We like to interpret sex in a meaningful way.
Placing it in the context of a romantic
relationship may transform the act from an
animalistic urge to a meaningful, intimate
experience makes it more desirable when
death seems to be lurking around the corner.
Sexual intercourse is a means to have children,
who can symbolize continuity and immortality.
Sexual pleasure can be used to attain spiritual enlightenment.
Sexual conquests may attest to one’s desirability
and prowess and may therefore promote self-worth.
Symbolic Meaning in Sex
The awareness that death is inescapable, coupled with the instinctive desire to live, can constitute an unbearable paradox.
To escape this potentially paralyzing terror and to maintain psychological equanimity, some people may employ certain defense mechanisms.
These are designed to remove the awareness of death from conscious thoughts by imbuing the world with meaning, order and permanence. Often people will reach for symbols of immortality. And sex can be a big one.
If people find a symbolic meaning in sex, they may experience a heightened desire to engage in it to assuage concerns about mortality.
Although in some cases sex may pose a problem for humans, as it reminds them of their animalistic nature, and consequently of their finitude, in other cases it may serve as a death-anxiety buffer.
As long as we can find a symbolic meaning in sex, regardless of whether it is an act of love or a source of self-worth, they may experience a heightened desire to engage in it so as to assuage mortality concerns.
Sex can make us, at least temporarily, feel internally transformed and connected to something larger and more meaningful than our everyday lives.
We have reached a stage in our civilisation where certainty has become unstable. For millennia, God has supposedly kept sin at a manageable level by instilling fear and guilt.
Where do we find our sense of right and wrong today? Many believe that it’s part of our very nature as human beings and mammals. We really didn’t need Him and His anachronistic instruction manuals to muddy the waters.
As for sex, here are the results of an online survey of more than 14,000 participants who had abandoned their religious beliefs.
What the survey revealed was that not only was there little difference in sexual behaviour between those raised in a strict religious way and those not, but that in fact the more religious the individual, the more they used pornography.
The only difference of course was that the believer felt more guilty about it. The fact that the highest levels of pornography use occur in Utah and Mississippi said it all.
The grim consequences of sexual guilt
were best illustrated by the tragic
hypocrisy of hymen reconstruction,
for which demand is growing.
Death, or at the very least the eternal
shame of an entire extended family, can
be the tragic result of not being “intact”
for your future husband.
