Anti Sexuality, Culture and religion

Anti-sexuality. Culture & Religion:

Today we are bombarded with many anti-sexuality issues. Be it the debates about same sex marriage, child molestation, nudism and more. Each time a controversial topic is started, researched or a question thrown out into the masses, the reactions from the RRR are almost an instant one.
Each time the RRR counters, they counter with “Cultural, Civilization and religious values”. They often do go back into history “just a bit” to argue that “all cultures and civilizations” prohibit for example same sex marriage or homosexuality. However, do they go back into history far enough?
In my blog on nudism I have scraped on the surface of this history. Now I shall explain it a bit deeper.
When we talk about “Culture & Civilization” we simply scrape the surface by associating it with specific dynasties, architecture & styles, specific foods, clothing and rites. What we forget to look at is what civilization actually is.
Culture defines itself as an adoption and use of local materials. The culinary culture of a country is for example pretty much defined by the agricultural and natural food resources available. Although Europe is today a region in which almost all countries use potatoes as their staple, one has to understand that potatoes are only known since the discovery of the Americas after Columbus. Therefore the “potatoes in every dish” culinary culture for most of Europe is a recent adoption.
Going into a furniture shop and seeing furniture made from bamboo does not take a rocket scientist to label it as “Asian”. A more refined person will identify the said furniture as Chinese, Thai or something else. When we call it “Asian” we mean the regions in which bamboo is the most common and easiest to work with wood. Therefore the Asians have adopted these vast resources to be part of their architectural use and common use all around. They use bamboo for their houses, furniture, various implements and even grander structures as bridges in the past. In the same token other regions in which bamboo is not part of the vegetation have adopted the use of pine, oak and other woods for their architecture and furniture. The same goes for the Inuit in the American Arctic in the adoption of seal pelts for their clothing. While other regions use cotton and hemp fibers for their clothing. Additionally the temperature of the region defines the type of clothing. Furthermore the regional main activity prior to modern times defines the style of the clothing. For instance the “cowboy-style” is a direct result of the needs of a cowboy for specific protective clothing that is unique to his activity and conditions of the region he works in. All these tools, implements and designs originated in the past. At times some of such still today used implements date back 1,000’s of years in their origins.
However when we consider “Culture” to be synonym to Art, then we touch a different subject already. Islam for example prohibits the painting of images. Islamic art is beautiful in symbolism, but unlike a Christian church with its frescos and life-size paintings of biblical images, the same is absent in Muslim Mosques. To now claim that Muslims cannot paint or draw pictures of human faces is totally untrue. It is not that Muslims lack the skills to paint this way, it is that they are not used to doing it due to their religious directives imposed on them. Therefore the now so distinct Muslim art is not so much a culture due to resources as the bamboo example, but a culture based on religious and social values.
Whenever we assess culture we have to look at one factor. The Human being is a “Naked Ape”. With this we have to understand that man was not meant to live in regions other than what were temperature and season wise suitable for a nude lifestyle. So in order to inhabit the regions outside the 24/7 nude temperature range, mankind adopted to clothing and building of dwellings that enabled them to sustain such a life outside the their natural habitat. And it is this where culture begins in the sense of the unique use of their local resources to their needs. If oak does not exist in ones region, then the skills to work an oak tree into furniture or more would and could not be developed.
However when we talk culture in the sense of civilization, then the entire picture begins to change.
Foremost, civilization in the sense that we understand it today began with the invention/adoption of agriculture. When the European explorers came to North America, they were a bit surprised to see 1st nation tribes being pretty much independent and living off the land quite well. I discussed the difference between agriculture and garden culture combined with hunting and gathering. Many accounts of 1st arrivals of European settlers dealt with the 1st nation Americans helping them out through the winters. However with all the security on sustainability that the 1st nations enjoyed, hardly anyone called them a “Civilization” while on the other hand the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas were called “Civilizations”. However the 1st nation people in general were quite peaceful people. The few disputes between neighboring tribes were minor compared to the grand scale “War-Civilization” and human sacrifice “Culture” of the Aztecs and Incas.
As more of a “joke” I once defined the term “civilization” as a “useless building upwards versus a productive building lengthwise…” – I still stick to this definition.
We marvel at the incredible monuments such ancient civilizations as the Egyptians, Romans, Incas and Aztecs left us. They truly are engineering marvels and yet their marvel has very little to do with a daily life use. These architectural marvels are of little use for the sustainability of a people. Therefore the term “Empire” is much more fitting than the term “Civilization”.
