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autographedcat"Human beings took our animal need for palatable food … and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species … and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools … and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language … and turned it into King Lear.
None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction … that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.
And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.
Why should we see this as sinful? What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?"
--Greta Christina
(via Sex Is Not The Enemy)
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Re: Had much the same reaction
Date: 2011-02-15 12:43 pm (UTC)As I see it (and various better writers have aid it as well), humans are capable of taking anything 'necessary' and turning it into both great good and great evil (often taking the good to excess, the difference between the gourmet and the gourmand is one of degree). We can use our social skills to achieve projects, or to raise a lynch mob. We can send men to the moon, or missiles to blow others to bits. We can use sex for joy, or as a weapon (not just rape, I'm thinking of the "keep them barefoot and pregnant" enslaving of women). We are capable of being both "better than the angels" and "worse than the demons" (and as one of the Pratchett/Gaiman supernatural characters points out in "Good Omens", often at the same time).
The difference, in the predominant Christian interpretation, seems to be that there sex is regarded as purely evil (at best a "necessary evil"). In many denominations it is still preached as something to be endured (as a duty to propagate) rather than enjoyed (and anyone who does enjoy it and says so openly is regarded as a slut). So yes, I think that the quotation which started this is a reaction to a peculiarly Christian attitude.
Re: Had much the same reaction
Date: 2011-02-15 02:38 pm (UTC)Not that I disagree with you on the rest of it, or even on that--I just wanted to point out the double standard is alive and well.
Re: Had much the same reaction
Date: 2011-02-15 03:00 pm (UTC)IME, the "anyone who (openly) enjoys sex is considered promiscuous" (and therefore bad) idea applies equally to men and women. However, for men being seen as 'bad' is often (perhaps generally) regarded as a positive thing (by other men), and this I think is the double-standard. By the lights of the churches which disapprove of sex the men are also being 'wicked', but women are punished harder for unacceptable behaviour (probably because their priests are also male).
Re: Had much the same reaction
Date: 2011-02-15 08:49 pm (UTC)