We have been sexual beings since the dawn of evolution a few billion years ago, but human beings for only a few million years. Whatever the numbers turn out to be, sex is about a thousand times older than human consciousness. Understandably, the ego, in its struggle to dominate reality, has sex a most compelling battle ground. The frenzy to control sex is a dominant theme throughout human history. In those cases where ego has won out and conquered sex, no progeny has resulted.[ Cloning and other scientific skills have not displaced the old fashioned way - at the time of this writing.] Fortunately, ego has been losing so far. Otherwise we would not be here now. This struggle between ego and sex may have given birth to some art, perhaps a few good ideas, but the more usual result has been battle scars and cultural trauma. Such is the human condition.

Objectively, sex is the mechanism of evolution as well as reproduction. Whether it is best described as `the survival of the fittest' or `the survival of the barbarians' is yet to be analyzed, but genetic selection has played an important role in evolution. In modern abstract culture, MAC, humans of superior wealth and education have few children, while the down-trodden have more. Assuming human value is somewhat genetic, MAC degrades the gene pool.

In addition to reproduction and evolution, sexual bonding is another basic function of sex. Sex is inherently the enemy of the self, as any lover or parent can affirm. Desmond Morris, the British metabiologist, in his elegant book, THE *NAKED APE, describes the system beautifully. Sexual intercourse once a year can provide all the babies one could expect from our species. Yet few attain this goal. The sexual impulse seems so constant that no season seems free of it, affirming its function as the mucilage that holds the family together. Morris explains loss of body hair as a mechanism to increase bonding sensuality in spite of the weather; and breasts, larger than the other primates, as enticing toys and symbolic decoration.

The bonding machinery of sex operates not only by positive reinforcement, but by negative consequences of its neglect. Positively, it seems to feel good, and also leads to strangely deep attachments widely based on interdependence, role specialization, and general empathic identification (bonding love). Preliminary emotions and imprint machinery (puppy love) seem particularly compelling and form the basis of much art and culture (romantic love). In contrast, the negative effects from the neglect and denial of sex lead to poor physical and mental health (depression), fascist ideology, and poorer golf scores.

The bonding mechanism operates differently at different stages of life. The early stages of puppy love soon evolve to the heavy imprint stage, guided not only by readiness but also by image mapping - the subconscious psycho-historical construction of preferred selections. If a relationship occurs, the couple moves to a bonding stage. In modern abstract culture the dissociated ego often triumphs, the bonding is often broken, regressed, or postponed. As life progresses, the entire mechanism changes, but since the role models and family structure are absent, maturation is truncated (p.47). As the earlier bonding machinery ages and changes without expression, bonding or even coupling becomes more difficult and less likely.

The conflict between evolution and bonding illustrates the awesome complexity of this system. Throughout human history, it is adaptive that the nuclear and extended family be strongly bound in order to nurture the ever slower maturation of the human young. From the evolutionary point of view, it is adaptive that the genetically superior men and women parent more than their share of the children. Each culture handles this contradiction in its own way. To this day, it is a sore point in human intercourse. One scientific study has recently sneaked through this painful barrier to indicate that human ovulation takes place in response to some quality of intercourse over a wide range of days, not on an abstract schedule as the "rhythm" advocates would like to believe. Further studies suggest subtle but elaborate and compelling psychocultural controls on ovulation and fertility. We hesitate to list them in a family essay, but they go beyond candy and flowers.

From a demographic point of view, high birthrate seems to correlate with high stress, presumably in order to secure the continuation of the human community and human life itself. Such fecundity is like a tree which bears heavily after a severe pruning, as if in a desperate attempt to fulfill its evolutionary role. The solution to the `population explosion' is obvious: emulate those societies with low birth rate - correct the poverty and oppression associated with high birth rate. Essentially, provide a secure life for all the people.[ A secure life and lively culture is technically easy, as explained in the essay, SUSTAINABLE LUXURY, p. 225.] Unfortunately, it seems that the system which promotes such security in the First World rests upon the stress of the Third World. That need not be so.

