Love, Sex & The Death of God - An essay in quotes.

[Nile577]

Love, Sex & The Death of God - An essay in quotes.

'It makes it all alright that I can go into you!'

I visited a holiday camp last year. 18-30 year olds. We booked it cheaply. 600 people in 150 caravans. Not a wrinkle among them. One night my friends went to the on-site club. I stayed alone, in the van, with Raskolnikov for company. Outside I heard swearing - drunken people running around, howling forth their excitement. It was an epiphany. So I left (though tempted, not with a bloody sock). Walk, I did. Through the countryside. Ended up on a hillside overlooking the camp ('Ivory towered bastard'). It struck me at the time: Dancing was a cover for getting laid. The whole place existed for sex. Petrol; cars; travel to the site - all for sex. A million years of fossil energy spent transporting a white-shirt, blue-jeans wearing, hair-gelled phallus across the country. Dancing on the grave of a trillion tiny fossils.

Humans hold on to their orgasms. Ever noticed it? They wire them into the mind. They clutch them tight to fan their egos or feel them weigh, under the covers, against a lonely night. They ward off the crow’s-feet in the morning mirror. Sex is social success; a gender role through gesture. A crutch to lend a meaning. Sex is the starch on executives’ shirts and the impetus behind the Rolex watch. See it? It thrusts out from an after-shave cloud to buy drinks, confidently - always two of them.

Whole lives go to such things. Flick through the scrap book of youth from old age. Naked. Seems a waste, really.

Oh Pangloss, Pangloss, you do warm the heart! Tell me of the nailed man. Did he not love?

Christianity superseded love.

One loved God more than family; one loved Christ more than a wife. When one saw his relatives damned, he would see them in their true light – as sinners - and despise them. That they were family no longer mattered. The pain was seen in context. The afterlife anaesthetised it, holding sentiment in check (though the club-foot scattered flowers on the dust that he still loved!).

This sickness has been replaced with another:

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

God is dead. Einstein did it, in the laboratory, with the lead pipe. Oh happy gay science!

How love grows in the wake! Its sweet pants sing to heaven.

An analysis then, of carnal apotheosis:

Love.

Love is now holy. It is the barrier against the void. At a Pynch:

He will be scrupulous about never telling her. But there are times when it's agony not to go to her feet, knowing she won't leave Clive, crying 'you're my last chance . . . if it can't be you then there's no more time. . . '

Amour and 'Ahh, MORE!'

When men cry over lost love they act not from reason but from a terror of lonely death. Sentiment reinforces a control. It is spirituality for an atheistic age. Romance is a creed; a protocol of rote. A relationship is an insular flame. It warms the icy spectre of mortality. Swear yourself to another and martyr their death, bitter and inevitable, at the shrine of obsequies, chastity and ‘making the best of it:’ golf, bowling and pensioner-clubs. Respect of the loss is sounded to the young at dinner: "she's coped well with the death of her husband" - a flicker of tragedy on the horizon, gaping between two mouthfuls of carrots and steak.

Ode to a dry, dusty menopause, men of pause.

But not for thought.

Peace (A reverie): PUT IT IN A BOX:

Where love is not consumption but a scaffold. Where the gaze is outwards, not in. Where it is beautiful, not desperate; gentle, not maudlin; where it barely exists as an external thing at all. Where one does not have to make the most of a "last day together" and does not have to cry. Where it is conditional, not like ivy; clinging so it kills the tree.

Sex has become a religion. The Karma Sutra is its Bible. The churches of the world are club floors and bar stools. Pack flesh into them. The congregation stands evaluated under a thousand Darwinian gazes. People must be shaped to fit. Orgasms exist in holiday vans and tents and bedrooms and toilets and back-pocket condoms. They are portals to a fleeting nirvana; visceral and physical. Judgement day is nightly, the Messiah slim, curvaceous and holding a cocktail drink in hand. 'Hell' is to be passed over. So they say. Not invited back. Something cruel about it. Neurotic low esteem is the product? "I left him because he was weak." Make art about it.

"Here I can have everything all of the time"

"I only fuck a very high quality of guy at the moment; it takes real good looks to interest me these days." - The cat-calls of carnal flaneurs, tossed on a Baudelairian sea. Ho-hum.

*The gentleman took a bullet to the chest, he writhed on the floor and scrawled in blood*

The moments after loveless sex are the emptiest in life. Take your pleasure. Lie, gazing through someone else’s cigarette smoke at the ceiling and realise: THE DISTANCE STILL EXISTS!.

"Look at it scream and scream." I marvel at the coyness:

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This REFUSAL TO FUCK ME, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near ;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust :
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

They see life as a race; the track a tunnel. Youth is the better to ram into it. Nail it to the sticking point, right inside the womb.

THE FALL (on being rejected for an acting part because the film company was after someone younger):

'Desolately Gloria raised her glance until it fell out across the area-way. But she found she could not see the opposite wall, for her grey eyes were full of tears. She walked into the bedroom, the letter crinkled tightly in her hand, and sank down upon her knees before the long mirror on the wardrobe floor. This was her twenty-ninth birthday, and the world was melting away before her eyes. She tried to think that it had been the make-up, but her emotions were too profound, too overwhelming for any consolation that the though conveyed.

