An interesting scenario...

Kynisk Sokol

Ancient Mariner
When out on a walk today, a somewhat strange concept festered its way into my mind for reasons unknown.

If hypothetically the entire human race's sexual desires were killed off somehow, would this world be a better place?

Think about it:

-Abortion would be extinct. You wouldn't have unwanted pregnancies becuase sex would be nothing more than a mundane means to pass your genes onto the next generation. Also, the search for good gene traits would rely on objectively examing genes under a microscope if people were that serious about who to have kids with, rather than going with the gut instinct of someone being 'hot' as the discriminatory factor for good health. Let's not forget people who are infected with HIV, have high cholesteral, and mental disorders don't always look ugly while there can be ugly people that are otherwise deemed healthy.

-No rape, paedophilia, child abuse, time wasted on masturbating, violent S&M that beats people to a bloody pulp, prostitution, coprophagia, bestiality, and asphyxiation (people choking themselves in order to achieve a greater orgasm, some so-called "suicides by hanging" were really this).

- Ugly people would not feel alienated or be discriminated against (there's been studies that show hot people are treated better).

- People will only like each other for their emotions or whatever that strange abstract concept is. There won't be any women crying about how some guy dumped them as soon as they let some dude into their panties and burn victims will not be judged by their looks.

- No moronic advertisments trying to use sex appeal to sell. Also, no idiot celebrities that are only famous cause they're 'hot'.

- There are no expectations. In other words, you're not setting yourself up for dissapointment because you're not missing out on orgasms. Orgasms will be history. In this hypothetical world we will have to assume knowledge of sexual pleasures never did exist or is long gone like the dinosaurs.

Outlandish? Ridiculous? Moronic? Yeah, that's me. -_-

Oh yeah, and there would be none of that pornogrind nonsense around either.
 
:bigsmile:
Better wonder why natural selection allowed sexual reproduction to be such a success in the history of life on earth...










...babes. :lol:
 
On the whole, yes - most of what you say will be eliminated. But - to view someone deemed "ugly", or just not that nice too look at (i.e. a burns victim), may still not be that pleasing, to some.

Is this driven by some sexual desire or more simply (for want of a better word) "aesthetics"? If it is not the former, we are back to square one with this scenario.
 
Of course, the world would be a better place without human emotions of any kind, but would life really be worthwhile?
 
It's interesting, as you put it, but would the world not be a better place with, say, no distinction between people?  What if there were only two kinds of people in this world; male and female, and all the males were identical and all the females were identical.  No differentiation means there can be no jealousy.  There will be no wars, and there will be no religion.  No hate...yet no love.  Peace will be eternal, because war will be unnecessary, but, as Perun said, would life be worth living?

If we get a few more replies I say we write our very own Brave New World/Logan's Run etc. :bigsmile:
 
Perun said:
Of course, the world would be a better place without human emotions of any kind, but would life really be worthwhile?
Raven said:
It's interesting, as you put it, but would the world not be a better place with, say, no distinction between people?  What if there were only two kinds of people in this world; male and female, and all the males were identical and all the females were identical.  No differentiation means there can be no jealousy.  There will be no wars, and there will be no religion.  No hate...yet no love.  Peace will be eternal, because war will be unnecessary, but, as Perun said, would life be worth living?

If we get a few more replies I say we write our very own Brave New World/Logan's Run etc. :bigsmile:

You misinterpreted what I was saying. I didn't say that we should become a grey mass of robot-like people, I was saying that the nullification of man's sexual desires would give the benefits that I already described. I didn't say anything about removing man's emotional capability. Speaking of Brave New World, I haven't gotten around to reading it, but I really should, although I did anticipate that there would be a comparison.
 
Black Dragon said:
You misinterpreted what I was saying. I didn't say that we should become a grey mass of robot-like people, I was saying that the nullification of man's sexual desires would give the benefits that I already described. I didn't say anything about removing man's emotional capability. Speaking of Brave New World, I haven't gotten around to reading it, but I really should, although I did anticipate that there would be a comparison.

I don't think I made myself clear.  I was making the point that if you could, hypothetically, remove some part of man's emotions, it would do much more good to remove the whole lot.  Even without sex, there would still be a hell of a lot of misery, but by removing all distinctions between people, no-one would have the need or gain for violence, hate etc.  It's the basic principle of many dystopian sci-fi stories, I believe.
 
Conor said:
We all know who isn't "getting some" at the moment ;)

Zero points for originality, kid. Anyways, there are some interesting concepts to be discussed here, but there's no need to turn this thread into an outlet for you to exert your "manhood". If you haven't got anything useful to add, then keep your mouth firmly puckered on your mother's tit where it belongs.
 
Conor, if you're going to dish out, you'll have to swallow the echo as well.
 
Conor said:
I agree Perun but at the same time, Black Dragon can't resort to his elitist "you're a kid and don't know anything" -can't-take-a-joke- trick any time somebody challenges him.

Look, if you come on to a serious thread that someone else has started to try and get some proper discussion and start making wise-ass comments (notice that JacKnife's was a general joke, yours was directed at Blackie), you have to expect some flak.
 
