Look to how boys and girls divide up in early school, and how members of the opposite sex are sometimes considered ‘icky’. It is sexual attraction that brings men and women together later in life. Without that it would seem men and women would go their separate ways and possibly one class dominate and enslave the other to a much greater degree then what pieces of that we may have today.
Yeah, there are whole untapped genres going to waste, like songs about capital gains and collateral estoppel.
Desire is part of the human condition. Do you take issue with these songs?
The problem isn’t desire, sexual or otherwise. Not having desires means you’re depressed or apathetic. The problem is what people do with their desires: how or whether they choose to act on them.
Well, as long as you’re not doing so on the local playground, I don’t think jerking off is a problem.
Judy to the rescue.
Should have thought of that. I remember that one, too, from when I was younger. I remember thinking that surprise boners sounded like the worst thing ever.
They’re not that bad. It seems many males fear the surprise boner, but the likelyhood of being spotted sporting one seems remote unless you’re un a swimming suit. At least, I’ve never noticed someone sporting one, though that may simply be because I don’t pay attention to men’s crotches.
Going back to the OP, more or less, long before the population crashes the economy would crash. Most Hollywood movies - right out. The few that are left would employ the best, not the hottest, actors and actresses. Most of the music business - gone. Most of fashion also. No more sports cars. And no high heels.No trophy wives. Lots of abandoned web sites. Without dates restaurants go out of business.
And politicians have to stay focused on business for a change.
I’m amazed at how many people think that looks would suddenly become unimportant. I REALLY doubt that. Setting sexual desire aside, we’re still have strong aesthetics for all our senses. We like beautiful music, beautiful fragrances, delicious tastes, pleasing touches, and beautiful sights. Sex can tie into each of these sometimes, but I’d argue that we spend most of our time noticing and enjoying beauty in non-sexual contexts.
I can easily appreciate the good looks of all sorts of people to whom I have zero sexual attraction – people way out of my age range, women (I’m a straight woman), otherwise unattractive people that are perfectly groomed and dressed, etc. Little girls like to wear sparkly dresses because they’re pretty, not because they want to attract any kind of sexual attention. I have nice paintings because they’re pretty, not because they turn me on. I dress nicely for my job because I want to be seen as competent and vibrant, not because I want men at work to want me.
Humans aren’t mosquitoes. We run on emotions, not just reflexes.
No you wouldn’t. Most of the motives for such crimes would still be there; people would still have anger, bigotry, greed, hunger, fanaticism, and so forth to motivate them towards violence. If society starts collapsing as many think it would, that would naturally make matters much worse.
It would probably increase domestic violence if people still have families at all, since it’s unlikely there’d be much if any emotional bonds between mother and father. For that matter given human tendencies towards xenophobia, without desire to counterbalancing it both genders might well start to see the other as actively repellent; deformed.
You want demeaning towards women? Well, look forward to a society where men look at women as having exactly one reason to exist; as a mobile incubator. And where women look at men just as sperm banks. Look forward to a society without affection much less love between the genders, where reproduction is at best a cold business deal or a government imposed duty.
Actually, come to think of it matters might be even worse. If men still have the instinct to impress & attract women, and women still want to turn on & attract men that will really screw them up since they’ll have a constant desire to do the impossible.
Why not? Plenty of positive human emotions do not spring from sexual desire. Friendship, admiration, protectiveness… the list goes on. I have platonic, 100%-sexual-desire-free friends for whom I would move mountains to help if they needed it. Assuming the family unit continues without sexual desire, I would probably marry or cohabit or whatever with someone I liked a whole lot.
Love does. As does the willingness to tolerate someone else being the parent of your child. And on the whole, men and women don’t get along very well, especially when living together; considering how difficult it can be to keep a relationship together now, I can’t imagine such working well at all without sexual desire & love to give people a reason to try to make it work.
I meant to ask this earlier but why do you think that men and women would no longer want to even tolerate each other? If there’s no sex complicating things, why wouldn’t men and women get along even better?
Not always. Of the persons I love most in the world, only one of them is someone I have had sex with. And even discounting the males & relatives in that group, most of them are people are people I would never imagine having sex with. And at least two of those are women I can recognize intellectually as hot, but for whom I’ve no desire.
I think you may be extrapolating too much from your own experience, sir. I get along just fine with women, including those I would like to sleep with and never shall, those I would never sleep with for whatever reason, and several of those I have slept with in the past. And I am hardly unique. I know many men who have plenty of female friends, and vice versa.
Because humans have strong xenophobic tendencies. And because mutual dislike or even hatred is exactly what the genders feel towards each other before sexual desire kicks in. The first generation probably wouldn’t be too hostile due to cultural habit; but if there is a generation after that, they will never outgrow the “girls/boys are icky” stage.
Even if you are right about our xenophobia, people of the opposite sex can easily be inside the tribal boundaries, not outside of them. Even before I was married there were plenty of women I liked but who I wasn’t interested in, and my kids are a lot saner about these things than I ever was.
I think a big part of the “ickiness” factor comes from kid’s noticing male-female interactions that they are in no way ready to begin. If these didn’t happen, the ickiness would disappear. My younger daughter never felt this, in fact.
I don’t really remember hating boys. Kids may go through a “boys/girls are icky” stage but that’s not all kids. I mean, xenophobia doesn’t stop people of different races from being friends when they get to know each other. And girls and boys who are siblings often grow up being close and knowing that the opposite sex is more or less normal. I’m not sure why that wouldn’t be the case.
Cite?
If—or to the extent that—humans do have strong xenophobic tendencies, it may be because we evolved to be distrustful of strangers, who may be dangerous or at least unpredictable because they are not part of our tribe. But this wouldn’t apply to people who are similar to use except for being of the opposite sex.
This is among the more depressing ideas I’ve heard expressed seriously on the Internet. It definitely doesn’t correlate with my understanding of prepubescent children, and I wager I spend a lot more time around them than you do, dude.