But to step back a bit . . . There is a train of thought among soberer scientific circles that the true intelligent creatures on planet earth are. . . wait for it . . . genes. The theory being that genes need to survive over geological time and so create better minds and bodies to host them. Think about it. Every animal on the planet is designed, nay programmed, to reproduce as fast as it possibly can to outrun the "kill or be killed" environment. It worked for early incarnations of homo sapiens. Children barely out of the necessary physical development to mate (what we call puberty) were encouraged by nearly every society in history, regardless of the dominant religion, to "carry on the line". Breed fast or we'll die out. Our genes demand survival!
What is absolutely fascinating about modern Man is that everyone is still in thrall to the genetic programming but acts as if it is quite all reasonable! We do not have to procreate to continue our species. We do not have to procreate to continue our family: most families are so extended these days they not only become tribes but become communities, then nation-states. We do not necessarily have to procreate to ensure that our Belief System out-dominates all the others (although this paradigm still applies to the poorer, more ignorant, more religious-bound cultures of today). And we certainly do not have to procreate to ensure that homo sapiens in the dominant, top-of-the-food-chain species on the planet! We are breeding at a phenomenal rate so few other species stand a chance. So, procreation, sex, for survival's sake is mostly redundant.
And so back to back to sex. Well, one thing the genes did was to ensure that, by various biochemical markers and tried-and-tested evolutionary practices, procreation had to be extremely pleasurable. Why would any starving, desperate life form go to quite as great a length as to woo another similar life form to messily interact with and make themselves even more vulnerable? Especially at times of great stress and great personal risk? Well, for one, there is nothing in the mammalian brain that quite compares with the dopamine rush from orgasm (although some troublesome drugs tend to mimic it without having to go through courtship rituals). In fact, thanks to evolution, any species that didn't get a kick out of fucking died out and the ones that did make a major fetish out of it became a quite intensely driven species indeed.
Freed from a desperate need to reincarnate itself, human intelligence was able to get imaginatively creative about just how pleasurable sex could be. Not just the orgasm but the visual, tactile and, yes, even the olfactory stimuli that evolution originally demanded for good procreation. It is no error that prostitution and pornography have been around for as long as religions and civilisations. The internet may have been created by technicians and the military/industrial complex but it was the pornographers that drove the enabling streaming technologies. And although the pillars of civilisations (e.g. politicians on moral crusades or priests and imams controlling their flocks) have tried to suppress all these animal urges, it is obvious that the genes will have their way!
And sex will have its day! What most people choose to ignore is that the very concept of sex dominates their minds every hour of the day. Whether to want it, to give it, to deny it, to bargain with it, to buy something because of it, to negotiate for it . . . the list is endless. Sex is fundamental to modern life; to the building of homes; to mortgages and finance; to children; to futures; to old age; to loneliness; to nearly every other personal evil. What people fail to appreciate is the balance between that dopamine rush and the cost. Witness the terror of "The Affair": both genders will sacrifice all the stability they have built over twenty years for twenty minutes of dopamine rush.
Moreover: combinations of genetic disposition, hormones, fantasies, plus differences in the collection of nerve bundles around the penis, vagina, clitoris or anus between consenting humans have allowed some very imaginative deviations from the mammalian procreative norm across the centuries. The more intelligent and imaginative the species the more attractive sexual experimentation becomes. All that is needed is time and a freedom from the the distractions of reality. Need to have babies before you die? Nah! Let's focus on the fun bits first and worry about children later.
No wonder the world's Religions get all repressive and hot under the collar!
What is absolutely fascinating about modern Man is that everyone is still in thrall to the genetic programming but acts as if it is quite all reasonable! We do not have to procreate to continue our species. We do not have to procreate to continue our family: most families are so extended these days they not only become tribes but become communities, then nation-states. We do not necessarily have to procreate to ensure that our Belief System out-dominates all the others (although this paradigm still applies to the poorer, more ignorant, more religious-bound cultures of today). And we certainly do not have to procreate to ensure that homo sapiens in the dominant, top-of-the-food-chain species on the planet! We are breeding at a phenomenal rate so few other species stand a chance. So, procreation, sex, for survival's sake is mostly redundant.
And so back to back to sex. Well, one thing the genes did was to ensure that, by various biochemical markers and tried-and-tested evolutionary practices, procreation had to be extremely pleasurable. Why would any starving, desperate life form go to quite as great a length as to woo another similar life form to messily interact with and make themselves even more vulnerable? Especially at times of great stress and great personal risk? Well, for one, there is nothing in the mammalian brain that quite compares with the dopamine rush from orgasm (although some troublesome drugs tend to mimic it without having to go through courtship rituals). In fact, thanks to evolution, any species that didn't get a kick out of fucking died out and the ones that did make a major fetish out of it became a quite intensely driven species indeed.
Freed from a desperate need to reincarnate itself, human intelligence was able to get imaginatively creative about just how pleasurable sex could be. Not just the orgasm but the visual, tactile and, yes, even the olfactory stimuli that evolution originally demanded for good procreation. It is no error that prostitution and pornography have been around for as long as religions and civilisations. The internet may have been created by technicians and the military/industrial complex but it was the pornographers that drove the enabling streaming technologies. And although the pillars of civilisations (e.g. politicians on moral crusades or priests and imams controlling their flocks) have tried to suppress all these animal urges, it is obvious that the genes will have their way!
And sex will have its day! What most people choose to ignore is that the very concept of sex dominates their minds every hour of the day. Whether to want it, to give it, to deny it, to bargain with it, to buy something because of it, to negotiate for it . . . the list is endless. Sex is fundamental to modern life; to the building of homes; to mortgages and finance; to children; to futures; to old age; to loneliness; to nearly every other personal evil. What people fail to appreciate is the balance between that dopamine rush and the cost. Witness the terror of "The Affair": both genders will sacrifice all the stability they have built over twenty years for twenty minutes of dopamine rush.
Moreover: combinations of genetic disposition, hormones, fantasies, plus differences in the collection of nerve bundles around the penis, vagina, clitoris or anus between consenting humans have allowed some very imaginative deviations from the mammalian procreative norm across the centuries. The more intelligent and imaginative the species the more attractive sexual experimentation becomes. All that is needed is time and a freedom from the the distractions of reality. Need to have babies before you die? Nah! Let's focus on the fun bits first and worry about children later.
No wonder the world's Religions get all repressive and hot under the collar!
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