(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

A friend has asked me to write a post about something I said to her in person, though I have been struggling for a long time on how to put this into written word and perhaps tie it in with a number of other things I have been writing about.

Pleasure is sacred. Therefore:

• pleasure is good, and


• each of us has the responsibility to treat pleasure with respect.

It seems silly to me that I have to make a case that pleasure is sacred, but let me demonstrate why I think this is indisputably so. Let me start with this:

Pleasure receptors best known for helping the body respond to morphine and opium may also hold the key to mother-child bonding, scientists reported on Thursday.

Mice pups genetically engineered to lack these receptors -- doorways into cells -- were unable to properly bond to their mothers and did not show the natural distress when separated from her, the researchers said.

from Pleasure Receptor May Hold Key to Mother-Child Bond

These pleasure receptors would also respond to endorphins, the "natural opiates" our bodies produce. Endorphin release corresponds to the feeling of love and the pleasure of sex, and so is a primary mechanism whereby humans are capable of forming bonds with one another.

To come at this from the other end, neurologists investigating the new field of "neurotheology" have demonstrated that the parts of the brain which are responsible for mystical or religious experience are the same parts of the brain that are involved with human sexual response.

If "God is love," then God appears often in the form of pleasure.

It stands to reason, that if pleasure is sacred, that it can be profaned. And it often is; it is unfortunately all too common that pleasure is abused and misused. Addiction is a common form of misuse.

Considering how pervasive sexual abuse is among human beings, the cloud of evil that it casts over the human race is considerable. On many levels, sexual abuse makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, for the abuse survivor to form close or effective bonds with other people. Thus, in addition to the violation that occurs on the level of direct physical abuse, sexual abuse carries the additional violation of profaning one's ability to give and recieve love.

crossposted to my journal and crossposted to the_pain_sutras

Comments

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

Are you a materialist?

I agree that pleasure has vast potential in the sacred department - but I believe this to be in spite of the endorphin response rather than because of it; the response in itself, I feel, has more the appearance of slavery than liberation - being the reward/punishment system our genes use to control us.

Whoa that was a long sentence.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

But if Malkuth is not holy, Kether is not holy.
The spirit is not separable from the form. They are interdependent.

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

By Assiah alone, indeed neither are holy.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I guess I am basically a materialist, though I tend not to think of it that way. I am certainly not a "reductionist" or any other sort of "hard materialist."

Let me put it this way -- anything that appears to be "supernatural" I take to be "natural, but not explained by current theories." So it is not that I reject the existence of the supernatural or spiritual, it is that I tend to think that it is a part of existence indistinguishable from what is natural and material.

I fear that drawing any sort of distinction between "spirit" and "matter" leads inevitably to dualism, which I find to be a very damaging philosophy.

Rather a strange statement from someone who self-labels as a Gnostic, eh? :)

I think of "spirit" or "divinity" as things which exist primarily in human cognition -- but whether that is correct or not, they are still meaningful and I would never pretend that they are not.

I do not think that understanding the workings of the cosmos in primarily material terms means that we have to pretend that spirit or divinity is meaningless.

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

I agree that supernatural is typically a canard, insofar as it is often taken to mean 'cannot be understood' or 'in violation of understandable laws' - neither of which seem to be the case. Of course, esoteric schools throughout time have offered the entire scope of hermeneutic theory on the so-called supernatual.

In The Conscious Mind (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195117891/qid=1088486676/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-0510415-4280928?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), Chalmers puts forth a theory called naturalistic dualism, which has some similarities to what you've offered. He agrees that there is no theoretical barrier before the supernatural (mind and consciousness, anyway), preventing it from being understood - that we just do not have a complete account yet.

However, he feels that the 'extra stuff' needed for a complete account cannot be physical stuff (cannot have mass/spatio-temporal extension). This does not mean it's spooky - he offers the example of discovering a new fundamental (irreducible) property of stuff that is the building block of consciousness (such that 'fundamental ontological stuff' would have 'mass', 'spatio-temporal extension' and 'proto-consciousness' as irreducible properties). (Note: such an account may not actually be 'dualist' in the formal sense, nomenclature aside)

Is this the direction you're going in? Do you reject the idea of non-corporeal [post-]human existence? I think most models of this sort cannot easily accomodate such things as afterlives.

"I fear that drawing any sort of distinction between 'spirit' and 'matter' leads inevitably to dualism"

Definitely. It gets very tough to really talk about holism though. :p

"Rather a strange statement from someone who self-labels as a Gnostic, eh?"

Hehe... yes and no. I think it takes a careful reading of Gnostic texts to discern if the original darkness indeed has an existence of its own or is rather some derivitive of (ie. or mere absence of) fullness. I think at least some Gnostic texts can be argued to be ultimately monistic metaphysics, following this approach.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about Chalmers again lately. I turned to him for reassurance a few years ago when I first encountered and felt threatened by the idea of material reductionism. He makes some excellent points, but as some of his critics have said, it is too early to close the door on a materialistic explanation for consciousness.

Chalmers appears to be a proponent of Strong AI, which is not a position I think is tenable. However, he could well be right that an understanding of consciousness would depend on the discovery of a new property of nature.

I have a loose answer to his Hard Problem that I have been meaning to post about for a few days now. I'll have to go back and check first to see if it is an answer he anticipated.

At the moment I lean towards the Penrose-Hameroff "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" model. Essentially this model proposes that consciousness is a product of certain quantum configurations that exist within the brain. Chalmers did address the idea of "quantum consciousness" with an objection that it still wouldn't explain qualia. In itself, perhaps not, but it's early yet.


It gets very tough to really talk about holism though.

