In the ancient/classical world in Europe, it seems that social mores were a lot less restrictive vis a vis sexuality, alcohol/drug use and the like. Then Christianity came along and said no more buggery etc. Then the puritans came along.
Indian culture seems to have moved in a similar progression - from the Kama Sutra to a, well, more prudish culture today. Even Muslims - for example I’ve read that the absolute prohibition agains alcohol wasn’t seen as quite so absoulte in the past.
So is this just my confirmation bias or is there some tendency for societies to get more puritanical over time? Putting this in GD since I’m not sure there’s a factual answer here.
I’m guessing we’re puritanical in ways the puritans couldn’t have imagined, and they were puritanical in ways that strike us as silly. What is taboo in a society is in constant evolution. A century from now, random sexual encounters might be as casual as we now view ordering pizzas, but driving your car instead of letting the onboard computer do it…? Shocking!
Well, pre-industrial peoples might consider us to be revoltingly delicate and spineless and fragile - “What do you mean, you don’t take your children to public beheadings? What are you, some kind of coward?”
Let me offer a different interpretation. The ancient/classical world is a broad category, but we do have first-hand evidence that the Romans in their later centuries were into orgies and other such things. Shortly thereafter, Roman civilization collapsed and vanished. It was replaced by the Christian medieval civilization, which has undergone great changes over the centuries, but has been continuously existing for about fifteen centuries.
This would suggest that civilizations which have a decently restrictive attitude towards sexuality tend to last longer than those who take the mass orgy route. As most people who tried living in a hippy/free love commune found out, sexual anarchy simply can’t be sustained.
Roman society collapsed after it turned Christian.
Which is more likely to be related to the collapse of an empire, turning into a theocracy or how often the average citizen hid his salami on the average day?
What exactly is the method by which sex ends empires?
Nonsense. The Decline had sent in long before with Nero, Caligula, etc. By the time Constantine sat the throne, the Empire was on it’s last legs and century.
Neither. In this case there were many factors, including the decline of the Citizen soldier, rampant corruption, over-extendion, and many others.
I did not say that Christianity caused the Empire to fall. I said, if one had an empire, which is more likely to make it fall, changing your world-view or hiding your salami?
3rd century AD is when the Roman world changes in radical ways, so it does not make sense to attribute later collapse to events before then. In any case, Nero and Caligula might have made for a bad imperial court, but the empire as a whole was not in crisis then.
The empire was robust under Constantine and his successors. After Constantine you have roughly one hundred and fifty to two hundred more years in the West before you’d say the game is up, and three hundred more years of ancient culture in the East (and eleven hundred more years before Constantine’s capital falls).
Roman sexual mores are much different from ours but they are at least as demanding as ours, probably moreso, but about different things. Free women’s sexuality is greatly restricted by emphasis on chastity and, for married women, the univira ideal. Double standard gives men flexibility in number and variety of sexual partners, but they have intense societal pressure to conform to societal norms of “manliness” in their sex lives. Slaves’ sexuality is extremely restricted – because their bodies are not their own they have limited ability to choose the sex life they went. Similar point could be made about large numbers of desperately poor people engaging in prostitution in order to keep body and soul together (in that case economics makes being a free person a moot point).
In general, Roman society demanded individuals conform to group values much more than our society does. But we tend to focus on how different their practices were with the attendant misinterpretation that they must have been more free because they were doing such strange things. In reality, their social norms made extreme demands upon them.
Thanks, Vaevictis. That nicely clears up the question for me, despite my inability to articulate it well. If you’re still around, can you elaborate on one point: what exactly were the social norms of “manly” sexuality?
The above responses have clarified my thinking, and I realize I asked the wrong question.
In hunter-gatherer cultures, psychotropic compounds are often closely associated with religious practice. In ancient Sumeria, temples of Inanna had sacred prostitutes. Nowadays, a church that featured sex and drugs would be inconceivable. So in ancient times, religion and what I’ll call hedonism (for lack of a better word) went hand in hand, today they seem to be polar opposites.
So my question is this: has the separation of religion and hedonism been a steady trend over time? If so, any thoughts or theories on why this would occur?
The Eastern Empire lasted until 1454. The Western part fell to pieces in the late 400s. I’ve never been satisfied on the usual causes. But the food, wealth and power were in Byzantium/Constantinople, and perhaps the west just degenerated into a backwater by comparison. In which case, why the roaring comeback from the Renaissance onward?
Hedonism is self worship. The purpose is to satisfy ones personal desires, whatever they may be.
When religious dogma asks the participant to focus on a greater value outside of themselves and their own pleasure, religion and hedonism will usually part ways. They will co-exist, but not under the same roof. At least not openly Whitney H. tried to live a religious life in the public but a more hedonistic life privately (secretly).
Hedonism has the potential to be more dangerous over time. Communicable diseases and accidental deaths come to mind. But, perhaps they had more fun anyway ??? Who is next? Lindsay?
Whitney H. tried to live a religious life in the public but a more hedonistic life privately (secretly).