sex is what makes us, what breaks us and what no longer explains everything. We have recently emerged from a most dismal century. Intellectually, it was nearly consumed by the ideology of one Sigmund Freud. Freud was a genius who spawned a cult of great influence and wealth. He taught that sex explains everything and that years of analysis can create mental health.

Most of the psychology became prey to the very premises that produced the heights of the Freudian era.

But still...

The result of the virtual eclipse of Freud in our time is that we no longer believe sex explains everything.

But we should think again. We are produced and quite literally delivered by sex, the simple and miraculous-seeming act of impregnation, pregnancy, and birth.

Also in a broken world, sex still breaks us in a hundred ways.

Mindless

When it comes to sex, mindlessness seems rife today at almost every point. Excitation is built into existence. Noise is endemic as a background. Conversation is virtually impossible. Casino culture rules even where there is no gambling.

Mixed results

Sex seems to lead to everything from the greatest of harms to the most divine of experiences. As an aspect of love, mindless sex seems on the rise. Mindlessness and sexual preoccupation are like a horse and carriage. The only question is which one the horse may be.

As Freud receded, AIDS and STDs have risen up, as if to say we need a deeper answer.

Not so simple

When I was a boy in the 1940s, the facts of life were made available in a thin and recondite book. It simply presaged an awkward first time coupling and marriage and children as a logical result.

Today, one look at “Shameless” gives you the frenetic direction of change, brokenness, and loss of past.

One episode of “Shameless” is good preparation for the tenuous real world that seems to be unfolding.

Confusion reigns

Politics, culture, and the future reel with waves of feeling and response. Brokenness spreads past imagining.

The eclipse of Freud was met with the rise of pharma-therapy. Welcome opioid Epidemic! Greed and capitalism are in bed with our most private urges. For many, the result is a sterile yet ugly amalgamation of suffering and pain.

We have unrelenting growth of sexually transmitted disease to give us pause.

The future of love

The mindlessness that seduced smart people to love the bomb might play similar tricks when it comes to increasing love as a means of averting nuclear winter. If we are to bring on love, we should see other values as even more crucial than reproduction. Consideration and mindfulness would be good starting points.
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