Since the rise of the Covid pandemic, there has also been a rise in the appearance of many other conditions and diseases that affect human beings. One that has seldom appeared in the articles I have been reading about the pandemic is that of precocious pubescence. Although this condition does manifest itself with boys, it is primarily a condition of girls. Girls as young as five developing breasts. Girls as young as eight beginning to menstruate. The stress that this must put both the girls and their parents through has to be enormous. Interestingly, the causes that I have seen mentioned for the surge in the appearance of this condition seem to have only a tenuous connection with Covid itself. Obesity, stress, and pesticides. One could say that staying inside a lot during the initial lockdown could have contributed to obesity which might have, in turn, influenced the prevalence of precocious pubescence. And the whole experience of the lockdown could have increased small children’s stress levels which could have led to premature development. I’m not sure I see the connection of precocious pubescence and Covid and pesticides, but, oh, well! One point being made is that there is no one all-encompassing cause that has been generally accepted that accounts for all the cases that have been discovered during the pandemic so far.
I have some thoughts on this matter that relate to the influence of modern technological living environments on the emergence of Covid as well as on the growing prevalence of early pubescence. It gets back to a point I have made in several previous articles: a cause is not always related to a focused defined explanation. Sometimes it relates to an intangible total enveloping presence. In this case, the total enveloping presence is the experiential numbness created by the takeover of living environments by modern technology. And this, in turn, has led to the deprivation of organic stimulation that we all have to deal with. One way that some people today have tried to confront this problem, is to obtain an increased amount of organic stimulation from a source that has nothing to do directly with the external living environment, namely sex. And in order to get the variety of organic stimulation that one used to get living in more traditional natural environments, one looks for a greater variety of sexual partners than most people would have been accustomed to having in more traditional times.
At any rate, this craving for sex as a substitute for a more global organic stimulation starts early in a person’s life. As a baby weans itself not only from the mother’s breast but also from the mother’s physical closeness, it seeks to get more and more organic stimulation from sources in the external world. The problem is, of course, that there isn’t very much available from traditional natural sources. So, the young girl’s body starts to configure itself at a very early age to become receptive to the one source of organic stimulation that is still readily available. At an unusually early age, she starts to become receptive to mature sexual activity through the premature maturation of her body.
I know that, to many people, this might sound like an outrageous explanation, but it is a coherent explanation that can be used to cover all instances of precocious puberty, because, after all, all humans are going to be affected by the growing diminishment of organic stimulation in our modern living environments. Precocious puberty is just one of the many different harmful effects of the sensory distortion and, in particular, the experiential numbness generated by the gradual displacement of traditional natural environments by modern technology. I have discussed many of these effects in previous articles. Self-destructive physical tendencies like cutting and even suicide. Acts of mass murder and terrorism. Addictions to food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, hoarding, and video games. I have not discussed precocious puberty before,, because it has not been as much a subject of public discourse as the topics previously mentioned. It is primarily with the surge of Covid, the corresponding quarantining and social isolation, and thus the withdrawal from many social contacts and some of those patches of organic stimulation that remain in the external world, that there seems to have been a surge of precocious pubescence for the reasons previously discussed. Covid brought a greater intensity to the separation of people from the organic stimulation that they needed for both mental and physical health. And for some young children, it has led to the unconscious adoption of a desperate strategy to pull themselves away from the sensory distortion, away from the experiential numbness that prevent them from living vibrantly.
© 2022 Laurence Mesirow