Since the inception of this column, the focus has been on what people have been evolving towards with regard to the effects of modern technology on their human behavior. I have discussed how being surrounded by modern technology has provided people with sources for both mirroring and modeling in the form of computers and robots. People interact so much and so constantly with computers and increasingly with robots that they begin to imitate them and to bond with them much as if they were organic entities. Unconsciously, people let themselves become robotized, as these modern machines, these modern complex behavioral entities subtly leave marks on people as if they were organisms leaving organic imprints on the humans that were using them. So, the computers and robots become sources for human aspiration, sources of behavior that humans want to become more like. This whole form of analysis moves from an unspecified time in the present towards some unspecified time in the future.
On the other hand, my recent article on Trump, Putin and their followers focused on what was lacking in their lives, what they had lost in the past. The fact is that they had somehow lacked so much organic stimulation in their early years, lacked so much organic connection, whether from humans or from physical environment, and this was instrumental in their psychological movement towards modern machines for their connection and quasi-bonding with others. It is hard to feel like an organism when the foundation of being an organism, namely organic stimulation, is so glaringly lacking.
This lack of organic stimulation in the external world is not only relevant for analysis in political situations where the focus is on authoritarian leaders and their followers. It is also relevant for dealing with other kinds of relationships in today’s world. One kind of relationship where it plays an increasingly prominent role is in the sexual relationships between young men and young women. Young men who are increasingly immersed in the experiential vacuum that surrounds them have developed unusual techniques in sex for pulling out of their numbness. They turn the sexual act into something that is very rough and very kinky. Non-fatal strangulation and urinating on the women. This kind of behavior can be found very frequently in hookup sex. The women, for the most part, aren’t particularly happy with this kind of behavior, and after a number of experiences with it, many pull away from sex altogether. Pornography is considered to be a contributory factor in the behavior of these young men by some analysts, but not by all.
What is definitely a causal factor in this situation is the lack of base organic stimulation in the lives of these young men. Organic stimulation that acts as a kind of flowing blendable continual backdrop for a young man’s life narrative. Obviously, people do continue to grow and develop physically in our modern living environments, in spite of the lack of sources of organic stimulation. But some degree of traditional natural living space is crucial, particularly for young men, in terms of being able to arrive at some level of emotional maturity. We can say that the numbness generated as a result of a lack of base organic stimulation has a psychologically castrating effect on these young men. To compensate for these castrating feelings, many young men feel a need to create traction in their lives by generating abrasive stimulation in sex in order to pull themselves out of their numbness.
Unfortunately, there are some very negative side effects to these sexual actions: the physical hurt that their female lovers experience as well as the psychological demeaning. Although hookups as a form of sexual connection were not designed to create sustained emotional bonding between the lovers, they also weren’t meant to create such unhappy experiences for the women involved that they decide to withdraw from sex altogether. Later on, when the women decide to settle down into more intimate relationships, will their past experiences with hookups influence their capacity to open themselves up to men who really love them and care about them? Perhaps the impersonality of a hookup in and of itself generates so much numbness that it too is a contributory factor to men wanting to rise above the total numbness that they are experiencing by carrying out the acts of aggression under discussion.
In some early columns, I discussed how modern free love is not the same as the sex before marriage that occurs in some preliterate tribes. There it serves as a way of binding together members of a generation that already know each other. It has nothing to do with expressing some aggressive sexual rapaciousness. The men are not engaging in sex as a way of overcoming feelings of psychological castration. They live in an environment full of organic stimulation.
Hopefully, we will find a way to introduce more organic stimulation in our modern living environments such that authoritarian populist leaders will not be so popular and men will no longer feel so compelled to engage in such kinky hurtful activities.