The Problem Of Sex
17. THE PROBLEM OF SEX
INTRODUCTION
There is little doubt that, judging from media coverage as well as the subjects casually talked about in private, sex, a formerly bassfully and politely avoided subject, is not only one of the most popular interests but has steadily been gaining ground since at least after the First World War and more so since the Second. Some psychologists as well as other intellectuals of the twenties and thirties of that century, like Freud, directly or indirectly did a lot to de-privatise and desecrate sex and instead popularise and vulgarise it. Freud, clearly a profound misfit and pathologically sex-obsessed neurotic dusted off and reanimated the Gnostic mystical discourses in the language and under the guise of modern psychiatry and sent the subject of sex in the opposite direction- he reversed the taboos sanctifying sex and also the moral and social responsibilities dignifying sex which responsibilities were based on religious teachings. Let us see what all these mean.
Let us begin with what the Gnostic mystical means. Since time immemorial religion has had two levels of understanding and exposition. The first, commonplace and shallower but more useful to the unsophisticated masses is the catechistic version which instructs in plain language in God’s existence, His demands on us and what happens when we obey and disobey Him etc. Even small children can understand this. Most religious people remain at this level and they are better for it. Whether this version of a given religion is altogether good in an objective and commonsensical way is another matter. The fact I s that there is also a second and deeper level which is depth-psychological; in this the believer thinks that he is finding reasons in his deep soul to justify his faith and motivate his piety. This going deep of faith shows the claims of the literal faith (like the material or quasi-material existence of winged angels and fiery demons) to be metaphors for spiritual truths (or claims) reducible to our moral and aesthetic concerns and aspirations, like seeing justice done and sufferings assuaged.
For example, the believer seeking the depths of faith can come to the conclusion that angels represent his own nobler if potentially available nature while devils represent his lower nature so ready to sin and scandalise. He may then go on and believe the God to be his own highest level of moral and spiritual attainment. This is an intermediate point in his penetration of spiritual secrets and most, especially the philosophical minded settle with this for the rest of their lives. They secretly deny the Resurrection of their bodies, a universal Judgment and a future
We must equally note that some deep-goers are mythically and magically oriented and motivated. By mythically oriented I mean someone very willing to learn about and perhaps also ready to invent myths all of which he feels stirring some spiritual depths in him.
There can be little doubt that both the philosophically thinking and mystical and visionary-minded are deceived, at least to some extend. The spiritual realities transcend both of them and their fuller and more reliable discovery need the switching on of an obscure and evasive button in the soul which button activates much deeper or higher (both mean the same thing in spirituality) levels of mental functioning. Only the most sincere to Allah souls can locate and access this golden button. Most seekers are not or cannot maintain the required sincerity and as soon as some spiritual power seems to flow in them they switch back to the selfish gain mode and declaring their perfection go into the cashing-in mode! They found a spiritual movement and gather disciples and from then on live princely lives for its own sake, accepting worshipful homage as well as material favours and often passing on the mantle to their sons or sons-in-law for continuous benefit to them by proxy.
What the most talented and achieving spiritual seekers attain is totally untransmissible to those outside it; each person must attain it as his lone self and once attained he will realise that there is neither a possibility nor the need to impart their understanding to others. Their disciples, if they adopt any, have to achieve their own enlightenment if they have the capacity to begin with; the most the guide can do is to suggest, encourage, impose discipline and support. Still, genuine success cannot be guaranteed. What we mean by genuine success is this: The aspirant attains a level of spiritual maturity which causes him to produce impeccable behaviour which can stand any moral and objective scrutiny. I added to ‘moral’ the ‘objective’ because moral is a relative term; what is moral in one society may be immoral in another. The condition of objectivity (at a high philosophical level) discredits any moral differences between societies and seeks the justification of any act in its objective results, that is to say, it’s creating better health, fairer sharing of burdens and benefits and peace more based on love and respect than enforcement etc., for more people for a longer term, For example, let us take the attitudes of cultures towards alcoholic beverages.
