Today’s class elicited a pretty strong reaction from myself, and one that I didn’t take advantage of expressing in our meeting. I know that we’re discussing this question of whether or not “A Billion Wicked Thoughts” is Cartesian on Thursday, however I’d like to approach it in one-way here. What I found... interesting? intriguing? worth observing? about today’s class were the things being avoided, or repressed, in terms of where our discussion was led. And then the phrase “what we already know” was used twice, which really interested me, and almost angered me. Of course I’m coming from an incredibly personal standpoint, however I really do believe if... our class, for example, had an open and honest discussion about our ideas of desire we would be even more astonished with the knowledge we’d (maybe?) be able to obtain. To be honest, I’ve only read the preface of the book thus far, but looking at the table on pg. 18 for the first time in class today was enough for me to question everyone’s/anyone’s understanding of desire or sexuality. It is not a comfortable topic to discuss amongst strangers, especially on Valentine’s Day... a day that probably makes people feel more emotionally or sexually repressed than we already are. The point I’m driving out is that we, in class today, completely avoided discussing our own personal desires... ones that may have contradicted those things stated in this book... and my one glimpse at the table on pg. 18 made me want to stand up for my own personal desires, because they differed greatly from the way they were presented in those tables. I didn’t like how male and female desire was being categorized, and reduced to something very general and not representative of myself (possibly... most likely others)... I know I keep referring to that table, and some of you may not have your book on hand, so to be frank I found that the porn sites I more frequently visited were on par with those of the male category, not the female. And I also thought it was pretty... stereotypical I guess, for the female sites to be heavily based in the categories of soft-core erotica because I, personally, am not as aroused by literary porn as I am by visual porn. Now, I am just one person, and maybe the numbers, the “facts”, do really point to a strong female... trend? But I just feel like we could learn a lot more about human desire... mostly sexual... because it seems to be so taboo, so repressed. I also don’t think it is as gendered and separate as the deductions made about desire in this book. Again, I’ve only read so much of it that I’d need to read more to say more.
This to me relates so much to the mind/body duality. I think the importance of the body is so undercut, especially in these Cartesian methods that seem to over simplify something as complex as desire. As an actor I am constantly tuning my body as an instrument that will allow me to be receptive, to react instinctively, and hopefully in a primal way that holds up the mirror to nature... true human nature. I think the danger in saying “these are things we already know” is that we dismiss the knowledge we can obtain through experience, or empirical observation, and rely more on “facts” or “reason”, things that I guess we’re supposed to believe about desire... or any human behavior. I wish that the topic of sex and desire were easier to discuss, because after all it is a deep animalistic instinct within all of us. I think that people who are more comfortable and in touch with their sexuality are more grounded and in touch with the world around them. But then it is puzzling to look at how the mind and the body can either work together to create something amazing, or something completely contradictory. For example, why would someone continue sleeping with someone who doesn’t actually please/fulfill them? Beyond pure physical desire, there are multiple factors that feed in to our pursuits... They’re emotional; they have to do with how certain actions make us feel, and how the mind can twist those ideas... instincts... dirty habits even... those ideas that cause humans to do seemingly malicious things like cheat on partners...
I don’t really know how to conclude anything I’ve just said... I’m just curious to hear anyone’s personal reactions or beliefs about desire and the mind and body’s role in shaping it..
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