, all the time. I'll cheat on the people I'm cheating with.

I'll even cheat on my right hand.

Hurray for extremism. Uh oh, someone shot somebody today, obviously everyone else is going to go out and shoot someone in their lifetime, I mean everyone is doing it, and the rule of the jungle is kill or be killed, right.

Sure people break promises, we are human after all, but some people don't break their promises (shocking I know, some people are men [or women] of their word). This is not to say that someone has never broken a promise, but some are more important to people not to break, cheating being one of the easiest to not break, given people have the ability of self control, or can just break up with someone if they aren't being satisfied (avoiding the cheating). Cheating isn't something that accidentally happens, or can't be prevented without excessive effort.

I believe I've already weighed in on cheating so not going to repeat it. As to the headline, meh, don't care.

My point is not that everyone MUST cheat. My point is that no one knows they will never cheat and that no one knows they will never be cheated on even though there is a significant if not even a higher probability that one of these will happen as evidenced by the high rate of individuals that actually admit to cheating let alone those who do not admit it but are caught, including the ones you would least expect based on how much they have to lose, how much it is contrary to how their character appears to others, etc.

John Edwards is a man who most would say (based on his circumstances and the type of person you think he is because my point is that no one really knows who anyone is) is not the type of person that would cheat.

In other words, many people don't know themselves, let alone others because they deny what they truly want as animals (it isn't just sex, but it often deals with non-exclusivity in relating to other individuals), for what society reinforces we 'should' want as humans (permanent exclusivity in many forms of relating).

Cheating does not exist until someone decides to create a violation against exclusivity. In other words it is natural to relate to others in the way that the individual decides. There is nothing inherently right or wrong about relating to multiple individuals. We do that all the time in many facits of our lives and it goes unquestioned, even celebrated. It only becomes ‘cheating’ when humans (for some reason) decide to try to unnecessarily reinforce an ideal of exclusivity (and in matrimony, permanent exclusivity) on very significant manners of relating to others, which is unrealistic for a great many members of the society it is part of.

So my point is if we recognize that some people would claim to never cheat and then actually end up cheating, it is reasonable to assume that we might also think we will never cheat, but recognize that we may end up cheating (why are we any different from these others who 'knew' they would never cheat?) and therefore it is unreasonable to vow to never do it, i.e. to pledge faithfulness in monogamy, let alone matrimony, but rather it is more EXTREMELY ideological to do so.

Do you realize how completely pointless defending a view based solely on possibility is?

Talking about something where no matter what anyone says, you can rebuttle with "Oh, but you don't know!" is something that really doesn't need to be talked about. It's a waste of everybody's time.

Where I disagree is when the view is with respect to knowledge in the first place.

I can and will assert that some people don't know something in particular. You might agree but still maintain that it is irrelevant because in the long run nobody 'knows' anything, they just believe it, so useful arguments are better spent on other things.

But I am appealing to those who disagree with us and still actually assert that they do 'know' it. My relying on John Edwards case is an example to support a notion to appeal to different system than their system of faith or' knowlege', i.e a rational argument, in an attempt to make the rational argument based on the actual evidence undeniable enough to one part of the self that it begins to not rely on the faith or knowledge based part of the self.

Therefore I neither agree that it is pointless nor a waste of time.

So, you're citing an example of some other guy to get people to take a look at themselves.

Right.

That'll work.

It's pointless.

Really, we can't learn something from ourselves by looking at others. OK. But I disagree.

No matter how you try to present it, people are generally only swayed by things happening directly to them. The exceptions being, of course, exceedingly empathetic individuals.

Therefor, a persons view on "cheating", whether they will or will not and why, is not going to be swayed by an example set by some guy with a lot to lose, and all you're left with is trying to convince people of possibility brought on by circumstance.

And, yes, in cases like this, viewing other people's actions won't change how one personally feels they would act. From the looks of it, your argument is exactly as I said - you're trying to convince people that they don't actually know, and that ruins any chance of a logical argument this could have had.

Well when Elliot Spitzer was found to be cheating, a lot of magazine articles and talk shows started to ask moreso, "why do men cheat?". There were even greater moments of disclosure where men were 'able' to admit things that they felt about women, which otherwise women would not want to hear (i.e. the men would be in trouble if they admitted to their women).

It is still a far cry from FULL disclosure to one's self let alone to others as to what one really wants from or thinks about their partner and non-partners.

The Edwards case adds fuel to the fire in at least that women found Jonn Edwards to be attractive both physically and emotionally (including for the way he stood by his wife as well as overcoming the tragic loss of his son). Yes it is true that women can go back into denial about who men actually are and what it REALLY means to be human (i.e. it is not just what people want idealistically but what we are motivated to be animalistically). But at least now, we men can say to the women, "What did you expect?" and also, maybe men, can learn from this situation that goals, accomplishments, and success are not all its cracked up to be unless you are honest with yourself and don't put yourself into a situation from the start where you are destined for eventual failure. This is just another example of writing on the wall, for men to learn about themselves and what they can commit before actually commiting.

If anything, John Edwards and his family are for some like having something bad happen to a family member that you actually did care about so that even if it didn't happen to you directly, you might be impressed enough to learn by it.

Admitting to having done or not done somethign is completely different from simply stating whether you think you will or will not.

Either way about it, this is not something like a disaster response - it's not unpredictable. There are only two possibilities - yes or no.

It's a choice that will be based entirely on one's own morals, and not on what other people do or say.

This guy isn't going to change what someone thinks of their own actions, period.

This kind of situation is more likely to actually reinforce to women that they can't trust men, then to men that they can't trust themselves, but what something like this does is make it harder to women to simply ignore the creeps because eventually, they may begin to realize that we all are creeps, even the good-looking successful sympathetic family men (according to their female perspective of normal expectations).

You might argue that women have already seen enough examples to know this, but I would argue that they still are more in denial but the more examples we see, the less likely women are to try to put all their investment in one man. Marriage as institution is becoming less favorable to both men AND women, and much of that is because people are being more and more honest with themselves.

These examples make the acts seem less taboo, which is a GOOD thing (to a certain extent) because it allows us to understand what would motivate someone to act that way.

As long as we are thinking about the subject, and as long as we are learning about what is realistic, SOME people will begin to change their mindset and this will eventually have an effect on some peoples actions.

LESS taboo?

Are you f*cking stupid?

All these things do is show how some great dude fell to the wrong situations, and then monogamy nuts come out and gripe about how there's too many people doing stuff like this.

Everyone else just laughs at him for being an idiot.

Well maybe now to add to the conversation there will be more who vocally speak in defense of being who you actually naturally are instead of who you try to force yourself to be or who others expect you to be. As I said before, I think the commentary that followed the Elliot Spitzer case had more commentary that actually (albeit crudely or naively) tried to more objectively learn about what really motivates men to cheat rather than assert what people want to believe motivates men to cheat.

Even if no one is quite celebrating John Edwards for the positive virtue of going for what would make him happy and only argue against how he hurt others, the fact that it stands there as an actual occurrence at least subconciously impresses the mind that life goes on even after something taboo has occured.

... Oh, forgive me. I suppose it took your saying this in particular for me to finally realize that you must simply have all the morals of an alley cat.