She strained to see until she could feel the flesh on her temples pull forward. Yes - the cheeks were ever so faintly thin, the corners of the eyes were lined with tiny wrinkles. The eyes were different. Why they were different!... And then suddenly she knew how tired her eyes were.

'Oh, my pretty face,' she whispered, passionately grieving. 'Oh, my pretty face! Oh, I don't want to live without my pretty face! Oh, what's HAPPENED?'

Then she slid towards the mirror and, as in the test, sprawled face downwards upon the floor - and lay there sobbing. It was the first awkward movement she had ever made' - The Beautiful & Damned

Divorced from love; no strings attached. Enough to make people want to continue living. Somewhere between the tropics (cap. or can.), to mill around. To fuck a flame into being.

 

[Nile577]

A recent book of the month here was Plato's Symposium. I like the text a great deal. I'm sure you already know Socrates' reasoning in his concluding speech. He realises that a wider, pantheistic love for the processes of life is always of a higher value than that love which is solely erotic and specific. Socrates learned to love the universe with the intensity that most pursue a love of sex. I think if more people were this way, life would be better and relationships - correctly contextualised as part of this wider love - deeper, more profound and healthier. I am not sure I could hope to change people but, whenever I am confronted by non-understanding friends, I try and gently explain myself along these lines.

(Aside from the flowery essay above) what are your thoughts on the role of sex in a relationship? How is sex seen as a wider social force in our society?

 

[Warden_D]

A recent book of the month here was Plato's Symposium. I like the text a great deal. I'm sure you already know Socrates' reasoning in his concluding speech. He realises that a wider, pantheistic love for the processes of life is always of a higher value than that love which is solely erotic and specific. Socrates learned to love the universe with the intensity that most pursue a love of sex. I think if more people were this way, life would be better and relationships - correctly contextualised as part of this wider love - deeper, more profound and healthier. I am not sure I could hope to change people but, whenever I am confronted by non-understanding friends, I try and gently explain myself along these lines.

What are your thoughts on the role of sex in a relationship? How is sex seen as a wider social force in our society?

It's funny that you're calling me tonight
And, yes, I've dreamt of you too
And does he know you're talking to me
Will it start a fight
No I don't think she has a clue

Well my girl's in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
I guess we never really moved on
It's really good to hear your voice saying my name
It sounds so sweet
Coming from the lips of an angel
Hearing those words it makes me weak

And I never wanna say goodbye
But girl you make it hard to be faithful
With the lips of an angel

-Hinder

The way she climbs up and down them poles.
Lookin' like one of them Pretty Cat Dolls.
Tryna hold my woody back through my drawers.
Steps off stage, didn't think I saw her.
Creeps up behind me and she's like, you're -
I'm like, yeah I know, let's cut to the chase.
No time to waste. Back to my place.
Plus from the club to the crib's like a mile away.
Or more like a palace, shall I say.
And plus I got a pal. Every gal is game.
In fact he's the one singing the song that's playing!

-Akon

I know you like me (I know you like me)
I know you do (I know you do)
Thats why whenever I come around
She's all over you (she's all over you)
I know you want it (I know you want it)
It's easy to see (it's easy to see)
And in the back of your mind
I know you should be fucking me (babe)

-PCD

All of these are/were enormous hits very recently. And this really only scratches the surface.

As a social force... Doesn't this change with the mainstream value set? My impression is that society is going through a very selfish/self-absorbed phase right now. Maybe it was the economic crash? Just the natural order of things? Not sure. Anyway instant gratification is king - guys looking to "get their nut off", girls looking for as many people to gratify them with attention as possible, corporate crime is out of control - seems no one has a feeling of personal responsibility about their actions just as long as they are getting something for themselves RIGHT NOW. I mean clearly big business has picked up on this and just about everything is somehow sexually charged now. It seems familiar though. The "In da club" era reeks highly of studio 54 and the late 70's...

I've lost close friends to "just needing to get a nut off" and the deception it ultimately lead to.. And what worries me is I don't see this as getting better at all, people really are willing to sacrifice more and more just to release a little bit of chemicals in the brain. Has life really gotten so dismal?

A friend of mine observed not so long ago that most young people in our country (the us) have almost no concept of what it means to be unselfish until they have a child. I would tend to agree with this from what I've seen. It becomes almost impossible to sustain the former level of self-gratification when there is a vulnerable being in your life that must always be thought of first.

Ok so I do have a point somewhere... I think sex does play a valuable role in a relationship, but only when it ceases to be completely about having a good time for yourself and becomes a vehicle for presenting a level of vulnurability and caring for another individual. In an increasingly isolated and impersonal world, it can be very valuable. Words don't always do it... There's probably so much more to it though, I mean, it could possibly be good as a way to quell reproductive urges spurred by an overzealous media? Sounds kind of superficial but damn, keeping a long term relationship going has gotten really REALLY complicated...

Sorry if I'm not nearly as eloquent as many here, I spent my college years reading more music scores than classic lit.. But damn seriously fantastic set of quotes before...

D.

