An Interest of Conflict

“The greatest pleasures require the least - the least pleasures require the most”

I like sex. There, it’s out in the open – let’s enter this particular relationship honestly, cards on the table. And by like, let’s not diminish through wanting affection, I love it. I think about it, a lot, watch a good deal of visual stimulation enhancement (porno) and engage in it probably 20 times a week, 15 with a partner. Minimum. Some would call me a horndog. Most avoid calling me all together.

Not that this is a surprise. My horndoggery tends to put off those who are less doggedly horny. Any among the readers who know me, know this; any others who have paid the slightest attention to my work know it implicitly, because I don’t hide it. I’m not ashamed of it. You might even say I’m pleased by it.

And that alienates me – most aren’t comfortable around sex. Sure they can make witty comments about it, throw off the odd vulgarity, even talk sparingly about it, in general terms, but when it comes to explicit particulars, or gets too personal, most have other things to attend to. Most would rather talk about other stuff than how they use their junk.

Notice that term: junk. What is junk? It is waste, used up refuse, trash. That’s how the modern hipster refers to the one part of their body that can truly create. Wise creatures would look at their reproductive attributes as near divine, ecstatic elation which leads to creation. In the west it’s our junk.

No big surprise how we treat what comes of it.

In societal terms we treat childbirth as a miracle but look at the birth of a snake or polecat as gross and vile, it’s only miraculous when a human pops out. Especially of a snake or polecat. At the same time we socially treat sex, which is the accepted means to achieve said miraculous childbirth, as a dirty and disgusting process, those who enjoy it for its own sake, perverted and wrong. Horndogs.

Western religion treats the means to the miracle of birth as but a necessary evil in the propagation of the species. Don’t do it because you enjoy it, do it because the church needs more sheeple to bleat its praises, more acolytes to repeat its phrases. Do it cause God insists, not because the very act is a delight. At least when performed correctly.

In many regards it seems that’s why the church in all of its (western) forms insists that we do it incorrectly, so it isn’t a delight. And we’ll get out of bed on the porously defined Sabbath and offer our juice to God through the church of our choice, instead of rutting away as God must have intended lest It wouldn’t have made sex so much more entertaining than church.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason some of us like sex so much more than others is simply our point of focus. How often do you get laid a week? How often do you think about getting laid a week? Would you like to get laid more than you do?

What do you watch on TV?

If you’re as most you watch the hip new flashy version of the same old shit that’s been on TV since its inception – propaganda. Programming to convince you that you are not only of the best place on Earth, but because of it you must certainly be better than people of other places. Shows which define you in terms of how actors and directors and editors and producers interpret what writers promote as ‘real’ life.

You know writers? The sexually frustrated geeks who never got laid at school, who sit alone in a room and make sweet sweet love to their computatator, releasing their bile on all the jocks and cool kids who actually went outside and did stuff, these are the people defining ‘real’ life for the average TV viewer. Film writers too. People weaned on TV’s massive awe inspiring teat, many with little personal life experience, define life for the viewer through a commercial lens: flash, violence, noise, explosion, sex, product.

Most of course forget that like radio, TV was first and foremost used to sell product; consumer goods in escalating proportions confirming the primacy of the single product hawked with the most fervent urgency: Capitalism. You know, the political ethos currently destroying the world in a hail of greed and rampant corruption? All the creative content was ever intended for was to keep the viewers (listeners) in their seats. Ethos and lifestyle were incorporated into the programming to cement consumer loyalty: nationalism, the brand. Filler originally between the commercials has now become the commercial itself.

It’s awesome.

I read a quote by a Russian journalist who worked for years in America; he commented that American propaganda is much slicker than Russian propaganda owing to our massive advertising industry, but that while Americans tend to believe our propaganda, Russians tended to disbelieve theirs. As it becomes further influenced by western promotional techniques, one wonders how long that has remained the case.

Americans love shows like 24 and Survivor and Americon Idle. We love sports. These diversions promote one thing in common: conflict. Each of these shows and entertainments advance the notion that life is a constant struggle against oppression, that the strong prevail over the weak, good prevails over evil and that no matter how good your sports franchise is, they can’t win every time. But they’re bound for a resurgence next season. Drink Bud!

From these shows, we learn how to talk, are provided common jokes to share around the water cooler, learn how to dress to suit our particular niche in society and especially how to think. We learn to think about buying stuff, how important buying stuff is.

We learn what constitutes a national threat, what it takes to form a consensus, to drive the unappealing from our midst, what constitutes a good singer, dancer, flashing monkey. We learn that a Bud is good during Miller time but that players on performance enhancing drugs are a bane to the noble game. Why would anyone want to enhance their performance?

Shows like 24 offer up a dichotomy that Mani would have been proud of: pure good vs. pure evil. No gray areas to blur the lines of very clearly defined rightness and wrongness. The show that sold torture to America as an absolute necessary, I don’t know, evil seems like such a strong word – maybe just a tool of the good, to wrest information that isn’t forthcoming out of those of pernicious design. To combat evil using the very methods employed by evil. For good.

And though it’s never worked in real life – anybody can be tortured to say anything and Mr. Blair aptly pointed out in 1984 that torture is used to break those tortured, not to gather intelligence – every episode has people tortured to save thousands of lives. Always to save thousands of lives. Something that all the torture the USA has ever employed upon all the poor bastards caught up in our clumsy efforts to make everyone fear us has failed to do. The same idiots who couldn’t protect the Pentagon from a subsonic, unarmed civilian airliner with over an hours notice and trillions of dollars worth of weapons, are out there torturing terrorists to protect us. I feel safe.

