"The idea underlying such endless discussion and dreaming about the physical act is that sexual expertise confers worldliness and is therefore part of becoming an affirmed individual. This is a curious suggestion... Sex is many things - a need, a desire, an emotion, a release - but it has nothing to do with worldly sophistication, character building or even existential action. Sex, in general, is more of an obstacle than anything else for those who wish to free themselves and act as individuals... [W]e aren't dealing with a successful affirmation of responsible individualism in the real world. We are creating private dreams which compensate for the fracturing of the individual and the castration of his or her power in public life."
The idea that the act of sex (or arguably the imagining of and build up for sex) has replaced religion in the West as the thing the common man numbs himself with so he can make it throughout his otherwise mundane and worthless day is an interesting and debatable one indeed.
Do you agree with this at all?
― Cunga (Cunga), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:24 (twenty years ago)
― i fully expect an insightgul well thought-out discussion to arise from this, Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:28 (twenty years ago)
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:29 (twenty years ago)
― rogermexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:30 (twenty years ago)
― kingfish (Kingfish), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:30 (twenty years ago)
― person who made the initial snarky response, Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:31 (twenty years ago)
But I do think that there's something odd and historically new about the way our society and culture actually seem to demand constant thought about sex, rather than repress it.
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:37 (twenty years ago)
― Wiggy (Wiggy), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:45 (twenty years ago)
Wasn't one of Marx's first books about a religious leader manipulating a woman with religion to the point where she was disconnected to herself?
The context of that quote isn't 100% tied to Marx anyway as he stole it from another German thinker.
― Cunga (Cunga), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 03:54 (twenty years ago)
― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)
― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)
― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:23 (twenty years ago)
― Dan I. (Dan I.), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:29 (twenty years ago)
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:31 (twenty years ago)
seem to demand constant thought about sex
http://www.gtascraper.com/content/sanan/maccer.jpg
"Oof! thatcher! Thatcher! THATCHER! OOOOHHHH MAGGGIEEEEE!"
― kingfish (Kingfish), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 04:44 (twenty years ago)
On this count, tho, I kind of think what's going on with sex in the West is more complicated than "opiate of the masses," because there's been real liberation wrapped up in it. So the Sexual Revolution gives you both women's rights and Googlable double penetrations -- and also women's right to double penetrations, I guess. So I think Saul's oversimplifying, at least in that graf.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 05:50 (twenty years ago)
I don't think that sex is or has been used as an "opiate" at all (or for that matter ever will). There's still too much stigma attached to it to allow that to happen on any kind of massive scale, and certainly not on the scale of what religion has accomplished. Even on an imaginary plane, people still have issues overcoming all of that.
― alma, Thursday, 29 December 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)
― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 29 December 2005 21:16 (twenty years ago)
― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 29 December 2005 21:39 (twenty years ago)
But opiates have a big stigma attached to them. That doesn't stop the masses from from pursuing them.
― nickn (nickn), Friday, 30 December 2005 06:55 (twenty years ago)
― an honest person, Friday, 30 December 2005 07:37 (twenty years ago)
― an honest person, Friday, 30 December 2005 07:58 (twenty years ago)
― Mitya (mitya), Friday, 30 December 2005 08:10 (twenty years ago)
I think we're more sort of going on the 4th or 10th millennium of that war, aren't we? Some kind of control of sexuality is one of the foundational requirements of human civilization. The direction the West has moved, post-Enlightenment, is toward decentralized individual control, which is in line with our general power distribution trends. The Catholic Church of course stands in opposition, and even though Protestant evangelicals are OK with contraception they are otherwise in line with the Vatican. But it's a losing battle. Every once in a while some National Review sadsack will try to make the intellectual case for social (if not legal) prohibitions on sexual freedom, but it makes them seem particularly fuddy-duddy and I can't imagine that the Ponnuru/Goldberg generation there is really that hung up on that shit. And that's the thing, if you look at this as a very long evolution rather than as something being fought over the last few decades, the trend lines are very clear and are not going to be easily reversed. Which isn't to say that they can't be turned in one direction or another going forward, but reactionary roll-back-the-clock efforts are just not going to play.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 30 December 2005 08:14 (twenty years ago)
so do you practice it in group or on your own?
― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Friday, 30 December 2005 10:16 (twenty years ago)
― Stone Monkey (Stone Monkey), Friday, 30 December 2005 13:47 (twenty years ago)