Day Twenty Six: Chastity

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

Today in one of my last posts for this month of discipline, I will review one of the last of Benjamin Franklin's self-improvement principles, one that is a bit controversial: Chastity. The way I interpret this, Ben is saying that as in all other things, sex is best in moderation, and should not hurt anyone. I completely agree, and have been guilty in the past of not abiding by this rule.

It is of no surprise why: The human sex drive is strong. This makes sense because reproduction is crucial to propagating one's genes, and so the more we reproduce the better in terms of our evolutionary fitness. Once again, our genes conspire against us and must be conquered with self-control.

Sex is not inherently a bad thing; it can be a way to express in physical terms the emotional connection between two people in love, or perhaps merely a fun way to exercise between two consenting adults. However, sometimes sex is a means for a man to exploit a woman; we all know the stereotypes of men who would say anything to get a woman into bed, making false promises and employing devious tricks to get past the woman's defense. While this might be defensible in terms of blind genes driving us to do things, 'my genes made me do it' is not a valid argument. Our genes are not in ultimate control of us, we make conscious decisions to do things and thus the buck stops with our intention, not our genes. Our genes, though they produced us, cede control to our brain although they try to influence us with their indirect means of influence such as the sex drive.

What I've learned about sex is that it is somewhat hollow when your partner is not someone you are ultimately interested in. Despite what movies and culture may espouse about men who are able to bed many women, the hype does not live up to the reality, at least in my view. As loathe as I am to say it, sex is likely best reserved for a meaningful long term relationship. or at least a well-acknowledged short term one. There was a time when I viewed my desires for sex as my animal heritage, something that I should not deny; but this merely led to hurting women by satisfying my desires. It is not our animal desires that make us human, but our ability to supress them! The one thing that separates us from the animals is our conscious ability to rebel against our genes.

So, during my youth I would not have conceded the merit of Ben Franklin's stance, but now I am mature enough to realize that he is right; sex is a powerful act, one that should not be pursued blindly for its own sake, but is best in a certain meaningful context. As a powerful act, one should always remember the dangerous side of sex, such as pregnancy and stds. Less dramatically, the emotional impact of sex, especially on women, can be incredibly painful. Women, evolutionarily, have much more invested in sex then men; sex represents nine months of energy devoted to the genes of only one man. Thus, a women is careful about sex, and acts as a gatekeepr. Men, on the other hand, can inseminate an almost limitless amount of women in the same time, with no direct comitment (becuase they do not carry the baby). This is the heart of the evolutionary conflict between man and woman.

The conflict is this: Men, in general, tend to prefer polygamy, while women tend to prefer monogamy. This is a general statement, so of course there will be exceptions. But as a general rule, it makes sense because of the relative investments of men and women in sex. There is no silver bullet to solving this conflict; men want lots of varied partners, while women would prefer the man to stay true.

For awhile, I struggled with this realization; I could deny myself sex, or hurt women whom I didn't really want a long term relationship with. In the end, I realized that conquering my desire for sex is a way for me to conquer my genes and resolve the conflict. I want to do no harm, and by blindly following the whimsical desires of my gene-guided hormones I was inflicting harm. The solution is to rebel against the genes, overthrow the control they hold on me.

So now, I must practice this virtue of chastity until I find someone that I can really connect with, which is somewhat of a rareity. All roads lead to control of self and denying our primal insticts; this is what it truly means to be human.