...grow up to make this show a hit:
I'm not much of a lover, you might note. In fact I've never been deflowered in the bathroom behind the dance floor, nor have I been sexually abused as a child. In fact, nobody I've ever met has shown much interest in touching or admiring me. I should feel so special. The end result from all this not touching has left me a little sensitive and hurt, with a low self esteem, though really I feel like sex would be all kinds of a bad idea. I often feel resentful to, and I know I shouldn't, that women complain about being horribly traumatized when they were "violated" as a young girl. I know they were yelled at and beaten and denigrated and demeaned, but it just makes me kind of envious sometimes. At least someone desired to touch them at all.
I've thought about love for quite a while. Everyone I know seems to think it's the greatest possible achievement, and while I doubt that, there are more sinister forces at work. We're currently in the backlash of the 60's movement. As Andrew Wong once said:
Ask yourself: how did the same people who gathered in naked, stoned crowds for this...The people who truly followed the 60's movement have been murdered, and the people who follow along with the crowd have been assimilated into that ideal of a corporate sitcom. It's really sad, and one of the targets of the wealthy corporates has been the concept of free love. This essay is about what they've taken from us, and what we need to take back.
...grow up to make this show a hit:
Free love. It's a word that has been used to describe promiscuity, disease, irresponsibility, whatever that means, regrets and bad choices. You can't have free love, can you? If you try, you'll end up dumped, unhappy, pregnant, and abandoned right? You'll be nothing but a dirty, nasty whore with a drug problem and a criminal record, right? But think for a moment: think how I am in these statements redefining free love in your head. Don't deny that other people making these statements are trying to do the same thing. Where do the words "promiscuity," "prostitution," "disease," and "irresponsibility" appear in the phrase "free love?" They don't, and you have to stop putting them there to discover what free love really is. You have to stop equivocating free love with something that isn't so free, and isn't love, just because people keep telling you stories to scare you away from it.
Promiscuity. Okay first off I have no moral compunction about nymphs or satyrs, or anyone who wants to have as much sex with as many partners as physically possible. I won't deny sex feels good, and at the same time I won't pretend that it's some sort divine experience that is blasphemed by having sex with someone you really don't care about. But the problem I have is how can you love someone you don't really care about? See, the kind of casual promiscuity where people have sex but don't form close friendships, that may be fine and all, but it's not love. Love I define as close friendships, plain and simple. It's a feeling you have of caring for other people, and a feeling I have for just about everyone believe it or not. When something good happens to someone you know (not at your own expense) and it makes you feel good, that feeling is love. It's fully possible to be promiscuous and love everyone, since it's not like you're going to run out of love or need to stop and fill up at the love station. It's also possible to be monogamous and "true," and not love at all: a majority of most marriages I'd say after the first few years or so. So promiscuity or not promiscuity, it really has nothing to correllate with love, and therefore has nothing to do with free love.
Prostitution. Let's say you set out to do something you enjoy. Your career is fun, and it's a pleasant occupation that while involving lots of physical labor, is very satisfying. What the holy gumball is wrong with that? Oh sure your clients are going to suck. They're the ones who aren't good enough to get sex for free, but it could be worse: you could be working in the insurance industry, or on an AOL customer support line! And occasionally you'll get someone who enjoys paying money for sex as a pastime, and a service to you, and that sounds like something truly special. Not only do I have no problem with prostitution, I think it's one of the more respectable occupations, and anyone who thinks it should be outright illegal is either deluded or cruel.
In the context of free love, prostitution suffers the problem that people keep conflating the concepts of sex and love. There is a difference between sex and love you know. While it's true that we are designed to instinctively love people we have sex with, we also have free will and those instincts aren't written in stone. Those among us willing to sell their amours for a price have to actively suppress that instinct. In other words as most prostitutes will know, the first rule is don't get attached to your clients. So prostitution, while a noble profession, is actively anti-love. And at $100 an hour or more, it sure as heck isn't free. Prostitutes restrict people's freedom to have sex with them, in order to get money for it, and I'm not sure I really agree with that, but it's not free love.
Disease. Oh disease. One would think we're all walking around with the scent of cheese and ale wafting from somewhere other than our mouth. The truth is one thing has contributed more to STDs than anything else in our society: clothing. Because of clothing we lose what little instinctive ability we had to judge the health of each other especially by genitalia. Many STDs are not overly obvious to the untrained eye, but clothing certainly doesn't help things. Now I'm going to tell you about the most terrible disease ever known to mankind.
Malaria.
That's right, something NOT transmitted sexually. The next worst from malaria is a little disease called smallpox. Both came from that livestock rich area of sub-Saharan Africa, so if you want to look for something to blame: blame cows, not sex. Far from transmitting disease, love causes us to engage in behaviors that prevent disease. You are far less likely to knowingly infect someone you love, and you are far more likely to be candid with that person. Sometimes people keep secrets because they want to mate with that person, but my definition of love is independant from lust: love is the good feeling you get when good things happen to someone else. Lust is the tingly compulsive sort of feeling you get to start you heading towards possible sex. You can lust after someone and love them, or neither, but either way love is going to save you more than it's going to ensnare you.
