Archive for the ‘Distrust Of Sex — The Better Reasons’ Category
Beanz Meanz Sexz
Most modern people appear to believe that sexual shame came into the world only with Christianity, or at least with Judaism; that is, they assume it is a historically contingent development rather than something intrinsic to human life. They might therefore have difficulty explaining why the Pythagorean cult prohibited the eating of beans. According to […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
A Forgotten Malady
The translator’s introduction to the first novel I read by Émile Zola talked about his contemporary Cesare Lombroso with his – to our eyes – arrant nonsense about criminal types. I doubt I would have otherwise encountered the nineteenth-century term “spermatic intoxication”, although I was well acquainted with its opposite. That is, I was well […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
The Gnostic Challenge
Those who condemn religious people for their distrust of sexuality are making the unexamined assumption that there is nothing really to distrust. Confident that the reservations entertained by the major religions and philosophies are solely because they consider sex ‘dirty’, such critics then seek earnestly to explain that no, sex is not dirty but good […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
Sexuality Versus Dharma
Suppose we are not so radical as Borges’ heresiarch, but desire humanity to persist, and even to improve itself, what then? In that case, we might consider the effect of sex on our general behaviour: namely the promotion of ruthless competition, egotistic self-assertion, and above all, deceit and manipulation. The race is not to the […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
Miltonic Computers
The whole point of angels is that they do not replicate; in the Cathar mythology, they wept when they found themselves imprisoned by Satan in gendered carcasses, that is, when they became ourselves. Being undying, indestructible, self-sustaining and without the drive to breed, angels have no reason to strive for resources or reproductive success. In […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
The Bottom Line
Hamilton proved that the main advantage of sexual reproduction is that the genetic shuffle confuses the parasites. (From the point of view of the parasite, of course, animal biology is a police state and sex is its most powerful tool for preventing you making an honest living.) Since no one individual carries a complete set […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
“It Is Not Enough To Succeed. Others Must Fail”
It may legitimately be doubted whether there is, ever has been, or ever can be, a human society that lacks some kind of ritual or test that a man must pass through in order to obtain reproductive opportunities. As feminists have rightly pointed out, there is no absolute requirement that such a test involve fighting; […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
What About The Losers?
Distrust of sexuality is traditionally seen in terms of disgust with bodily fluids, or of fear of pleasure, without it always being explained why these should evoke disgust and fear at all, or why they should do so in some people but not others. It is true that disgust at the chthonic might be due […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
The Dualist Escape
We are forever being told how good and beautiful and wonderful human sexuality is, by writers who appear never in their lives to have been deprived of it. This may tell us something about the sex lives of journalists. The “tertiary eunuch”, however, does not like to be told about the unity of body and […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
Fooling Us Into Breeding?
One of the unusual features of the mammal Homo sapiens is that her oestrus appears to be relatively concealed, and much ink has been spilt on the question of why. One theory is that the concealment is designed to deceive men; that is, to afford women greater control of with whom they conceive. For excellent […]
In: AGAINST NATURE, Distrust Of Sex -- The Better Reasons
