Undeniably, and this is self-evident so forgive me, but there is something addictively enticing about lust. Firstly, it's one of those curious words that can be used both as a noun and a verb. Lust can be a ‘sensuous appetite’, ‘a source of pleasure’, ‘a sinful sexual desire’, or ‘a degrading animal passion’. You can also use lust to wish or desire eagerly, which we’ve all done from time to time.
Many writers throughout the years have had bold stances on lust such as the writers of The Bible or say, Aldous Huxley, author of the famous dystopian warning, Brave New World. One of the famous lines describing Huxley’s world, “Everyone belongs to everyone else,” attempts to highlight a society in which multiple sexual partners are encouraged without the burden of commitment, and a commitment which is also frowned upon by Huxley’s fictional populous. Act on impulse and attraction with no limits or relational development.
We’ve seen brief circumstances and even revolutions of this type of sexual liberation throughout history such as the counterculture movement in the 1960s where technological advances in contraception, ideas and promotions of free love, and the outright challenging of traditional value systems (such as marriage) all became part of a social movement. Movements such as these differ from Huxley’s world in the way that they were circulated through a niche minority rather than the societal majority, ideals of the social norm which Huxley’s world accomplishes by engineering human beings, drugging them, and conditioning them. In essence, his world does away with human nature and instills forced manipulation. We haven’t gotten to that point yet as far as I can tell, but I do think that certain mediums in our society drive a similar encouragement of lust, aided by our current technological revolution.
You can begin to entertain this idea, or your lust itself if you have some free time and a bottle of lotion, with the mass availability of pornography on the internet. Granted, human beings have been depicting sexual images as early on as the Paleolithic era (yes, we’re talking about cavemen carving boobies in rocks with rocks). Just about every great human civilization has paintings or carvings or sculptures representing native folks getting it on with each other, but reasons for this seemed to take a turn after the invention of the printing press. During the Enlightenment, Satirists used pornographic images to take shots at the Catholic Church (or so they say because what demented historian is trying to find out who was wacking off to these images?). Pornography itself didn’t start evolving into what it would become until the World Wars came about which only makes sense. What’s a better breeding ground for lust than thousands upon thousands of sexually deprived soldiers all dying to see that pinup Jason is hiding under his bunk, the perv? You start getting your smutty magazines after that which keeps everyone entertained until the birth of the internet. It’s here of course that chaos breaks loose and we now have an ultimate lusty situation on our hands (no jerking off pun intended.) The no-holds-barred pornography that we know today is quite possibly having a direct negative impact on our society. Limited research suggests that loneliness, sexual dissatisfaction, rising rates of divorce, and an increase in erectile dysfunction among young men between the ages of 18-29 could all likely be directly attributed to the excessive usage of pornography.
Porn isn’t the only lustful development, however. With these amazing little devices that we worship, we also have access to technologies designed to engage us in non-committal sexual activity with strangers, apps such a Tinder and Bumble. These apps provide large pools of sexual partners which would make you think that it would be a decent place to find a long-term relationship, however, all the limited data we have to suggest that the probability of finding a partner on Tinder is 10% for women and a dreadful 0.6% percent for men. This doesn’t exactly indicate that Tinder serves as a digital world of holy matrimony. If people aren’t on Tinder for actual dating, then what are they on it for? (I wonder…) Could it be sexual desires hoping to be fulfilled? With this in mind, I think we could assume that it’s likely the closest arena to Huxley’s society in Brave New World, disregarding the 10% of ladies who are meeting people on there. Ph.D. student and Gates Cambridge Scholar, Rob Henderson, has written often about Tinder and other dating apps. He found that men swiped right on 60% of the profiles they came across as opposed to women who swiped on only 4.5%. Why is this significant? Well, ideally, it suggests that women are pickier maters. A Norwegian study found that out of a pool of 269 (nice) Tinder participants that 84% had no sexual encounters, 13% had one, 3% had more than one, and 4% had more than two. So, does this suggest that a small percentage of men are hyper-sexually active on Tinder with multiple partners while the majority have none? If so, does this make the case that committed relationships could be beneficial to more people in regards to sexual success? It seems that if we look at Tinder as a no-holds-barred sexual arena, it's only favoring a few dudes. I think for the large pool of failures on Tinder, these dudes would be regarded as ‘douchebags’ even though that is not a scientific term, which is ‘successful.’ Does that make you cringe? Why?
Perhaps I’ve gotten off the subject a bit. Are we living in Huxley’s Brave New World…not exactly? But, I think it's fair to say that the option is there if you want it, and it's certainly not frowned upon if popular culture has anything to say about it.
So what are the possible benefits to an ‘Everyone belongs to everyone else’ type of lifestyle? The problem is, we don’t know. Even if someone is hyper-sexual, there’s always someone out there who will say no, even if you’re George Clooney. The closest you can hope to find who embodies this type of lifestyle is someone who exists in a no-holds-barred sexual circle. Finding this person took some discouraging dives into Youtube, but who I found is a man by the name of Neil Strauss, author of the international bestseller, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. In this little gem of a book that you’re mother would be so proud of you for reading, Strauss lays out a blueprint for pick-up manipulation, breaking it down into a series of skillsets and experiences he acquired by joining an underground society of hyper-sexual men. He’s broken down the art of picking up women in steps, not so different from ‘The Dennis System’ in the TV show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Dennis’s D in his acronym is ‘Demonstrate Value’ which comes directly from Strauss’s step number 3 which is, ‘Demonstrate Value.’ Anyways, I came across Strauss’s bestseller while watching a video titled ‘Chatting With a Guy Who’s Slept With 1000 Women.’ In the video, this guy credits the skillsets he learned from The Game to his success and then proceeds to break down his sexual success in the way of statistics. You know, real wholesome mathematical shit. Now, given the Strauss wrote a book on the subject, and the book’s methods have been proven to have moderate if not incredible success, you’d think that he’d then also see the value of living in light of his written word.
