Thursday 9 September 2004

Pic of the day: People from outer space seem to have a much more straightforward approach, judging from this screenshot from the anime DearS. But for us earthlings it can get pretty complicated and difficult to talk about.

Unhappiness & sex

Most people think they know what makes them happy or unhappy. And for the most part they are right. So I will only target what I see as common myth-concepts. And I hope to make it as obvious to you as it is to me, although I know that's unlikely.

Whether you think humans were created somehow or just evolved randomly, it makes sense that we are adapted to a certain lifestyle. Not as detailed as eating with fork instead of chopsticks, but certain actions are obviously part of our "operating system", like eating and drinking and running and jumping and having sex. This doesn't mean that humans know instinctively how to make love; even great apes don't copulate when raised in isolation (although they tend to discover masturbation at some point). But when we see people having sex, we kinda recognize it, and once introduced to it we tend to like it pretty quickly (unless the introduction was really unpleasant).

It is obvious then that not having sex makes people unhappy, or at least less happy than they could have been. While not nearly as acute a need as water or food, it still makes a difference, especially after one gets used to it. So far so good.

***

It follows logically that if a little sex makes you happy, then lots of sex will make you deliriously blissful. Alas, the logic is flawed. We are calibrated for a certain level of food, water, and sex. If you eat too much, you grow fat and experience discomfort. Sex is also best within limits, but these vary from person to person. (And over the course of one's life, but you probably noticed already.)

More and more basic needs can be filled easily with the help of machines. In much of the world food is plentiful and shelter is evolved into a complete habitat. There is barely any experience of hunger, thirst or cold anymore, and so people are more motivated to think of sex. In the harsh times when our species was younger, these things were balanced against each other. Now food production is automated, but sex is not. Well, assembly line sex hasn't caught on, anyway.

I won't argue that humans are monogamous by instinct. There are such animals, mostly birds but also a few species of mammals, and we're not like them. However there is good reason to believe that we are inclined toward oligogamy (or some call it just oligamy), a limited polygamy with only a few partners. Sexual encounters outside this limited range can still be great fun, but they lack an important emotional component. As with food (or air, for that matter), quality and quantity diverge when quantity moves away from zero. That is to say, unless you are starving more is not necessarily better.

***

It is possible that people may have too much sex even with one partner, but this is less likely as long as both want it. (Usually people reach some kind of compromise on this.) Studies of stone-age people indicate that they have plenty of time for sex, even after gathering food and building shelter. But accounts of tribes where promiscuity is the rule have been exposed as jokes played on the gullible anthropologists. It seems that fairly long-term sexual relationships have been the rule throughout our species' history. This is almost certainly genetically based, since so many other things vary randomly.

And again, there is the simple observation that people who "sleep around", who have many sex partners, tend to be unhappy and prone to drug abuse and suicide. There may be more fundamental causes for all of these things, with promiscuity being a symptom rather than a cause. But I still caution you to not try this at home.

Of course, having no sex life at all isn't exactly anything to write home about either, but you already knew that. (And at least it leaves some more time to play City of Heroes...)