Fear, Sex, and Pandemic - Part 3

by Carol Dunn · 2009-07-11 08:15:00 UTC
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(image credit: Belltown Messenger)

If sex and danger are tops, how can we get anything done? For sex, our systems seem to have handled it by building in a counter compulsion away from embracing our sexual desires-how that counter compulsion plays out varies, clearly influenced by environment, culture, age, spirituality, opinions, etc.

For the most part, it seems we take the compulsion to focus on sex, and the counter compulsion, and let it mess us up.  And yet, so far species wide, there has always been a next generation, so despite everything, it is working for now.

We are surrounded by danger: the earth quakes, the land slides, disease, and Dick Cheney.  How does our species handle so omnipresent danger with our unidirectional response? The planet is in a state of constant change, all over the globe, physics happens.   If our subconscious responded to each of these real dangers, we would exist in a constant state of fear response (indeed, some people do, and find it very hard to even leave their house.)

We reduce the threat of constantly being obsessed with the thoughts of danger by being inclined to ignore all but the most glaring. You would assume that is irrational though, since ignoring future risk means that we set ourselves up to be taken by surprise, to walk right off of cliffs (which certain percentage of us literally do, sad to say).  The implication is that on a species wide level, it is more beneficial for some of us for some of us to blithely walk right into danger, than for us to stay in a constant state of risk response.

Carol Dunn
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