Almost all religions outside Islam allow it, some albeit with a warning of caution. In many, an alcoholic drink can even be a sacramental item, it must be drunk in the course of a ceremony or devotion. Obviously Islam’s banning of it is the safest act among all; we do not need alcohol as a drink in any normal physiological sense; those who never drink are at least as happy as those who drink in moderation. The difference is in favour of the abstainer; he saves money and also avoids the often dangerous company of drinkers. There is a subtle point to consider as well: Alcohol and in fact all mind-altering substances are taken to allay psychological pain or at least give added cheer to the user. Islam implies that all pain psychological pain relief and extra cheer we need are available from the contemplation of Allah and what can be obtained from drugs can only be far inferior and also totally transient bastard effects, stolen and not deserved! That a psychological pain reliever and cheer booster is very effective as well as free from harmful results may be seen from an example like this: A man loses the love of a woman dear to him and to relieve the torment he resorts to drink. Surely he gets some relief but it is both transient and costly to his health. Now let us see what happens when a psychological alternative comes along. The beloved sends news that she also is suffering and would like a happy reunion. Even when false, this news immediately lifts the moods of the man and he soars above pinkest clouds. Total salvation, is it not?
The Revelation made to Jesus is called Evangel/Injil which means good-news- do we now see why? Allah calls His Qur’an also good-news, i.e., ‘al Bushra’ and His Messenger sws as ‘Basheer’, the bringer of good-news.
Returning to the issue of morality, I must remind my readers that in Islam sinful and immoral is the one and the same thing and this shows what a no non-sense approach Islam takes in battling evil. Islam does not distinguish between moral and legal liability and responsibility; all wrongs are both immoral and criminal. Scrutinised in whatever way and at whatever depth all the provisions of Islamic Law pass all moral tests with flying colours without exception. To take our current subject the sex, Islam’s legal/moral rules about sex cannot be faulted. It seriously limits the intermingling of the adults and adolescents of the two sexes in such intelligent and yet non-oppressive ways that the members of either sex could not be happier for the ban. Thanks to this, in sufficiently well-mentored Muslim societies all evils and crimes related to sex are far less than in other societies.
For its part, Christianity also attempted a similar segregation but spoilt everything by adding to its agenda the demonisation of the sexual instinct itself. Being so unnatural and untenable it always backfired and not only Christian environments including the Royal and most surprisingly ecclesiastical were often flooded with sexual scandal. Even some popes have been known to be gross and deliberate sexual offenders and a few openly displayed lovers and bastards to which bastards they additionally awarded clerical top ranks and the benefices going with them. There were Catholic bishops who attended public ceremonies and entertainments with their numerous concubines and even more numerous children in tow.
In other words while Christians accused and satanised Muslims for marrying, sometimes marrying polygamously and also adding concubines as their law allowed the same Christians betrayed heir own values and indulged their passions even more, and that in far less honourable and healthy ways. From civilian neighbourhoods to nunneries and monasteries clandestine sexual relations were rampant, neighbour cuckholded neighbour, monk or bishop abused nun and some nuns even encouraged it. Many bishops, being supposedly celibate, had a nun as their housemistress instead of a male housemaster and these nuns had to attend to all the needs of the holy father including bedchamber chores. It was then an open secret that what we had was an unregistered marriage to say the least minus the children which were variously avoided or aborted. The effects of this extremely and pathologically hypocritical attitude explains today’s extreme sexual license very well; The sexual excess could not more bear with its confinement into a cupboard and came out of that closet of a hushed up culture of desperate promiscuity. All Muslims who lived with Christians as neighbours always found that Christian women were of easier virtue than their Muslim sisters, despite their sexual instincts being far more strongly discouraged. It could surely be a backfiring of an unnatural pressure.
THE ROLE OF FREUD
Freud knew this Christian sexual dichotomy and neurosis only too well. As for his mystical attainment, he stopped at the philosophical level of understanding and that not in a pious sense. A decent moral philosopher attains the halfway house realisation that religious feelings are mysticalised forms and approves the religious feelings as proper and necessary and often resists the temptation to leak out this secret to the common people. Freud turned this philosophical understanding (amply exposed in the writings of some Jewish philosophers) upside down in the sense that he acknowledged the metaphorical nature of creedal items (like the existence of God and an afterlife) but did not appreciate the noble moral aims going with such beliefs. He detested them, held them responsible for obscuring moral issues and in fact inventing and imposing harmful moral rules the greatest of which was the suppression of man’s sexual instinct. He abused his halfway house discovery for explaining away not only religious faith but dismissing the taboos it imposed as outdated to say the least. In fact he positively fought against them by devices like psychological fictions of an Oedipus complex in man which was then extended to women under the name of a corresponding Electra complex.