In my opinion the STD issue has been entangled with the promiscuity and prostitution issue far, far too much. Yes it's true that with more vectors (pathways) the disease will spread faster, farther and more effectively. But a few precautions can all but close every single one of these vectors. A regular blood test will identify many dangers including HIV. Condoms protect against many problems, and should always be used until a long term disease free track record has been established. Sores on genitals are never a good sign. In fact, healthy genitals have a very distinctive smell in humans: learn it. Gynecology exams: fun and productive! And check your sheep for scrapies before you... well you know. ^.~
Once these precautions are in place, suddenly promiscuity and prostitution actually become safer than this supposed ideal of monogamous, married love. As you may know, monogamy never worked very well for our species. Too often a partner, usually the guy, is left sexually frustrated many times. That lends to a temptation to be infidelious, and since the monogamous agreement doesn't allow responsible promiscuity, the adultery has to be kept secret. Secrets are the best vector for sexually transmitted diseases to spread.
You might notice at this point I used the words "responsible promiscuity." Crazy idea, huh? Well let's talk about responsibility. To be responsible is to be able to respond or answer for one's conduct and obligations
. Not as strong as you thought, eh? Turns out if you walk up to a debtor and say, "Hey, give me back the US$150 you borrowed!" and they laugh in your face, then perform an interpretive dance, then they are being responsible. You just don't like their response! People don't want responsibility, they want what they'd rather not call it: guilt.
They want you to feel responsible. How do you "feel" available for response? Well the answer is they want you to feel guilty. The reason for this is security. They want to feel secure that when they walk away, you're going to squirm uncomfortably, but you're not going to kiss the pretty girl making teases at you in the room. Though guilt is somewhat useful at times, and security is often a good thing, there are better ways to form a relationship than through guilt. Your "faithfulness," "reliability," "committment," are all words to express the guilt you feel preventing you from leaving the relationship.
What better ways you ask? Well first off, if your partner is only ever attracted to you that's fine, but nobody should feel bad or guilty for being attracted to another person from their chosen partner(s). The best remedy to avoid bad things from happening here is not guilt, but honesty. You should be able to tell your partner you find someone attractive, and they should be able to take that without demanding you reinforce your committment and desire towards them. Love without conditions is of course, free, and love without guilt is free. In this state of free love, often you'll find your current partner is quite good at satisfying your cravings, and who knows perhaps you two can find someone new who is equally worthwhile (and clean). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that! Well... as long as you practice birth control there isn't.
Children are often used as objects to enforce guilt. Parents must be "responsible," and it is so easy for them to be "bad parents." The reality of the situation is it takes a community to raise a child, and parents should be aware that they are often the worst possible person to be involved in that child's affairs. This heaping of guilt on the parents our society does today is horribly destructive to child development. Kids growing up with neurotic parents, and nobody else to turn to, grow up into messed up adults. To put things in stark perspective: on one hand your friends and family have an obligation to help you raise a child you make in your belly, but they also have a right to prevent you from making that child, or deciding that child's future, because you're not always going to be the only person involved.
A healthy community is going to want every woman to have two children on average, or even better the women who are better at having children can have several, and the ones with narrower hips or risks of complication can help raise them. Yes this second group includes the guys too. Does this happen? No. Should it happen? Great Boomba yes! Why doesn't it happen? Well, mostly because we've been manipulated into thinking that birth parents are the only people who have all rights and obligations over raising their child, and to break that sacred traditional family apart is some kind of horrible crime. It's all artificial though, and the guilt trip relationship that forms the modern nuclear family is a serious disease in society I think. Responsible? Sure you can be responsible and still love freely! Guilty though? Leave your guilt with your dead ancestors, and let's move on to a healthier life.
Free love is not love without costs, nor love without gains. It's love that's free. Freedom is one of the most cherished things in the world, and also the most feared. Often we want to be restricted, to be led, to be coddled. That's fine in many cases, but not in love. You want someone to tell you where you can't drive perhaps, but you don't want someone telling you where you can't love. Matchmakers are a wonderful resource who can point out the people ideal for you to form close friendships with, but once they tell you who you can't be friends with, they become nothing more than censors and fascists. On one hand if you're ignorant, or not seeing the full picture, then it's better if someone else keeps you away from danger, but on the other hand, isn't it better if that person cures your ignorance, and shows you the full picture so you can keep away from danger yourself? Never protect. Never protect, prepare.
Free love is about freedom. It's about being aware of every factor involved and seeking out the right way of life for you, with other people or not, and making the best decision without limits or guilt. It's about loving someone and feeling good about loving them, whether in a close relationship or from afar. It's about knowing people deeply and well, and being able to tell who to love and who not to love. If someone tells you, "I don't love you," and you feel no hurt, only a desire not to bother that person, that's free love. You're free to ask and they're free to turn you down, and they're free to ask and you're free to turn them down. Everyone has to do their best to stay open minded, aware, well informed, and free of shackles that exist for no purpose other than to make you into the tools of your own oppression. Smash the machine of marriage, expose the ugly truth of true love, destroy the entrapping family! Free love forever.
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