The Heady Matter of Sex (and other ramblings)

Not all light is good light. In other words depending on the scale and perspective, light can be considered better or worser. I don’t think the light has any issue with this business of being critiqued, it just moves in its photon-ey way, dashing through the universe at what to humans appears to be unbelieveable speed, and does what it does, unconcerned. A good friend of mine, however, is a professional photographer. He recounted how at one of his model shoots, he had such wonderful daylight shining in some San Francisco windows. He hadn’t anticipated a grumpy neighbor’s discomfort at the nudity of his model, and a local constable was called to throw a wet blanket on the whole affair. Unless, of course, he shut the blinds. Which in turn, shut out that wonderful light, which is what my friend found distressing.

There seems to be a narrow, or wider, band of ‘goodness’ within which things can be judged as such. I am not at all certain there is any abstract nature of this, whereas something is ‘good’ (or not) as judged from all possible observation perspectives, times, and places. The narrow band with which humans survive with any manner of gracefulness would likely to be not at all good, to something that found it more suitable at the infrared or ultraviolet range. But, biological life seems to work best in that 45 percent of solar energy that drives Earth-born biological systems.

Its not good light, its not bad light, its just light. Goodness or badness is an assignment from a particular point of view, which prespupposes a particular teleological idea, and in the case of human dependency on ‘good’ light, a somewhat practical one as well.

Then there is this matter of being omnivorous, which is a polite way of saying that we could also chew on another living, feeling being, probably with a family. The omnivore is also a carnivore at heart, though this is a matter of some discomfort among human beings lately. But, we have a choice. We can subsist on spinach and such, though this would take some considerable adapting of at least my own preferences.

But, we have a choice. But, what if we didn’t? What if no matter how we thought about it, we would have to eat flesh? What an ethical conundrum! Ethics, it seems, is unforgivably biased towards necessity. I am struggling to think of an ethic that survived very long in the face of a contrary necessity. Like the hunger striker: ethics can propel one grandly, but not interminably, unless the nature of the world changes.

And for a lot of things, that’s a tall order.

Ethics and morality: hard to distinguish between the two, both actually deriving from something a lot less stern sounding, which was ‘customs’ (ethics a derivative of Greek from which we get ‘ethos,’ and morality from a Latin root that leaves us with ‘mores,’ i.e. the customs of a people. Maybe ‘ethics’ is more abstract, and ‘morals’ more particular, but I think that is a matter of when ethics is more near at hand and in our immediate face, that we start thinking of it morally.

Recall the discomfort polite society had around the matter of sex? Well, maybe it still has. My photographer friend, for instance, encountered admonishment at not sex, but simply nudity. I hate to think of what might have been his ensuing story if there had been sex involved. Probably more than a slap on the hand, possibly hauled into the local police station. And that would have been tame in comparison with what would happen in an fundamentalist Christian or Islamic city!

Admittedly, human sex running wild will only serve to destroy the very lusting beings we are, unless we figure out and practice a socially effective way of not letting such heady matters lead to full-term pregnancy. Personally, I hope that we don’t put an entire end to that practice. But then again, your are listening to someone who still eats meat.

Which probably now explains the title of this piece: The Heady Matter of Sex. It kept you reading, didn't it?