Experiments in Chaos—Failures from April 28, 2015

Today I'm exploring a topic I like to call Nudism: Should It Be Mandatory? Now, on the face of it, this would seem to be a silly idea, but if you look deeper, I think you'll realize it's totally ludicrous. At least I hope so, since that's sort of the point.

It's possible that if everyone had to be naked, it might encourage them to take better care of themselves; eat right, excercise, all that sort of thing. In all likelihood, however, we'd probably all just lower our standards. So there might be health benefits, but there'd probably be an aesthetic detriment instead.

Since there wouldn't be any pockets, we might all become less materialistic. Which might be good, since all those pants manufacturers would have gone out of business. Then again, we'd probably just start making larger handbags and marketing them to both sexes. Which would balance out from a business perspective. So I'm not anticipating any growth, either spiritual or economic.

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that women wouldn't have much trouble telling if a guy finds them physically attractive. "Say, you are happy to see me, aren't you?" After all, they couldn't possibly have guns in their pockets, since they wouldn't have any pants to put the pockets on.

One problem would be cold weather. We'd lose an awful lot of people in the winter. Of course, the environmentalists say there are far too many of us, and that we're trashing the planet as a result, so ecologically it might work out for the better. Then again, we'd more likely build covered and heated walkways with docking ports attached to both the walkways and the vehicles, and have our food and whatnot delivered. That's bound to use up a lot of resources, so we're still spinning our wheels so to speak.

There's that whole UV thing, as well. Skin cancer cases would rise dramatically, unless we took advantage of our covered walkways and docking ports during the summer months as well. Looks like the environment would take it on the chin year 'round.

From what I hear, the Europeans have a far more relaxed attitude about nudity. For instance, I think the German outlook on being without clothing can be summed up with the phrase "I have no idea what the German outlook on being without clothing might be, but I'm trying to pad this thing out and I'm not especially proud about how I do it."

Astronauts might face a rather unique challenge, as well. A nude spacewalk just isn't going to turn out well, is my guess. We'd probably need some sort of exemption there. Firefighters too. And those scientists who study volcanoes. And like that.

The problem is, once you start handing out exemptions, where will it all end? Another perfectly goofy attempt to make the world a sillier place has been sabotaged by government regulators, that's what. And that would just be wrong, for all I know.

After considerable study, I've concluded that this is a viable concept that will need considerable refining in the implementation stage. On the other hand, I've been conducting most of my research at the Playboy mansion. (Three more restraining orders and I'll have my bedroom completely wallpapered.) Also, as I've pointed out in the past, I did a lot of drugs in the seventies and eighties. So it's possible my findings are biased. Further study may be warranted. If I can get past the Playboy security guards. That's getting more difficult, and they're not polite at all.

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