So, I am reading this book about Buddhism, which I will fail to mention, and he goes on about how digital pornography (in which he really is referring to any nudity) could make the world a better place. It made more sense to me than it may have to you as you read it, because he worked to this point. However reading it still came as a bit of a surprise to me. So here's my little story about it I guess, since I haven't blogged in ages (except for a few posts on SG, which I will transfer this to as soon as I leave the country so afraid of me looking at some nekkid girls in the confines of my small dusty room).

I refuse at this point to call myself Buddhist, but I am thinking about giving it a whirl (as terrible as I could see that sounding, I don't think I care. I would much rather "test drive" some things that might become important in my life that hold them so holy as to only grasp towards them when I know I should, which by the way would be never). Any which way, I like reading books about it (and Taoism, I might add), so I was reading this book. It was briefly mentioned as to maybe why we prize covering our naughty bits so highly (I am no animal behavior specialist so I had to assume he knew what he was talking about here) is because in nature animals show their fabulous (or not so fabulous) prizes to initiate sex or war. Well, he is right about one thing, unless you have some issues going on, walking up right makes it hard to hide your bits and pieces even if you don't shave.

So we cover up, why would seeing a bunch of naked people help? Well, not going into the Buddhist philosophy that are then quoted and explained in the book, I will tell you what cultivated in my brain (which happen to be quite similar any way, but only similar). First, let's say we did hide them for the above reasons, the story begins. Then we go through a lot of time where education wasn't so great (death before defiling the good word!) so we needed reasons to tell people to cover up. The reasons we got? Well because we are impure and evil, and our naughty parts show our impurity but are necessary for baby making so for baby making they can be used but pretty much nothing else. So if it's ok for baby making then it's ok for your spouse to see them, back in the day it seemed like you were supposed to get too excited about this though (besides, people were gross and smelly until monks invented mirrors mind you).

But then mirrors did come, and suddenly you were looking at this man/woman who took care of themselves, and your hormones began to rage. If it weren't for hormones and sensitive parts, what point would there be to have sex, and thus create babies? Well I guess the making babies part, but more often the first two lead to the baby making, not the desire to have them (although that does happen, and for psychological reasons that could easily be linked to the evolution of man, which in part has to do with hormones and sensitive parts). So now, people were thinking these impure thoughts, as wonderful scents, beautiful faces, and (and probably most importantly) the fact that what they were thinking was impure.

Of course you can't think impure thoughts if what you are thinking about is pure (well maybe you can, but let's not think to hard, I am a bit tired). The more we hide our selves from something, the harder we find it to hide. Sure you can think about Hillary Clinton to stop thinking about what you would do to the hot waitress, but after a while Hillary won't distract you. But, you think to yourself, I don't distract my thoughts, I go on with them and tell my buddies. Well yes, this is true now, but if you noticed we are progressing through time, so please hold on.

So any way, people start to rebel, at first secretly but then it becomes more and more obvious we like sex and want more of it. We continue to reshape rules to go "Ok ok, yes sex is ok, but only for making babies"... then "Ok ok, sex without babies is ok, but please just with your one partner, oh and ONLY with the opposite sex". Now we are getting to the point where popular magazines are saying "Go nuts! It's more experience and you will feel better (just stay clean!)" (again, not quoting reading material, go learn for yourself).

So we have these rules now. Sex is more open, but still something to keep to a limited amount of eyes, but let's face it, we all end up seeing it. Some sooner than others. I would estimate this day and age no matter how hard you try kids see sex at a very young age. Where as some parents would blame the media and want stricter control or something I think almost stupid, I think it's stupid because those kids dug under their parents' bed and found some nudy mags thats they looked out, turned red, maybe giggled, but thought about once they got old enough. Most of them probably stole an issue or two and hid it some where safe, or showed their friends or something. Besides that, parents have sex, and almost always kids end up figuring that out.

But what is the response to all this? Freaking out, hiding it, sometimes even punishing the children for the parent's poor attempt at hiding. What does this do? Makes sex and nudity that much more exciting. Think about when you had your first bit of alcohol that you had. Even if you were still a "kid" and your parents let you try it as a joke, or just to let you know, no matter how gross it was you still thought it was pretty cool, because it was against the rules. So the first time you had sex was this crazy little adventure. Some people are possibly so afraid of their deity that it is a bit of a nervous encounter (and a life lived in fear is no life at all, in my book), for the rest of us it was going to be this awesome forbidden fruit.

But who switched our awesome forbidden fruit with boring old apples? Sure it doesn't feel all THAT boring, but it's not as exciting as you anticipated, but at the same time you tell yourself it is. Now what the hell does that mean? Well it's easy. Not only was it super awesome, but at the same time, you think you missed the secret. These 2 things can equal a total abuse of this new power you found. Most of us turn out relatively normal, but sometimes it takes a while to end up normal. A lot of us will have lots of sex, if you are lucky all of it will rate between 6-8.5 on a scale of 1-10 though, so many of us go on the search for that 10. Maybe her boobs are too big or aren't shaped right. Maybe his penis is too small or he is too chubby. We find ourselves searching for this greener grass that does, and yet does not exist. Sure, our partner might not be porn star quality, but if we ended up with the porn star we want we would probably be just as unsatisfied as we are now eventually. Eventually we get bored of the hunt and settle down, in a manner of speaking. And we enjoy what we have, which is a very good thing to do, since we have it.

But all that is if you are lucky, as this secret mystery of sex stuff is what breeds our sex offenders. Sex is so great and secret that they must have it, but it is so impure and distant that they don't see it like everyone else does (impure and distant at least, if you are some how already weird it distances you further and makes you think you are missing out on life itself I would assume). So they go about it all wrong, they hide in a dark corner and watch porno after porno, they go to clubs and sit off in the distance watching women (or men) and how they move and how great it must be to have sex with them. This breeds and cultivates until the day they think they can get away with rape/molestation.

So, my point is we are sex freaks, and a little bit due to nature but more so due to our own fear of our issue. This is how I think about it personally, there are things it's easy to prove we need, if we don't eat or drink for a while we up and die and it's easy to point the finger. However, I have watched studies on baby animals having to do with a mother's love. 3 babies, one by itself, given milk from a bottle, one with a large stuffed version of what it's mother would look like with the bottle implanted as a fake nipple, and a baby with it's natural mother. Each offspring did worse than the next, showing there was some kind of connection with a willingness to live and love.

Obviously we need to procreate to continue to exist as a species, but maybe it's something more. Masturbation is natural through mammals, and in the Bonobo monkeys they even have mutual masturbation (or bisexual love, depending on how you look at it). So maybe deep down part of us needs sex, or it wouldn't be held so high, even if a bit secretive. However, it could do to not be something seen as so impure, and maybe it could seem a bit more natural, and we would all be a bit happier (hey, we are getting laid right?) and a bit safer (because we don't need to go around screwing anything that moves to see if it's going to be what we are missing, which could lower disease rates as well as sexual crimes).

Then again maybe it will just make things worse, but I have the feeling it won't. I just don't know how long before it will get better, as usually each change has to come with a bit of uneasiness.