 

[OldScratch]

This is a rather complex topic. Despite the tremendous advances in clinical research which tell us much about why we do what we do from a biological standpoint...I still see sex and sexual attraction(and all that entails)as something of a mystery to modern people, even as the very subject seems to dominate the culture. We seem obsessed with sex - yet we still don't really know what to make of it all.
Our entertainment drips with sexual innuendo or more commonly unambiguous carnal imagery...yet socially we maintain a fairly negative and prudish, if altogether unconvincing, attitude toward the whole business. I once heard a woman say of our modern culture's apparent schizophrenia regarding sex, "We encourage people to do whatever feels good...and sanctimoniously condemn them when they do it!"

Strangely enough, sex in modern times seems to be about everything but procreation. It is recreation, it is female-empowerment, it is casual, emotionally-detatched, and often a conquest simply for the sake of it, apparently dispensing with the biological drive toward reproduction altogether.
For young females, explicit bi-sexuality appears to be not only some sort of rite-of-passage, but an act of almost ritual exhibitionism - to the point where video of this pseudo-sapphic spectacle is a defining cultural phenomenon of the age.
Sex does seem devilishly selfish today( a clear reflection of us). The quest for a "soulmate," a partner with whom one can create the "one-flesh" of Biblical lore, is often replaced by someone with whom one can, "get their nut off" (as the Warden put it.) What once was the domain of prostitutes and desperate men is now what passes for relationships among many - only in a somewhat sanitized incarnation. Again, as Warden D noted, the quest for instant-gratification appears to be driving sexual relations and our increasingly permissive and casual attutude toward them.

The question is, what will such a departure from the traditional relationship roles mean socially? We already see drastic demographic changes stemming from the sex-as-recreation versus procreation movement. As Norsemaiden stated in another active thread, a variety of nations are facing ethnic extinction due to non-replacement level birthrates. But many(perhaps most) are unbothered by such things, so sadly, there is no way to measure this.

Sex is undoubtedly a critical component of most any adult relationship from an intimacy standpoint - but is it as important as we seem to imply on a broader social scale, considering how driven we are by sexual imagery, refernces, entertainment? I wonder if we overstate the impotance of purely sexual love, as a bit of overcompensation for our collective inability to know or duplicate a "higher" love like Socrates. We may desire more, but living in an age of some anti-intellectualism and crass, instant-gratification superficiality, we have no idea how to get there...so we react animalistically.

 

[Norsemaiden]

This is a rather complex topic. Despite the tremendous advances in clinical research which tell us much about why we do what we do from a biological standpoint...I still see sex and sexual attraction(and all that entails)as something of a mystery to modern people, even as the very subject seems to dominate the culture. We seem obsessed with sex - yet we still don't really know what to make of it all.
Our entertainment drips with sexual innuendo or more commonly unambiguous carnal imagery...yet socially we maintain a fairly negative and prudish, if altogether unconvincing, attitude toward the whole business. I once heard a woman say of our modern culture's apparent schizophrenia regarding sex, "We encourage people to do whatever feels good...and sanctimoniously condemn them when they do it!"

Strangely enough, sex in modern times seems to be about everything but procreation. It is recreation, it is female-empowerment, it is casual, emotionally-detatched, and often a conquest simply for the sake of it, apparently dispensing with the biological drive toward reproduction altogether.
For young females, explicit bi-sexuality appears to be not only some sort of rite-of-passage, but an act of almost ritual exhibitionism - to the point where video of this pseudo-sapphic spectacle is a defining cultural phenomenon of the age.
Sex does seem devilishly selfish today( a clear reflection of us). The quest for a "soulmate," a partner with whom one can create the "one-flesh" of Biblical lore, is often replaced by someone with whom one can, "get their nut off" (as the Warden put it.) What once was the domain of prostitutes and desperate men is now what passes for relationships among many - only in a somewhat sanitized incarnation. Again, as Warden D noted, the quest for instant-gratification appears to be driving sexual relations and our increasingly permissive and casual attutude toward them.

The question is, what will such a departure from the traditional relationship roles mean socially? We already see drastic demographic changes stemming from the sex-as-recreation versus procreation movement. As Norsemaiden stated in another active thread, a variety of nations are facing ethnic extinction due to non-replacement level birthrates. But many(perhaps most) are unbothered by such things, so sadly, there is no way to measure this.

Sex is undoubtedly a critical component of most any adult relationship from an intimacy standpoint - but is it as important as we seem to imply on a broader social scale, considering how driven we are by sexual imagery, refernces, entertainment? I wonder if we overstate the impotance of purely sexual love, as a bit of overcompensation for our collective inability to know or duplicate a "higher" love like Socrates. We may desire more, but living in an age of some anti-intellectualism and crass, instant-gratification superficiality, we have no idea how to get there...so we react animalistically.

I may be wrong on this but from what I have read and seen on the media, there are racial (sorry to bring race into this) differences in attitude towards sex in that while Whites are certainly not far behind Blacks in the promiscuity stakes, Blacks behave in a natural way, which is not a modern phenomenon to them. Black men are not horrified by the prospect of impregnating the woman they have sex with - and in fact are proud of having a physical manifestation of their virility. And Black women are more willing to simply become pregnant and rear these kids. This contrasts starkly with the White attitude that the man doesn't want a child to cramp his style and neither does the White woman.