According to this fiction, boys hated their fathers as their sexual rivals in the possession of the mother while girls did the same towards their mothers. As such, he made incestuous desire a genetic necessity which had to be unnaturally suppressed by subsequently imparted culture. Because the genetic is too strong the clash of incestuous desire with parental sanctity created a can of worms of deep psychological tensions and frustrations and led to neuroses and in general unhappiness. With such an incredible view of the human sexual instinct he then spent the rest of his life to persuade his patients as a psychiatrist to unearth and admit their inalienable lust for their parent of the opposite sex and their murderous hatred for the other parent, their sexual rival! In the course he introduced a concept of sexual frustration and said that it as the root cause of almost all mental suffering and distortion which he called a neurosis. It was than a single and natural step to say that realising this root cause of neuroses and loosening sexual taboos could resolve a lot of the psychological suffering. In actual clinical practice he stands accused of abusing his many female patients and in his private life of even worse crimes.
Since Freud and his school of ‘Psychoanalysis’ almost all taboos in the Western societies have been coming down and sexual excesses, abuses and perversions are spreading like a plague. What dirt Freud single-handedly threw on traditional sexual morality no other previous thinker ever could. In the past did also exist many sexual libertinists but none could more justify his attitude as Freud could thanks to his Satanic Gnostic mystical renderings of a Godless kind. But have the social and moral injunctions the issue of sex created among mankind been misguided and oppressive realities as Freud say? To answer this question we need take a look at historical evidence, of both natural and social history.*
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
If you have watched TV documentaries about animals you must have seen that some advanced species, like some birds and mammals do have an institution of family quite similar to the traditional human families, both monogamous and polygamous kind. Certain kinds of birds mate with a member of the opposite sex for life; the two set up a nest together, mate, hatch the fertilised eggs by taking turns to sit on them with the free spouse at any time then flying of and bringing food for the whole family both before the hatching of the chicks and after. This is family life at its best even by traditional standards. Are these birds doing it naturally and by instinct or were some deceitful bird philosophers or bird prophets from a bird god persuading them to do it? Do chicks hate their father and lust after their mother? Like birds, we also find some mammalian species living like human families. While lions are polygamous in the sense that exclusively one dominant male mate with all available fertile females some fishes are not only monogamous but like birds share in the tasks of raising a family. I had seen one documentary where a huge male fish released semen on the eggs whenever his partner ejected them into the water and when the baby fishes formed he allowed them to attach to him and suckle a milk-like substance he released from his skin. In other words the father sacrificed part of his food he converted into ‘milk’ to his babies as if he was the mother. Since many biological species jealously live and breed in faithful and loyal family structures there is nothing artificial or forced in traditional human sexual behaviour and all the philosophical criticisms to the contrary reflect only the Freudian complexes of the philosophers concerned.
In this connection it is interesting to note that early in the Bolshevik regime in Russia Lenin’s government had abolished marriage and let people to indulge in promiscuity and admit all babies so produced into state raising institution. It proved a total nightmare and the edict was reversed. Marriage entered the Soviet law and afterwards it maintained as hallowed a status under law as in any ‘capitalist’ society. Lenin’s own marriage to his wife Krupskaya was quite traditional and warm and he never regretted it. In fact history is littered with many communistic revolutions and states spread among all civilised nations from the Greeks to Persians and even some Muslim fringe sects adopted communism and were persecuted and brought down by Muslim governments in whose territory they were practicing their delusions. Why traditional family and the sexual taboos supporting it are natural and beneficial? That is the next question to answer.
THE JUSTIFCATION OF SEXUAL TABOOS
Bisexual reproduction is the norm among countless species where a cell from each partner unite to produce a baby. The production is based on an equal contribution of genes from each parent to the genetic material of the baby or babies and as such is subject to the laws of genetics. The health or otherwise of a baby is mainly detetmined by the genes it inherits from its two parents. It is known that not all genes are compatible with each other. Some genes from some parent can clash with some genes from the other. While the meeting of some genes have an enhancing effect on the quality of a baby meeting of some other genes in the same baby have harmful effects and in fact abnormal or still babies may ensue. It is well known that many genetic illnesses of varying seriousness run in families which practice too much inbreeding and that is why many societies in history put a limit on the genetic proximily allowable between prospective partners.
