sex and marriage

Chapter 2 The Necessity of Sexual Morality

In any society, whether ancient or modern, there are two main components closely related: one is the economic system; the other is the family system.For now.There are two influential schools of thought: one is that everything is economic; the other is that everything is sexual or family.The former is the school of Marx; the latter is the school of Freud.I don't belong to either school because it seems to me that economics and sexuality are interrelated in terms of causation and that neither is clearly superior to the other.For example: the Industrial Revolution has undeniably had a profound impact on sexual morality in the past, present and future; but on the other hand, Puritan sexual morality is psychologically an essential part of the reason for the Industrial Revolution.

I've never identified economics or sex as a primary factor.Because in fact the two cannot be completely separated.The primary responsibility of the economy is to feed and clothe people.But among those who obtain food and clothing only for personal gain, the need of food and clothing is very little; the need of food and clothing is due to family reasons.Thus, as the institution of the family shifts, so does the purpose of the economy.It is obvious that not only life insurance but most private savings would be greatly reduced, or even stopped altogether, if children were to leave their families and be brought up by the state, a republic of the kind Plato spoke of.That is to say, if a certain country recognizes patriarchy, then this country will in fact become the only capitalist.Some scholars often raise a rhetorical question, that is, if the country becomes the only capitalist, then all our current families will not be able to survive.Even so, however, it cannot be denied that there is a close and complementary connection between private property and the family.Because of this, we cannot figure out the cause and effect.

The sexual morality of a society includes the following stages: the first stage, positive institutions embodied by law, such as monogamy in some countries and polygamy in some countries; the second stage, the law has no right to interfere , it is public opinion that deserves attention; the last stage, both in theory and in practice, only focuses on individual choices.Apart from Soviet Russia, there is no other country in the world today whose sexual morality and sexual system are determined by rationalism.And there has never been such an era in the history of the world.This is not to say that the institutions of Soviet Russia are impeccable in this respect; what I mean is that they, or at least a considerable part of them, are not derived from superstition and tradition, as are the institutions of other countries at various times. from.As for what is the highest sexual morality from the viewpoint of happiness of most people, that is indeed an extremely complicated issue.The answer to this question will also vary from environment to environment.The answer is different in an industrially developed society than in a primitive agricultural system; in a place where medicine and sanitation are good and the death rate is low, and in a place where plagues are so rife that most of the inhabitants die before they come of age. As far as areas facing death are concerned, the answer is different.When our knowledge is enriched, it may be considered that even the most noble sexual morality will have many differences according to material conditions or time and place.

Throughout the ages, sexual morality has had a certain impact on individuals, couples, families, nations and countries.However, at a given time, its influence has a good side and a bad side.When we examine a particular system, we must first study the above effects before we can determine what the system is like.

First, we should examine purely personal influences which are based on psychoanalysis.Here we are concerned not only with the influence of the law upon a person's behavior when he is an adult, but also with the traditional conception of obeying the law that a person has in his prime.We all know that the effects of ancient taboos are strange and immediate.On this question, of course, what we have to discuss is the happiness of the individual.

Secondly.It examines issues between men and women.Certain sexual relationships are clearly more valuable than others.Many people think that a sexual relationship is certainly more perfect if its main component is psychological rather than purely physical.Indeed, the general knowledge, sung by poets and imparted to educated men and women, is that the value of love increases if an extra large number of persons enter into the sexual relationship.The poet also teaches that love is worth judging by its intensity, though this is a very controversial issue.Most modern people believe that love should be an equal relationship between a man and a woman, and therefore polygamy cannot be regarded as an ideal institution without a particular reason.For this question, we have to consider not only marriage, but also various relationships other than marriage, because no matter what kind of marriage system is implemented, various relationships other than marriage will also vary according to the different marriage systems.

And second, we're going to discuss family issues.Different types of family organization exist in different times and regions.However, patriarchal families are more important than other types of family organization, and there are far more monogamous patriarchal families than polygamous ones.Long before the emergence of Christianity, the main motive of sexual morality in Western culture was to bring sexual civilization to this level of female morality.Without this kind of moral civilization, the patriarchal family cannot exist, because the relationship between children and parents cannot be determined.Christianity's contribution to masculine morality was psychologically derived from the teachings of asceticism.In modern society, this dynamic is intensified by female jealousy.Female envy was powerful in the women's liberation movement.The latter motive, however, is temporary, because even on the surface of things we can see that, although in the past it has always been women who have been bound, what women want is a man who can give A system of freedom and equality between men and women is not a system that allows women to restrain men.

