THIS IS A CHALLENGE

[Bare_Truth]

Nudism and naturism are what Big Brother and hoi polloi say they are, but people with a desire to be nude are just that.

You have juxtaposed two thoughts so let me pick on the first one as that is where the problem lies.

Nudism and naturism are what Big Brother and hoi polloi say they are, .......

In the sense of speaking about "truth", that statement really only applies to the "definition" in the minds of Big Brother and the hoi polloi. Then the question becomes WHY? What threat does nudism/naturism pose to big brother that Big Brother's reaction is so overblown and harsh? It is not something like some sort of public health issue! and I suppose that it has something to do with Big Brother's desire to please and hence control the hoi polloi. I suppose that if we were all Muslims, that the hoi polloi would have plenty of explicit scriptures to point at in the Koran and hadith to claim that we must be covered. However, as western society has mainly the Bible as a religious reference which starts out with God creating a garden and placing a couple of naked gardeners in it to dress and keep it and then has God declaring it all "Truely Good!", one is left wondering where western society got such phobic reaction to being without clothes.

One might attempt an answer by theorizing that the hoi polloi tend to suspect and fear anything that is out of their ordinary experience, hence peoples from harsher climates who regularly need clothing from polar influenced climates need protection from the cold, and those from dessert climates need protection from the cold of the night and heat of the day might end up wearing clothes so much of the time that they find nudity so literally "outlandish" that they distrust anyone who avoids clothing when it is unnecessary and or cumbersome.

The extra sensitivity about the excretory and reproductive regions of the body could logically be derived from the odious nature of the excreta and the very important issues associated with reproduction and stability in society if reproduction and child rearing are not managed in an orderly way. Somehow these issues get mixed together and societies then extrapolate these issues into concern about the exposure of parts of the body that are entirely benign with respect to the excretory and reproductive parts of the body.

If my foregoing analysis is reasonably logical and accurate, then the lack of rational response to nudity leaves only the irrational emotional sort of reaction that we see. Ranting, blushing, shaming, fleeing what poses no threat, needless suppression, and distress are all emotional responses. They are simply unnecessary and particularly hard to deal with because they are not rational and not particularly amenable to rational persuasion. They are phobic responses. They trigger "Fight or Flight" responses.

When emotions run rampant and uncontrolled they unnecessarily trigger the "fight or flight" urge associated with the release of adrenalin (et al?) and that is what we call "alarm or offense". "Alarm or Offense" are indeed the very words that we often find in laws regulating nudity and when properly included in law what is properly prohibited is the "Intent to cause alarm or offense" as opposed to inadvertantly or unintentionally causing alarm or offense. As long as there is no intent to cause "alarm or offense" then the only problem lies with the observer and not the naturist. It is for this very reason that warning signs are placed on nude beaches which say "you may encounter nudity beyond this point". Such signs are a warning to those who have the mental abberation that they cannot react to nudity with anything other than the "neurotic irrationality of alarm and offense".

What is unjust in western jurisprudence is any requirement for the accused to have to prove innocence by proving lack of intent (ie demanding that the accused "prove a negative"! What Big Brother's legal system does not like is having to prove intent in order to get a conviction and impose a penality because intent is difficult to prove.

At least there are victories achieved when even minor efforts are accepted as showing "LACK of INTENT". Simple signs warning of the possibility of encountering nudity have been honored by law enforcement and the courts, I suppose that posting of my property against trespass and the fact that I have planted a 10 to 25 foot tall bamboo hedge between my lawn and the road are pretty good evidence that I lack intent to cause alarm or offense to the public, The posting against trespass is done along the entire 3/4 mile perimeter of my property, but can I expect a court to dismiss any charge based on the prosecution's inability to show intent, (troublesome words in "show intent"versus "prove intent").

By the way, please regard the post by Petros and this response as only an aside. The floor is still open for more examples of a single sentence explanation of what a Cristian Naturist is.

[New_Adventurer]

Technically, 1 sentence, 2 fragments, and 1 imperative, but who's counting?

Really? Microsoft Word usually does a pretty good job at grammar checking, my first wife was a grammarian, and my father was a proofreader at a newspaper. Thought I had it right.

[jasenj1]

Nudism and naturism are what Big Brother and hoi polloi say they are, but people with a desire to be nude are just that.

You have juxtaposed two thoughts so let me pick on the first one as that is where the problem lies.

I think you over-analyzed Petros' statement. I read it and interpreted it to mean:

• A thing means what the government says it means. They have the governing power to set spaces aside, throw people in jail, give people tickets, etc. The government shapes the public's perception of a thing by how the government treats it. (An idealist would say in the USA we are governed "by the people for the people" with protections for minorities & such. A less charitable person might say the governing class caters to whatever constituency will give them $$$ to get elected and keep their image "clean".)
• A thing means what the masses think it means. The vast majority of people in the USA have very little contact with or information on "nudism" & "naturism". So if you use those words they have very little to draw on to associate those sounds/letters with meaning. They may have heard of a "nudist colony" and seen one used as a joke in a movie, or they may have seen pornography using those labels. But they really know nothing of the subject.
• "People with a desire to be nude" - that is people who actually practice "nudism"/"naturism". The label isn't overly important.

