The posts on this website (after 04/04/24) Category Organization
I think it makes sense to post two separate types of Blog Commentaries. One for my political and philosophical ideas and a second as a sort of present and past dairy recording and reflecting upon actual events of my life. This idea has been gestating far too long and understating it, initiating them is overdue.
Part of my “problem” is that I am always busy, simply living a full life. That includes all the routines of looking after one’s self – as well as now sharing my life with my much younger partner. At my age the momentum of one’s lifespan clock is ever more obvious. So one must speak, tell the stories. As well as articulating my thoughts on the issues important to me, especially on sexuality and environmental degradation. There will be no particular order to these writings. Mood memories and the complexity of my subjects play into decisions about posting. Hopefully I won‘t succumb to the ever present pressures of self-censorship in this strange world where some subjects have opened up for discussion while with others taboos have expanded their power. And hopefully a few people out there will read and find value in what I have to say.
Post One: My general overview of human sexuality.
First it seems clear that while a few avenues have opened up for discussion, more have actually shut tightly down. Gay men seem less open than ever to share their thoughts about desire and experience in an explicit way. Not that we have ever been particularly open even with lovers and close friends. For example, during the peak years of the AIDS epidemic (mid-1980‘s – thru the early 2000s) so many people I thought I knew and understood in matters of how they conducted their sex lives, contracted the syndrome while I did not, even though my sex-life was about as active as it was in the 1970‘s.*
Around 1985 the Conservative government of Canada under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney decided to try and put a stop to the momentum of the gay movement by introducing an internal Memorandum that basically encouraged Canada Customs agents to prevent gay & lesbian literature from entering the country. At the time almost all gay literature was published abroad, mostly in the USA but also in Britain, Germany and France. The idea was to attempt to declare any title that discussed homosexual sex as “obscene”. By doing so they hoped to put gay bookstores out of business. Not insignificantly one of the first books to be banned was “The Joy of Gay Sex”. The first edition was co-authored by Dr. Charles Silverstein and Edmund White. The book had been available for eight years and had been sold by most Canadian bookstores. Because “JOGS” was the first and then only mainstream publication to discuss gay male sexuality in an open and positive way, Glad Day Bookshop Toronto decided to challenge the censorship and take the government to court. While our 1987 trial was successful in challenging the ban, the first edition was already out-of-print. A second and third editions, co-authored by Silverstein and Felice Picano were published in 1993 and 2006 respectively.
With the post-AIDS epidemic surge toward assimilationism, gay men seem even more hesitant dare to speak and write openly about the joys of cocksucking or ass fucking.
Another indicator about how powerful censorship is on the subject of human sexuality is the entire subject of children‘s sexuality. An absurd myth about preserving „innocence“ – which itself exposes how negative and guilt ridden the subject of sex is in so many societies. During my own final years as a bookseller, I recall a book of sex research documents on children’s sexuality (published by Little Brown) being recalled and removed from circulation.
I have often wondered whether the Greeks and Roman wrote more than the few references that have managed to survive. Again, I mean explicit descriptive writings as well as more philosophical texts. The Muslims and Christians both may well have destroyed numerous works while they were busy preserving others. Considering the range of topics covered especially by Greek writers, it seems odd that they could have overlooked sexual love. After all, I do not think the taboos ingrained in Ibrahimic religious dogma plagued either Greek or Roman civilizations.
Anyhow, as a primate with 97% of my genes shared by the Genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos), I choose to identify with the peace-loving, sexually open and uninhibited apes on the north side of the Congo River. They are also considered to be slightly more intelligent than their much more carnivorous, war-like cousins. We will never know the answers to many questions around the evolution of Homo sapiens so my choice is more political than scientific, yet somewhat consistent with the habits and behaviour of this lesser known ape. Again, an important reason why Bonobos are lesser known is because most zoos would never include these sex loving creatures lest children observe their love making.
