SEX: The Most Powerful Force There Is

I recently watched this series ‘Making A Murderer’. The series is based on the life of Steven Avery, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 18 years, then released. He later gets entangled in another messy crime under questionable circumstances and is serving a life sentence now. Thanks to the popularity of the series, while serving his second sentence, he gets a good amount of female attention and a handful of this turn into full-fledged relationships. For one reason or another, these relationships do not last. As one ends, another blossoms and the cycle repeats. Here is a man serving a life sentence without parole, but is desperately clinging on to the idea of finding a soul mate, in spite of his many failed relationships prior. Yes, there is an element of hope to this. Beyond that, what this signifies is how powerful of a force this attraction between opposite sexes is.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Steven Avery is not an exception, we are all under the spell of the same force of nature. At a personal level, there is no denying that this force has had a tremendous impact on the course of my life. This makes complete sense, for the simple reason that it is this force of nature that ensures that there is a next generation. Think of how barren this planet would be if our mating was rooted in love and not in lust. What sets off during adolescent years continues to drive our lives with varying degrees of intensity. It is foolish to think that only teenagers are under the thumb of this force. Just that the body tempers down with time, but the mind continues with its wishful pursuits.

The world is full of adults who refuse to grow beyond the adolescent urges and are painfully unaware of it. There is this one Indian movie ‘96’ that was released in 2018 and the story revolved around a middle aged protagonist. This movie is about a man who holds on to his long lost teenage crush and refuses to get into another relationship as he believes his first love was his true love. This absolute garbage of a story was celebrated by the masses as a classic. In a more sensible world, this movie should have been trolled and ridiculed out of existence for celebrating a man child who refuses to grow beyond his adolescent years. It was instead celebrated as a great story of love, not just by teenagers raging with testosterone, but by a wider audience across the age spectrum.

We can always rely on popular culture to reflect the reality of society. If one looks at the most popular music, movies and literature of the day, a good chunk of them would be centered around romantic relationships. It is tempting to dismiss those focused on teenage love(say Twilight series for instance), but the ones focusing on finding love again at 70 are not too different in their core. One can argue that this is different from the urges of the teenage years, but the fundamental drive is still the same. It is just a cultural thing to view one as more refined than the other, as this makes us feel we are maturing with age like fine wine.

The popular culture reflects what we are willing to admit to ourselves collectively and it is for the most part normalized stupidity. Beyond this tip of the iceberg, there is a huge chunk of reality that the society refuses to acknowledge or admit and for understandable reasons. For instance, adult content or sexual content dominates the world wide web today and this trend has existed in one form or another for ages. There is unlimited content online to cater to every reasonable desire and unreasonable ones too. In a way, this wide range of content is a direct reflection of the wide range of sexual desires amongst mankind. Evidently, there is no boundary to how this desire manifests and expresses itself. Internet has just amplified this lack of boundary, but it is not the source of the problem. The root of the issue lies in the human mind and not much can be done about this. The collective refusal to acknowledge this reality becomes comical in places like India where the masses speak of traditional values on one hand, but consume the grossest content available on the other.

We are, for the most part, deranged animals. Deranged animals we may be, but this has never stopped man from attempting to overcome his animalistic tendencies. So much so, that every major religious and spiritual denomination on this planet urges its followers to reign in their temptations. The rationale behind this being that only when we control the animalistic tendencies do we stand a chance to explore the beyond, is there anything beyond is a question for another day. This idea is so deep rooted in various spiritual systems that celibacy is considered a mandatory requirement. Many spiritual systems have gone to great lengths to develop techniques to help its members achieve this lofty goal. The intentions maybe great, but what about the results ? Questionable at best and deplorable at worst. There is a reason why the most horrific sexual crimes unfold in religious and spiritual organizations. Living with the delusion of having tamed a carnal desire without actually having done so is a recipe for disaster, both at an individual level and at a societal level.

Once we peel away the fancy layers, what lies is the basic trick of nature to mate and reproduce. The trick is the same for all species, just that we camouflage it with our stories and narrations. A bird dancing to attract its mate is no different from one learning guitar to impress his crush. We just add layers of love and romance to cover up the core reality, it feels better this way. We can build a grand story around our mating process, but the bird cannot. The narrations of the mind have little to do with the desires of the body, as Schopenhauer rightly observed

Every kind of love, however ethereal it may seem to be, springs entirely from the instinct of sex

In a way, am glad we can do this and make the mating process grander than what it is. Without this, the world would have not seen many works of art and our lives would be terribly boring without the art that love/romance has inspired. However, no amount of romantic music, movies and novels can alter the underlying reality though, nothing can. At the core of it, the sexual urge in man is no different from that in dogs, except they have a breeding season and we don’t. Same as with dogs, there are rabid ones and sensible ones amongst us.