Sunday, April 5, 2009

On the subject of desire, sex and self validation.


It’s a late here. I know it’s even later on the other side of the globe. I didn’t want to bother but I’ve been thinking a lot about your response, which I found very interesting. I don’t think there is anything wrong with seeking self validation. Unfortunately it’s not something that our society dishes out readily. Particularly when it comes to eros, which of course is what we are talking about. The reason I find the undying urge to needle you on the subject is because I feel that you are not being entirely honest with yourself. I don’t believe introspection should be cause for degradation. I see introspection as a vehicle for self realization, and eventually self-fulfillment, which is yet another one of those dirty, dirty desires swimming about in our heads. Desire itself is a multi-faceted emotion, which I feel the need to emancipate from it’s obscene and other wise ludicrous connotations before proceeding. Desire encompasses so much more then sexual longing. Desire is short hand for affection, attraction, intimacy, companionship, validation, conversation, and stimulation. Western culture itself treats eros/desire as an almost paranormal force, which is both depraved and unharnessed. The pursuit of pleasure, gratification, and validation -not only in a physical or sexual sense- have become almost heretical activities. It seems that with in the eyes of religious authorities and government officials sex, love -and even the desire for such- can only exist safely within the confines of prescribed social norms. I don’t find this to be a particularly pragmatic approach to the human condition. I see guilt and shame to be the byproducts of a set of archaic beliefs that refuses to expect the legitimacy or necessity of human relationships.
Americans are at once publicly oversexed and personally desperately undersexed. We are surrounded, bombard, assaulted by images of unrealistically attractive people selling anything from beer, and cars to laundry detergent and sofas. It seems that more attractive people are cleaner, drive better cars, and can drink endlessly without vomiting, and it is our secret suspicion that they have better sex or at lest have sex, because most of us aren’t having any. There is more sex on television today then most of us are likely to see in a year. “Sex” all be it striped of it’s emotional connotations, cleaned, and repackaged in neat palatable portions, entirely remove from the involvement of inevitably flawed human beings. There is no mystery, no innuendo and yet this thing alludes us. We are caught in the antagonistically stimulatory production of want, which fuels our consumer-culture. So we reach out through the isolation of cyberspace in search of some human contact, recognition, appreciation, and validation. What is so wrong in that? What is weak in that?