A culture's rules about sex can be analyzed on the D chart (p.32) according to these two extremes: On the right, the high Accord side, are customs that protect the integrity of the family and the culture. The left side holds patterns that manifest the war between the ego and reality played out on the battle field of sex. Between these two extremes we measure the Dissociation parameter, often called abstract vs. organic, contracted vs. expanded, power vs. harmony, or, in general, the SExual Accord Parameter, SEP, 1 to 9. Practice making such a D chart of sexual mores, and share it with loved ones.

Consider the admonition not to covet thy neighbor's wife. Throughout history this issue is associated with considerable family stress. However, in organic social life, the extended family enriches and secures more complex and protective relationships. For example, the affection and love between cousins and others within the extended family enhances and protects the nuclear unit, whereas the breakdown of extended family abandons these attachments toward the sins of abstract sex, including incest and abuse. There is some evidence that the complex forms of love within the family are differentiated by a vast subconscious array of olfactory and other sensory systems. But as the extended family decays, such richness of role differentiation is lost, contributing to increased detachment and abuse.

Notice that the so-called Puritan[ The image of strict puritan sexuality is valid, but the actual history is not. They had a lot more fun than you might think.] sexuality, nominally to enhance the family, actually inhibits its bonding. As the ego vanquishes sex, the vital impulse reasserts its power in pathological forms, such as sadomasochism, careless driving, unwarranted shyness, jingoism, alcoholism and parent abuse. Be thankful for the sexual service workers who nurture the lonely under limited contract. These therapists accept the wrath of the undercut market out of the generosity of their hearts, and other reasons.

In a high A organic social life, OSL, the ego's war against sex is much alleviated by role differentiation and cultural richness. The anti-sex admonitions have muted impact on the flow of organic life. In a higher D social life, the war on sex erodes the fabric of organic social life and contributed to the Compulsion to the Abstract Life, CAL, compelling lifestyles toward parasitic solitude, as analyzed in CULTURE OF THE GHOSTS, COGs, p. 326.

Life's developmental stages are also caught in this struggle. For example, by denying sex to their children, parents deny their maturity and force them out of the homestead: "Not under my roof!" "You can't have it if you don't pay for it". The stress of young married life is extra heavy under forced isolation, because the support and role modelling of the extended family is lacking. In this and other cultural patterns, sex becomes the mechanism of alienation - very low SEexual Accord Parameter, SEP. The honeymoon salad of "lettuce alone" may be appropriate for a while, but healthy living needs the quasi extended family support - a household of many adults to tend the children, a wide mix of generations including elders, role differentiation with versatility, and other aspects of Organic Social Life, OSL.

Promiscuity is a mode of dissociation in the sense that the ego strives to deny the bonding emotions. But it may also offer evolutionary advantages, such as the survival of the richest. From another vantage, it may be a pathetic but somewhat effective attempt to build an artificial extended family, sort-of-siblings. The loss of the extended family gathering around the hearth, the loss of the tribal night baseball, and other options for a rich cultural life degrade to this abstraction - a pickup.

There seems to be some common confusion about the nature of the nuclear family which should be made perfectly clear. The man-woman couple is quite inadequate as companionship. To put it simply, the man may be happy watching TV football and drinking beer, but the woman has no one to talk to. Eve found herself in this situation in the Garden of Eden when she haplessly attempted to convert Adam into a dinner companion (p.166). The nuclear family is inherently unstable, a transition from organic extended families toward people living totally alone. The wealth of the First World enables, but does not compel this disaster. Unfortunately in MAC, people are as alienated as they can afford to be.

