sex
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:11 am
Inspired by YahooBot's complaint that porn subverts the reproductive act (or somethig like that), let me tentatively try this notion out for size:
Sex is not for procreation.
Boom!
Oh sure, sex might be "for" reproduction as far as nature is concerned (in some free floating sense of "for"). Nature is "red in tooth and claw".
However, I have put off the natural man.
(See what I just did there?)
Sex for me is an end, not a means. I won't be having any more children but there will be plenty more erotic activity for me.
I don't look to nature or to my genes to find my purposes. Sometimes, I have my own purposes. I often outsmart my genes (apparently my genes want me to eat a lot of sugar).
As far as sex is concerned, I am taking the pleasure (thank you genes) but subverting the reproduction (since I'm done with that).
I have a friend who has no children and probably never will. He still has purposes and those include sex. Good for him.
Nature, or rather my genes, may "want" me to impregnate as many females as possible but I am not cooperating.
The point here is that evolution has produced many things but being blind could not foresee that many of these things (intelligence for example) would take on a life of their own. Oh sure, humans cannot be uniformly at complete cross purposes with the selfish gene project of propogation or we will die out- but so what? That does not completely constrain us or define our purposes and meanings. Humans seem to act against nature as much as with it and we act orthogonally to nature as well.
Nature did not invent hands for guitar playing either but that is another story--another one of my purposes.
Sex is not for procreation.
Boom!
Oh sure, sex might be "for" reproduction as far as nature is concerned (in some free floating sense of "for"). Nature is "red in tooth and claw".
However, I have put off the natural man.
(See what I just did there?)
Sex for me is an end, not a means. I won't be having any more children but there will be plenty more erotic activity for me.
I don't look to nature or to my genes to find my purposes. Sometimes, I have my own purposes. I often outsmart my genes (apparently my genes want me to eat a lot of sugar).
As far as sex is concerned, I am taking the pleasure (thank you genes) but subverting the reproduction (since I'm done with that).
I have a friend who has no children and probably never will. He still has purposes and those include sex. Good for him.
Nature, or rather my genes, may "want" me to impregnate as many females as possible but I am not cooperating.
The point here is that evolution has produced many things but being blind could not foresee that many of these things (intelligence for example) would take on a life of their own. Oh sure, humans cannot be uniformly at complete cross purposes with the selfish gene project of propogation or we will die out- but so what? That does not completely constrain us or define our purposes and meanings. Humans seem to act against nature as much as with it and we act orthogonally to nature as well.
Nature did not invent hands for guitar playing either but that is another story--another one of my purposes.