Everything about our sexual lives, other than the most obvious, becomes the point of our relationships. Rather, I mean to include us all as a culture that has willingly made one of its most fundamental human practices into an artificial abstraction. I mean no attacks on anyone, least of all those whose desires point them in infertile directions. A same-sex couple cannot be described as suffering the tragedy of infertility, for fertility has nothing to do with their relationship. If sexual activity is abstracted from the procreation of children, then how does it differ from any other form of sexual activity, including those that under any conceivable set of circumstances could never produce a child – or even fail to produce a child. And with the normalization of this technologically invented childless sexuality, all forms of childless sexual behavior appear normative. What might have once been an anomaly and an exception (childless sexuality) is now the only form that we consider normative – children being little more than accessories after the fact. The failure of birth control had a sure and certain remedy.Īnd so, when we now discuss “sexuality” in our culture, we have in mind a new thing (not the thing that human beings have lived with throughout all previous history). The legalization of abortion in the Western world in the latter half of the 20 th century added an element of violence to the equation. The family slowly became reconfigured, not by necessity or nature, but simply by the whims of human desire. As such, children became lifestyle choices for people who wanted that sort of thing. We were no longer “slaves” to our bodies. With the implementation and popularization of medical intervention, human sexual practices became estranged from human biology. The arguments surrounding family planning were initially the work of ardent eugenicists who saw science as an important tool for breeding a better, healthier race. Oddly, as recently as 1928, almost all Protestant denominations in America shared the condemnation of birth control with the traditional Churches such as Catholics and Orthodox. The philosophies and arguments that we now call the sexual revolution are largely the result of new forms of birth control, particularly the use of artificial hormones, and their popularization. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, such that the right actions between two persons result in the creation of another life. For almost all human history, sex between men and women within a certain age range, generally led to the conception of a child. The so-called sexual revolution, touted as a change in choices, lifestyles and personal freedom, is, in reality, a massive intervention into human life by technologies that change the very nature of sex and distort how we see it and use it. Modern culture, with its economic and family arrangements is increasingly an example of artificiality. Day after day, lifetime after lifetime, in an environment that makes our polar regions seem like paradise is not a true strategy for colonization. But movies only last for a couple of hours. So, human beings would rarely go outside, other than with extreme protection.
It would become a cancer camp in short order. Mars, that likeliest of candidates, is bathed in deadly radiation. I can imagine this same scenario if human life were spread to other planets. But what happens when an entire society and culture is predicated on medical intervention, when what becomes “natural,” is, in fact, artificial? I would never want to suggest to anyone that my apnea should become normative. I am deeply grateful for medical intervention, both for my night’s sleep, my lack of a gall bladder, and the stent that keeps my heart functioning (getting old!). What happens when we can only live our lives through the wonders of a medical intervention? For some, it might be as difficult as kidney dialysis, or as inconvenient as insulin shots. This little vignette of my medical life is my way of illustrating a certain scenario. I laugh because at night we strap on our sleep masks and lie there like pilot and co-pilot. Panteleimon shut down the electricity when it was time for “lights out.” Go to bed. It was only an issue one night when the monastery of St.
#UNMARRIED MAN V ATTEND JESUS UNDISTRACTED PORTABLE#
I bought a portable one, capable of being hauled around in a backpack. Athos last year, one of the more difficult practicalities was the need for my machine wherever I went. And so, I sleep with a “sleep machine,” a device with a mask through which a positive air pressure is maintained so that you don’t stop breathing. According to the sleep study I endured, it happens over 90 times an hour. When I fall asleep, I stop breathing at certain points.
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