Only, this isn’t the case at all. All of the following quotes come directly from The Game itself.
“There’s a downside to casual sex: Sometimes it stops being casual. People develop a desire for something more. And when one person’s expectations don’t match the other person’s, then whoever holds the highest expectations suffers. There’s no such thing as cheap sex. It always comes with a price.”
What do you suppose the desire for something more is? Just asking. Perhaps this explains why in Huxley’s world, casual sexual interactions also have to be supplemented with drugs and operant conditioning. Although, who knows? It’s only fiction.
Ultimately, Strauss concludes the book with a line I’m sure is often ignored by most of the men who read it.
“To win the game is to leave it.” You might be thinking, what a loser.
But, Strauss takes this even a step further. After cheating on someone he loved multiple times, Strauss then published a follow-up book to The Game titled The Truth. The second of this delightful series is an autobiographical account of his transformation from a free-love advocate enthralled in the thrill of fucking whoever was all about it to someone who then began to question their value.
Are we built for a life of polyamorous relationships? Or, maybe even the more important question: Are we built for a life of monogamy? For more on this, I turn to comedian, Russel Brand.
Now happily married, even Brand, once a prominent pickup artist himself, poses this. “You can spend a moment analyzing whether or not the monogamous model of partnerships between two people is in itself flawed. Certainly, it seems there is more room for latitude and variation than is currently prescribed.” He follows this up by then talking about the deep and private intimacy he shares with his wife. “My relationship with my wife, very intimate and deep. The reason I don’t cheat and have affairs is cause I’ve reached a place spiritually where I couldn’t put anything in the space between us.” He then commits specifically on connection itself. “If I felt there is no connection between us, and I’m only in this relationship for…habitual reasons, then I suppose having an affair would be less of a problem.” I find Brand’s assessment on connection deeply curious because I think it begins to signal that a valid argument is there. Commitment is worthy if a connection is there. “Some people say that animalistically, monogamy is a difficult thing for us to achieve, and perhaps that’s true. It’s not particularly common in the animal kingdom, but what in human culture is common in the animal kingdom?” Brand equates this with art, civilization, mathematics, many of the outlying factors that separate human culture from your basic ostrich or baboon, but I’ll go ahead and throw in the idea of morality itself. If assuming that morality is for the sake of self-betterment, and therefore the betterment of the entire society, is this common in the animal kingdom? “My point is that probably the reason monogamy reoccurs throughout civilization is that it's a sensible social contract and benefits people more than it impedes them. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have survived.”
The barrier that separates mere lust from love I believe is a connection, as Brand pointed to, and I don’t believe connection can be achieved without commitment simply considering the depth required to be connected. What we notice about our modern-day portals to easy lust whether it be pornography, Tinder, or even learning a system of manipulation is that they all effectively eliminate commitment to a particular person, leaving us devoid of connection. The commitment is instead put into the medium itself and the time used on it whether that be time on the porn site, on Tinder, or in the club picking up women. The harsh truth is that you have to pay for commitment in some form. What are you paying for? What is the benefit of committing to these mediums designed around lust, for while they fill a certain emptiness temporarily, the product and the actual results seem minuscule to the cost? Granted, there’s also a high price to committing to another person and forging that connection. You give yourself. But what are the benefits of doing this?
You can’t commit to something deep and meaningful without first confronting yourself. If you commit to anything true whether it be your job, your partner, or even yourself…sooner or later your flaws will come bubbling to the surface where you’ll either have to face them or turn away. And even if you turn away, that doesn’t mean those flaws magically disappear.
How can you aim to be the best version of yourself if you’re unwilling to face the weakest and worst parts of your character? How can you fix them if you simply pretend that they don’t exist?
You can pretend there isn’t a hole in your roof, but when it rains, you’ll know the hole is there and that it still needs to be fixed. And while it seems small…if you don’t fix it, it’ll take a while, but eventually, it’ll make the house unlivable.
This is the inherent value of commitment. Commitment forces you to diagnose your character. Neil Strauss, the pickup artist himself says.
“Without commitment, you cannot have depth in anything.”
T.D. Jakes says. “Without commitment, nothing happens.”
Is it a shock to anyone that after a one-night-stand, the first thing you feel is nothing? Emptiness. Is it any surprise that the characters of Huxley’s, Brave New World, live lives almost identical to the person beside them who stands for nothing, and search only for means of escape? What is that they are trying to escape from? I think it's fear. Fear of being hurt. Fear of failure. Fear of becoming less than what you could be.
“You always have two choices, your commitment versus your fear.” -Sammy Davis, Jr.
Commitment is the third of the Seven Deadly Virtues.