The endless and delightful study and discussion is being regularly updated, even in the popular weakly news magazine, TIME. Barbara *Ehrenreich's *REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE FEMALE, in the March 8, 1999 issue is an elegant, lively and simple summary of recent scientific studies from archeology, medicine, psychology and common culture.[ Author *Ehrenreich cites new books: Natalie *Anger, WOMAN: AN INTIMATE GEOGRAPHY; Dianne *Hales *JUST LIKE A WOMAN; and Helen *Fisher, THE *FIRST SEX.] Like the scientists, objectivists know they are always incomplete, inaccurate, distorting and often just plain wrong. But that's no reason not to speculate. That's how discourse evolves.Gender specialization certainly predates our evolution as humans. All animals specialize by gender, more or less. Imagine the emotions of evolving human males - hunting and warring - as different from the emotions of the females - gathering and nurturing. The men must mentally plan the hunt or raid. They surely experience fear, but are obliged to suppress it for the sake of the operation, like modern soldiers. When they leave the cave or the camp, they may experience loneliness, but are obliged to suppress it rather than endure shame from their team or squad. As the hunt or battle quickens, their adrenals fill them with the excitement of rage, elaborately engineered by the male culture and their leader, yet they are obliged to suppress it lest they loose their cool. If they are injured, they are obliged to continue until they drop for the sake of their manly image and the success of the group. As the battle wanes and the pain becomes noticeable, they are obliged to suppress it, lest they be considered sissies. If necessary, they are allowed to die quietly, perhaps whimpering for their mothers at the last.[ For a modern update, see WARRIOR ETHIC, WE, p.242.]

They return to camp with some blend of victory or defeat, success or failure, and the women folk ask them how they feel. They would probably rather not say. Archaeologists have discerned from fragmentary data that one of the earliest statements in proto-human language was "bring home the bacon". Similarly, psychologists use this to explain why early male discourse is often so boaring.

The women need to keep their emotions more integrated. Managing the family and the tribe is no easy task. Harmony is especially important with the children, who would easily go crazy if what they subconsciously perceived was too far from what was presented to them. The women must also deal with the traumatized and dissociated men as they return from the hunt. For the sake of the tribe, women's sensitivity is crucial because they weave and maintain the cultural fabric.

Gender roles are more or less rigid, depending partly on the insecurity and stress in the culture. Unfortunately, the adversarial nature of modern abstract culture can exacerbate the battle of the sexes. Females are increasingly obliged to abandon emotional and empathetic functions in order to participate in the male styled competitive economy. Even the familial roles of teacher and therapist are abstracted from the fabric of family by the demands of the professions. To make matters worse, the breakdown of family leaves a lack of attention to the children. A further disaster is the segregation by age that interrupts normal maturing at every stage of life, as explained in Chapters 4 and 8. The agony of modern gender conflict reflects this breakdown of culture. Evolutionary based gender specialization, instead of supporting the culture and celebrating the difference, stresses all concerned. Nowadays women are equal.[ Author Maggie *Scarf explores the patterns of family misery and well-being in her book, *INTIMATE WORLDS: LIFE INSIDE THE FAMILY.]

Modern thinkers such as Socio-linguist Debora *Tannen, (who wrote SHE SAID, HE SAID, and YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND, Women and Men in Conversation.) lay out the ancient roots of gender differences, essential throughout the evolutionary period. The females are necessarily nurturers and family communicators, the males hunters, and warriors. Rejection of these ancient roles seems to be a cliche of the day, but it probably can't be done even if it were a good idea. Messing with these gender roles usually turns out to be just another compulsion to the abstract life, CAL. Obviously women are versatile, woman can adjust to the modern mad world of work, men can cooperate enough to function in a world economy - perhaps without destroying each other and all higher life forms. Many modern thinkers tinker with gender roles, but few consider the reconstruction of organic culture, ROCL, such as creating a proximity of ages and genders in the same household as a healthy alternative to the deathly stagnant and unstable nuclear or single parent household. Without ROCL the psyche and ecosystem will continue to degrade.