Am I right?

Note: this is not intended as a criticism of Blacks but if anything a criticism of the fact that Whites behave in a totally warped and unnatural fashion.

The normal White sexual behaviour is supposed to be aiming towards finding a soul mate for life and intending to rear children in that situation. But men especially, who are terrified that their wild oats may find fertile ground and produce offspring are the most unnatural creatures on the face of earth! The only excuse for this is if they know they are genetically very substandard. (Women who don't want to get pregnant makes some sense as they have a physical investment that men can entirely avoid).

 

[OldScratch]

I may be wrong on this but from what I have read and seen on the media, there are racial (sorry to bring race into this) differences in attitude towards sex in that while Whites are certainly not far behind Blacks in the promiscuity stakes, Blacks behave in a natural way, which is not a modern phenomenon to them. Black men are not horrified by the prospect of impregnating the woman they have sex with - and in fact are proud of having a physical manifestation of their virility. And Black women are more willing to simply become pregnant and rear these kids. This contrasts starkly with the White attitude that the man doesn't want a child to cramp his style and neither does the White woman.

Am I right?

Note: this is not intended as a criticism of Blacks but if anything a criticism of the fact that Whites behave in a totally warped and unnatural fashion.

The normal White sexual behaviour is supposed to be aiming towards finding a soul mate for life and intending to rear children in that situation. But men especially, who are terrified that their wild oats may find fertile ground and produce offspring are the most unnatural creatures on the face of earth! The only excuse for this is if they know they are genetically very substandard. (Women who don't want to get pregnant makes some sense as they have a physical investment that men can entirely avoid).

It is interesting to note, at the very least, that attitudes regarding sex and relationships do (historically speaking anyway) seem to vary greatly between racial groups. I suppose much of this is viewed to be cultural as much as anything, but that is tough to say definitively, as the topic would likely be deemed too controversial to discuss objectively.

Black columnist Stanley Crouch recently wrote a piece lamenting what his own adult daughter termed the near complete lack of suitable men for a young Black woman to pursue as a husband. Crouch himself noted that in the urban Black 'community' many, if not most males are in a state of retarded adolescence - perpetual manchildren. He pointed to the Hip-hop culture, ghetto-glorification and the like as prime culprits in fueling this devolutionary process. Whatever the cause, he noted that this was something of an unspoken but widely shared frustration for Black women trying to create a family in the more traditional or dare I say, White model, as it might be called. Thus, far too many are awash in the hopeless out of wedlock birth bonanza, which some estimates place at 70% nation-wide, but perhaps as high as 85% in urban areas! This is not only disasterous for Black children, but must necessarily leave most urban Blacks completely "out of the loop" in terms of traditional, long-term relationships/marriage, etc. Whether it is entirely natural or not I'm sure is up for debate, but it certainly has become "normal" in America's urban areas.

 

[Blowtus]

I may be wrong on this but from what I have read and seen on the media, there are racial (sorry to bring race into this) differences in attitude towards sex in that while Whites are certainly not far behind Blacks in the promiscuity stakes, Blacks behave in a natural way, which is not a modern phenomenon to them. Black men are not horrified by the prospect of impregnating the woman they have sex with - and in fact are proud of having a physical manifestation of their virility. And Black women are more willing to simply become pregnant and rear these kids. This contrasts starkly with the White attitude that the man doesn't want a child to cramp his style and neither does the White woman.

Am I right?

Note: this is not intended as a criticism of Blacks but if anything a criticism of the fact that Whites behave in a totally warped and unnatural fashion.

You could percieve it as such, but I don't see that is the only option. I enjoy sex, I prefer the state of my mind when I am having it on at least a semi-regular frequency. Ie, my instinct drives me to want sex. This is no doubt because it results in procreation, but my instinct cares not for pro-creation. I am able to use my intellect and knowledge to decide both that I do not personally want a child at this point in time, and that this is also good for my fellow human beings and the planet as a whole. Likely the latter can be torn down to merely an ego boost for myself - I don't see that this makes it any less useful however.

What is there to suggest that people 'should' function in 'natural' (less sophisticated?) ways?

 

[Nile577]

Nile, your first post in this thread was wonderful. I really enjoyed it , and the excerpt from John Donne's poem brought memories of when I got top marks for an essay into his love poems while in High School. It seemed a bit inappropriate for High School imo. That was so funny because I don't think I really deserved so high a mark for it. But my English teacher said he was so impressed. Hmmm. He used to be very confident talking to the class but when I was talking to him alone he was really nervous. I wonder about that. Do people sometimes find it easier to talk to crowds than to an individual?

Heh, yes I remember studying it at high school. It was in a 'Best Words' anthology. I think it's actually an Andrew Marvell poem, but it's easy to get confused (they are both metaphysical poets). Perhaps I am a heathen but I mostly dislike Donne. I find his endless obsessing with sex and seduction rather tiresome. He had a great mind and was a great poet; I wish more often he would have posed himself different problems to overcome other than how to woo a love, prove his feelings or sweet-talk some buxom wench into bed.

