If you don’t believe in evolution — and specifically, evolutionary psychology — it’s really hard to make sense of how absolutely outmatched we are by the current progress of technology, and our society along with it. How human brains that evolved over thousands of years to respond to a comprehensible world that interacts with us through our five senses while optimizing our propensity to survive have not had time to adapt to the unfathomably rapid changes that have compounded following the industrial revolution.
Personally I think the internet/porn industry has distorted our idea of what women and men should look like. The average woman will never be a porn star or an instagram model, nor should that be expected of her. The average man is not 6ft tall, 6 pack abs, and six figure salary. It causes us to be so insecure and feel so inferior that we don't want to get back out there and meet/date normal looking people. This loneliness endemic is crushing and sad, I'm not sure how we get out of it.
I wonder whether the lower percentage of young people engaging in sex is related to the well-documented decrease in human fertility worldwide. As a male born in the 50's who came of age in a university town in the 70's, it's hard for me to imagine young people not having sex unless they are religious. The struggle to embrace abstinence after returning to faith practice was very difficult for me and every other "reconvert" I knew in university, gals as well as guys. We were burning!
With respect to early marriage, are there not some states in the the US that allow people to get married as young as 13 or 14?
Once the procreative function of sex is dispensed with, or at least separated from the unitive and pleasurable aspects, what defines "aberrant" except one's own cultural prejudices or upbringing? At such a stage doesn't the ancient distinction between "cute and not cute", or passive and dominant, make as much sense as the old Judeo-Christian guidelines (which I still believe in, but I don't believe in separating the procreative from unitive aspects of human sex)?
Personally I think the internet/porn industry has distorted our idea of what women and men should look like. The average woman will never be a porn star or an instagram model, nor should that be expected of her. The average man is not 6ft tall, 6 pack abs, and six figure salary. It causes us to be so insecure and feel so inferior that we don't want to get back out there and meet/date normal looking people. This loneliness endemic is crushing and sad, I'm not sure how we get out of it.
I wonder whether the lower percentage of young people engaging in sex is related to the well-documented decrease in human fertility worldwide. As a male born in the 50's who came of age in a university town in the 70's, it's hard for me to imagine young people not having sex unless they are religious. The struggle to embrace abstinence after returning to faith practice was very difficult for me and every other "reconvert" I knew in university, gals as well as guys. We were burning!
With respect to early marriage, are there not some states in the the US that allow people to get married as young as 13 or 14?
Once the procreative function of sex is dispensed with, or at least separated from the unitive and pleasurable aspects, what defines "aberrant" except one's own cultural prejudices or upbringing? At such a stage doesn't the ancient distinction between "cute and not cute", or passive and dominant, make as much sense as the old Judeo-Christian guidelines (which I still believe in, but I don't believe in separating the procreative from unitive aspects of human sex)?