The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables

Hello everyone.

Just to clarify – this post is not a continuation of any of the previous arcs. Not that I’m aware of, at least… It’s just a collection of thoughts that crystalized recently, out of my ongoing brain chatter. Actually, maybe that’s not accurate. It might be related to this (the end bit, where I mention Hollywood-type “love”).

It may come as a shock to you, but I am a sexual being. On average, you are too. How do I know? Simple: On average, it has to be in your DNA – in some form, at least. If the genetic lineage that produced you didn’t code for such a trait, that lineage would have dwindled and disappeared, and you wouldn’t be here. But it didn’t, and you are reading this, so: that lineage DID have that trait, and therefore you do as well. I’m not denying that there are a-sexual people (by that I relate not to people who are not sexually active / are suppressing their sexuality, for whatever reason; but to people who intrinsically don’t feel any sexual drive). But the same logic leads me to think that they are not common. Full disclosure: I don’t personally know anyone a-sexual, and regardless, it’s possible that my entire (mis?)understanding of it is wrong. Never mind, that’s beside today’s post’s point. All I was trying to say is that, one way or another, most of us are sexual beings.

What do I mean by The Post-Sexual Era (please forgive me if that term already “officially” exists and has a different conventional meaning)? I mean that apparently there was a trend, and it culminated, and now we’re on the other side of the hill. I was born at the very end of the 1960s, so I didn’t really get to experience them. Not even most of the 1970s (in the sexual context), because I was still a child, though I can attest to some vague “vibe” recollections from the later 1970s, and maybe I can relate a little to “how things were” back then. Then, I was a teenager in the 1980s and a young adult in the 1990s, and I became a family man in the early 2000s. That’s my personal context, but it’s also not too important here. We all know about the “Free Love” revolution that the 60s are famous for, brought on in part by the pill. Of course, that’s a simplistic view. There was a combination of social trends which unfolded between the 1950s and say, 2010, that led to a “There and Back” (to borrow a Tolkien phrase) kind of journey, in how sexuality was viewed in the Western world. Surely not fully “back”, but I claim that some reversal did occur.

I dare say that initially it was a clear trend of “opening up”, “coming out”, loosening, relaxing, legitimizing, “mainstreaming” of what used to be in the margins. Please try to read all those descriptors as neutrally as you can, because there is no judgement here on my part, no hidden message. It’s simply something I both know about from popular culture (you know, movies I’ve watched, including documentaries, books I read, etc.), and have some lived experience of. However, I feel that at some point something flipped. It was very subtle, and even now (maybe 20-30 years later) it’s still not obvious what exactly happened and when; but I am strongly convinced that the general trend has changed at some point, and apparently I’m not completely alone in that thinking. I actually think it’s not surprising. Every action has a reaction, and typically every revolution or reform is followed by some sort of recoil. The flip I’m talking about might be related to a much broader reaction that started perhaps in the 1980s (or maybe earlier, and it just got visible then?). Very generally speaking, I refer to a shift towards the political Right, a return to religion / more conservative values, and so on. It started becoming prominent on a global level in the 1980s, continued through the 1990s, and at least in the sexual context I believe it was done somewhere between 2010 and 2020 (for convenience, think “before COVID”). I know it might sound weird (crazy?), because on the surface it seems like no such flip occurred in the sexual context, and if anything, the rise of the Internet (and everything it brought), which loosely matches the timeline 90s-to-2020, had put sexuality “out there” much more than ever before. Yes. I told you it’s subtle. The reason it seems that way is directly related to the point I’d like to make here.

Either way, for clarity(?), consistency, and argument-flow sake, I’ll state my presumed context a bit bluntly: The Sexual Era, which began in the jolly 60s, ended somewhere around 2010 (don’t quote me on a number please), and since then we’re in the Post-Sexual Era.

So, do people don’t act sexually anymore? Do they not express their sexuality? Is it all hidden again? Are we back to 1940s-1950s norms and worldviews? Absolutely not. Nothing like that.

HOWEVER…

I dare say that there is a lot of suppression and double-standard around. I dare say that our current culture does not really endorse genuine, unencumbered sexual expression. True, it’s not that people in general can’t, or don’t, express their sexuality, or act on it. No doubt they can, and do. But the mainstream certainly does not welcome it, and no amount of politically-correct lip-service can convince me otherwise. The (not very many) individuals who wholeheartedly and openly own their sexuality in the public space are frowned upon at best, ridiculed and marginalized at worst; and the general mainstream sentiment (and I can’t believe I’m saying it) is now back to almost 1950s standards – sexuality should only be expressed in the private space; it’s something lowly (not to say “dirty” or shameful); “keep it to yourself”, “TMI”,  “We are better than animals” etc.

Well, my friends, we ARE animals. No amount of culture or science can change that. We are biological creatures, driven – at base – by a hard code (DNA) that we, as individuals, have no control over, and don’t even fully understand the workings of. And that code includes a very strong sexual component, for the simple reason – which I’ve stated many times earlier – that our particular versions wouldn’t have been around if they didn’t.

Why is that a tragedy? Or maybe, what exactly is the tragedy here?