I agree that it's sometimes easier to talk to large groups. Personally, when I'm in smaller conversations I find myself both inside and outside of them at the same time. That is, I both analyse and partake. This persists until I get comfortable with someone and if I never do, well, I still have fodder for writing.
It's strange to be exactly aware of how you come across and even, at times, able to plumb the depths of what the other person is thinking, but to still sometimes have an awkward conversation. I find small-talk is immesurably more awkward than serious, intense discussion.

 

[speed]

Love, Sex & The Death of God - An essay in quotes.

'It makes it all alright that I can go into you!'

I visited a holiday camp last year. 18-30 year olds. We booked it cheaply. 600 people in 150 caravans. Not a wrinkle among them. One night my friends went to the on-site club. I stayed alone, in the van, with Raskolnikov for company. Outside I heard swearing - drunken people running around, howling forth their excitement. It was an epiphany. So I left (though tempted, not with a bloody sock). Walk, I did. Through the countryside. Ended up on a hillside overlooking the camp ('Ivory towered bastard'). It struck me at the time: Dancing was a cover for getting laid. The whole place existed for sex. Petrol; cars; travel to the site - all for sex. A million years of fossil energy spent transporting a white-shirt, blue-jeans wearing, hair-gelled phallus across the country. Dancing on the grave of a trillion tiny fossils.

Humans hold on to their orgasms. Ever noticed it? They wire them into the mind. They clutch them tight to fan their egos or feel them weigh, under the covers, against a lonely night. They ward off the crow’s-feet in the morning mirror. Sex is social success; a gender role through gesture. A crutch to lend a meaning. Sex is the starch on executives’ shirts and the impetus behind the Rolex watch. See it? It thrusts out from an after-shave cloud to buy drinks, confidently - always two of them.

Whole lives go to such things. Flick through the scrap book of youth from old age. Naked. Seems a waste, really.

Oh Pangloss, Pangloss, you do warm the heart! Tell me of the nailed man. Did he not love?

Christianity superseded love.

One loved God more than family; one loved Christ more than a wife. When one saw his relatives damned, he would see them in their true light – as sinners - and despise them. That they were family no longer mattered. The pain was seen in context. The afterlife anaesthetised it, holding sentiment in check (though the club-foot scattered flowers on the dust that he still loved!).

This sickness has been replaced with another:

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

God is dead. Einstein did it, in the laboratory, with the lead pipe. Oh happy gay science!

How love grows in the wake! Its sweet pants sing to heaven.

An analysis then, of carnal apotheosis:

Love.

Love is now holy. It is the barrier against the void. At a Pynch:

He will be scrupulous about never telling her. But there are times when it's agony not to go to her feet, knowing she won't leave Clive, crying 'you're my last chance . . . if it can't be you then there's no more time. . . '

Amour and 'Ahh, MORE!'

When men cry over lost love, they act not from reason but from a terror of lonely death. Sentiment reinforces a control. It is spirituality for an atheistic age. Romance is a creed; a protocol of rote. A relationship is an insular flame. It warms the icy spectre of mortality. Swear yourself to another and martyr their death, bitter and inevitable, at the shrine of obsequies, chastity and ‘making the best of it:’ golf, bowling and pensioner-clubs. Respect of the loss is sounded to the young at dinner: "she's coped well with the death of her husband" - a flicker of tragedy on the horizon, gaping between two mouthfuls of carrots and steak.

Ode to a dry, dusty menopause, men of pause.

But not for thought.

Peace (A reverie): PUT IT IN A BOX:



Sex has become a religion. The Karma Sutra is its Bible. The churches of the world are club floors and bar stools. Pack flesh into them. The congregation stands evaluated under a thousand Darwinian gazes. People must be shaped to fit. Orgasms exist in holiday vans and tents and bedrooms and toilets and back-pocket condoms. They are portals to a fleeting nirvana; visceral and physical. Judgement day is nightly, the Messiah slim, curvaceous and holding a cocktail drink in hand. 'Hell' is to be passed over. So they say. Not invited back. Something cruel about it. Neurotic low esteem is the product? "I left him because he was weak." Make art about it.

"Here I can have everything all of the time"

"I only fuck a very high quality of guy at the moment; it takes real good looks to interest me these days." - The cat-calls of carnal flaneurs, tossed on a Baudelairian sea. Ho-hum.

*The gentleman took a bullet to the chest, he writhed on the floor and scrawled in blood*

The moments after loveless sex are the emptiest in life. Take your pleasure. Lie, gazing through someone else’s cigarette smoke at the ceiling and realise: THE DISTANCE STILL EXISTS!.

"Look at it scream and scream." I marvel at the coyness:

“Had we but world enough, and time,
This REFUSAL TO FUCK ME, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near ;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust :
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

They see life as a race; the track a tunnel. Youth is the better to ram into it. Nail it to the sticking point, right inside the womb.

THE FALL (on being rejected for an acting part because the film company was after someone younger):

'Desolately Gloria raised her glance until it fell out across the area-way. But she found she could not see the opposite wall, for her grey eyes were full of tears. She walked into the bedroom, the letter crinkled tightly in her hand, and sank down upon her knees before the long mirror on the wardrobe floor. This was her twenty-ninth birthday, and the world was melting away before her eyes. She tried to think that it had been the make-up, but her emotions were too profound, too overwhelming for any consolation that the though conveyed.

