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Prostitution
I'm waxing philosophical right now so bare with me. When one thinks of prostitution, one usually associates the word with sex, hookers, brothels, the red light district or what have you. Rarely, if ever, one expands this pre-conceived notion to include the underlying concept of prostitution, that of "providing a service for money". If one goes by that concept, then it is fair to say that one can prostitute one's body as well as one's mind. Yet, it is only the former that has generally garnered, regardless of era, location or culture, a negative connotation within society at large.
Prostituting one's mind, on the other hand, has been held in high esteem in many societies, despite it often being much more detrimental to society as a whole. Those poor bastards lending their minds to corporate America, for instance, are prime examples of prostitutes. They are, in every sense of the term, providing a service for a salary, that service in question being the utilization of their minds to maximize profit for a certain company or organization, usually to the detriment of others or on the backs of others. It is not far-fetched to suggest that some engineer renting his mind to further the profits of some major oil company, for instance, does much more harm to society at large by contributing to the pollution of the environment and the exploitation of workers in some third world country than some poor whore in the ghettos of brazil offering a blow job for a buck.
Why is it, then, that prostitution of the body is viewed, almost without exception, as something so much worse than that of the mind? Afterall, they are based on the same concept: the exchange of a body part for some dough. I offer my brain, she offers her vagina or he offers his dick. What's the difference?
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