One solution to the instability of the nuclear family is the polygamy sometimes found in Islam and Utah. What a woman needs is another woman in the household for civilized companionship. But two women become such fast friends that the man is left out, eventually becoming little more than the occasional butt of jokes and giggles. So a third woman must be added to take her turn sharing the burden of his loneliness. However, in the normal course of events, two of the women will likely be fast friends, leaving the third in an awkward position with practically no companion at all. Therefore a fourth woman must be added. This alleviates the dynamic complex of the three and makes the burden of caring for the man even easier. The Muslims and Mormons had an interesting idea, though perhaps the genders are reversed. (Hey, just kidding!)

To sum up on a more serious note. Consciousness is inherently in conflict with sex, which permeates and underlies every personal and cultural process. According to the Dissociation of the Minor System, DMS p.31, DMS, the ego strives with increasing power against the integrative forces of love and sex. The operational goal of this compulsion to the abstract life is total dissociation of organic life and culture; that is, everyone living alone and being themselves, the ultimate tyranny of the self, TS.

The mechanisms of sex are beginning to be understood. Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, and many other scientists, study neurohormones, which are brain chemicals that affect mood and mental processing. Romantic love, she believes, comes in three stages, each with its own set of neurohormones. 1. The sex drive, or lust: The starting point for most relationships, with sex hormones such as estrogens and androgens which (include testosterone) the main chemicals giving people that urge to merge -- quick. The sex drive can come and go in a matter of minutes. 2. Attraction: This is what makes people "fall in love". Inside the brain, the chemicals at work are mainly the monoamines. These hormones include such substances as adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin. All can contribute to feelings of elation and bliss. Typically, this stage of intense love may last from months to several years. 3. Attachment: The longest lived phase of romantic love, it can last a lifetime. Attached couples feel anxious when they are apart, are most content in each other's company, and associate stability, peace, and tranquillity with one another. Corresponding floods of brain chemicals that they trigger in one another include endorphins, which elevate general mood, and hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin also associated with comfort.

In addition to this chemical foundation, consider a more psychoanalytical explanation of sex - the underpinnings - whether or not they are conscious or remembered. Such awareness depends on the individual, the custom, the psychohistory. But regardless of the amount of consciousness, this is what's going on in the great subconscious life, experienced or not:

Male subjective sexuality begins with a participation at the lowest level, the level of prenatal life. Sex is a recapitulation ontologically of life in the womb before birth, and phylogenetically of life in the water before we crawled upon the earth. Sex recapitulates the great reunion with the mother, before conscious separation, before separation from harmony with nature, before the fall. The holy communion of breast feeding is another universal recapitulation - taking from the outer world to nurture the growing self. Beginning about age two is the birth of the self, terrible and enraging though that separation is. The triumph of will is born, and sexuality develops a more conscious mode, a vague and terrible awareness of the other as separate from the self. This self, together with but separate from the archetypal mother, manifests in a variety of ways reminiscent of separation, weaning, the push and pull of elemental interpersonal relationship. "Let me count the ways." Each sexual encounter recapitulates this entire process, but fortunately men are too discrete and too exhausted to mention it.

In childhood, this great separation of self from other matures into the trauma of Male Broken Identity, MBI. All children implicitly ask the mother: "When I grow up, will I be a human being like you?" To the girl child, the implicit answer is an insignificant and continuous "yes". But the boy child is shaken to his roots with a resounding if implicit "NO!". Thus, the drastic discontinuity begins: that separation from the water, from the mother, from the other, finally from the human race itself, forever plagues the male psyche.

It is only at the higher psychic maturity levels that the one woman becomes differentiated from another, and regression is common throughout life. As we learn from dream analysis, much of sex is deep in the subconscious, beneath ego identity, an ontological philological indulgence. But the distinction of other from mother begins in the psyche's early years and gradually grows.

