I've Been Thinking

Human beings have become the dominant form of life on this planet through a particular evolutionary advantage; the ability to reason, which gives us the power to build tools, both physical and social. Of course, this ability can only be used because of previous evolutionary developments, beginning with obvious things such as hands or speech, and moving on up to more complex social behaviour, much of which we share with other mammalian species. Without strong social behaviour, our reason would be vastly less effective. All human achievement, in science, technology, music and literature, has gotten to where it is today by building on the achievements of those who have gone before, by learning from the traditions and records that the society has accumulated over the centuries.

But humanity has been given another characteristic through the peculiar methods of evolution, the orgasm. Orgasms are fantastic, it's hard to keep dispassionately observing while you're having one, but the next time you do try and appreciate just how intense the pleasure actually is compared to anything else that might happen to you in your day to day life. However the experience is extremely transitory, so people usually focus on finding better ways to receive pleasure, such as drugs, fighting, religion, or god forbid, personal happiness. People pursue sex with great dedication, yet in todays frantic, self-obsessed world, it's usually not just the orgasm that we're after, rather validation or social standing or to just make the voices STOP goddamn it they just keep going on and on and I wasn't bad I promise but the dirty lady looked so pretty and please don't put me in the penitence hole again.

In fact, I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that of all the motivations that propel people through their daily lives in the western world, sex would be easily the most common (as most of us very rarely have to think seriously about securing food and shelter, it's really the only animal instinct still guiding us). How is it that this incredible interdependent society, so complex and with so many achievements, and so reliant on everyone following basic social conduct that specifically restrains self-interested pleasure seeking, can continue when everyone's wandering around in pursuit of the orgasm, natures own addictive high literally designed to be the best feeling possible and hard coded into our minds to be the goal of our lives?

One reason is that to a lesser degree human minds have also been programmed to desire a stable society, so unlike in the animal world sex for humans is not intended to be a violent, emotionless act. All human behaviour is governed by societal conventions, and sexual encounters, whether they last half an hour or a life time, are no exception. But that's bullshit, we've all read or seen how people behave during a war or in a lawless area, social pressures are just the cork holding back the selfish desires of the nastier elements of the human race. What is it that allowed everyone else to overcome the same instincts, rise above the animals and to form the society in the first place? And the answer is quite simple. Masturbation.

So the next time you go to the top of a huge skyscraper, miraculously towering hundreds of meters above the ground seemingly in defiance of gravity but made stable by principles worked out by hundreds of generations of structural engineers, or engage in communication with someone on the other side of the world via the intricate collaborative computer engineering feat that has formed the internet, or enjoy a piece of music composed by Beethoven, who wrote his masterpieces after studying and learning from the work of the musical scholars who came before him, remember to say “Thank you masturbation!”