In Europe, public social nudity is fairly common and well-accepted. The government recognizes this. The people recognize this. They have widely understood terms to describe it - FKK, naturisma, nudismo, naturism, etc. (I would say Europeans are also used to being exposed to many languages, hearing words they don't understand, and working to discover the meaning vs the USA where people will just say "Wha?".) The USA has a deep cultural aversion to nudity (grown deeper in the last 50 years).

[jasenj1]

One might attempt an answer by theorizing that the hoi polloi tend to suspect and fear anything that is out of their ordinary experience, hence peoples from harsher climates who regularly need clothing from polar influenced climates need protection from the cold, and those from dessert climates need protection from the cold of the night and heat of the day might end up wearing clothes so much of the time that they find nudity so literally "outlandish" that they distrust anyone who avoids clothing when it is unnecessary and or cumbersome.

Yet Finland & Sweden have very strong sauna cultures where group nudity is common. So maybe your analysis only holds to a certain point? At some point a culture values warmth & sunshine & the few fleeting weeks when they can enjoy exposure to the elements. So they embrace nudity as a delicacy to be savored.

[Petros]

A response will be forthcoming, but will require thought.

In the meantime, consider - the mob < mobile vulgus is just that, fickle and changing with the wind. As for the Instrumentality, it operates generally speaking not by principle but by desired outcome.

[Bare_Truth]

Well, alas the topic of this strip has shifted, but this new direction is of value also. What has not been explored is what can be done about "Naturist Phobia in the General Popultion"!
People tend to at least suspect and be ill at ease with andvery frequently fear that which is unknown or at least unfamiliar to them. Naturism tends to suffer from this. And that is compounded by the facts that nudity is (1) a useful adjunct to sex, and (2) a ubiquitous component of porn and perversion. These two associations then fuel the notion that naturism is guilty by association. That in turn leads to a notion that social nudism belongs in the realm of "Adult activities to be at least restricted or outright eschewed and condemned and mentally unhealthy", if not outright perversion. In the parlance of the advertising industry, Nudism/Naturism has a "public image problem"!

So then what are the best ways to fix that image problem. In fact what even constitutes a fix of that problem. Lots of things, As long at the topic of this strip has now shifted perhaps we might address, rather than the definition of what a "CHRISTIAN NATURIST" is but what are the benefits of it to society at large. Customarily people jump to the individual health benefits, but for starters I would like to look at the societal benefits, and I think that chief of these is the social leveling effect that it has. Stripping away the artifice of appearance that clothing gives (Thinking here of the LIE that old saw, "CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN"), Nudity leaves us having to really judge the behavior and listen to the ideas of others rather than some artificial projection made by clothing.

24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

And when clothing is not needed for protection, then is it not really there for appearance?

[Maverick]

[Customarily people jump to the individual health benefits, but for starters I would like to look at the societal benefits, and I think that chief of these is the social leveling effect that it has. Stripping away the artifice of appearance that clothing gives (Thinking here of the LIE that old saw, "CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN"), Nudity leaves us having to really judge the behavior and listen to the ideas of others rather than some artificial projection made by clothing.

24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

And when clothing is not needed for protection, then is it not really there for appearance?

Absolutely it is. The wearer is trying to appear a certain way: clean, dirty, wealthy, poor, conspicuous, inconspicuous, "modest", immodest...

Clothing and accoutrements show who's in charge, whether in the palace or the boardroom. Take those away, and the social strata get somewhat narrower.

[Petros]

One of my log-standing pet peeves [LSPP] is that as a spam-lover, as one nauseated by mayonnaise, as one naturally inclined toward Baroque music, as one who prefers the flowers of legumes to composites - for these and many more I need no label; if I made myself a label I would be laughed out of the hall.

But I can't just say I believe the Nicene Creed, that I like being nude, that I dislike state micromanagement. In certain areas, we have turned it into divisive politics.

And I resent that. Likely there is a name for that.

[jochanaan]

A Christian naturist follows Jesus and has learned that the naked human body is good, natural, innocent and holy.

[c.o.]

I would just interject a caution, without in the least intending to be contrary, than which few things are further from my intent, simply as a reminder for those who do not normally interact with second-generation academics with lawyer grandparents, pointing out that the restriction to a single sentence, even with the language specified to be English, is not, quite obviously, absolutely certain to guarantee, if such things can be guaranteed or even consistently predicted, anything that the average speaker of English, or indeed any other Western European language, could reasonably count as concision, nor yet precision.

Thank you, Charles Dickens .