Sexuality its essence and goals in human life

Looking back in history humankind seems to be permanently dissatisfied with its existence. People have found themselves bound and unable to realize own wishes and hopes. Hence, person has been vainly groping one’s way toward happiness. At the same time, obviously, people fail to admit they dangle in-between cradle and grave of all the mass of individuals around. And, further on, with a few exceptions, to everyone who has ever lived in crucial times or epoch, it has never occurred his own existence seemed to be empty. On the contrary, the latter was praised by the majority to be voluntarily taken hostage by various dogmas which formed a mould of their life and offered a particular world outlook for consumption. That is why once trapped by illusions a human being and the whole mankind are drowning in the swampy civilization. As a result, a chasm between routine and one’s true Self for the majority of Homo Sapiens has been dramatically extending. At least taking for granted the fact that we are rational beings who are independently able to give sense to our lives, or in the long run – to realize that very sense – we have alienated from the idea of existence of something that is our true sense. This makes one’s life not merely meaningful but the only possible. Instead of putting all dots upon i’s as far as one’s origin and destiny concern person has fancied a range of gods and devils who would be responsible for each and every life as such as well as the whole world. It is especially true when it comes down to justification of one’s weakness, narrowness, and negligence. But no matter how strange these gods look: from a powerful old sage and goat-like seducer to the universal laws of nature and society, - the former have always remained a satisfactory excuse for a depraved mind but simultaneously still-born for human heart. Otherwise, if people dealt with real spiritual beings instead of phantoms of one’s imagination, their life would hardly be pre-occupied with suffering, disbelief, and total scepsis, and primarily with scorn toward the alive around.

       Meanwhile an evidence of being trapped in one’s illusions is further backed by the fact of inability to come to agreement about the context of the main notions that mark acts of existence, phenomena and things. Hence on practice trivial things may cause considerable differences as far as their essence in our lives concerns, and lead to conflicts, with irretrievable errors at times.  It concerns disagreement with subjects and their inner disharmony, confusion and psychotic breakdowns, madness and suicide.
One of the most misleading and controversial notions, which seem to be clear at first sight, is a notion of sexuality. In its turn, uncertainty around what is or hence would-be sexuality provokes numerous sufferings that accompany life of every person, at least a civilized one, and the whole mankind in general. Hence any effort to consequently link the essence and the place of sexuality in one’s life should reinforce liberation of man and revival of existential optimism.   

The most certain thing we can state about sexuality is that it is an attribute of human existence. Sexuality is a basis and a reason of formation of the most powerful intentions oriented towards subjection, keeping in one’s spotlight, disposal and mastering the other as a bearer of the same identity. Sexuality stands not for one’s nature but rather for predicament of person, in the meaning of certain totality of the most durable features of one’s existence due to which we are accept ourselves and others when ponder upon that. In other words, sexuality might occur something that splits a real person and its real nature from its manifestation or from that aspect of one’s existence which is open to a narrow human mind. 
 
The essence of sexuality as ontological barrier between the true self and a modern routine person can be examined upon biblical parables. Once a person had got an ability to know good from evil and discovered a wish, one lost unity with being as such and extracted oneself from the stream of existence getting a limited possibility to form arbitrarily own space. The facts, which prove that sexuality is connected with the “fall of man”, his separation and alienation from own ontological well, and loss or leveling of one’s “divine essence” can be easily found in myths. In particular, in legends of Arian origin it is mentioned that originally people were asexual and did not have sexual wishes; they bore light within and extracted it; there was neither sun nor moon; when sexual instinct was so-called discovered, sexual organs were discovered as well which led to disappearance of inner light and appearance of the Sun and the Moon in the sky (329, 3).

Hence sexuality, or rather its discovery and its manifestation in people, is strictly related to one’s spiritual state and certain disintegration from the ontological well. As a result, the deeper person plunges into existence vortex, the more valid the sexuality factor is: at a particular stage person as a potential bearer of sexuality is passed into a state of a sexual being or even a slave of own sexuality.
 
Ultimately, sexuality is one of the most enigmatic and inseparable conditions of human existence. A mystery of the sexuality phenomenon despite its elusory comprehensibility and simplicity is probably caused by immediacy and predetermination in comparison to human thinking. In other words, at the beginning person acquired sexuality, and only afterwards became a rational thinking being. At the same time we must take into consideration that “rational thinking simplifies world, including the one within person, - hence deep motives of activity remain unbounded and distorted” (5, 91).

That is why a narrow human mind or rather rational thinking is unable to realize something aboriginal and larger than the former itself. And the only thing we deal with when it comes to sexuality is its routine aspects which are fixed in our consciousness as sensations and impressions and reflected in it by various tag-notions.

Meanwhile in the western philosophy an idea of narrowness of human mind was first voiced and grounded by Immanuel Kant, introducing via his scientific theory a notion of “thing-in-itself”. If we apply the above-mentioned Kantian supposition for the sexuality phenomenon then we realize that the latter is “thing-in-itself” – something that makes every act of sexuality possible and is open to person in one’s sensations to be stated in mind. At the same time the phenomenon of sexuality is beyond comprehensibility because according to Martin Heidegger’s point of view, everything person deals with in routine is the least discovered. Moreover, in his later years the German philosopher was even more concerned that “most definitely cognition is able only to hide something which is accessible ab ovo in non-cognitive activity” (6, 127).
 
Obviously, narrowness of cognition is linked with the current over-the-top hi-technology orientation of a modern man and his paranoid efforts to separate himself from nature behind the gates of artificial Ecumene. As a result, person has developed a skill to complicate things like in a drama. Though one should remember that “the highest wisdom is hidden in simple and natural way of all the things, and it is hard to realize that since it is simple and natural” (2, 35).
   
