Regret And Man's Natural Impulses

Why Are We Here?
Man has for quite a few years now, pondered over our existence –

What are we?
How did we get here?
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
Are we alone as intelligent beings in the universe?
What is our purpose here?
and what is it about Johnny Depp?

"What about Johnny Depp?" I hear you ask. Well haven't you noticed? The very mention of his name sends women blurry-eyed and... well, out of character. Their usual constraints of public behaviour go out of the window. Heterosexual men are frequently perturbed by him and the effect he
has on the female population. What is it exactly? There are plenty of very good looking famous men around but they don't have this effect on women. What has he got so much of that they haven't. Gay men probably have a better understanding. Come on don't be shy you know what it is...it's something animal, isn't it?

I have no doubt it is something animal. I propose that the biological (i.e. unaffected by made-up morals etc) fact is that Johnny Depp has something about him that drives the female of the species (and probably tempts many males also) to want to have sex with him. I propose that this is something innate rather than learned, although I have no doubt that he has over time developed an ability to use it to his benefit. To turn it on, so to speak. So why would this happen? Well far be it from me to second guess the workings of mother nature, but I am guessing that the aforementioned goddess (Gaia as James Lovelock explained her) mother nature, knows that for some very good reason known only to her, it would be a jolly good idea if Johnny Depp were to father an enormous amount of children by a variety of women on the planet. The same applies in reverse of course. There was a time when Australia could probably have used Kylie Minogue's bottom to change the future if it had had the inclination. Very simply, nature makes sure that the right genetic matches fancy each other. Every so often nature throws up one near perfect specimen who nearly everyone's hormones tell them is right for them. Of course you might ask, "right for what?" and that would be a far harder question to answer. I would suggest, however, that the correct answer is, right for the survival of the planet. Perhaps not right for the survival of man though. What do I mean? Well I would suggest that if man overpopulated the Earth, or began to threaten the Earth's delicate ecological balance in some other way, mother nature would step in and make the necessary adjustments by making sure we didn't fancy the same people. Men might begin to fancy skinny women with narrow hips who were physically unsuited to childbearing. Women might begin to not fancy men at all. Men might be more inclined to have sex with other men or by themselves. Consequently the birth rate would drop. Ecological problem solved. I will leave the rest for you all to work out. Meanwhile I must get back to work on developing my new pheromone sprays.

Why Do We Have Morals?
Those who study human biology, psychology and even philosophy, as well as farmers and others who
work with animals, often find themselves asking this question. If nature always knows what is best for us and for all on the planet in the long-run, then why invent our own rules. Surely it would serve us better to simply follow what comes naturally, no? I must admit, since I was a very young boy I have found this a very seductive argument. Apart from anything else, it provides us with excuses for doing anything we please. Rather like the 'the devil made me do it' argument or the argument that provides a legal get-out clause in many societies, 'I heard voices in my head telling me to do it', it opens up some very tempting possibilities. I remember when I was at school, a girl in the playground asking a group of us, "if you were able to make yourself invisible, what would you do?" You could almost hear the whirring of mental cogs whizzing round in everyone's minds and their adolescent loins awakening. For many years I thought that it was all a conspiracy. That those in power (governments and more so the Church) simply didn't want people to enjoy themselves. That out of a ridiculous sense of superstition, human beings are inclined to believe that pleasure is the work of the devil (especially if it is free pleasure).

Now, as I have matured and my overactive hormones have calmed down somewhat (all things are relative) I have come to realise that there is a reason for all this and it applies just as much to financial wealth as to the things it can buy. I call it the child in a sweetshop syndrome. Restricted from having sweets by parents on the basis that too many sweets are bad for you, children crave them more than the mere sugar-rush explains. They are forbidden fruit. The promise of sweets on special occasions or if you are good, is a very powerful driver I'm sure we all remember. But imagine a child is given access to as many sweets as they want. This is what happens to William Brown in Just William. Not only does he stuff himself until he feels sick but he plies a young girl he is soft on with the same. Very soon they want no more. In fact neither of them want to ever eat sweets again. They have lost their allure. The same happens with toys and toyshops and this is also true with adults. The attraction of a harem soon wanes as does the endless decorating and furnishing potential of a palace or a garage full of fast cars.
Going back to sexual attraction, I recall the fact that as a teenager I went out with a girl whose family were naturists (i.e. walked around naked, even in forests). When I recounted my experiences of naturism to friends who were more stubbornly attached to their clothes, I was always asked, "but don't you get excited when you see all those naked women?" and the answer was a resounding "No." The allure of naked women to even a hot-blooded 18yr old young man, disappeared almost the moment the shock of the circumstances subsided. Women in clothes or underwear were far more seductive. The element of wonder and of possibility was the catalyst for sexual excitement, not nudity, where everything is literally stripped back to the basics, leaving nothing to the imagination. The glimpse of a lecturer's stockings or a lacy bra-strap as she stretched to write on the board was infinitely more thought provoking.

Image courtesy of The Sun. Note: their images are usually far less subtle (and therefore less exciting).

On this basis of course, one can see why an interest in eroticism proliferated in the hyper-conservative
Victorian era. Table legs that had to be covered with linen out of a fear of sexually suggestive furniture? Was Queen Victoria's denial of such a possibility as lesbian sex an indication that she wanted this to remain the ultimate excitement and that the very admission of its existence would make it less attractive?

As you can see, I have made my peace with the moral codes that still constrain society and our sexual behaviours. I have even come to applaud them. I would not want to entirely lose the excitement I felt for simple pleasures in my youth. A glimpse of something through the trees. Claudia our French nanny washing my hair, splashing water on her white cotton blouse. The aroma of a girl's long hair as she leans across my desk to borrow a pencil sharpener. I would not want eroticism to disappear or to become boring. In my book The Pimlico Tapes, I have documented a case (dealt with by a therapist) of a man so overindulged with sexual pleasure, so permissive in his behaviour that he loses interest in the things most of us find sexually arousing. Slowly over time the therapist manages to reawaken the man's sexual feelings by means of self-denial and focus upon seemingly innocent activities like watching a tired middle-aged waitress shaving her legs in a back yard. It is the stuff of Catholicism and of attraction to that which we are denied. The moment the restrictions are lifted, the desire, the frisson, it dissolves.

If you want to read more by A.K. Anders, please click on of the links on the right panel of this blog. OK if you're too lazy, click here: AK Anders on Smashwords (click here for Amazon or just type him or the title The Pimlico Tapes into your search engine). Enjoy your evening and remember to add your e-mail into the Follow By e-mail box (top right hand margin) if you'd like to be notified of future posts (about quarterly - after all you can have too much of a good thing).