Welcome.  Facts4U.com is the result of a senior citizen endeavoring to pass on to the younger generation some of the lessons learned during many years of life--especially considering more than a few of the lessons were learned from the school of hard knocks. What I feel are some of the most important Facts4U I have to share are the facts you'll find listed below, not necessarily in the order of importance:

1. One of the strongest drives of the human is the drive to be accepted. When you hear of "peer pressure" causing an individual to behave in ways quite out of character, then you need to be aware that a main component of the individual's character is based on the need for group acceptance. We in a sense do have split personalities--one as an individual, the other as a social organism.

Note that this "split personality" is most obvious in adolescents. Preadolescents confront the world as individuals functioning under the watchful eye of a guardian.  Then when hormones start flooding their body (adolescence) and the required instinctive mechanisms are triggered, they move from meeting the world head on as individuals to striving to stand facing the world shoulder to shoulder with peers. Of course, peer acceptance requires group conformity. The adolescent as an individual  struggles for survival, but he (or she) had rather die than be ridiculed, scorned, or ostracized from the group. (Nature has encoded in their genes the fact that the organism's struggle for survival as an individual isn't going to be as successful as the individual's struggle for survival as a member of a pack/herd/flock/troop/group/gang.)

2. "Peer pressure" isn't a force external to the individual. Peer pressure is the result of instinctive mechanisms within the individual. The instinct is one of the factors that drive the individual to strive for group acceptance. But this doesn't mean no peer would ever twist your arm in an attempt to stimulate you into conformity. It only means such arm-twisting would likely be unnecessary considering the effectiveness of the internal stimulation being experienced.

3. Organisms are not gear driven. They instead are dynamic systems. For instance, the fruit fly isn't genetically preprogrammed to seek ripe fruit in a specific and invariable manner. Instead, the fruit fly is motivated by a particular form of internal stimulation--such as thrust or hunger, or the "attraction" of a particular scent. And the fruit fly strives to satisfy the "want" through trial and error and/or as a result of previous learning experience.

This is true for all organisms. And the only difference between the fruit fly and the whale, or the human for that matter, is the complexity of the organism. We seek ripe fruit for the same reason the fruit fly does. But our behavior is much more complex, because the memories and learned-behavior stored in our "large" brains are more complex. And the reason one person may seek particular fruit while another avoids it is determined by instinctive "wants" and previous learning experiences. (Note: Certain smells may be pleasing to one person but repugnant to another because the second person had previously been "over stimulated" or gotten sick while sensing the smell. Also note we humans have language the fruit fly doesn't have. We thus develop rhetorical (and most often illusory) excuses for feelings we experience and for our acquired predisposition.)

4. The term "free will" is equivalent to "free wind." Both terms are oxymoronic in the sense that free from cause and effect contradicts a word referring to phenomena that is the result of cause and effect. In fact, the wind is only the effect of natural forces acting on air. Wind does not exist independently as a physical thing. Wind is a descriptive term referring to moving air. Air does exist. And when it is moving we call it wind. Likewise, the brain does exist in reality. But the so called "will" does not and cannot exist independent of the brain. And to add "free" to the descriptive term (will) confounds the meaning even further.

To say the fruit fly seeks the ripe fruit because of free will is not only nonsense, it would effectively prevent the believer of such nonsense from trying to ascertain the causal factors involved in the fruit fly's behavior. To say the human who happens to be seeking ripe fruit is doing so because of free will is just as nonsensical.

5. The reason females, who become sexually active outside the restrictions of marriage, are stoned to death in the Mid-East and scornfully rejected and ostracized by certain groups in this country is because, by nature, the human is very much akin to the bonobo (the chimpanzee species, Pan paniscus). Female bonobos tend to collectively dominate males by forming alliances and using sexuality for control. This means that in order for the male of the human species to stay in control, female sexuality would need be suppressed (and repressed emotionally). Most of the emotionally-loaded rhetoric used to justify suppressing female sexuality is either illusory or delusional (based on a erroneous understanding of reality or designed to delude).

The person who is born with normal eyes would go blind if the eyes are not stimulated with light so that the necessary wiring for sight can develop. This critical stage of development is said to be completed by the time the child is five years old. I suspect sound would be necessary for hearing to develop properly. And the critical stage for language acquisition is theorized to be the first ten years of life. The person who had never been exposed to language during the critical stage would be justifiably considered "retarded." Is there a critical stage for sexual development? I suspect so. I also suspect that many people have been sexually retarded or made sexually blind. Then again, should human sexuality happen to develop without retardation, then chances are, we would all be like bonobos when it came to sexual expression and habits.

6. Of course, in a country controlled by corporations that survive by making profits off of the citizenry, sexuality may be retarded and suppressed as part of a stratagem to redirect the energies of the populace, i.e., the individual who is in a state of sexual equilibrium isn't going to experience anywhere near the amount and intensity of striving as the individual who has unfulfilled sexual needs. Sexually satisfied individuals are much less likely to jump through all the hoops offered them as being fulfilling (and thus shop till they drop) than individuals who are experiencing ongoing sexual "want," especially when the deprived individuals are ignorant (and kept that way) of the root cause of their striving  (want).

George Carlin had this to say on the subject:

I don't get it. Sex is legal. Selling is legal. Why isn't selling sex legal? Why is it illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away?

George didn't get the big picture. George was unable to grasp why sex is retarded, suppressed and repressed in this country. (Note, I use repressed to mean self-suppressed, which is usually an emotionally conditioned response.) George thought some prudes had enacted contradictory morals as laws. Whereas, the contradiction arises as a result of sex not being made illegal "for fun" but being made illegal for profit, because "boo games" (scare tactics), retardation, and repression sufficiently curb the "for fun" activity, but wouldn't be anywhere near as effective should monetary rewards be involved.

7. Virginity is glorified as another means of sexual retardation and repression...-->For a continuation of this ongoing list of Facts4U, please click HERE<--.