Consider Survivor: as one of the most popular shows on TV it is about nothing more than humans reduced to the law of the jungle – and prime time censorship. Got to make sure any rutting leads to conflict, like the soaps and pretty much all horror films: fuck = death. Survivor is nothing but a show about us being animals again. Its popularity proves that we like watching others behave as animals. We go ape over it.

How about American Idol? This is but another version of the Gong Show, with has-beens and snobs taking the role of the gong. Either the contestant is deemed really good and accepted into the better graces of the hosts (producers) or deemed not good enough and relegated to the ignoble position of never-were, consigned to spend the remainder of their pathetic lives cursing the ground Simon walks upon.

Conflict.

Conflict, we’re told, is the essence of drama. And as a spectator, it beats the hell out of listening to dullards prattle on about how happy they are the dog got fixed or that Aunt Martha’s hip pain is subsiding. But, do we need drama in our private lives, beyond what we have already equipped ourselves with? Do we need to escalate the drama by creating conflict, even when we’re home, especially when we’re home? Do we need more battles to keep our lives interesting? Do we have to fight each other to tolerate being around each other more than a few hours a day?

These are good questions, because we’ve been told that we can’t; that we must fight, that life is a perpetual struggle for the top of the food chain – the law of the jungle applies. But doesn’t the law of man supersede the law of the jungle? Isn’t that what civilization is all about, getting us out of the woods, away from the lower species? Doesn’t the law of man suggest that we’re better than animals; that we shouldn’t have to crawl and scrape and fight to sustain ourselves?

Doesn’t the law of man raise us above all the other creatures of the Earth so we don’t have to live in perpetual conflict and fear? But is it not the teachings of man, the advancement of empire and control, the promotion of God, which makes human even lower than the animals by human claiming to be superior while proving to be not? We continue the conflict we say we’re better than, by maintaining the brutality and law of the jungle we claim to have overcome.

Can we have it both ways? Is life a Manichean dichotomy: good vs. evil? Everybody thinks they’re good, even evil people. The worst people in the world imagine themselves as good. Some people think Dick Cheney is a national treasure others a war criminal. Advocates cite his tough stance on terror while detractors point to the terror felt by the millions of people that his actions killed and displaced. Who can say? The Hague?

Sports aficionados, to perhaps ascribe a level of nobility to their delight at the simplest of conflicts will cite the grace and symmetry, the poetry of motion in the human form, the amazing abilities of sports figures to contort themselves, to throw themselves, hurl themselves, land and bounce and roll and slam into things with such grace and ease.

But, if that is what they watch for, why don’t they watch ballet or figure skating? Perhaps they do. I’m betting the majority of football fans out there who cite amazing feats of physicality as a reason they appreciate the game, likely don’t watch ballet or figure skating, mostly. Even though dancing and sporting disciplines employ strong men tested to the limits of their endurance and scantily clad women seemingly flying through the air the reason sports fans really like sports is the score. Conflict.

Why do people get upset when their team loses? Don’t they just watch sports for the game? Isn’t just catching the ball, throwing the ball, running with the ball sufficient to the appreciation of human endurance? Getting crushed under a pile of fucking gigantic guys? That beautiful poetry of human form so noble and revered, that we thrill to watch humans slam into each other as hard as they can to advance a few yards, to gain a few points?

If the score isn’t what it’s all about, there’s no need for it. The score is what it’s all about, it’s the besting, the wresting of control, it’s one beating another, it’s the law of the jungle. We’ve elevated ourselves right back to where we started. We live in perpetual conflict to amuse ourselves. We’re just that bored.

If conflict is the primary staple of one’s diet it becomes more natural to use arms to keep others away, at a safe distance. If affection, or pure horndoggery is what you feed upon, the natural response is to use arms to embrace, to draw close. Sex in a society steeped in conflict tends towards violent, abusive, disrespectful or equally offensive to the form, just plain lazy. So many just can’t be bothered.

Because we fear intimacy – a result of capitalism, which teaches us to distrust, to operate in secret, to always seek the advantage – we can’t be bothered to explore each other, or especially ourselves when it comes to sex. We strive instinctively for this closeness only to rush through it as though it is a chore to be tended to, not the delight it can be.

Instead of spending our nights in bed with each other talking and kissing and licking and sucking and fucking, we spend our nights watching people battling each other for primacy, as our nation battles for primacy in a world that for the most part has moved past this, opting instead to resolve their own internal struggles rather than share them with their neighbors.

No big surprise then that a nation that bullies everyone around to get their way has little time for the joys of sex, the freedom of intimacy, the liberation of sensational delight. The only freedom we seem interested in is the freedom to make a bunch of money, no matter what it costs. We’d rather be millionaires than great lays. We’d rather own a bunch of shit we never use than use the stuff we came equipped with to create pleasure for those we claim to love the most.

Sex is more an appetizer than the main course – so many rush through it so they can look at the 2 dimensional world of TV or the pornonet. With a living breathing, willing, naked human we like, right in front of us, so many of us would rather watch TV. TV is easy, no demands (oh, alright, consume!) no disappointments. No one judges our performance watching TV – hell, everyone is too busy watching TV. It never expects head, having already severed ours from our bodies.

So many relegate sex to something to be tended to when time allows. Soon as the important stuff is taken care of, then we can eke out a few minutes for sex. Hours for TV and the Web a few minutes for affection, love, sex, just before passing out immediately after getting what we came for, focusing upon the destination missing the delights of the journey completely.

No surprise that the USA’s citizens are angry and repressed and hostile and violent, more interested in making more holes in bodies rather than enjoying the ones we came with. Actual conflict is fun for the whole family while actual sex is our nasty little secret, hidden, sequestered, X rated and wrong. Women who fuck on film are whores, the ones who don’t fuck at all are saints.

Having met both, I prefer the whores. Saints are bores.



© 2011 7/25/11 simmbiosis