So, most probably, it is impossible to understand what sexuality is until person is a creator again, or at least a natural being. But it isn’t the reason for human tragedy because through the fog of routine and gloom of concern a creative genesis piercing into human existence now and again. In spite or despite of a fact that most of one’s attention people pay to anything but one’s self and Creator, there is a certain link between Creator and Its manifestation (in other words, ordinary man). And at the same time any person despite a narrow ability to understand has an inborn gift to realize – to open Entity and its attributes, beyond thinking, in integrity. The problem is that modern man rejects the gift and accepts the ability above-mentioned. As a result, everything that is not imprinted with reason, is cast into oblivion of non-existence. And, consequently, any efforts to hint at the real matter-of-factness as far as present or potential cognitive abilities of person to discover Entity in its integral variety concern fall pitifully flat.
 
To reveal what sexuality is per se till nowadays has been kept untouched under heavy stratum of human scepsis, disappointment, pretentious chastity, ignorance, fear of misunderstanding and becoming a laughing stock. What is its true purpose and place in human life? Instead of the latter, what an ordinary passer-by focuses his spotlight on is dozens of literary sex-concerned “masterpieces” aimed as a rule at satisfaction of one’s meanness. Somebody’s goal there then is to earn easy money, whereas for the other that might be a faint chance to overcome one’s neuroses caused by unfulfilled sexual desires.

As a consequence the results are unheard-of from the point of view of Eternity and Entity. Human soul is so to say beyond recovery: a link between the well of person and current existence is irreversibly lost. Coming from nowhere person is at risk to have gone to nowhere finding one’s final destiny in the grave, or perhaps for a little while – in the memory of mankind. And vain is any effort to pay off by indulgence a perspective to get scattered in the dark, since there hasn’t ever been a priest, a sage or an oracle who fooled Entity: for what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits his own self? In the long run anything that seizes to change and transform is bound to die and get decomposed. This “death via life” is revealed by spiritual sterility which is a “curse” (3, 360). And the only thing one-dead-for-the-Entity can count on at his best is somebody’s sympathy no matter how miserable, well-to-do or pious his earthly life seemed. In the worst case scenario one is bound to get “spellbound” by notorious “shamans”. But both sincere sympathy and manufacturing magic are unable at least for a while to protect person from paroxysms of despair and fear in front of the extending unknown we call future in perspective. Because either we rely on understanding of the former or mean brain-washing of the latter we cannot reconcile a chasm between an artificial illusion we got trapped in and the real Entity. One is left captured by own sexuality no matter which spectacular or honorable contours the latter form.

Talking about a casual way of treating sexuality one cannot but notice a popular Freudian thesis which identifies the phenomenon (sexuality) as specific attribute of human existence and energy at the same time with its main function to stimulate person to reproduce the alike in material (physical) form. Though at a closer examination one reveals the fact that sexuality is a means and a mechanism of stimulation of person as a specific being who has not mere subjectivity but personified beginning likewise soul or any substance for reproduction of human kind in generations. At the same time sexuality by means of physical affection, as an extreme expression of the biological, distracts in fact an individual from orientation on ontological self-realization, acquiring complete self-identification, and trespassing causality. As a result, person is taken hostage by human kind due to one’s sexuality. In other words, one sacrifices own ontological uniqueness for the sake of maintenance of humankind duration under pressure of own sexuality.

Hence, “amassing” of person is an undeniable fact of colossal deformation and mystification of sexuality and sexual sphere, at least within Judo-Christian Ecumene. Due to religious dogmas, moral codes, puritan ethics, or otherwise to almost mad laudations of corporal passion and contempt, sexuality has transformed into a stumbling block having combined in itself powerful affection and shame, despair, irritation and depression.

So, despite one’s own will person has become a battlefield of wishes and fears which deprive any individual of spiritual balance, confidence in oneself and trust in others unless one can conquer own passions. And all this, in its turn, has made us search for a reason of existential concern and private frustration in the realms where it isn’t – outside ourselves.

As a whole sexuality reveals itself as a universal formula and a form of accentuation of individual needs, fears, concerns, impressions, hopes and at the same time of psycho-physical peculiarities, diseases and pathologies at its worst. And all these manifestations of the accentuation undoubtedly find their resonance not only in human behavior but also in arts, in ersatz-art to be more accurate. Though their own definite completion they find in the so-called public opinion in forms of stable beliefs, stereotypes, mores and ethics. 
             
             Literature

1. Арендт Г. Становище людини. – Л.: Літопис, 1999. – 254 с.
2. Гебель Иоганн Петер. Паунггер Иоганна, Поппе Томас. Лунные правила на все случаи жизни. С-Пб.: Весь, 2004.
3. Еліаде Мірча. Мефістофель і андроген. К.: Видавництво Соломії Павличко «Основи», 2001. – 591 с.
4. Калуга В.Ф. Протистояння і взаємодія “самості” та людського роду – від зумовленості світом до онтологічної свободи. // Аграрна наука і освіта. Том 7. – К.: “ПП “Видавництво “Фенікс”, 2006, № 5-6. – С. 154-161.
5. Тейлор Ч. Дебати між лібералами та комунітаристами. \\ Сучасна політична філософія. Антологія. – К., 1998.
6. Хайдеггер М. Пролегомены к истории понятия времени. – Томск: Водолей, 1998. – 383 с.
7. Хамитов Н. Тайна мужского и женского. – К.: Либідь, 2002.


Volodymyr Kaluga