Seriously,
I believe that it's very difficult to guess what the world would be if there wasn't sexual interactions between us (I mean, us, humans...). Our species evolved in a strict context of sexual selection, which means males fighting or at least competing for females. One consequence is sexual dimorphism which has been decreasing while early humans have been evolving and which is now very slight. In other words, sex is the main driving force in terms of evolution. It also has led to social consequences in term of society structure and the way the work was shared in early humans society (with consequences in our present society). I don't mean the relationships between women and men are fair todays nor it was the case in the past. I just believe it's the logical consequence of the natural evolution of our species. This being said, it's nearly time that women are treated fairly in modern human society. :halo:
And, perhaps more important: what would the art be without sex? There wouldn't be a lot or rock'n'roll band aorund would it? Think about David Corverdale's lyrics without sex? Whitesnake would certainly play mostly instrumentals which would be a very good news :lol:
 
From the point of view of the human race, I think that over the years the lack of an orgasm would have serious implications on the size of the population.  Over the millions of years that have passed since the first "humans", the growth in population has been quite small up until the 20th century, and has exploded since then (due to medecine, industry, food etc).  If the pre-historic man/ape had not been able to have pleasure during sex, he would probably not have passed on his genes and the human race would have died out.

If all of a sudden the orgasm was eradicated, the human population probably would sustain itself and society would feel the benefits of no rape, deviance, "ugly discrimination" but this is merely speculaiton.  Without the orgasm, people would seek an alternative, like drugs and alcohol.  One way or the other, the human race isn't goiong to be around forever and it's just a matter of time.
 
OK, some random thoughts on all the above...

1. Rape would not be eliminated, only reduced. Rape is (for the rapist) usually about power and violence, not sex.

2. How do you propose to remove the sex drive and still allow sex for procreation? The two cannot be separated. The sex drive evolved precisely in order to get us to procreate.

3. Assuming you could get around my second point, there's no reason to think that the population of the world (especially the third world) would stop booming. In primarily agricultural societies, people breed in order to get more help on the farm. That was true in old Europe, and was true in the US through the first world war. Those societies (like the US and much of Europe) which are now primarily post-industrial have already levelled off their growth, because a man no longer needs 8 kids to help with the harvest.

4. The idea of "removing all emotions" is completely impossible. Most (if not all) are based on survival needs. Consider fear: it serves the purpose of keeping us away from dangerous things. Anger is what gets us to fight back when threatened or hurt. Love for children helps our offspring survive.

In fact, it may be time to repeat an idea which I once posted somewhere in the Commentary forums. All instincts lead to emotions, but that does not mean that our emotions are in tune with our instincts. While a certain level of emotion is necessary for survival, most people have excesses of these emotions. Consider envy. The purpose of "keeping up with the Joneses", from an instinctual point of view, is to make sure that you don't fall so far behind in the quest for resources that you get eliminated from the quest for procreation. But how many modern people stop there? I don't need a 40-inch plasma TV to survive, but I'm sure envious of anyone who's got one.

The measure of a person's moral defects is the extent to which their emotions exceed their natural purpose.
 
Random thoughts:

1.  I have viewed on a Discovery channel or some such show that one of the reasons the stegosaurus has died off is because its protective spikes and plates were placed inconveniently thus turning love-making into a painful chore instead of a fun, athletic activity that it is.  Poor dinos; even if the big bad ecological disaster did not occur, its future looked bleak.  Biologically speaking, like Jackknife and Conor have stated, sexual pleasure is needed for procreation.

2.  I'm glad Brave New World was mentioned.  A branch of hedonist philosophers believe that we must cut ties with our evolutionary past with pharmaceuticals much like the novel, which they blame for arousing fear among the general populace concerning designer drugs and other mind-altering substances and forestalling the inevitable change into the next, self-guided step in human evolution.

http://www.paradise-engineering.com/hedab.htm

This bit is from their introduction.  Some of it makes sense; some is written in a self-indulgent verbosity that requires frequent re-reading and basically makes my head hurt.  :D

"This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Nanotechnology and genetic-engineering allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Post-humans will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world."

Lofty dreams, wouldn't you say?  Chapter 4.2 deals with Blackie's question.  At least, that's how I understood it.
 
If you're familiar with Freud (and I'm digging into 10-year old memories here :bigsmile:), I seem to recall that he meant that humans have two major drives that control us - eros and something I can't remember now, but sex drive and death drive. Both these drives are what motivates us in many different ways, not only for procreation or killing. For example, some people have extremely successful careers and speaking with Freud, that's the sex drive, subliminated into the hunt for a career. the death drive is also a very strong motivating factor in human lives. If we remove the sexual drives from humans, maybe the urge to conquer new domains will be removed too? Scientific discoveries that aid mankind would perhaps never be researched. We can't un-discover things but the drive to seek new truths/explanations/medicines might disappear together with our sex drives. That's why I really don't think Blackie's idea would be the end of all bad things. But interesting idea all the same.

I also agree with SMX on the issue of rape - very few rapes are about sex, otherwise chemicals would be used as a medicine on rapists everywhere. There have been tries in Denmark, I believe, with chemical castrations and though rapes were reduced, the effects weren't enough to warrant general use. Also, some rapists who can't function (i.e get it up) end up using bottles, sticks, tools or anything they can find in order to hurt as much as possible (or whatever their reasons may be).
 
Possibly the horniest little bugger around -- the Bonobo chimp -- uses sex drive to prevent violence.  I'm not suggesting we start incenstual relationships with our (blood) relatives, but clearly if a mammal from our evolutionary past can be non-violent, the tendency for human cruelty must be a result of something other than our libido.

"[Common] Chimpanzees and Bonobos both evolved from the same ancestor that gave rise to humans, and yet the Bonobo is one of the most peaceful, unaggressive species of mammals living on the earth today. They have evolved ways to reduce violence that permeate their entire society. They show us that the evolutionary dance of violence is not inexorable"

(From Wiki).

Besides, for males, at least, asking them to give up their sex drive is like asking them to give up their...  :D
 
Anomica said:
I seem to recall that he meant that humans have two major drives that control us - eros and something I can't remember now, but sex drive and death drive.

That's Eros and Thanatos (though I think Freud never used the word Thanathos himself but it was used in post-freudian theories)
 
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