"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." C. S. Lewis
"I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips." Amos Oz
"When I see a slippery slope, my instinct is to build a terrace." John McCarthy
Our romantic life is made more complex by the many alternatives available to us]. Some of these alternatives are clearly good for us while others can prove] harmful. One of the easiest ways to avoid the bad alternatives is to steer clear of those situations in which the bad alternatives are more prone to tempt us. In other words, we can protect ourselves by refusing to get anywhere near the brink of the slippery slope. Below, I will point out some difficulties of such an attitude.
The desire to avoid choosing a bad alternative is expressed in the argument that says that once you take the first step on a slippery slope, you are bound to slide all the way down the hill. This argument maintains that once one is in such a situation, taking any course of action is liable to lead to unhappy results. In this view, a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events, culminating in a significant disastrous event. However, I would argue that this slippery slope argument can be fallacious when there are intermediate events that can prevent the agent slipping further or when the agent can avoid such a negative outcome by the strength of her own will.
The dynamic character of cyberspace abolishes many traditional borderlines and presents many situations in which these "slippery slope circumstances" can arise. Hence, an innocent conversation can easily turn into hot sexual affair. There are much fewer red flags in cyberspace and normative boundaries are often blurred, making them much easier to cross. Cyberspace has managed to blur the borderlines of reality in many powerful ways. Fantasies, and in particular romantic fantasies, are much more accessible, cheaper, and real in cyberspace. The lure of such fantasies is greater and their consequences are more uncertain and dangerous. At the point on the morality scale where cyberadultery is located, the slope is very slippery; at this point, people can easily slide downhill, to where actual adultery is located.
In light of the risks involved in going down the slippery slope, we often build fences around our boundaries in order to prevent ourselves from being merely one step away from crossing the boundaries. Thus, various religions demand that women adopt a modest appearance, in order to prevent temptation. Such fences, while intended to avert people from taking the last step before behaving in a forbidden manner, do more than just protect people from overstepping boundaries, they also prevent them from engaging in pleasant activities, which cross no normative lines.
Extreme religious and conservative societies prohibit the use of lustful emotional imagination since they assume that such imagination has great probability of leading to immoral behavior. Avoiding lustful fantasies is realistically impossible. Even Jimmy Carter admitted that, although he was very religious, he had lusted after a woman in his heart. Sometimes, trying to repress a certain image-for example, imagining that a pink elephant is standing in the corner-simply makes that image even more irrepressible. It is also doubtful whether prohibiting lustful imagination is morally just. The above extreme approach assumes the validity of the slippery slope argument:
The slippery slope argument is flawed since our lives are full of slopes and hills and avoiding all of them is tantamount to ceasing to live. We must make compromises without conceding the extreme pole. We can make a few steps on the slope without necessarily falling all the way down. Living involves taking risks, but these can be calculated risks with certain safety valves. Drawing lines is an inevitable everyday activity, which should take into account the given context. Indeed, the more prevailing moral approaches draw flexible lines concerning the use of imagination. These approaches do not prohibit-at least not completely-lustful fantasizing; it is the enactment of such fantasies that may be morally wrong.
Moreover, we should guard against building such high fences and walls since they prevent the healthy beams of the sun from entering the tight space in which we have enclosed ourselves. In certain other cases, fences can have the opposite effect by increasing desire. This accords with the saying that "Stolen waters are sweet," as well as with the successful tactic of "Playing hard to get" (see here).
Morality is much more complex and sensitive to contextual and personal subtleties. The very fact that morality recognizes the presence of priority order among our values indicates that morality accepts violation of values of less importance when needed. Considering minor breaches as morally acceptable recognizes the value of compromises. Contrary to the popular saying, "once a cheater, always a cheater," human beings are able to moderate their activities while not necessarily slipping down the slippery slope. In contrast to the zero-tolerance approach, a Scottish proverb says: "better bend than break." Bending, which is a kind of compromise, is the flexibility needed to keep the ideal for a long time. People who refuse to compromise their ideals often abandon them.
The above considerations can be encapsulated in the following perspective that a married person might express: "Darling, there are so many temptations all around us and I cannot and do not want you to close your eyes and put a veil over your beautiful face. But please be aware of possible slippery slopes and try to approach them carefully. It is true that we live only once, so we should take care not to ruin our only time here."
Adapted from In the Name of Love
