Seen In The Steam

I support sin in the home. I support S.I.N. in the home.

My heart aches at the stupidity, cruelty and shear brutality of our culture. What is this abstinence crap for adolescents? What an ignorant, arrogant, paternalistic century we live in? Don’t we have enough knowledge of history, biology and anthropology to know that it is normal for adolescents to have sex. Nobody, and I mean nobody of adult intellect, although childish intellects may still feel dreadfully insecure on this point, no adult intellect thinks sex among sexually mature animals is any thing but normal. People of adult intellect know that, according to biology, animals go through various growth stages in their lives, one of the most well known being puberty. Puberty is the time when an animal, like people-animals, become sexually mature, that’s is, the animal becomes capable of reproduction.

THEN THEY HAVE SEX. What is the problem here. Animals have sex when they become sexually mature. People are animals. People-animals have sex when they become sexually mature. Sexual maturity in people occurs between the ages of ten and twenty. It’s the way of our biology. It’s been the way of biology for the last X billion of years. What is our problem with this? Now say again why sexually mature people shouldn’t have sex?

But don’t give me pregnancy fears in this day and age of various and sundry birth control methods. And for disease protection there are always condoms. And please don’t give me that stupid person’s argument that they're not 100 % sure. Nothing in life is one hundred percent sure. Existing is inherently risky. Celibacy will not protect any one from the vagaries of life. You have to look at the risk, low for both disease and pregnancy if you use condoms AND if you have stable sexual relations with a limited number of partners who care. Against what gain? Not certainty of anything, except that you will be foregoing the joys of sex at a time when it would probably, with the right education and initiation, be one of the most happy times of anyone’s life.

And don’t even start with me about emotional maturity, that obfuscating bullshit. People are as emotionally mature as you educate them to be. I will remind you I support both sin in the home, and S.I.N. in the home. I support the sexual initiation of young adults in a loving, caring and joyful atmosphere that would promote emotional growth. A culture that forces young adults to first experience sex in circumstance possibly threatening, frightening and dangerous, for female and male, is despicably cruel to its own children. The culture of sexual cruelty in which we dwell starts with our culture’s failure to provide experiential sexual initiation for its own young adults.

What is this abstinence crap? Why do people want to steal happiness away from young people? Why don’t people do everything in their power to ensure that bourgeoning sexual feelings are allowed to a unfold in a joyous, loving, caring, accepting atmosphere. Why call it sin? Why are people so stupid. Why can’t they learn. Sex is fun and natural and there for us to respect and enjoy, just like the rest of the existence. I am sick and tired of this childish, fearful, authoritarian celibacy crap and all the stupid people’s rhetoric about young adults shouldn’t have sex. Grow up. If sex is a sin, it is one only because you get some perverted, masochistic pleasure out of seeing young adults suffer, not because it inherently is. You are making it up that sex is a sin. WE MAKE CULTURE UP. We are ALL, including every authority figure you can think of, just making it all up as we go along. It is a cultural delusion that sex is a sin and should be suppressed among young adults. Get over it. Sex is good, all you know-it-alls. And I say lets remake OUR culture; Support SIN.

I support S.I.N., I support Sexual Initiation Now. I want to turn sin into a loving and joyful moment of initiation into adulthood in each persons life. The moment when they first experience intimate sexual contact. And don’t talk celibacy and waiting for marriage at me. Marriage is far too serious a commitment to wait to have sexual relations. Sexual compatibility is part of the foundation of a stable and satisfying relationship. To wait to find out until after the binding contract is made whether or not you are compatible in bed every single fucking time of your lives, is pure madness. Children born of a sexually fulfilling and caring relationship, have to be happier, healthier and more loving people themselves, than ones born of duty, guilt and necessity.

I support SIN in the home. I think every child should first SIN themselves into young adulthood in the bosom of their own loving and caring homes. Now isn’t it terrible to call sex a sin. I think it’s a form of psychological child abuse, to put people off the joys of sexual activity. Imagine growing up thinking sex is a sin, then getting to be that totally insecure age, the transition between child and young adult with this cultural lie that sex is a sin hanging around your neck like a proverbial millstone. You become a sexual creature, a young adult and society ignores your sexual needs in all but the most exploitive, crass and commercial ways. Sex is for Sale everywhere, but it is not for Joy. If sex is sin, then we have the mind set of demented monsters. Only a demented monster would ruin the joys of sex for its own children.

Adolescents unite, you know who you are, those who want to engage in sex, not forced to, but want to, some where between the ages of 10 and 20. Start agitating for real sexual education and initiation devised by physicians, anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists. Start agitating for a culture that provides sexual initiation in a caring atmosphere. Support S.I.N.! And any caring adult who went through the hell of an uninitiated adolescence can join too in supporting SIN.

So Julie Lasky, editor of ID Magazine, thinks a cash register office building is the best memorial for a mass grave. Maybe she’d like to see a shopping mall built over Auschwitz? If this building goes up then the whole world will not doubt that New Yorkers have a dollar sign not only for a heart, but for a soul as well. If New Yorkers were really moved by this tragedy they would use their power of eminent domain to send a different message. But no, the almighty buck reigns supreme in New York, which is why it got targeted in the first place. New Yorkers have learned nothing from this barbarous attack. I imagine the Romans, when they were the center of the world, and after sucking the wealth of the known world to themselves for almost 500 years to the impoverishment of the rest, were as much in denial as New Yorkers are now, although things move ten times faster now and New York has been sucking for only 50. If you boast that you live in the center of power and wealth in the known universe, how can you be ingenuously surprised to find the barbarians at the gates attacking you. Wake up, and change your greedy, self centered ways. Why aren’t 9/11 photographer Joel Meyerowitz's 3,000 trees being planted on site? Because some already obscenely wealthy people are going to lose a whole lot of rental income and the city a whole lot of tax revenue. Obviously, in New York, it’s all about money, there's only one shared value: greed. I know in New York nobody wants to take any responsibility for anything that’s happened to them, especially the cowardly artistic community which is a parasite on the greedy elite who precipitated this disaster. If they did take responsibility, then this office building, NOT memorial, would never be built.

