I must admit that I have never been much of a fan of the “battle” model of heterosexuality. Conventionally, sex in this model happens after the man has won, and I quite like sex but I’ve never been especially fond of pretending to lose. Not that I have to worry about any of this in the private sub-society of my marriage, mind you, but it was a source of some frustration back when I was single.
I am told that Nabokov always insisted that his butterflies were just butterflies. He was an entomologist, as you may know. Mind you, I’m inclined to interpret this as saying that they were, to him, “butterflies” as he understood them—with sufficient complexity that they could not be reduced to simple symbolism. More like a rich signifier than a non-signifier.
My own thesis was on water, and when it shows up in my writing it means something, but a big part of what it means might indeed be well described, in a sense, as “water.”
Note that the image is of a mock battle between swans who are physically much less sexually dimorphic than humans. So it’s not a matter of the male vanquishing the female, but of two individuals asserting their independence and then freely giving in. But I agree that the domination model of sex has become too, well, dominant.
Mary Midgley quotes Eibl-Eibesfeldt on the evolution of social instincts: “While there is no friendship without aggression, there is also, with few exceptions, no friendship without parental care.... Love is not primarily a child of aggression, but has arisen with the evolution of parental care.... Among the animals that do not look after their young, we know of no group defence and no fighting partnerships.... Brood care, on the other hand, calls very early for individual partnerships and individualized cherishing of the young, and thereby offers the necessary basis for a differentiated social life.... Aggression plays only a secondary role in strengthening a bond.... The sexual drive, on the other hand, is extremely rarely used as a means of cohesion, although in the case of human beings it plays an important role in this respect.... The roots of love are not in sexuality, although love makes use of it for the secondary strengthening of the bond.”
And I didn’t mean to imply that Nabokov’s interest in butterflies was purely symbolic. I was primarily thinking of a pseudonymous writer of comic fiction admitting to taking up birdwatching as a respite from his “sex and love addiction”.
As a small child I wasn’t particularly interested in either trucks and guns or dolls and Barbies, but I loved stuffed animals and little animal figurines. It is a developing thesis of mine that modern life unduly emphasises questions of sex and gender to the exclusion of other forms of curiosity
But he said neurosis. I will watch it again because even quaker church is time expensive and i might have to start stealing to live. You would have to write the Religion is the slow hallucination movement. That is how it is for me I doodle my freest like Dali's notebook sketches if you have seen those, during quiet meeting. I cannot generalize my experience to the rest... honestly you really think OCD sufferers might be having twisted visions to behave in that way? You could be right. I am asking folks How craaazy are you? Electriclightorchestra things are nuts.
I would no end of enjoy to hear you give a dry and a rye chorus to some extended sequel to 'and did the savior's feet in ancient timed?' where some moonlighting songster had listed 6 or more sacred Pendle Hills or Knotting hIll and you just rhymed like an eleven year old about the stale oil behind the fish shops. At the same time you and Robert Sapolsky are likely right that religious devotion is devotion that has nowhere to go. Hormones all the way down he has said, just last year. Us religious failed in four thousand years to invent human rights, that is a quantity of the facts. At the same time, while you were chroussing to the tune of 'and the pail came tumbling after' i wld be planning to visit Salisbury hill by night.
I like the idea of religion as organised schizophrenia… which suggests that secular modernity could be termed disorganised schizophrenia. Let’s see how long that lasts!
I must admit that I have never been much of a fan of the “battle” model of heterosexuality. Conventionally, sex in this model happens after the man has won, and I quite like sex but I’ve never been especially fond of pretending to lose. Not that I have to worry about any of this in the private sub-society of my marriage, mind you, but it was a source of some frustration back when I was single.
I am told that Nabokov always insisted that his butterflies were just butterflies. He was an entomologist, as you may know. Mind you, I’m inclined to interpret this as saying that they were, to him, “butterflies” as he understood them—with sufficient complexity that they could not be reduced to simple symbolism. More like a rich signifier than a non-signifier.
My own thesis was on water, and when it shows up in my writing it means something, but a big part of what it means might indeed be well described, in a sense, as “water.”
Thanks for reading!
Note that the image is of a mock battle between swans who are physically much less sexually dimorphic than humans. So it’s not a matter of the male vanquishing the female, but of two individuals asserting their independence and then freely giving in. But I agree that the domination model of sex has become too, well, dominant.
Mary Midgley quotes Eibl-Eibesfeldt on the evolution of social instincts: “While there is no friendship without aggression, there is also, with few exceptions, no friendship without parental care.... Love is not primarily a child of aggression, but has arisen with the evolution of parental care.... Among the animals that do not look after their young, we know of no group defence and no fighting partnerships.... Brood care, on the other hand, calls very early for individual partnerships and individualized cherishing of the young, and thereby offers the necessary basis for a differentiated social life.... Aggression plays only a secondary role in strengthening a bond.... The sexual drive, on the other hand, is extremely rarely used as a means of cohesion, although in the case of human beings it plays an important role in this respect.... The roots of love are not in sexuality, although love makes use of it for the secondary strengthening of the bond.”
And I didn’t mean to imply that Nabokov’s interest in butterflies was purely symbolic. I was primarily thinking of a pseudonymous writer of comic fiction admitting to taking up birdwatching as a respite from his “sex and love addiction”.
As a small child I wasn’t particularly interested in either trucks and guns or dolls and Barbies, but I loved stuffed animals and little animal figurines. It is a developing thesis of mine that modern life unduly emphasises questions of sex and gender to the exclusion of other forms of curiosity
But he said neurosis. I will watch it again because even quaker church is time expensive and i might have to start stealing to live. You would have to write the Religion is the slow hallucination movement. That is how it is for me I doodle my freest like Dali's notebook sketches if you have seen those, during quiet meeting. I cannot generalize my experience to the rest... honestly you really think OCD sufferers might be having twisted visions to behave in that way? You could be right. I am asking folks How craaazy are you? Electriclightorchestra things are nuts.
The claim is that the visionaries who start religions are probably shizotypal, producing a way of soothing their followers’ neuroses
I would no end of enjoy to hear you give a dry and a rye chorus to some extended sequel to 'and did the savior's feet in ancient timed?' where some moonlighting songster had listed 6 or more sacred Pendle Hills or Knotting hIll and you just rhymed like an eleven year old about the stale oil behind the fish shops. At the same time you and Robert Sapolsky are likely right that religious devotion is devotion that has nowhere to go. Hormones all the way down he has said, just last year. Us religious failed in four thousand years to invent human rights, that is a quantity of the facts. At the same time, while you were chroussing to the tune of 'and the pail came tumbling after' i wld be planning to visit Salisbury hill by night.
Thank you! On your prompting I checked out this Sapolsky lecture: https://youtu.be/40rs3dekKto?si=o4u3T_E0yzh464kz
I like the idea of religion as organised schizophrenia… which suggests that secular modernity could be termed disorganised schizophrenia. Let’s see how long that lasts!