And yet that very quest to end our isolation has been subject
to centuries of stigma and incessant friction with our social
values. But it needn’t be this way. We are guided through the perils this
sexual conundrum by philosopher Alain de Botton.
De
Botton writes in the introduction:
"Despite our best
efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple
or nice in the ways we might like it to be. It is not fundamentally
democratic or kind; it is bound up with cruelty, transgression and the desire for
subjugation and humiliation. It refuses to sit neatly on top of love, as it
should. Tame it though we may try, sex has a recurring tendency to wreak havoc
across our lives: it leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our
productivity and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs talking to people
whom we don’t like but whose exposed midriffs we nevertheless strongly wish to
touch. Sex remains in absurd, and perhaps irreconcilable, conflict with some of
our highest commitments and values. Unsurprisingly, we have no option but to
repress its demands most of the time. We should accept sex as inherently rather
weird instead of blaming ourselves for not responding in more normal ways to
its confusing impulses."
"This is not to say
that we cannot take steps to grow wiser about sex. We should simply realize
that we will never entirely surmount the difficulties it throws our way. Our
best hope should be a respectful accommodation with an anarchic and reckless
power."
He later offers a
delightfully animated account, of why a kiss holds the appeal that it does:
"The pleasure of the
moment can be understood only by considering its wider context: the
overwhelming indifference against which any kiss is set. It goes almost without
saying that the majority of people we encounter will be not merely uninterested
in having sex with us but positively revolted by the idea. We have no choice
but to keep a minimum of sixty or, even better, ninety centimeters’ distance
between us and them at all times, to make it absolutely clear that our
compromised selves have no intention of intruding into their personal spheres.
Then comes the kiss. The
deeply private realm of the mouth — that dark, moist cavity that no one else
but our dentist usually enters, where our tongue reigns supreme over a
microcosm as silent and unknown as the belly of a whale — now prepares to open
itself up to another. The tongue, which has had no expectation of ever meeting
a compatriot, gingerly approaches a fellow member of its species, advancing
with something of the reserve and curiosity exhibited by a South Sea Islander
in greeting the arrival of the first European adventurer. Indentations and
plateaus in the inner lining of the cheeks, hitherto thought of as solely
personal, are revealed as having counterparts. The tongues engage each other in
a tentative dance. …
Beneath the kiss itself, it
is its meaning that interests us — which is why the desire to kiss someone can
be decisively reduced… by a declaration of that desire — a confession which may
in itself be so erotic as to render the actual kiss superfluous."
But
the true mesmerism of sex, de Botton argues, isn’t even in the physical act
itself — it’s in the existential promise that it holds:
"The pleasure we
derive from sex is also bound up with our recognizing, and giving a distinctive
seal of approval to, those ingredients of a good life whose presence we have
detected in another person. The more closely we analyze what we consider
‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of
excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values
and our sense of the meaning of existence.
Our culture encourages us
to acknowledge very little of who we normally are in the act of sex. It seems
as if it might be a purely physical process, without any psychological
importance. But … what happens in love-making is closely bound up with some of
our most central ambitions. The act of sex plays out through the rubbing
together of organs, but our excitement is no boorish physiological reaction;
rather, it is an ecstasy we feel at encountering someone who may be able to put
to rest certain of our greatest fears, and with whom we may hope to build a
shared life based upon common values."
Ultimately,
sex is a grounding mechanism that reminds us of our own imperfect humanity, and
in that imperfection lies the messy richness of being human:
"Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we
were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
We could age respectably, get used to our privileges and think we understood
what was going on. We might disappear into numbers and words alone. It is sex that
creates a necessary havoc in the ordinary hierarchies of power, status, money
and intelligence.
[…]
We might even embrace the pain sex causes us, for without it we wouldn’t know
art and music quite so well. … When every contemptuous but fair thing has been
said about our infernal sexual desires, we can still celebrate them for not
allowing us to forget for more than a few days at a time what is really
involved in living an embodied, chemical and largely insane human life."