Continued on May 3, 2024
It seems that with the technological developments of the last 20 years, Generation Z (1995-2012), the Polars (2013 – Present), and a good share of the generations going back to my own (the Baby Boomers) have lost or never had any serious respect for actual science, including the science behind all the technology that dominates their daily lives and perceptions of reality. Again, it shows how easily sapiens is manipulated by whatever forces are loudest and repeating whatever their ‘message’ is, ad infinitum. Sapiens seems determined not to actually learn to think critically and slides easily into religion and irrational social/ scientific/political interpretations of almost everything. The list seems all encompassing: – the endless, ever increasing manipulations of consumerism, the blatant destruction of our natural world, disease phenomena such as epidemics & pandemics, the biological basis of gender. In societies outside those with some claim to “democracy”, reality is dictated by the state. And even some of those states undermine whatever meaning the word has and call themselves the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As a result recent film helped millions of viewers to understand, science made the horror of a nuclear bomb possible. And although it brought an end to the Japanese initiated conflict of WW2, it very significantly raised the bar of human self-destruction. In the years that followed, scientific research proceeded to improve the lives of the citizens of the country where these advances were made, ultimately enhancing the so-called superpower status of the United States. The list of inventions and discoveries from the late 1940’s through the moon landing of 1969 is indeed impressive.
Most began in a laboratory and of course took a years before the results reached commercial status or publication. Advances like the first commercial television broadcast (1951), the impact of Jonas Salk’s vaccine in pretty well eradicating polio (1955), publication of the studies (1948 and 1953) of American sexual behaviour by Alfred Kinsey, the 1953 announcement of irrefutable scientific proof that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”(1962) revealed the extreme toxicity of DDT and other chemicals foisted on the public to deal with “pests” but which are deadly to man, to bird life, and almost all living creatures. And finally, that era’s pinnacle moment of scientific achievement: the 1969 American landing on the moon. These clearly scientific events made nearly all Americans stand back in awe of how science can move our world forward. The focus was at the root, and the root was science.
So the question is, why did this focus and respect fade away in the consciousness of a large percentage of the population? While I cannot claim to grasp every facet of this phenomena but I can suggest a few possible reasons.
One may have its origins in the way the tobacco industry responded to the threat to their profits from the enormous hold on the public when the scientific truth about the link to ling cancer hit the media. The tobacco industry literally created an army of unethical fake “scientists” to counter the tested and retested findings. And in turn they developed media outlets to promote their lies. Considering how pervasive cigarette smoking was, and how seriously addictive smoking is, whatever fortunes were spent creating “fake” science and media, it no doubt was a drop in the bucket.
Fortunately the truth about the deadly connection between smoking and cancer succeeded in dominating the narrative. But sadly so many people from each subsequent generation have chosen to ignore the blatant warnings printed on each package. And they take up the habit, thinking it makes them “cool” ( a word I have always despised) and that somehow, they will not be among the unlucky ones.
What this particular consumer product drama initiated, the creation of a monstrous strategy by the most powerful corporations dedicated to doing everything possible to hide the truth of the dangers and deficiencies of whatever they are foisting on the public, has become pretty standard practice. Yes, environmental & consumer laws were enacted because of activists like Ralph Nader and groups like Greenpeace. But they are few and lack the monetary and political support needed to push back against multi-national corporations.
Even if a few more advanced “democratic” countries enact laws aimed at protecting nature and their citizens, these corporations simply push their lies and products in countries where there are few, if any regulations. For example, if a particular herbicide or insecticide is declared carcinogenic in countries of the “developed world” the corporations take their poisons and sell them in countries where awareness and education are so low that they scoop up the deadly chemicals and even think they have some miraculous quality to assure that their produce will thrive. For example, sadly I have seen poor farmers in Morocco totally engulfed in some powder they are spraying over their fields. It may well kill the particular bugs eating their plants, but it will also kill every other insect (especially the pollinators) and over time, the farmer himself.
With globalization everything has changed, in my opinion, mostly for the worse. These global corporations have the power to play their games in each and every country without regard to anything other than profit which in most cases are not exactly shared in an equitable manner with the people doing the actual work. An army of lobbyists is ready to set the stage and buy off the officials. And so, it seems that technology (based upon certain scientific breakthroughs) took a leap frog forward, leaving science as the nebulous hinter-ground that gave birth to technology.
* My own survival has had a lot to do with how science informs me about pretty much everything in life, however in this case reinforced by considerable experience. I experimented several times getting fucked with different partners over the years but never experienced the pleasure the majority of males seem to get from it. Plus I have never been particularly motivated to engage in the opposite role. So the possibility of infection was extremely low, if at all.