The tragedy is in not acknowledging that our sexuality is, plain and simple, an integral part of our makeup as biological creatures – no more and no less. I know, I know, there are also epigenetics and layers upon layers of cultural conditioning. I know all that. Obviously our individual sexualities are each more than DNA-driven, biological urges and behaviours. I’m simplifying the view to make a point here, and the point I’m trying to make is that our sexuality is a core, integral, undeniable part of ourselves (again, I’m talking on-average here; a-sexual individuals are outside the scope of this post). In previous posts I talked a little about endorsing all of ourselves, “good” and “bad” (which are just relative value judgements anyway). Well, I want to state very clearly that in my opinion our own individual sexuality is part of the whole (duh), and that not fully and naturally owning it, whilst still very much living it – in whatever suppressed way – is a tragedy.

Suppose that in current-day Western society everyone felt welcome to fully own (and express, as much as they felt like it) their sexuality – whatever it is, in each individual instance. Anything related to that would be totally unremarkable, like eating, or driving a car, or sitting in front of a computer in an office. We’d just do whatever, and move on to the next unrelated thing, completely free to focus, free from unnecessary confusion. By saying “do whatever” I mean anything that is a free expression of our sexuality (more generally – of our Self); not necessarily anything grand or flamboyant; we don’t have to jump right to extremes, like having (consensual) sex with your co-worker in the lunch room, haha. Awareness to differences, sensitivity and courtesy would still apply, just like for anything else we do in life. If we had that sort of acceptance, sexual expression would have been just that, and it wouldn’t have to carry so much hidden extra. And the best: Relationships (of any relevant kind) would have been just themselves too. We could finally, well and truly find what real connections with other people mean, much less burdened by hidden agendas.

There’s the famous saying “Money makes the world go round”, which can easily be tweaked by adding “and sex” after “money”, and some extremists say that it’s actually superfluous because money is just a segway to sex (in many roundabout, sometimes intricate or subtle, ways)… Imagine that out of the way… Sexuality would be just sexuality and relationships would be free to be relationships. Relationships could still have a sexual component but there would be so much more clarity about it.

[I just re-read what I’ve written so far and I’d like to fix a wrong impression that might have come out of it: I am not talking about “open relationships” or any sort of “technical” separation between sexuality and relationships. I’m not advocating either for or against that here. I do have my opinion on the subject, but it’s not what I’m here to discuss today. One possible takeaway from what I wrote above is that people can be completely monogamous and still express their sexuality freely and openly; because letting your sexuality express is not necessarily about having sex or making any sort of approach on anyone. Maybe it’s more about first acknowledging that you are a biological creature, a sexual creature (unless you are a-sexual, of course), and that whatever you feel in that arena is just one aspect of the whole of yourself, and doesn’t fully define you; not in general, and not in any particular moment. Once you get into that state of mind, you can also appreciate that whatever others are expressing sexually is just that – a subset of their whole being, what they feel, and how they’d like to relate to others around them.]

Here lies the tragedy: When we don’t own our sexuality, when we keep it suppressed or “under the hood”, it doesn’t go away. We are still the same biological creatures. What we don’t honestly acknowledge, and certainly what lurks beneath our thin consciousness crust, we can’t control, and often it controls us, instead. The obvious extreme case is people who act violently on their sexual drives, but I’m not talking about that today. I’m talking about a result that is much more gentle, more “benign” (though in my opinion there’s nothing benign about it), far more pervasive, and in my reading, completely outside of our cultural awareness.

When we’re not honest and clear about our sexuality (first and foremost, each with ourselves) – in its full glory – we risk getting it mixed up with other things. Most importantly – with our relationships. The obvious case is our primary relationships (girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, wife, husband, fiancé, whatever), but I believe that it affects many other relationships in more subtle ways. If a “mainstream dad” is not endorsing his own sexuality in a plain and healthy way, will it not, in some ways project upon his children, affect the way they grow up and the people they become? I’m not talking about any foul play here (that’s an obvious outlier which is beside my point here). I’m talking about the whole demeanour of that person, how they go about through life. If you’re a parent who has raised children, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. By the way, I believe this crosses genders and sexes in all directions and combinations. It’s a genderless, sexless observation about sexuality…

What does it have to do with Hollywood-style “love”?… Very simple. When the full, honest expression of our sexuality is suppressed (while our sexuality is still very much alive and kicking, albeit beneath the surface), we can’t move past it, into a deeper, fuller kind of connection – basking in the Other’s Otherness, in acceptance (which I believe is true Love), growth next to each other rather than leaning on each other. We can’t move past, so we get stuck, and before long we start mixing up sexuality with “love”, and with intimacy, and with connection, and with worth. That’s tragic! We end up in a culture – the glorious 2020s Western pop culture – where a very big part of our wellbeing hinges on the outcomes of our curtailed, moderated sexuality and its surrogates and stand-ins. Pick any mainstream mildly-“romantically”-themed movie or current-day fiction book, or any “love song” you hear on the radio, have a quiet thought about it, and you’ll realise it. Even better, just look around you, at friends and family. And if you dare – look at yourself. Just to reassure you, I’m no better – I’ve had my fair share of that mix up. But I’m beginning to wake up, I hope.

I don’t know if I’ll live to witness the Post-Post-Sexual Era, but I sure hope it’s coming, for the sake of my children (or maybe theirs, if it’s too late for them).

Peace to all.

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Did you know…? There are more posts in this blog than are presented to you right now. It’s an attribute of the template which I can’t change.
How to see all of them?
Click on the header – the bold “The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables” at the top. You’ll get a list (which is not complete either), with a button at the bottom to access the next list, and so on. Those go all the way back to my first post in this blog.
Enjoy Reading!