Animals in general spend their day with such activities as eating, grooming, procreation and sleeping. Animals sleep a lot! The minute their sustainability needs – (Food) – has been met, they sleep! They dig borrows and build nests to rear their young, but beyond that, they do pretty much “nothing”. Tribal communities still stick pretty much to the same rules, even if they are agricultural communities. Their buildings and infrastructure are purpose built. The art is pretty much basic to please the artist and owners, and this is about it. The rest of their life is spent in communal activity of enjoying themselves.
During the Vietnam War peace movement a common slogan was seen: “Fuck for Peace”. As cute or funny this slogan may sound the truth behind it is strikingly true. If one lives a life of sustainability and makes the best tools and equipment to enhance that life, but then after all work is done is “Interacting” with his fellow tribes people, then this man is enjoying himself. Tribal communities use much of their time in interaction with each other and in plain simply having “fun”. A tribe for sure will work communally on the improvement of their village. They will pitch in to rebuild a house that had been gutted by fire or leveled by a flood. Yet past this activity to have a good life, these people see no reason to use more of their time energy and resources to build something that is of absolute no use, - like a pyramid. The few remaining tribal cultures are renown for their much more open sex-life, for what we westerners would call “excessive promiscuity” and more. These cultures enjoy life. They bundle their efforts and energies together when it is in the communal interest, but beyond that they won’t move a finger. Why go and build a pyramid if one can spend the same time much better with some happy drinking, sex or dancing. This “hedonistic lifestyle” is naturally not ideal to build an “Empire”!
From an engineering point of view, the tones of rocks used to build a pyramid some 100 meters “Tall” or so could have been much better used to build highways or canals for shipping and irrigation some 10 Kilometers “Long”. If a tribe would have seen need to expand the local infrastructure then they would have build just that in the common interest for all. The reason why tribes in the Amazon region spend extra time and efforts to build their houses on stilts is due to the seasonal flooding. If they did not maximize their total efforts and just build on the ground, then run and hide on higher ground till the flood is over and then rebuild, then their efforts are a waste of time that is repeated each year. For this reason they build their houses on stilts. Also the time and effort it takes is quite substantial in comparison to a straw hut on the flat ground, the same effort is rewarded and “paid for” within a few years for not having to rebuild from scratch after each seasonal flood. So the term “laziness” does not apply to these people. They are not lazy! They are “Efficient”! They operate on a principle of: “Do it once! Do it right and enjoy the rest of life.” Therefore a tribe will have no problem to mobilize its members to any project that affects the common good of all, even if it is a 10 year project to link a lake with a river via a canal, “IF” such project makes sense to them from their economical points of needs and sustainability.
An empire however has needs far beyond one’s sustainability! Tribal cultures also post their guards around their herds and villages. However these guards and volunteer armies are a far cry from the professional armies that empires entertain.
An Empire is in essence a tribe on steroids. Tribes define themselves as clans of families that remain within an acceptable population limit. In essence a tribe is much more a collective of families that hardly exceed in numbers the mental ability to remember every persons name. An empire, in its earliest stage, is a unity of many tribes. The moment this happens, the workload increases for each member of the tribe. Suddenly, besides to meet ones own sustainability requirements, the sustainability of the entire empire is to be considered. This means the tribal economy has to produce more than what it would need for the tribe alone.
For example let us take a situation in which one region of a new empire is wealthy in agricultural land but lacks the access to salt. Salt is one of our foremost commodities that were used in early trade and it is vital for food preservation. Natural and on the ground salt deposits are all over the world and were used from very early on by mankind. However if a tribe was near such a deposit of salt, then the amount of salt that they mined was just for their own use. Now let us see this “Salt-tribe” being integrated into a larger region and empire. The benefit of this integration is a wider variety of goods available to them. The down side of this integration is the need to produce and trade now salt for the entire empire. Soon with the demand of salt being so high, the tribe that was at 1st totally self-sufficient is beginning to rely on trade only. All its efforts go into salt mining. Their entire culture now becomes a full time workforce of salt miners and traders. As the empire expands, the demand for their salt increases. Finally the workload is beyond the workforce that that tribe counts in men, women and children. On top of this, mining salt is not an easy job. Remember that for a common good people easily accept a short time hardship, but not a long time hardship. Most likely to meet the demand, the use of slave labor will be introduced. Centuries later, suddenly the salt trade shifts and the community that had entirely depended on its salt mines are stuck in poverty. The best example is the rise and fall of the Sahara region of Timbuktu in today’s Niger region. 100’s if not 1,000’s of years of salt mining and trading have eroded all other skills as agricultural ones, how to irrigate fields and more. Suddenly from an empire plastered with gold a nation of abysmal poverty is born.