In fact, in monogamous families, the situation is also varied.Marriage is either decided by the couple themselves, or by their parents.In some countries, the bride is bought, but in others, such as France, the groom is bought.When it comes to divorce, the types are even more varied.Catholics don't allow divorce, but China's old system allowed a man to divorce his wife simply because she was nagging.In the relationship between the sexes, there is always each other, not only in humans, but also in animals.In order to maintain the continuation of the species, the participation of males in raising children is indispensable.For example, in order to incubate the chicks, the male bird must lie on the eggs continuously to keep the eggs warm; and in order to eat, he must spend a lot of time every day looking for food.In this process it is impossible for a single bird to do both, so the cooperation of the males is necessary, with the result that most males become moral paragons.In humans, the cooperation of the father is a great physical sacrifice to the offspring, especially in troubled times or in troubled nations.However, with the development of modern civilization, the role of the father is being gradually weakened by the state.Many believed that the biological contribution of the father would soon be lost, at least among the wage-earning classes.If this happened, the standard of heredity would change entirely, since the mother would have no basis for ascertaining the father of her child.Plato went a step further. He not only used the state to replace the father's position, but also replaced the mother's position.I can't agree with Plato's conception, because I'm neither an ardent supporter of a state nor a total supporter of orphanages.At the same time, the limited economic capacity also makes this idea impossible to realize.

Law and sexuality are related in two different ways: first, law enforces socially adopted laws on sexual morality; second, it also protects the general rights of individuals in the sexual sphere.The latter has two main parts: on the one hand, it protects women and minors from bullying and beatings, and on the other hand, it prevents vampires.However, in terms of pure effectiveness, neither aspect has been well regarded.Therefore, these two aspects of work have not been dealt with as seriously as they should.As for the former, although we have had a campaign against prostitution and have passed laws to that end, it has been too fanatical because the laws passed are easily evaded by criminals by profession and provide opportunity to blackmail innocent people.As regards the latter, the view that venereal disease is a just punishment for sin prevents us from adopting measures which are based on purely medical grounds.At the same time, it is generally believed that venereal disease is difficult to talk about, so that the disease is concealed, so that it cannot be treated promptly or adequately.

Finally, let's talk about population.This is an extremely wide-ranging issue that must be approached from many perspectives.There are mainly the mother's health problems, the children's health problems, and the psychological impact of the big family and the small family on the child's personality.These can probably all be classified as hygiene issues.In addition, there are private or public economic questions: questions of individual property in each family, questions of the relationship between society and the family, questions of the birth rate of the population of society.Closely related to this is the impact of population issues on international relations and world peace.There is also the question of eugenics, that is, of the improvement or degeneration of the race produced by the different birth and death rates in the different parts of the world.No sexual morality can be affirmed or denied until we have fully understood the points listed above.The so-called social reformers and extremists have a bad habit of seeing only one side of a problem, or at most two sides; few of them can connect their personal and political views for a comprehensive consideration.We cannot blindly say that this point is more important than that point, and we cannot predetermine that a system that is good from a personal point of view must also be good from a political point of view; and vice versa.I personally think that in most ages and places those invisible moral factors have led to the acceptance of institutions which contain an utterly needless cruelty, and this is still the case among the nations which profess to be the most civilized.I also believe that medical advances have made sexual morality legitimate from both an individual and a social point of view.At the same time, the increasing role of the state in education is gradually reducing the father to a historically unprecedented position of insignificance.There are therefore two tasks upon us in criticizing modern morality: on the one hand, we must rid ourselves of superstitions which are often unconscious; new factor.

In order to predict the development of present institutions, I shall discuss the following three questions: first, those institutions that have existed in the past, or are still preserved among relatively uncivilized peoples; Characteristics of the system: Third, where the system must be reformed and why.

(End of this chapter)