On Sex

I am unhappy. Why am I unhappy? I am considering that there is some pleasure which I am not experiencing which I could be experiencing if I only ardently pursued after it. I am considering that the entire world exists outside of me and that my being extends toward it the way in a which a flame extends toward the sky -- but there is no consummation; I am not it and it is not me. Reaching too far, I dissipate into a column of smoke; I would consume everything, and miffed that I consume only the little bit I do, and considering my nature, which is to burn, and considering the extension of that nature, which is a complete holocaust, I feel impotent in those faculties which I do possess while feeling capable of those things which are impossible to any man!

I would have my life be accomplished and also enjoyable. I would take happiness as the measure of whether or not a thing is worthwhile -- if it produces pleasure, then it is a worthy activity; if it produces pain, then it is an unworthy activity. But how can this be the case when pursuing after pleasures produces pain and activities that are sometimes painful can yield pleasure in the long run?

The problem is compounded because some pleasures are only readily available and hence, it would seem, appropriate to youth, whereas other pleasures are available eternally, until the end of life. The pleasures that are associated with youth, namely beauty and sex, seem to me to be stronger than the pleasures that are eternal, such as music, serenity, literature, philosophy, art, conversation, and so forth, no matter how ardently our nature would desire the opposite to be the case.

Sex seems the brightest and most powerful, the most fiery pleasure that one can pursue. But it is so particular! Because I don't want to have sex with anybody, or just in any way, but rather I want to have sex with very particular people whom some faculty in my body, I would suppose, selects at the moment of apprehension. To have sex with them is the brightest and most pleasurable activity, that leaves the vestiges of a complete and utter satisfaction in the body, I should say in the being; whereas having sex with someone who I would not desire is the most painful and utterly demoralizing experience, that mingles traces of despair and worthlessness in the soul.

But sex extends -- the desire for pleasure is a desire for constant and regular pleasure, for a state of ecstasy that extends as far as my time. It is a pleasure that is very complicated, because it is so related to physical beauty and yet so dependent upon a certain mental connection; there is a certain social sensibility in sex -- it is the culmination of all social relationships, it would seem, the ready demarcation and symbol of not only certain individual privileges but evident superiorities: as a token in some colorfully described "savage" society, one would say, that the alpha-male has sex more often than the others.

It makes me think of how weak and pitiful my condition is, that I am obliged to want something that I have no reason to want, and that I have furthermore been told from my first birth through all subsequent observations of society to want, and yet I cannot imagine, cannot think even for a moment, of living without it, since abstinence seems more of an absurd capitulation and failure than the extravagant indulgence of merely natural desires.