The problem to recap. Sex is great there is no doubt in this. But it doesn't cum without its drawbacks ... phnar phnar etc etc (why does oblique reference to sex bring such endless amusement?). Sex costs... a lot! Actually it costs us our lives; and reverse also, our eventual loss of life drives us to reproduction and sex. If we can measure the size of the force to reproduce we can think about it having been set to ensure, with enough certainty, that we will propagate. If we never did there would be no people here today (anthropic principal). Obviously the force is not infinite - we have to eat and attend other matters also which condition the possibility of reproduction. Reproduction being the meaning of life was the conclusion I came to at school. But I have begun to question the ultimate wisdom of reproduction in this blog ... what, for example, happens if we all reproduce too much? The right-wing answer is that the richest will survive and the poorest will die. But what if the damage to the environment is irreversable? This 'bacteria-in-a-petri dish' view of Life is clearly highly ignorant. For cellular automata and genes yes maybe this is how things are, but for dialectical beings like humans who can empathise, sacrifice and celebrate the success of the "Other" its an ill fitting jacket - albeit a jacket that we seem to be forcing ourselves to wear today.
Sex costs both socially and ecologically. Population pressures causing competition are highly destructive to wealth, standard of living and well-being. Old age, illness and death (Sakyamuni Buddha's three obersvations about Life) are all caused primarily by population pressure. Some cells, by way of example like amoeba, are immortal: death exists in others; it is not universal. This type of death I suppose must be contrasted with catastrophic death in a car accident or like. Buddha lamented the former more than the latter because it was the inevitability that shocked him - if we died only in "accidents" we have choice and freedom. While I digress there is the other type of death which all things exhibit that of ware and tear (and crying too) - the impermanence which was the main point He identified.
Individually sex costs because it binds us to childcare and capital. Few women I imagine are interested in males who lack territory enough to support children. Showing off and gesturing his abilities to accumulate and hold territories becomes the males main role in life. Nothing is fixed it seems as human females have taken to accumulating territory also - but I'm almost convinced this is a malappropriation of badly thought out democratic principles of equality which are absurd. How can a good doctor and a bad doctor be the "same"? Maybe the opportunity to be rid of dependence on males has been taken ... and the next step? rid of the dependence on other things all together... except we die without the plants making oxygen etc etc. So dialectical relationships between the male and the female seem to me to remain bar ill prepared attempts to irradicate the other half.*
My own quest has swayed far from the sexual dialectic also. The multiple loss of "my muse" - firstly in the failure of start a relationship and secondly more final in death - left me with little choice but to back off. I backed off from her, sexuality, beauty and relationships all together - the lot were intertwined. How long has it taken to marlin apart the separate threads of Life?!
I realise today as I have turning around that it was a mistake (and a long standing myth) to become hung up on a "single" individual. Marriage I believed in line with the myth was about the union of matching halves into the whole. And, while this is true - there is no essential existence to the parts! Male is made in its relationship with female and vice-versa. To be paired with someone yesterday does not entail that we will be paired today and tomorrow. To love "forever" is a well understood description of what the lover blindly and with irony only feels today. How can we know the future? That which is based upon today stays in today. I had rules with my muse to keep nothing. All poems and stories were written for the day and despatched by post never to be seen again. It is only weakness in the face of tomorrow that has seen me crawling back into the ashes of yesterday to try and resurrect what was. What I dreamed would be, I did yesterday, and what I hoped would be today, died yesterday also: why carry it with me today? Why carry this girl, these girls with me? Even were I married to any of them I wouldn't carry them so. Maybe this is the joy of being single - it affords us the possibility of carrying the memories of women. Being married we are free and carry no-one because they are walking with us.
So I argue for allez. Yet do I really stake the heart of arretez? Is sexuality something to be expressed in reproduction (of children and production) and its capital? Must yin seek the middle between these ways in the arms of my yang? OR is it still possible to rise above the limitations of mortal contact and be the embrace itself?
You and me,
When we touch:
When we touch:
Where?
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* A second genetically stable strategy existing in humans encourages EPCs (extra-pair copulations) as they are called in evolutionary biology. A female tied to a territorial male who can ensure capital for the welfare of her children loses nothing by breeding with other males. In fact bearing children by opportunistic males is a good strategy because it increases the mix of her genes in the next generation and children born to EPC are more likely to spread their genes by this strategy. The territorial male who actually loses by this strategy is therefore forced to take very strong action against males trying EPC and also the females who waste his resources through EPCs. Marriage is thus a very complex institution viewed from the standpoint of evolutionary genetics. It is essential for the female to find a territorial male for resources, but the male must have some assurance that the female will only sire his children. Feminism cuts at this establishment at its heart and questions why females can't form territories. In some animals they do, but it is determined by the availability of resources and the important factor that by definition it is the female who commits the greatest physiological resources to the off-spring leaving the male to accumulate environmental resources. It is a fact (that some would wish to ignore) that childbirth has a far greater impact on women than men and so does affect the material output of women more than men. Democratic fundamentalism blinds people to these simple facts. It is not discrimination that men are more reliable employees then women - simply logical. But it is true that with machines production is changing and this is creating the possibility of female territory.
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