Is sexual freedom at the core of Western non-judgmentalism and of Western suicide?

Sam writes:

Some of the comments in the 2003 thread, Modern people as “Eloi,” which you linked in Another white female pays the Eloi tax, are very good. In fact, they are good enough to justify separate posts and discussions on the main page. You comment from 1/22/03 at 7:41 p.m. is particularly insightful. I will have to think about it more, but at first glance it seems entirely correct to say that there is an inverse correlation between one’s range of illicit sexual experiences and one’s ability to feel the pull of transcendent moral norms. How many personalities does this shed light upon? D.S.K.? Clinton? Definitely worth bringing to the fore of discussion, in my opinion.

Interesting suggestion. Here is my comment from the January 2003 thread that you mentioned:

I’m offering the following as a tentative thought that I cannot back up by evidence beyond my own observations and intuitions.

It has often seemed to me that there is a negative correlation between the amount and degree of extramarital sexual experience a person has had, and his willingness to affirm objective moral principles. Most everyone today has had some extra marital experiences, some have had more, some have had a lot more. An extreme example is Clinton. Even in the earlier years of his presidency, Before Monica, whenever he would appear speaking on television there would be this look of such gross looseness and self-indulgence about him that the thought would come to me (excuse the vulgarity): “He looks like he just had a b.j.” As the Lewinksy scandal brought out years later, my vulgar thought was in fact the truth.

What I am speaking of here is not just a numerical index of sexual experience, but the attitudes that one has toward it. So this also applies to faithfully married people who nevertheless identify with and support the culture of sexual liberation; consider all the married, middle-class people who defended Clinton to the max, uttering the nihilistic slogan, “Everyone does it.” Think of the traditionalist Anglicans who support mixed-sex college dorms and mixed-sex dorm bathrooms. But the vanguard of this movement, as it were, consists of the people who have actually indulged in a great deal of experience, rather than the people who merely support a culture in which the right to do so is unlimited.

Here’s what I’m suggesting is the psychological core of the phenomenon. If a person has had a lot of affairs, and has not had any “second thoughts” about them or repented of them in any way, then it becomes impossible for him to stand firmly for the idea of morality, not just sexual morality, but the whole idea of a higher moral truth that transcends us as individuals. And the reason for this is that too much of the core of such a person’s identity has been formed by the experience of sexual freedom, and he (entirely correctly) sees objective morality as a direct threat to that.

To give a simple example of the incompatibility of the two outlooks: before I became a Christian believer I found it normal and natural, when with male friends, to talk occasionally about our past experiences with women; after I became a Christian believer I never did that again. No one told me not to do it; but it just came as an immediate thought that that was something that God didn’t want me to do. The liberated person celebrates and affirms his past sexual adventures; the Christian realizes that that is not the way God wants us to live. Without some experience of repentance along these lines, it is difficult for people to affirm moral principles that transcend individual desire. And so, not being willing or able to make moral judgments, they evolve into Eloi.

It would seem therefore that sexual liberationism is a component of Eloihood—perhaps even a major component, though that remains to be seen.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on January 21, 2003 7:41 PM

December 30

Warren N. writes:

Some other prominent sexual deviants from the 20th Century. Is there a pattern??

All of the Cambridge Five—the others were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross—were Communists; they believed that the Soviet Union was a stronger bulwark against fascism than Depression-era Britain. But the five were also sexually rebellious, a characteristic the Soviets adroitly used in their recruitment. Burgess and Blunt were gay; Maclean was a confused bisexual; Cairncross and Philby were promiscuous heterosexuals. “They were all rebels against the conservative conventional sexual mores,” says Christopher Andrew, author of The Sword and the Shield, a book about Soviet espionage. “[The Soviets] told them that fascism and sexual repression are different sides of the same coin.”

Matthew H. writes:

Our sexual sin is inversely proportionate to our communion with God. Masturbation (that is, all sodomitical or inherently issueless sexual acts) cannot coexist with a life of prayer.

St. Augustine famously said, “A man has as many masters as he has vices.” Our compulsion to serve our passions blinds us and ultimately kills us spiritually.

Thankfully, the Lord is gracious.

The relationship between sexual sin and our society’s slide into spiritual and political bondage is thoroughly discussed in E. Michael Jones’s Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control.

Edward M. writes:

Yes, when you allow young women to flock to the type of men they are attracted to, there are fewer marriages, fewer children.

LA replies:

This needs to be expanded on more. What is wrong with women being attracted to the men they are attracted to? Don’t people marry people they are attracted to?

Edward M. replies:

I was pointing out the fact that young women reject average men for the players, thugs, etc. It is the women, not the men who are at fault. See your “Another white female pays the Eloi tax” article.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 29, 2011 06:37 PM | Send