TWO KINDS OF ETHICS – EXCHANGE AND SEX
The Ethics of Exchange is the subject of property and production and exchange. This is the main subject of politics. This is the subject of “Thou shalt not kill.” And “Thou shalt not steal.”.
It is helpful to distinguish between the Ethics of Exchange and the Ethics of Sex. This makes it easier to think clearly.
In the Biblical Ten Commandments, two commandments relate to sex. “Honour thy father and thy mother.”. And “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”.
Christians often take a rather severe attitude toward sex, and are quick to think that sexual activities are “sinful”. This creates hostility in those who think that sexual pleasures are mostly harmless and give a great deal of joy and love. This hostility sometimes tends to discredit ideas of Christian morality relating to the Ethics of Exchange. Hence it is helpful to distinguish the Ethics of Exchange from the Ethics of Sex. Sex is quite a different realm of activity.
THE BIOLOGY OF SEX
Sex is nature’s way of mixing genes.
Sex is the way the race moves forward into the future. In this respect, humans are the same as animals.
Each individual body has a very finite life span. Each body dies.
But the race, considered as a whole, moves forward continuously through time, with no termination date. It is possible that the entire human race could die. This seems like it would be an extremely bad thing. Some animal species are “endangered species”. There is a risk that the entire species might die. In most if not all cases, this seems like a very bad thing.
Actions which broadly poison the environment tend to put the survival of the entire human race at risk. Therefore such actions which broadly poison the environment are very bad indeed. Actions to clean up the environment and reverse this kind of damage would be very desirable.
Doing without sex is not an option, for the species. If there were no sexual activity, the human race would promptly die off.
Thus sexual activity is not only extremely pleasurable, but also extremely necessary. So it does not make much sense to have a negative attitude about it.
The way sex works is that a man and a woman have sex. Children are conceived and then born. Then the children grow up and repeat the process.
PAIR BONDING
There is a strong tendency for a man and a woman to “fall in love” and form an emotional bond. This emotional bond is called “love”.
This emotional bond is biologically useful, because it means that the man and the woman tend to stay together as a unit. In zoology this is called “pair bonding”. This is beneficial for the raising of children, who grow up stronger and healthier in the family unit with both a mother and a father. Thus the strength and viability of the race as a whole is increased by the phenomenon of love and pair bonding.
The man and the woman commonly make a commitment to each other. This is an administrative decision and an agreement which they make about how they are going to live their future lives. They agree that they are going to live together permanently and raise children together.
Civilizations formally and legally recognize this joining of a man and a woman into a family unit with the institution of marriage.
The main reason to refrain from sex for people who are not yet pair bonded is to avoid creating children. This is a much stronger consideration for women, who bear the burden of pregnancy. This consideration is weakened by the easy availability of contraception and abortion.
Lack of sexual faithfulness by either the man or the woman in a marriage is almost always considered immoral and is often accompanied by harsh penalties, in various different civilizations.
Lack of sexual faithfulness by either the husband or the wife is very often a source of great emotional suffering to the other partner, and often to the unfaithful partner as well.
Thus promiscuity is very destructive to the emotional well-being of both men and women, and very destructive to the family unit and to the children which are the next generation.
This is why it is considered wrong to be promiscuous. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”.
Another reason against promiscuity is the problem of sexually transmitted diseases.
A culture in which extreme promiscuity is considered normal, usual, and acceptable is a culture in which it is difficult to create a long-term committed romantic relationship. The joy and love of romance are lost in crude physical self-indulgence. Pair bonding is weak. Marriages and families are weak. Men and women and children lose the support and the strength that come from the marriage and the family.
The Conspiracy wants the individual to be weak and the government to be all-powerful. So it encourages extreme promiscuity and attacks marriage and the family in many ways.
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