Hello hello to one and all!

So. It's beginning to look a lot like springtime. Sunlight, a natural briskness inspired by my finally having turned my heat down from its lethargy-inspiring winter levels, the positive energy at having a cleaner apartment (having cleaned it for a visit from my landlord which never came), as well as the release of tension from my recently-kaput relationship. . . I am a happy, energetic, and thoughtful dougman. So maybe I shall find myself back over this way more often.

No promises, though.

Anyway. SO I was thinking of the common theme in Utopian/Dystopian literature of some sort of enforced openness re sexuality and trying to decide whether I thought that would have the intended effect, or even more generally a positive or negative one. It's a very interesting question and one with a number of complicated facets.

But to strip the question of unintended or distracting burdens of connotation, let me rephrase the question: assuming a society where a high value is placed on complete sexual openness, what is the effect on interpersonal relationships therein?

So now, before some of the more excitable among you go getting all. . . excited, be careful to acknowledge that this is not a one-way ticket to cash in all your previous unrequited crushes, lusts, or loves. This would be a situation where all of the unrequited crushes, lusts, and loves could lay similar claim to you.

So there's our first base. From there, we hit the first branch: is sexuality completely open, or privately open. Meaning: would sexuality be such a part of daily interaction it would come to be governed by the same social customs as, say, polite conversation, or something more secretive, a contract in the dark that demands and is satisfied and leaves none of us with the possibility of unfulfilled desires. Interesting

Well, the former seems more realistic. I mean, can't all of us think of at least one group of people we know (or...

Hello hello to one and all!

So. It's beginning to look a lot like springtime. Sunlight, a natural briskness inspired by my finally having turned my heat down from its lethargy-inspiring winter levels, the positive energy at having a cleaner apartment (having cleaned it for a visit from my landlord which never came), as well as the release of tension from my recently-kaput relationship. . . I am a happy, energetic, and thoughtful dougman. So maybe I shall find myself back over this way more often.

No promises, though.

Anyway. SO I was thinking of the common theme in Utopian/Dystopian literature of some sort of enforced openness re sexuality and trying to decide whether I thought that would have the intended effect, or even more generally a positive or negative one. It's a very interesting question and one with a number of complicated facets.

But to strip the question of unintended or distracting burdens of connotation, let me rephrase the question: assuming a society where a high value is placed on complete sexual openness, what is the effect on interpersonal relationships therein?

So now, before some of the more excitable among you go getting all. . . excited, be careful to acknowledge that this is not a one-way ticket to cash in all your previous unrequited crushes, lusts, or loves. This would be a situation where all of the unrequited crushes, lusts, and loves could lay similar claim to you.

So there's our first base. From there, we hit the first branch: is sexuality completely open, or privately open. Meaning: would sexuality be such a part of daily interaction it would come to be governed by the same social customs as, say, polite conversation, or something more secretive, a contract in the dark that demands and is satisfied and leaves none of us with the possibility of unfulfilled desires. Interesting

Well, the former seems more realistic. I mean, can't all of us think of at least one group of people we know (or are perhaps in) where everyone seems to have dated or slept with each other and new recruits are bound to make the rounds as well?

Interestingly, I think at that point the added emotional stress relief and good-feeling-ness of open sexuality will at this point begin to dissipate. I think that some bond is formed simply through conditioning, the association of this person or that person with the endorphins and feel-goodness of a satisfied biological imperative. However, the greater bond, trust, and comfort yielded by this I do not think would live up to authors' expectations, those phenomena being results not of the physical sexuality, but the implied emotional bond (or willingness to enter thereinto) it's possessed thereof within our slightly more repressed society.

There would be changes, though. THinking of of the structure of social groups as a magnificently huge and complex series of venn diagrams of interests and experiences, sexuality here comes in as a major new factor-- likely still a medium or minor primary factor (which is to say the number of relationships actually founded entirely on sex), but sexual compatability instantly expands the options for the formation of social groups. Just as we all like to sit around, drinking and watching boxing on TV (okay, me and probably none of you), social groups in such a society could easily start to form based on style, attractiveness, etc.

Is this desirable? Hard to say. I think that most of us (predictable from the mere fact that we're _here_) would prefer a society more liberal about it than today's (even if we live relatively uninhibitedly, don't we still all follow some of the rules?), but less far than the above. I think the allure of the situation for writers (if we politely ignore the base possibility they simply want to be getting more and are projecting) is the immediate effect. I bet that if all of us could be having sex with a few new people a day, it would be months of ecstasy. But I also think that, after a time, the sexual activity levels of a given group would stabilize to a point. Here, if not far sooner, individuals would again begin associating aspects of the sexual experience with positive or negative emotions. Given a year or two of free-for-all sex, does no one else think that Joe is just as likely to spend at least part of a night getting pissed that Betty is spending the night with Mike rather than go pursue Becky whom Mike chose not to spend the night with?

So, in the end, I think that a significant number, if not a vast majority, of these "social designs" are little more than personal fantasies, incogent thinking, or larger-scale applications of personal desires or beliefes which, once again, prove to argue that the state is not just man writ large. SO there's my random thought of the day.

*kisses*