“We have a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over 30”

So you see, it was sexually non-discriminatory?

I hope you, and your wife and family, have a blessed Christmas and the most splendid New Year. You have been one of the many voices of sanity and reason here, but one of a few with genuine empathy. I’ll be away for a while. The world won’t stop, but maybe be a little less confrontational.

Neo:

Thanks for great articles. Enjoy the holidays and watch out for icy roads.

The term ‘consent’ suffers from problems that all high-level abstractions do in semantics and semiotics. Ogden and Richards were early students of these problems. ‘Informed Consent’ probably entered the lexicon of legal terms in medicine. A physician has to disclose all significant risks associated with a procedure before recommending it. In contact law, this evolved to full disclosure of risk in a contract. Since the abstraction was there, our legislative brain trust wrote it into the child safety laws. What it means would be up to a jury, but it is a very high level abstraction. Is it unconstitutionally vague…beyond my pay grade?

To a prostitute, this risk is disclosed by her (or his) pimp. “You will do this or I will maim or kill you.” Now this risk is well defined, so although there is full disclosure, it isn’t very nice. So to play a prostitute in a movie, was this concept in the disclosure package? If it was, would it mean anything to a 12 year old? It would to an actual 12 year old prostitute, because she would probably be whipped with a coat hanger if she refused. But would it mean anything to a 12 year old actress (term used advisedly)?

So we get back to the crux of the matter, if your parents cannot or choose not to protect you, despite your assurance that you don’t need them, is there really any effective secondary line of defense? I would suggest not.

How is portrayal related to actual? Subject of another discussion.

Thanks Ymar,

Your recollection of Socrates is better than my own. But my favorite Plato is the Allegory of the Cave. As a physicist, this applies admirably.

Greeks formulated the fundamental problem: What happens if you divide matter into two pieces repeatedly without limit. Leucippus and Democritus developed the concept of atomos, but Aristotle opposed it. Since Greek Science was largely non-experimental, the two views persisted into the early renaissance.

An early indication that the atomic model was correct was Mendelev’s periodic table. Applying occam’s razor, scientists of the time admitted that an atomic model was useful for explaining phenomonelogical results, but as unproven. Later, when experimental results kept piling up, Ludwig von Boltzmann had the temerity to suggest that atoms were real, only to be rediculed by his contemporaries, including Ernst Mach. Boltzmann became so despondent that he committed suicide over the issue. This occurred about six months before Brownian Motion, the first experimental evidence of the existence of atoms was discovered.

In my own lifetime, we were taught in grade school that although atoms existed, you couldn’t see them. Now, in my wife’s lab, they see them every day.

The cave allegory is useful philosophically and scientifically. But so far, every time we build a marvelous instrument, and look beyond the shadows, we find ourselves in a new cave. Whether that will continue is part of the adventure.

Foster was a child actress and model from about the age of 3. She was an “old” pro by the time she made “Taxi Driver,” but I don’t think she’d ever had a role with as much sexual innuendo in it. She was, I would imagine, acquiescent (agreeing), for the most part with the decisions her parents (I think it was actually her mother) made about her professional trajectory, but that is nothing like informed consent because of her age.

And “consent” is not just legalistic (although it is a legal term, of course, and in that sense it is legalistic), it is also philosophical, moral, and psychological. The legal and the psychological and the moral all blend in this particular instance into a seamless whole. Children are not able to have informed consent in any of those senses; it is one of the realities of childhood.

Now, it’s also the case that sometimes a 12-your-old child has better sense than his or her parents. But that doesn’t do away with the principle that the adults are in charge and that by their maturity and the child’s immaturity the adults are assumed to be able to do what’s in the child’s best interests. The child may be bright and have good intentions but just doesn’t have the knowledge and depth and life experience to make decisions of that magnitude for him/herself, and can be exploited unless the parents protect that child.

Thanks Neo,

I read your piece on consent, and find your argument compelling, if a bit on the legalistic side. But every author has to adopt a POV.

The problem as I analyze it isn’t consent per se, although that’s very important, as breaching it removes a major piece of protection. Every thinking entity with free will, including probably AIs, holds the perception that in fact they retain the freedom of consent. It’s inherent in Cogito Ergo Sum. It’s also why children desperately need parents. Probably, mom or dad asked for her consent (mistake) thereby empowering her to give ‘consent.’

Then she internalizes approval, takes personal responsibility for the results, and assumes that she’s just special because the parents are treating her like an adult. In fact, she’s being manipulated into a position where she will become conflicted, be unable to cope, and blame herself. Not a very nice situation, and in my opinion significant child abuse.

The second associated problem is that they now immerse the kid in a world of commerce, normally not accessible to her, and of adult goals and methods. With no background to interpret this world, the kid is easily deceived by those with goals other than her best interest.

So it’s a witch’s brew, what the French call a remugle!

As for Socrates, while there were kings during his lifetime, Socrates usually told people to question authority and to question the wise to see if they truly are wise: which included himself as well. The Athenian assembly saw this as a kind of treason against the teachings of the State, so voted by majority decree to sentence him to death, because. The State is always Right, and you an individual is always wrong.

Plato, as a reaction to this and to his inability to save Socrates, determined that democracy sucked and wisdom could only be produced by the State if an oligarchy of philosopher kings like his mentor/father Socrates, was put in charge.

Thus Plato is known for his Republic and laws, which some of the Founding Fathers imitated via the creation of the Senate.

Right. But hey, Last Jedi came out and a bunch of Disney movies, let’s all pay them money to “entertain” us, humans say right afterwards.

I don’t see Foster as the least bit psychotic.

However, I do think (as I wrote in the piece) that she’s had a number of major traumas in her life.

I do want to point out, though, that her consent to making the movie is not really possible. She was 12, below the age of informed consent. She could not have consented in the way an adult could consent. It is her parents and the director who are responsible, not Foster.

I wrote a piece on that very topic—not as it relates to Foster, but on the issue of childhood consent—here. Please read it, if you haven’t already.