Category: Sex, Love, Lust
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Lust
How can something so paltry be such a huge spiritual impediment?
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Thoughts on Marriage
Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are my favorite AM band talk jocks. Both intelligent and wise, they raise the level of the general culture unlike toxin-merchants such as Howard Stern who lower it. He's no star in my firmament. Prager and Medved know that they have a moral obligation not to add to the cultural pollution.…
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What Ever Happened to Linda Lovelace?
Her real name was Linda Boreman. The daughter of a New York City cop, she was raised in Yonkers and attended Catholic school where she was known as "Miss Holy Holy" because of her noli me tangere attitude. She died in April of 2002. Read her sad story here. Her case and that of others, Kerouac…
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This Sex Business
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Harvest 1956), p. 102: This woman business! What a bore it is! What a pity we can't cut it right out, or at least be like the animals — minutes of ferocious lust and months of icy chastity. Take a cock pheasant, for example. He jumps up on the…
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Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac
If there is divine light, sexual indulgence prevents it from streaming in. Herein lies the best argument for continence. The sex monkey may not be as destructive of the body as the booze monkey, but he may be even more destructive of the spirit. You may dismiss what I am saying here either by denying…
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Can Only the Mortalist Love?
From the mail: A friend of mine (a philosophy professor) and I were discussing issues of immortality, meaning, and love on Facebook. I explained to him that the love I feel for others in some sense 'seeks' immortality, as the depth of the feeling is such that without that belief, love would be almost too…
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Nocturnal Permission
This sometimes happens: You dream you are amorously entangled with a woman not your wife. But you know you are dreaming, and you begin philosophizing within the dream about the moral propriety of enjoying the sexual intercourse in the dream. You ask yourself: Should I give my nocturnal permission to this nocturnal emission? If I am not mistaken,…
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Superman: The Moral of the Story
George Reeves (1914-1959) was the original 'Superman.' You know the character: "Faster than a speeding bullet . . . ." Reeves was murdered (or was it suicide?) in June of 1959. I remember a comment of my Uncle Ray at the time of Reeves' death: "He could stop other people's bullets, but not his own."…
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Marriage and ‘Settling’
In the end you settle for so-and-so, or else remain single. It is worth remembering that she is also settling for you.
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A Man and a Woman Look into a Mirror
I just heard it on the Dennis Prager show. "A man looks in the mirror and sees Hercules no matter how he looks. A woman looks in the mirror and sees a wreck no matter how she looks." Those aren't Prager's exact words but that's the gist of it. The first sentence, at least, is…
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Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife
Here are the attributes al-Ghazzali recommends seeking in a prospective wife. (Alchemy of Happiness, p. 96 ff.) 1. Chastity2. Good disposition3. Beauty ("See a woman before marrying her.")4. The sum paid by the husband should be moderate5. She should not be barren6. Of good stock7. Not previously married8. Not too nearly related to her husband.…
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Can Mere Thoughts Be Morally Wrong?
We begin by provisionally distinguishing among thoughts, words, and deeds. I will assume that most deeds and some words are justifiably morally evaluable, justifiably evaluable as either morally right or morally wrong. The question I want to raise is whether mere thoughts (thoughts that do not actually spill over into words or actions, though they possess the potential to do…
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Defining Lust
Before we can ask whether there is anything morally wrong with lust we have to know what we are talking about. What is lust? Here is a start: The inordinate craving for, or indulgence in, the carnal pleasure which is experienced in the human organs of generation. But this won't do as it stands since…