She strained to see until she could feel the flesh on her temples pull forward. Yes - the cheeks were ever so faintly thin, the corners of the eyes were lined with tiny wrinkles. The eyes were different. Why they were different!... And then suddenly she knew how tired her eyes were.

'Oh, my pretty face,' she whispered, passionately grieving. 'Oh, my pretty face! Oh, I don't want to live without my pretty face! Oh, what's HAPPENED?'

Then she slid towards the mirror and, as in the test, sprawled face downwards upon the floor - and lay there sobbing. It was the first awkward movement she had ever made' - The Beautiful & Damned

Divorced from love; no strings attached. Enough to make people want to continue living. Somewhere between the tropics (cap. or can.), to mill around. To fuck a flame into being.

Wonderful! I only hope you didnt write this excellent post just for UM! If you add a bloated bum or thin wastrel with bad teeth and ginger hair as narrator, added some scenes and characters, you'd have the beginnings of a Martin Amis novel.

A recent book of the month here was Plato's Symposium. I like the text a great deal. I'm sure you already know Socrates' reasoning in his concluding speech. He realises that a wider, pantheistic love for the processes of life is always of a higher value than that love which is solely erotic and specific. Socrates learned to love the universe with the intensity that most pursue a love of sex. I think if more people were this way, life would be better and relationships - correctly contextualised as part of this wider love - deeper, more profound and healthier. I am not sure I could hope to change people but, whenever I am confronted by non-understanding friends, I try and gently explain myself along these lines.

(Aside from the flowery essay above) what are your thoughts on the role of sex in a relationship? How is sex seen as a wider social force in our society?

I am so glad you posted this about Socrates. Due to a few weeks of lackluster discussion and threads, I grew despondent and totally indifferent to writing the long essay I planned for the conclusion of the Symposium.

There is so much to discuss with your essay here though...

 

[Norsemaiden]

What is there to suggest that people 'should' function in 'natural' (less sophisticated?) ways?

Let AIDs, and other pandamics, famine, etc sort out the world overpopulation. Europeans are making themselves extinct and bringing in lots of Muslims. I don't want my decendents to be forced to live in that society.

Black men call it "the jewel in the crown" when they get women pregnant.

Every African child that is born increases the value of the African community and we should rejoice and be thankful for the gift of another jewel in our crown. We and our pregnant women should be aware that they are carriers of our most precious treasures.

The United Nations' Population Control pundits preach that Global Africa would be better off if we had less children. But we all know that the best, cheapest, most efficient way to destroy a people is to convince them that they would be better off without children.

The Global African population has already been decimated by over five hundred years of systematic and unrelenting genocidal warfare against us. It is therefore, the duty of every African person to go forth and multiply or do whatever is possible to make it easier for those of us who can to do so. I am confident that it will happen.

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cach...crown+Black+pregnant&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=6

Btw - Nile - I deleted that post that you responded to before I knew you had replied. It's just that I just thought it might have seemed a bit too irrelevant. Doesn't matter anyway.

 

[metal_wrath]

Let AIDs, and other pandamics, famine, etc sort out the world overpopulation. Europeans are making themselves extinct and bringing in lots of Muslims. I don't want my decendents to be forced to live in that society.

Why do you think that Europeans especially are making themselves extinct, and "bringing in lots of Muslims". I am not sure what you are getting at...

Black men call it "the jewel in the crown" when they get women pregnant.

The United Nations' Population Control pundits preach that Global Africa would be better off if we had less children. But we all know that the best, cheapest, most efficient way to destroy a people is to convince them that they would be better off without children.

The Global African population has already been decimated by over five hundred years of systematic and unrelenting genocidal warfare against us. It is therefore, the duty of every African person to go forth and multiply or do whatever is possible to make it easier for those of us who can to do so. I am confident that it will happen.

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cach...crown+Black+pregnant&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=6

[/QUOTE]
I am particularly puzzled by your generalizations here, being 'African American' myself, I have never felt this way.

 

[speed]

When men cry over lost love, they act not from reason but from a terror of lonely death. Sentiment reinforces a control. It is spirituality for an atheistic age. Romance is a creed; a protocol of rote. A relationship is an insular flame. It warms the icy spectre of mortality. Swear yourself to another and martyr their death, bitter and inevitable, at the shrine of obsequies, chastity and ‘making the best of it:’ golf, bowling and pensioner-clubs. Respect of the loss is sounded to the young at dinner: "she's coped well with the death of her husband" - a flicker of tragedy on the horizon, gaping between two mouthfuls of carrots and steak.

Ode to a dry, dusty menopause, men of pause.

But not for thought.

