Tuesday, April 25, 2023

More To Life Than Sexuality

At the other end of the error spectrum from the ideas that sexuality should not be acknowledged and is not worth serious philosophical examination is the idea that sexuality is what everything in life reduces down to, or at least the most foundational, high, or otherwise important thing about the whole of reality.  The objective truth about this subject lies in between these two logical impossibilities.  The only parts of reality that must be true, logical axioms, have nothing to do with sexuality in themselves because they are true regardless of what else is and dictate and reveal all truths, truths about sexuality included; they must thus be more foundational and transcendent than sexuality could ever be.

More than just dwelling on the laws of logic and logic itself is nonsexual, though.  Contemplating the broad scope of philosophical truths and ideas, observing environments in the external world, looking after one's children if applicable, and things such as the mere consumption of food, friendship, simple artistic expression, exercise, cooking, basic introspection, and so on are not sexual in nature.  There are logical truths about sexuality, and sexual behaviors can be seen in nature, and people can do any sort of activity misperceiving it as something sexual or wishing it was, but there is not only nothing sexual by default even about these things that could brush up against sexuality in some cases, like friendship or introspection, there are also entire layers of objective reality that things about sexuality are only true in light of instead of the other way around (like logical axioms).

There are obviously truths about metaphysics and epistemology that underpin or transcend sexuality and thus could not reduce down to sexuality, but when it comes to how people interact with each other, the idea that people only have dealings with other people for the sake of sexual expression is also demonstrably untrue.  All moral and broader ideological motivations aside, which could already steer people away from the stupidity of hedonism, not everyone experiences sexual feelings towards everyone else, even attractive people of the opposite gender, or has sexual feelings at all; not every heterosexual person is attracted to every member of the opposite gender and not every homosexual or bisexual person is attracted to everyone of the gender their orientations push them towards.

That it is possible for someone to be asexual and that not every non-asexual craves the thought of having sex with everyone--or actually acts on this if they did have such desires--is only another reason why it cannot possibly be true that sexuality is all there is to human-human interactions, much less all of reality, as if every logical truth and philosophical dimension of reality pertains to sexuality in the first place.  Friendship with the same or opposite gender that is free of sexual feelings or behaviors is not just possible, but already lived out at least by rationalists bold enough to resist societal pressures.  Even if friends of the opposite or same gender did have sexual feelings for each other, or if people experience sexual attraction to strangers, they are not fated to ignore the philosophical fact that there is more to a person with all of their worldview their capacity for emotions, their personality, and their linguistic communication than just sexuality.

In fact, anyone who truly does believe the blatantly false, easily refutable ideology that everything reduces down to sexuality believes that sexual objectification of practically everyone, or at a minimum every person that one is sexually attracted to (but not being sexually attracted to everyone else already proves that even one's subjective desires and perceptions are universally sexual), is either a necessary, inescapable part of life or perhaps even morally or practically good.  This is likely not what people who believe this outright error would necessarily want others to think they hold to, but it is what would logically follow from this ideas and any motivations derived from it.  More foundationally than just risking immense unpopularity and hostility in this regard, the concept of everything being sexual or directly, strictly having anything to do with sexuality at all is logically impossible.

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