Yes, unfortunately when we make distinctions using language, the human mind tends to want to elaborate upon distinctions and make them "harder" than they may actually be.


I think it takes a careful reading of Gnostic texts to discern if the original darkness indeed has an existence of its own or is rather some derivitive of (ie. or mere absence of) fullness.

Some of the Gnostics were definitely dualists, as were the Manichaeans, Neoplatonists, etc. (and, I would assert, the Christians, too), but dualism is not a necessary component of Gnostic theology and the Valentinians -- with whom I most closely identify -- appear to be monists who consider darkness to be essentially a human cognitive failing and not a "firm" material divide.

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

Concerning reductionism, Fodor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Fodor) offers an argument called Special Sciences (http://www.uab.edu/philosophy/faculty/ross/PHL%20470%20FODOR.htm) which suggests that each science (eg. physics, chemistry, biology, psychology) is an investigation of certain features of reality which have merit and and of themselves. Analogously, on the question of 'what a tree is', I could have a 'science' of color and a science of texture, and even though the latter is universal to the tree (as physics is to reality), it does not mean that the former is reducible to the latter.

Concerning cosmology, I'm sympathetic to the sorts of radical monistic/holistic theories which seem to begin with Parmenides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides).

Then, I see 'special sciences' as but different investigations by the mind into the holism, and do not grant physicalism any special status among them.

"Chalmers appears to be a proponent of Strong AI..."

Yeah, I part ways with him here as well. Although I agree with him that Orch-OR don't address the hard problem of qualia; but, like you suggested, this doesn't mean it's a fruitless area of research.

"Yes, unfortunately when we make distinctions using language, the human mind tends to..."

Bohm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm) invented a language structure called rheomode (http://130.192.70.9/files/research/exystence/brain/stamenov.pdf) to address this... I understand he had some school classes actually speaking it, and later discovered it had some similarity to certain aboriginal languages.

"Some of the Gnostics were definitely dualists..."

Yeah... I'm learning also that there are added complications in terms of sorting out monist/dualist cosmology versus monist/dualist soteriology, and so on.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

It stands to reason, that if pleasure is sacred, that it can be profaned. And it often is; it is unfortunately all too common that pleasure is abused and misused. Addiction is a common form of misuse.

I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time, I can assure you. You do tend to give me brain food quite often. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate this? Thank you.

[badsede.livejournal.com]

It stands to reason, that if pleasure is sacred, that it can be profaned. And it often is; it is unfortunately all too common that pleasure is abused and misused. Addiction is a common form of misuse.

I would think that this very reality means that pleasure is not itself sacred. Rather, it can serve as a vehicle for the sacred. When that aspect which is sacred is missing, then pleasure is not sacred. If pleasure were itself sacred, then the negating of sacredness (profaning) would also negate the pleasure itself.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

If pleasure were itself sacred, then the negating of sacredness (profaning) would also negate the pleasure itself.

In a way, that is actually what happens. People who are sexually abused, or who are addicted for a long time to pleasure-giving substances, find it difficult to feel or experience pleasure, either because it becomes tied in with negative feelings that negate it, or because the brain becomes endorphin-deficient -- which explains why some people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder are frequently addicted to drugs or alcohol.

[badsede.livejournal.com]

However, at the same time, I know from personal experience that many forms and situations of physical pleasure are in fact far from sacred.

With that in mind, you could make the argument that spiritual or existential pleasure is sacred. However, you would have to acknowledge that not all physical pleasure is spiritual/existential/whateveral, and that physical pleasure is only sacred when it is a vehicle for this "higher" pleasure.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

However, at the same time, I know from personal experience that many forms and situations of physical pleasure are in fact far from sacred.

I would propose that perhaps it is not the pleasure itself that was far from sacred, but the circumstances or attitudes under which the pleasure occurs.

Many times people seek pleasure in ways that are potentially very damaging. If the damage one receives from circumstances is greater than the pleasure received (and bearing in mind that pleasure operates by a law of diminishing returns) then that person is in effect profaning that which is sacred by virtue of its ability to form bonds of love and happiness between people, and its ability to lead us to mystical insights.

I'm not comfortable making a distinction between physical pleasure and "higher" pleasure, although I would allow a soft distinction between misuse or abuse of pleasure, and "higher use" of pleasure.

[badsede.livejournal.com]

I would propose that perhaps it is not the pleasure itself that was far from sacred, but the circumstances or attitudes under which the pleasure occurs.

I think you are right. Like all good, it can occur simultaneously with evil, creating "gray" areas. The key is to properly tune oneself to not only be able to perceive the good, but also the bad. I think people - myself included - are pretty good at turning a blind eye to what they do not want to see. Sometimes people will ignore a whole bunch of bad to get a little bit of good .. and in doing so do themselves more harm than good.

What complicates this is that physcial pleasure is really so easy to elicit.

I'm not comfortable making a distinction between physical pleasure and "higher" pleasure

Actually, thinking about it more now, I think some distinction is useful, but not that distinction. I think recognizing the difference between spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual and maybe a couple of other kinds of pleasure is a useful one .. especially since physical pleasure is so easy.

The natural conclusion would be that experiences that elicit pleasure on all these levels meets that "higher purpose. It would also seem that it is in compromising on one level that pleasure is profaned.


As is likely obvious, I have not really given this a lot of thought and my ideas are forming as they are written.

[badsede.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the book recommendation .. I always like book recommendations. ;)

[lilac139.livejournal.com]

Hello,
I came across your journal via sacredsexuality, where you posted a couple of poems. We seem to have a couple of interests in common, and a quick scan of your public entries here caught my eye. Hope you don't mind if I add you.
Thanks,
Shelley