Peace (A reverie): PUT IT IN A BOX:



Sex has become a religion. The Karma Sutra is its Bible. The churches of the world are club floors and bar stools. Pack flesh into them. The congregation stands evaluated under a thousand Darwinian gazes. People must be shaped to fit. Orgasms exist in holiday vans and tents and bedrooms and toilets and back-pocket condoms. They are portals to a fleeting nirvana; visceral and physical. Judgement day is nightly, the Messiah slim, curvaceous and holding a cocktail drink in hand. 'Hell' is to be passed over. So they say. Not invited back. Something cruel about it. Neurotic low esteem is the product? "I left him because he was weak." Make art about it.

After twice rereading--and enjoying--this essay, i come back to these two paragraphs. How wonderfully interesting they are. The pain of a lonely godless death without love, without sex--without the religion of sex. Oh how such thoughts increase with every marriage-less year! How friends find the nihilism unbearable, and sign away their lives to the will of controlling wives, or boring abusive husbands; only to see it all fail, and do it again. How the entirety of our waking lives seems based on procuring sex, not love. Oh, its terribly depressing.

And there is nothing worse--to me at least--than the feeling of worshipping at this altar of sex, without some pangs of love or at least "liking" ones partner; instead it many times happens to stave off ones loneliness or to properly fit in with the ruling religion of the land, one has sex with the total hatred or even dislike of said soubrette of the opposite sex whose flesh one is worshipping: now that is a terrible feeling. But this does not seem to be the majority opinion.

 

[Warden_D]

Sex is undoubtedly a critical component of most any adult relationship from an intimacy standpoint - but is it as important as we seem to imply on a broader social scale, considering how driven we are by sexual imagery, refernces, entertainment? I wonder if we overstate the impotance of purely sexual love, as a bit of overcompensation for our collective inability to know or duplicate a "higher" love like Socrates. We may desire more, but living in an age of some anti-intellectualism and crass, instant-gratification superficiality, we have no idea how to get there...so we react animalistically.

Absolutely. I think it's a part of a bigger cultural issue as well. In the same way we sacrifice the chance at something deeper for cheap sex now, the thrill of cooking and consuming a good meal for fast food, emotional learning for a drug-filled malaise, human interaction for online video games, exercising for diet pills, etc etc. When you look at it objectively, it's hard to know why we continue because for all our gratification, we're still a lonely, obese, depressed, emotionally retarded nation.

I'm always dismayed by how quickly a lot of these discussions turn into racial affairs, especially among a group of individuals as intelligent as the posters here. I see the the rise of whore culture as an issue of personal responsibility and by pointing fingers at other groups we just continue this lazy pattern of self-satisfaction and nothing ever changes. The finger should be pointed at all of us because I haven't met anyone who couldn't do a whole lot more. Are you buying your groceries from big supermarkets or small local (organic!) farmers? Are you getting lazy and giving your money to walmart or going the extra distance to purchase from local vendors? Are you driving a fuel efficient car? Or not at all? Are you buying beer from budweiser/coors or purchasing from microbreweries? Are you watching TV and producing ad revenue for whore-culture companies? What about magazines?

In a time when your vote means less than ever you, the individual, can influence change through our fucked up (but somewhat effective) economic system. Everyone should do a analysis of where they spend their money because I'm positive all of us invest in this awful system we complain about. Stop investing in big business, get some money into the hands of honest local small businesses, support the fine arts, and for god sakes take the extra time to cook your own meals, hang out with friends, enjoy your natural surroundings while they still exist, stop watching tv, read, play music or whatever. Challenging activities provide rewarding returns, and now we're moving more towards the higher love you talk about. If we can't learn some sacrifice then well relationships are gonna just get a whoooole lot more rocky...

D.

 

[derbeder]

Why do you think that Europeans especially are making themselves extinct, and "bringing in lots of Muslims". I am not sure what you are getting at...

+1
Some of those remarks hint at something worse than misunderstanding.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Why do you think that Europeans especially are making themselves extinct, and "bringing in lots of Muslims". I am not sure what you are getting at...

I am particularly puzzled by your generalizations here, being 'African American' myself, I have never felt this way.

[/QUOTE]


You may be unaware that the birthrate of Europeans is so low that they will phase themselves out of existence very soon if the trend continues. The same goes for those of European origin who live in non European countries. Far too many people are deciding to be childless or only have one child. This is what I term "making themselves extinct".

From the Sunday Times magazine Feb 15 2004 article "The Great Baby Shortage"

"To survive, the EU will have to suck in large numbers of predominantly Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa".

Hence "bringing in lots of Muslims".

It seems that you didn't understand the reason why I quoted that Black African man's comments. It was to demonstrate that while White people see having children as a nuissance and men don't want the women they have sex with to get pregnant - the Africans (and Blacks generally) have the view that it is wonderful to have children and that they would rather the women they have sex with do have a child : "the jewel in the crown".
That is the attitude I wish more Europeans would take.

Derbeder - your vague statement that what I wrote was "something worse than misunderstanding" seems to me to be an insinuation that I am being evil and that my view is morally abhorrent. Is that it? Typical!

 

[Norsemaiden]

And there is nothing worse--to me at least--than the feeling of worshipping at this altar of sex, without some pangs of love or at least "liking" ones partner; instead it many times happens to stave off ones loneliness or to properly fit in with the ruling religion of the land, one has sex with the total hatred or even dislike of said soubrette of the opposite sex whose flesh one is worshipping: now that is a terrible feeling. But this does not seem to be the majority opinion.