Almost all cultures put a strict ban on brothers and sisters marrying and a lot also banned or at least discouraged the marriage of first cousins. It is well known that isolated populations of a species, like the mammals confined to an island increasingly look too much alike and suffer from more and more genetic illnesses. Jews who traditionally married from within their race suffer from illnesses peculiar to them as well as looking too much alike. Tribal black races of
Before everything else we need and want to ensure that we produce and own up our own offspring and not have in our lap a bastard to whom we cannot warm up since self-love is the most basic of instincts because it is the most helpful of instincts in promoting our survival. Self-haters commit suicide to cite just one example and need no other enemy to punish them. Our natural and healthy self-love attaches us to our extension which our baby is and gives it its highest chance of survival and prosperity. This of course when both parties are normal and not insane.
A normal parent’s love for his or her offspring is such that even when the baby is grossly abnormal the parent still wants to keep it and dedicate his or her life to it. However beautiful, a child not his or hers cannot take the place of his or her genuine offspring in his or her heart. I had a she cat when I was a young man. This animal was an exceptionally devoted mother and looked after her each litter as carefully and jealously as a human mother. In one case one of her kitten, about two months old died in her absence and we had to bury it in the nearby fields. When she could not find her baby her distress and alarm was almost human. Crying in great anguish and restless with incontrollable agitation she looked us with eyes and mannerisms dripping with anguish and begging. Getting nowhere with us she ran off and the next morning we found her and her dead baby in our courtyard. She was licking and kicking it desperately trying to resuscitate it. She tried the feat for hours and could only give up when she was persuaded that it was over. Yet, a cat is a strong animal and a mother cat can look after its babies on her own. It is for this reason that cats and many other species do not need biparental family lives. But many other species do. We quoted some birds and fishes and both apes and men are in the same category. A woman both when heavily pregnant and after delivery and for a long time cannot cope on her own with all the chores and risks of raising a family. The species homo sapiens need biparental family structure more than all other species.
If some of modern mothers are coping with reproduction and child rearing without a male’s help it is because state organisations are stepping in. There are hospitals, nurseries and all help for hire to have. But as honest and sincere mothers always admit it is quite tough to cope with pregnancy, labour, delivery and care of a child, especially when young siblings are also around for a woman. What is more, nobody can match a good biological father’s qualities in helping both the mother and the children on a regular basis.
18. ECONOMY MUST SHRINK
INTRODUCTION
Increasingly the Western consumerist economy is taking over more and more of capable countries of the world into its fold while leaving out the less capable. It is another example of the Survival of the Fittest principle.
By capable countries I mean countries with enough law and order and accumulated traditions of governance and education.
Incapable countries are those who were very backward already when colonized by the Western imperialists, were stripped of their assets and wrongly forced into Western mold in a childishly imitative sense and without real spiritual content except in Western vices and are therefore under dictators and their elitist cronies who have replaced the departed Western exploiters in an even more cynical and bloodsucking capacity. Most aid given to these countries through threes regimes go down the drain as far as the poor majorities are concerned but end up as luxurious living and Swiss bank accounts as far as the elites. In one case one African dictator of an ex-French colony, drunk with so much arbitrary power and dreams of Napoleanic glory that he had declared himself as “l’Empereur” and his country an empire. He rebuilt and refurbished his palace like Louvre in
These and ex-giants present paupers like
Against this gloomy and at present apparently incurable block of nations we have the ever-powerful Western nations and those busy catching up with them on the outer fringes, like the recently emancipated Eastern Europeans outside Russians and the Pacific contenders like China and Malaysia. Among them
The already supers, namely the Westerners, are not as secure as they or we may think however. We suspect that they and their emulators are heading for a number of shocks in not too distant a future.
We suspect that their rate of consuming irreplaceable natural resources and rate of degrading the environment will eventually prove unsustainable. They are also are taking too many health risks by moving the frontiers of consumption and satisfaction into more and more extreme untested territories like GM food and ever-widening sexual tastes. Playing God with human genetics is another grave danger zone. And last but not least the ever-widening and deepening full-employment (economic) culture which is dehumanising their masses and converting them into free-looking slaves exploited for increasing the power of a semi-clandestine elite who are holding and pulling all the strings and are running towards a possible world domination at last.