The imprint mechanism kicks in at puberty. A vast array of olfactory, visual, auditory and tactile receptors become activated in what the kids call a "hormone attack". The accumulated agony of more than a decade of diabolical separation from the real world of the womb prepares the individual for that flash: the intense and ecstatic dream of reconciliation and completion. In the natural state, this would be sufficient blast-off for the bonding mechanisms to refasten the individual to reality. But the basic thrust of the abstract culture is to delay this development, prevent it from happening, and to destroy it when it does. In MAC, Romeo is often obliged to either robotize or die.

Again and again the fragile human organism tries to sustain itself in an alien environment, but the evil spirits of modern abstract culture thwart every thrust. Eventually the imprint mechanism expires, the bonding mechanism weakens, the individual becomes self reliant and independent and joins the CULTURE OF THE GHOSTS.

Here the regression begins. The human, having failed to construct the rudiments of organic social life, falls backward to previous stages. Whatever stage of maturation has been reached is undermined as the individual withdraws into selfhood and sinks back to the previous stage. In what is called `midlife crisis' or `seven-year itch', the fabric of family, undermined by a loss of extended family and tribal support, decays. The poor ghosts play at various life styles - bridge clubs, computer dating, and therapy - but none are adequate. The psycho-cultural support, which enabled the evolution of human culture and is essential for healthy psychic life, is gone. Individual strength may keep the person functioning, but the thrust is toward pathological byways. The TV family, the singles scene, the profession and other retreats, offer barely more than a vast wasteland.

An idealist would not presume to describe what's going on in the minds of the `other' gender, but an objectivist is unconstrained, free to explore the psychoanalytical foundations of female sexuality. Awareness of the `other' gender's experience is partly a matter of choice, or culture, or psychohistory, or poetic style. Certainty is never the goal, but a bit more accuracy would be nice.

Females of the species are different from males. Unburdened by problems of gender identification, (MBI), they straightforwardly participate in the evolution of the species. Subconsciously aware of their own supreme role as carriers of the eggs, they stride through life with a confident air of bearers of the race, barely burdened by the weight of this eternal duty. In contrast, the males, for lack of an X chromosome, are forever condemned to be not quite human, only auxiliaries in the flux of human history, perhaps.

But as organic culture continues to break down, the triumph of the will exerts itself against the ageless sexuality, consciousness begins to win its war against sex. Sex itself becomes a battleground. For lack of organic culture, man resorts to patriarchy, militarism, and football.

Recent studies have shown that white adolescent girls suffer a quick drop in self-esteem at puberty. Woman's basic role as manager of the family and purveyor of human culture is already severely degraded. In normal paranoid response to this horrendous disaster, the woman feels competition from all other women, a fear as intense as her pervasive resentment of men, once depicted as "three hundred million years of slavery". The harmony of mother and daughter alleviates this terrible atomization, until sex raises its ugly head at puberty and the mother realizes that the daughter is God's gift to mankind, including her husband.

Woman job of being God's manager loses its status in a series of regressions - the mother starts `working the girl over'. Uncontrollably they alienate, both suffering wounds of battle, both caught in slaughter of warfare. The father, in the unlikely event that he is present, is apt to be less aware of this battle than of most things. More likely he is simply blinded by God's new gift to his household. In the context of such raging pathologies, we are lucky anyone survives. Because of this aspect of modern abstract culture, MAC, the white race may not be long for this world, to the relief of all mankind.

Grooming behavior has not changed much in the past ten million years, since long before we left the Garden of Eden and became sapient beings. The all-consuming impulse to attract the best sperm still permeates female life, elaborately balanced with the demand for a reliable head of family. But the compulsion to the abstract life drives the female toward breakdown at every developmental stage, to be torn apart by the struggle between self and sex, to regress toward abstract life. This abstract goal is self-actualization of the ego against the greater self. Such self-actualization mostly happens in a wealthy and parasitic economy, which allows the woman to live totally alone, totally clean, protected by elaborate clothes and cosmetics, communicating mostly through clean machines to other humans twice removed. The throbbing undercurrent of sexuality which once mended the fabric of organic cultural life and barely entered consciousness, now becomes a deformed obsession, a mirage in the desert of loneliness.

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