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Chapter 32 Learning Objectives
Upon reading this chapter, the student should be able to:
- Recognize that sex can change a relationship for better or for worse, depending in part how the sex goes for each, but also depending on how each feels afterward about having it, which can be considerably different from how one feels before having it.
Watch this video or scan the QR code to see why do men change after sex.
It is a correct principle of ethics to take into account the particular circumstances in a situation in order to decide the right course of action. One should apply his brakes in his car if a child runs out into the street in front of him, though one should not drive about arbitrarily jamming on the brakes between intersections. Similarly, one might properly drive faster down a broad boulevard than one should drive down a narrow street with parked cars on both sides beyond which little children are playing. If one is playing poker, one would be foolish to bet the same on every hand regardless of the value of that hand. Circumstances determine what the right or prudent act is whether in ethics, business, poker, or whatever.
Further, it is fair and rational to act similarly under similar circumstances, unless there is some overriding reason not to — for example, in poker, one might sometimes want to bluff with a hand worth even less than one had folded previously, or a baseball pitcher may want to throw a different pitch from the one that had worked earlier in the “same” situation to the same batter, since the batter may now be looking for it. (Hence, it is not exactly the same psychological situation, though it may be the same playing or scoring situation.) But without some overriding reason to the contrary, circumstances in a situation determine what is right to do, and similar circumstances demand similar actions. Hence, to say that situations determine right behavior is not to say there are no standards or principles for situations nor that all situations are different in relevant ways.
Now one of the things that should go into consideration of what act is right are the desires of people who would be affected by your choice, including, of course, your own desires. For example, in deciding what present to buy a child for its birthday, one should at least consider what the child wants or might like. This does not mean, of course, that that is the only consideration — a twelve year old may want a big motorcycle that might be unsafe; or someone may want a car that the family could not prudently afford. But certainly it seems to me that if the choice is, say, between one kind of book and another, or between one kind of toy and another, of equal cost, and there is not some particular reason the child should not be given the one he wants, then the right choice is to give the child the one he actually wants or would like.
Similarly in deciding what vegetable to cook for yourself for dinner, between two equal costing ones that are equally app