But their success shall also be the beginning of their fall and the fall of the world community as a whole. That is because the globalization is picking so much steam that within decades it may become a fact more than it is now at the beginning of the 21st century.
In this essay we shall study these subjects and measures for correcting the path taken.
THE CONSUMERIST ETHOS
Since the geographical discoveries as from the times of great explorations like the discovery of the New World by
Both these discovered new worlds and later the already known world like Africa and
So, while in the past only royalty and top nobility could do such patronization now this enlarging class of bourgeoisie (towns people) also came in. Many new universities were founded while older ones expanded and in general education at all levels began to spread among the citizenry. With more and more educated and trained people around benefiting from this patronization scientific and technological advances and achievements proliferated. With the advent of the discovery of the steam power and the rise of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th , early 19th centuries the riches of the West increasingly became so self-supporting that any later loss of colonies could not slow down its rise. For example, synthetic rubber made natural rubber from former colonies almost irrelevant while plastics replaced most natural products from timber to metals and natural fibres thereby pushing their prices down along with the earnings of the any evacuated colonies. What also helped the West was its location in one of the best arable regions of the world, the Western European wet and temperate, if sometimes coldish.
All these favourable stars conjugated the power and potential of the Western nations became so great that the two great world wars they indulged in did only temporary harm and even the defeated and devastated Germans could make quick massive comebacks with a vengeance.
The first consumer society which served as a model for all that followed was the American. Thanks to their vast natural resources and a supply of industrious, ambitious and many-skilled immigrants
Ultimately we arrived at this age of ours in the
No doubt there has been a serious downside to all this. The same families who benefited from double incomes and many comforts they purchased are becoming more fragile in more than one sense. Although marriage is still the main form of stable sexual association among adults it is fast losing ground to unmarried and often temporary associations some of which are homosexual and therefore not reproduction-oriented.
Modern consumer economy made all caught in its wheels and cogs very mobile indeed. The traditional social norms and psychological comforts coming therefrom are almost extinct. In not too distant past people went on to live at their place of birth, working at some job there or thereabout and seeing the same neighbours and friends with whom they naturally developed deep psychological ties. Each locality had its character and culture and marriages were mostly between the members of similarly-minded families, often with parental approval if not by parental choice. By all standards these marriages were far more stable than today’s and children looked to a two-parental care until they formed their own two-parental families which remained in close contact with their predecessors. Life therefore was more social and less individual, all forms of social, psychological and to some extent economic support were available locally thanks to the stability the traditional system created. Neighbour lent to neighbour and many one-off burdens of social life like weddings were shared more or less among the whole local community. Women often did not work outside home and instead made home the best possible place for looking after and nurturing children not only as regards best diet but also psychologically and socially so that they were far better integrated with the rest of the society. That made both specific crimes and general anti-social behaviour rare in the extreme because everybody, in principle, knew and respected everybody else and therefore cared.
All of which means in principle the traditional society, when not too poor, offered a much higher quality of life, everything considered, to its members. The member could not go hungry while others had something to eat, could not be depressed too much because it would be noticed and others would enquire and offer support, could be given work if unemployed so long as some prosperous members as potential employers were around. It is wrong to regard women looking after the family as unemployed or less profitably employed than women working at outside salaried jobs. Human beings are the greatest assets we have and children are especially important. They need and deserve best care available and best care means best love, best concern, best help, best diet and best social environment possible. In principle, a mother at home provide all these- she suckles her babies, feeds them with home-made food (and not the factory-made junks which almost always contain not chemicals but inferior ingredients and dubious fillers) and most importantly provides for them a large daily dose of strongest possible love. And selfless love is the noblest and greatest sentiment necessary to civilize man in a social and spiritual sense, make crime less likely and friendships more dependable.
By all this we do not mean that the old society had not its downsides. Man has always been and will always remain less than perfect but any improvement, anywhere, anytime is to be sought. We therefore propose to show that many if not all good sides of the traditional and modern society can be harmoniously combined to create a society better than both. And we find the method in shrinking the modern economy a bit.