The source of existence is the ground of being, or possibly it is the grounds of being. Singularity is not necessarily more elegant than multiplicity, only simple minded authoritarian prejudice insists on that. No one knows the ground/s of being.

It is childish and primitive to think that the ground of being is anything like people, has the concerns of status and power that people have. It is childish and primitive to think the ground of being is even concerned with, let alone needs, our praise or obedience like people do. It is childish and primitive to think that the ground of being is now, or ever was, a real estate broker, a member of the fashion police, or a food Fascist. The ground of being is not concerned with our status, power, hairdo, head protection, lunch menu or real estate address. It is childish and primitive to think IT is. These are the concerns of fearful and ignorant people projected out on to a universe that is ultimately indifferent to our fate. It is hard for children to accept the indifference of the ground of being. Adults see IT is indifferent, and that the difference making is left up to us. Adults see that our irreligious fights over real estate, fashion, food, cultural trappings are the fights of self aggrandizing, self important, talking chimpanzees. We are the ones that care about real estate, fashion, food, culture. The ground of being does not care.

Serious spiritual practitioners, mystics of every institutional religion, say the dos, don’ts and dogmas of institutional religion are not a prerequisite to the spiritual life. What matters spiritually is our personal relationship to the cosmos, near and far. This is because the ground of being is the cosmos near and far. Our relationship to the ground of being is our relationship to the cosmos. Our relationship to the cosmos is our relationship to the ground of being. If we are at odds with the cosmos, near or far, we are at odds with the ground of being. If we are at odds with our neighbor, we are at odds with the ground of being. And we are acting and thinking like ignorant chimpanzees only concerned with our own status and power. If other people are lobbing bombs at us, whether we have chosen to call ourselves an Israeli , a Palestinian, or a New Yorker, the ground of being is not on our side. We must look to our own behavior. We are not innocent of all our suffering. Our own behavior is inescapably part of every problem we have. And the ground of being does not care. We do.

It is Time. It is time we stopped thinking and acting like talking chimpanzees. It is time we grew up and stopped being frightened and ignorant children. It is time we evolved, evolved into the next species we will become. How do we get there from here? It is our choice. It should be a thoughtful one.

Premises that will underlie a thoughtful evolution:

1. NO ONE KNOWS. No one knows the meaning or purpose of existence. And we never will. We do not know how existence works. We are in the dark, and always will be. Why? Because as a puny animal species not one of us has the physical-mental capacity to grasp the full complexity of existence. We make up stories. We make up explanations. We are generators of self aggrandizing and comforting delusions we call culture. We make up culture. Culture is our own arbitrary construction that must be able to function within the limits of physical reality in order for it and us to survive. But as with the physical world, in culture every aspect is open to change, and without notice. It is childish insecurity that make us want to believe, not think, but believe that some one in our own culture KNOWS. It is frightening for some people to realize that NO ONE KNOWS. Many people want the false security that belief brings. Adults live in the real world of chaos, ambiguity and unfathomable existence. Adults realize that no one knows and that it is only our animal fear of the unknown and our animal desire for safety that leads us to put our faith in the ancient fairy tales that soothed the minds of our talking chimpanzee ancestors. Time to move on. Time to grow up. NO ONE KNOWS.

2. EXISTENCE IS CHANGE. No change is not existence. No thing existing can be sustain in a fixed state. Existence is change, and change is existence. Any childish, false and soothing notions that any part of existence, from social systems to solar systems, is fixed and unchanging has long since been discredited by our common experience of this universe. In our universe, existence is change.

Principals that can guide us toward a thoughtful evolution:

1. FLEXIBILITY IS OUR PRIMARY VALUE. Because we don’t know, and never will, and because change is the only characteristic of existence we can count on, the only sensible course, if we want to survive and evolve, is to be flexible: mentally, culturally and physically. Aiming for any goal less than flexibility will make us more vulnerable to the ever imminent unexpected. Sustainability is a futile goal because existence is ever changing and unpredictable. The quickest road to extinction is to try to aim for any fixed state of being. Hoping to put our collective finger in the dike of existence to hold back the unrelenting march of change, whether social or geological, is misguided and ultimately a childish and fearful response to the inevitable change that is the reality of existence. Flexibility is our primary value.

2. WISDOM IS OUR PRIMARY GOAL. There are facts, there is knowledge, then there is wisdom. Wisdom is knowing when it is time to die, not only as an individual but as a species. Wisdom is recognizing that what ever you do it will always be helpful and always be harmful. Wisdom is knowing you can never give help without doing harm and that you can never do harm without giving help. Wisdom accepts our inevitable ignorance and strives to learn as much as possible. Wisdom accepts the ambiguity of existence and takes the responsibility of making choices. Sorrow is the price of wisdom. Joy is it’s reward.

3. NO SECRETS. Because we are ignorant, and always will be to the actualities of our own existence, it is necessary that all information be shared with all people in order that the most people can give thought to each challenge that confronts us. Secrets are a chimpanzee way of thinking. Secrets are the basis of unequal distribution of power in a social system. Secrets promote inflexibility and ignorance. No Secrets.