Sex Discipline

Welcome back, dear readers. This year, I will continue to prattle on about life, sex, the universe and those peculiar and unique creatures we call human beings.

The other day I made a curious sociological discovery. I was sitting around with some friends and, naturally, the conversation turned to sex. I casually mentioned that I hadn’t had any in almost six months. You could have heard a pin drop! The expressions on the faces of the people around me are the expressions you would expect to see if a guest relieved himself in the living room. Then they all began talking at once. Basically the gist of it was that they could not even imagine going half a week without sex. One of them thought it should be a management issue for my company because he was worried about my productivity. He was only half-joking.

This is what I found so amusing. You see, in the wider world, there have been many, many studies on sex and productivity. They generally agree that a person is more productive if he or she channels his sexual energy into his work rather than into actual sex.

In fact, the rich and successful countries have largely founded their success on sexual abstinence. Don’t be fooled by appearances – places like the United States of America are actually very prudish and sex-avoidant. A small, but extremely visible, minority of Americans rebel against the norm and give us Las Vegas, New York and California – but the vast majority of Americans find these places distasteful at best and corrupt and sinful at worst.

These societies actually founded their military and economic successes on the theory that sexual repression makes one more focused, productive and aggressive. The political products of this thinking go back at least two thousand years, to Augustus Caesar, the man who gave the Roman Empire a thousand-year life extension. Some early Christians of the period also began to extol abstinence because they thought it would conserve more energy for worship and contemplation.

Generally, the more organised a society becomes, the more restrictions are put on sexual practices. Partly this is to increase productivity but mostly it is to cut down on conflict. We cannot divorce the emotional element from sex. Indiscriminate, profligate sex results in fights – between lovers, rivals, and anyone else who thinks they may have a stake in a relationship. Exercising discipline over sexual practices prevents misunderstandings, infidelity and other sources of conflict. These conflicts are often so passionate that they become fatal. The connection between the sexual drive and the impulse to violence has been well-documented over the last hundred years.

This phenomenon is freely available to observe in our own society. Even our judges and magistrates have commented on how many women are dying at the hands of their loved ones.

So my friends’ attitude; that sex is best enjoyed as a free-for-all buffet, worried me immensely. If everyone is messing around, then no wonder we don’t have the time to build a society or country that will last. It’s not only the waste of time that’s distressing, but the waste of goals. If the point of life is to get laid with as many people as one can possibly fit into a lifetime, then obviously other goals, like careers and children and social obligations, receive a lower priority, or fall by the wayside altogether.

Now, I would be the first to agree that total abstinence is not good for a human’s mental health. It is just as bad as total sexual saturation. However, one tends to have the time to get things done. The secret, as the ancient Greeks would always say, is moderation. Depending on one’s tastes, a couple of times a week should be enough.

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