Is that really so widespread an attitude? It is terrible then. Surely one can easily find someone one really likes? Do the men dislike the woman (perhaps disrespecting her for giving herself in flesh to him instead of holding back) while the woman does like the man? Is there a double standard that while the man wants her to have sex very soon into the relationship, and she feels she must oblige or lose him, this is also the way to be hated or disliked by the man? The woman must be such a victim in this, presumably, because had she realised this perhaps she should have told him to wait - and if he was decent he would have waited willingly. Sex without getting to know and like someone first is really a bad thing. No one has to do that. It is actually socially irresponsible because no man is an island, and if one behaves that way one alters the trend in that direction also.

 

[speed]

Is that really so widespread an attitude? It is terrible then. Surely one can easily find someone one really likes? Do the men dislike the woman (perhaps disrespecting her for giving herself in flesh to him instead of holding back) while the woman does like the man? Is there a double standard that while the man wants her to have sex very soon into the relationship, and she feels she must oblige or lose him, this is also the way to be hated or disliked by the man? The woman must be such a victim in this, presumably, because had she realised this perhaps she should have told him to wait - and if he was decent he would have waited willingly. Sex without getting to know and like someone first is really a bad thing. No one has to do that. It is actually socially irresponsible because no man is an island, and if one behaves that way one alters the trend in that direction also.

Oh its just an observation-- a terribly general observation. And the observation is that sex is trumping all other feelings and desires in modern society. And i think it holds true for both men and women. I know just as many women who have sex with men just for sex; although I think women do a much better job of rationalizing this occurance then men. Really, as Nile states, go to any club, college bar, etc. and I think this observation holds up.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Oh its just an observation-- a terribly general observation. And the observation is that sex is trumping all other feelings and desires in modern society. And i think it holds true for both men and women. I know just as many women who have sex with men just for sex; although I think women do a much better job of rationalizing this occurance then men. Really, as Nile states, go to any club, college bar, etc. and I think this observation holds up.

Yes I suppose it happens quite a lot, usually when they are drunk and when they are on some sick holiday like those 18 to 30 orgies. No one can win in such a situation. Sex is rubbish if you don't know or like someone. Commitment to stay together is not the issue - because a sexual relationship may be just an extension of a friendship and there doesn't have to be any promise to bond for life if both parties are cool with that. It totally seems neurotic the way people don't want to connect minds as well before they connect physically. Perhaps they fear emotional hurt. Could that be it?

 

[OldScratch]

Oh its just an observation-- a terribly general observation. And the observation is that sex is trumping all other feelings and desires in modern society. And i think it holds true for both men and women. I know just as many women who have sex with men just for sex; although I think women do a much better job of rationalizing this occurance then men. Really, as Nile states, go to any club, college bar, etc. and I think this observation holds up.

But what IS the rationale? Pleasure - plain and simple? Are we really that sexually "enlightened" or liberal in but a generation? (or that shallow?)
This fascinates me about the younger folks today, particularly females. This was so utterly taboo when I was younger...and this was the eighties for goodness sake! Of course, there were still all manner of carnal activities being explored. And being a long-haired 'heathen' that played in bands and worked in the music industry, I saw a lot of what is common today long before it hit the mainstream. But that is what is so bizarre - to see this ultra-casual attitude as mainstream. The day( afew years ago) I heard someone refer to oral sex as the "new goodnight kiss" I was sure I had fallen into a timewarp and awakened into a different world!
Speed - I still think you are right. Sex seems to trump virtually all other emotions or motivations but perhaps for greed! I'm not sure the sentiment is new...but the near universal acceptance of it is. It is hedonism taken to the extreme. Is it a coincidence that we treat food the same way, with people becoming fatter by the hour? Glutttony! Decadence overload!
*By Lucifer's beard...I sound like someone's grandfather!

 

[speed]

But what IS the rationale? Pleasure - plain and simple? Are we really that sexually "enlightened" or liberal in but a generation? (or that shallow?)
This fascinates me about the younger folks today, particularly females. This was so utterly taboo when I was younger...and this was the eighties for goodness sake! Of course, there were still all manner of carnal activities being explored. And being a long-haired 'heathen' that played in bands and worked in the music industry, I saw a lot of what is common today long before it hit the mainstream. But that is what is so bizarre - to see this ultra-casual attitude as mainstream. The day( afew years ago) I heard someone refer to oral sex as the "new goodnight kiss" I was sure I had fallen into a timewarp and awakened into a different world!
Speed - I still think you are right. Sex seems to trump virtually all other emotions or motivations but perhaps for greed! I'm not sure the sentiment is new...but the near universal acceptance of it is. It is hedonism taken to the extreme. Is it a coincidence that we treat food the same way, with people becoming fatter by the hour? Glutttony! Decadence overload!
*By Lucifer's beard...I sound like someone's grandfather!

As I've stated in previous threads, hedonism--in either individualistic or group forms (depending on whether one is liberal or conservative)--is the basis for modern economics; which in turn probably has more direct and indierct influence on society than anything else. And sex is our most primal desire; thus are we to be surprised at the great level of sexual hedonism today?