Just a tad behind
Has anyone wondered why with 2 million years of existence and the incredible progression of the human society throughout time, us human beings still haven't really moved on from some of our own mechanisms that no longer serve us? Nature has taken strides of such lengths and we've witnessed its tremendous growth in close study but humans still haven't grown out of some silly things. This ranges from the wisdom teeth that are practically useless to the fight or flight response reflex that may be useful once or twice in a lifetime, but make life harder most of the time. But I'm thinking of the more interesting one: the mating instinct.
No, I'm not saying we shouldn't have this. No, of course it is one of the most essential element of being human, of being alive. It's just the disagreement of commands from the brain that the body has to deal with all the time that makes it frustrating. We often associate emotions with the brain and physical instincts with the body. Well, now we know that everything comes from the brain. That electrifying sensation from the touch of a certain someone is from the brain, but the hesitation of whether to engage in an act that you may or may not regret later on is also from the brain. This is technically all cognitive dissonance.
What happened was that our needs have evolved as a result of cultural conditioning from the ongoing change of society but our mating reflexes are still the same as they were from the beginning. At the start, primates, just like all mammals, mated when they were of age to reproduce. Now, similarly, after puberty, we all want to sleep with each other. Well, what's stopping us from doing that? Let's just brush off all the social stigma and the instilled fear of STDs and unwanted pregnancy. The real problem is that our brains have 1: raised the bar for sexual pleasure and 2: expanded a single act of sex into a much bigger issue.
I have recently binge watched a lot of TED talks and noticed most of them (or everything Youtube was shoving in my face) were about either passion and purpose or love and sex, probably because these are the things that people are most interested in but have no answers for. Well guess what? These people also don't have answers. One of these videos was a woman talking about whether casual sex is bad for us and of course, she went about it the stigmatization route. The truth is, we've already heard enough about stigmas. And yes, they influence all of our decisions, but at the end of the day, it's not the fear of judgement that makes us shy away from what we consider unconventional options. It's because some conventions are actually somehow physically wired within us.
While our brains are always sending signals to our reproductive organs to fuck, we are trying our best to carefully select the right partner for us as individuals. But the little gal down there tells us we need it right now! This very moment! Sometimes this instinct overcomes us and we reply to that guy who's been texting us everyday non stop whom we know we don't really like or just isn't exactly right for us. We give in. But we're still not satisfied. Why? Because no matter how well someone has performed in bed, it's just not the same without emotional connection. This is the increased difficulty for sexual pleasure. Orgasms are also linked with foreplay, and emotions play a major role during foreplay. These emotions are influenced by the current status of the relationship you have with your partner which is a result of everything that has happened before you got into each other's pants. This is the expansion of sex into a larger process of social interaction. They all go hand in hand.
So to prevent these disappointing scenarios, what do we do? We start to just opt for the easiest, safest route. We turn to ourselves. And again, stigma aside, is this a sound solution for the issue at hand? No. We know what we are looking for, and this is not it. This feeds even less the emotional needs of our desires, because somehow we have to arouse ourselves all on our own, without any counterpart. And then we resort to erotic media, and we all know how detrimental those are for our sexual health.
So we're back to home base. We're here, with the same periodic urges but the wisdom that we should wait for the right moment. Our body does not help us, because it hasn't evolved at the same pace as our mind. It drives us to pursue things that won't even satisfy itself. But somehow, unlike a computer that can program itself against repeating mistakes, our brain will still send out the same signals like a forgotten alarm, knowing it will probably release contradicting commands immediately after. So what do we do? As humans in this complex world of unquenched desires, what have we left to do?
No, I'm not saying we shouldn't have this. No, of course it is one of the most essential element of being human, of being alive. It's just the disagreement of commands from the brain that the body has to deal with all the time that makes it frustrating. We often associate emotions with the brain and physical instincts with the body. Well, now we know that everything comes from the brain. That electrifying sensation from the touch of a certain someone is from the brain, but the hesitation of whether to engage in an act that you may or may not regret later on is also from the brain. This is technically all cognitive dissonance.
What happened was that our needs have evolved as a result of cultural conditioning from the ongoing change of society but our mating reflexes are still the same as they were from the beginning. At the start, primates, just like all mammals, mated when they were of age to reproduce. Now, similarly, after puberty, we all want to sleep with each other. Well, what's stopping us from doing that? Let's just brush off all the social stigma and the instilled fear of STDs and unwanted pregnancy. The real problem is that our brains have 1: raised the bar for sexual pleasure and 2: expanded a single act of sex into a much bigger issue.
I have recently binge watched a lot of TED talks and noticed most of them (or everything Youtube was shoving in my face) were about either passion and purpose or love and sex, probably because these are the things that people are most interested in but have no answers for. Well guess what? These people also don't have answers. One of these videos was a woman talking about whether casual sex is bad for us and of course, she went about it the stigmatization route. The truth is, we've already heard enough about stigmas. And yes, they influence all of our decisions, but at the end of the day, it's not the fear of judgement that makes us shy away from what we consider unconventional options. It's because some conventions are actually somehow physically wired within us.
While our brains are always sending signals to our reproductive organs to fuck, we are trying our best to carefully select the right partner for us as individuals. But the little gal down there tells us we need it right now! This very moment! Sometimes this instinct overcomes us and we reply to that guy who's been texting us everyday non stop whom we know we don't really like or just isn't exactly right for us. We give in. But we're still not satisfied. Why? Because no matter how well someone has performed in bed, it's just not the same without emotional connection. This is the increased difficulty for sexual pleasure. Orgasms are also linked with foreplay, and emotions play a major role during foreplay. These emotions are influenced by the current status of the relationship you have with your partner which is a result of everything that has happened before you got into each other's pants. This is the expansion of sex into a larger process of social interaction. They all go hand in hand.
So to prevent these disappointing scenarios, what do we do? We start to just opt for the easiest, safest route. We turn to ourselves. And again, stigma aside, is this a sound solution for the issue at hand? No. We know what we are looking for, and this is not it. This feeds even less the emotional needs of our desires, because somehow we have to arouse ourselves all on our own, without any counterpart. And then we resort to erotic media, and we all know how detrimental those are for our sexual health.
So we're back to home base. We're here, with the same periodic urges but the wisdom that we should wait for the right moment. Our body does not help us, because it hasn't evolved at the same pace as our mind. It drives us to pursue things that won't even satisfy itself. But somehow, unlike a computer that can program itself against repeating mistakes, our brain will still send out the same signals like a forgotten alarm, knowing it will probably release contradicting commands immediately after. So what do we do? As humans in this complex world of unquenched desires, what have we left to do?