As I said before, people will always work hard on something, IF it benefits them in the form of a better life. How does one however then turn this personal “greed” or desire for a better life into a common culture? What logic is behind the reasoning to waste tones of materials, years of back braking labor and 1,000’s of lives of workers to build a pyramid that in the case of Egypt housed the corpse of a Pharaoh and God, or in the case of the Aztecs was used to slaughter and sacrifice people to some “Sun-God”.
Simple tribes have all sorts of “coming of age” initiation rituals, but hardly do they have the wholesale slaughter of people to satisfy a “god”. Hardly do they ever waste their time, resources and energy to totally mindless and useless tasks as to build a temple or a pyramid. The reason for this is the “Higher Cause”.
Every human wants to live forever. Many humans are very afraid of death. So what a better “Joke” to motivate as to promise ever lasting life or a better world in the afterlife! And strangely enough, from the 1st recorded empires we have evidence that they had laws that governed sexual conduct.
Why Sex? – Simply because – “If you fuck for peace, you have no time to waste on building pyramids.”
We all know about the nerdy professor that forgets to go to his own wedding because he got sidetracked by some exciting research. Many people do have strong interests in other things as just sex. If this would be not the case, then artists would not exist.
Let us make that clear: Sex is not just a procreation instinct. The more advanced a living organism, (animal) is the more the same engages in “recreational sex”. They do it, just because it “feels good”. So the people that wanted pyramids built got pretty much sick and tired asking “recreationally sexercising people” if they are “done yet” so they could go back to work. So they invented “Morality”.
Morality is based on the demonizing of the sexual acts. The female was quickly turned from an egalitarian partner of man into a 2-legged “breeding cow” for the empire so the same had more boys for the army and more laborers for the quarries. It is not surprising that female genital mutilation, - FGM, is believed to have started in Egypt under the times of the pharaohs. The reason for FGM is to reduce the sexual pleasures and naturally to ensure domination. In the case of male circumcision the arguments that it prevents masturbation are not just recent “Medical claims” but are even documented in ancient Jewish texts. So in both cases of genital mutilation the intent is to lower the sex-drive.
As we progressed from natural and common sense living and governing ourselves to more and more rule of law governments, we invented the “Criminal”. This was a very good invention for empire builders. With more and more laws more and more people committed crimes. Thus the solution was to either execute them by brutal means to the entertainment of the masses, - but also to drive home the message that this could be “YOU” who is next in line if you don’t obey the law. Or even more economic, to use them for slave labor! The draft was not just used to raise armies, but also used for huge projects as in Egypt for the pyramids and in China for similar projects.
The difference between “common sense” and “law” are quite large. In the case of murder for example: It is unnatural for most species to deliberately kill its own. There is a difference between self-defense, a small territorial squabble that might get a few killed and the whole sale organized slaughter in war.
To force ones will onto another person is rare if one lives according to natural instincts. Even unwanted touch is quickly repelled at any age. In a tight knit community, any transgression to this common sense behavior is immediately corrected. So the rare “criminally insane psychopath” is also disposed of quite rapidly.
In a civilization of empire mentality, the behavior is “uniform”. And in this uniformity we are taught restraint. We are behaving like actors on a stage playing the role of someone who we are not in person. We are “pressure cooked” and as everyone knows, eventually this pressure cooker will blow steam. Of course nothing unites us to a common cause as much as a common shared disaster or hardship. The more complex a society becomes the more compartmentalized each persons responsibilities become. Naturally we also increase our communal knowledge. Specialization results in better research and refinements of techniques. However it also removes from us the total oversight and transparency of the situation. How for example can a people vote for or against a war with some country if it does not even know what true evidence are in the files of its respective national secret service agency? How do we really know what is behind a financial crisis if we have not seen the minutes of the world bankers of their latest meetings?
With certainty however we can state that the more advanced and complex a society becomes, the more addicted to consumer goods this society becomes, the more the anti sexual agendas become relevant. And the more we get caught in this artificial “World economy” the more the powers that be desire to look at our sexual behavior and the more they will try to tell us what is “normal”, what we can watch, read, think and discuss. Instead of being tied to the needs for true sustainability we are now tied to an absolute abstract duty and dependence to the artificial world of Money and Morality.
Maybe the slogan should be changed to “Fuck for peace, the environment, humanity and natural life …”
“No boss! I’ll be at work next week maybe. I am not done YET … “