[papermill]

Sex, food and shelter are necessary conditions for an "awesome life" for most people. You could argue they aren't sufficient and you need more ( like spirituality, community, etc ), but it's disingenuous to dismiss it as an unnecessary condition that you could distract yourself with hobbies.

Response to (sridca):

Yes, I'm well aware of the difference between need and desire.

But you can't have an "awesome life" if your major desires ( food, shelter and sex ) aren't met.

Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic ailments.

Can you live without sex? Sure. Can you live an "awesome life" without sex. I highly doubt it. But people are willing to rationalize anything I guess.

Food, sex and shelter are pretty much our biological imperatives. Not sure how you can live an "awesome life" without your basic natural desires being met.

But if you are happy living a sexless life, then all the best to you. This is a difference of opinion that we are just going to live with.

[rofo1]

> Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic ailments.

Strong disagreement here.

Sex is not necessary. It's way overblown, and anyone that has regular sex (or the potential to get it) will concede that point. It's definitely not worth the drama that usually follows it.

Food is necessary, cause without it you will die.

Shelter is necessary, cause without it you will die as well (eventually, not immediately)

Sex it not necessary. In fact, I was always confused and flabbergasted by the lengths people will go to to get it. It's remarkable - it's probably evolution at work, but still never ceases to amaze me. People will tolerate the most insane things I've ever witnessed just to put one reproductive organ into another. If an alien race was watching this, they'd die in laughter.

Also, the obsession with sex that modern cinema, newspapers (think scandals etc.), indirectly facebook/instagram, on every billboard hot naked women are selling you something (hot naked women cleaning service, hot naked women car wash/sales/etc.) cannot be healthy. Just cannot be! I don't understand this obsession at all. Don't people have literally anything better to do? Do people really have this much free time?

OT: I'm glad to see this topic on HN cause the human bonding in general is a very interesting topic. Wish we could discuss it more, cause it feels like we, as a society, just go with the momentum instead of sitting down and thinking long-term consequences of what we are doing. It's almost shameful and definitely looked down upon to suggest traditional values and roles, even though those traditional values were result of thousands of years of various attempts. Surely the previous generations weren't all imbeciles that couldn't conclude what works and what doesn't. I think it's safe to say that what we are doing now cannot work long-term.

[AQuantized]

It seems like it isn't necessary for you, but you can't project that lack of desire onto the majority. The reality is that if a large subset of people have a strong instinctual desire that goes continually unfulfilled, many will not have satisfying lives. That's not to deny that some won't move beyond it, through focus on other areas or deconstruction of their desire. However, that's unrealistic to expect for the majority.

[sridca]

Just because most people feel something does not make it a fact.

[arvinsim]

Saying that is just like telling a happy person that he is not really happy, that he only feels happy.

It's meaningless.

[sridca]

How exactly is saying it -- that just because most people feel something [desire to have sex] does not make it [that, quoting AQuantized's response to rofo1, sex is a necessity] a fact -- "just like" telling a happy person that he is not really happy and that he only feels happy?

[tomp]

It's a drive. A biologicaly need. In not so recent past, many people (mainly men) risked death (becaues being gay was illegal) just to be able to have sex (and in many places that is probably still true).

So it's unrealistic for you to just dismiss it as "unhealthy obsession".

Edit: life would obviously be much easier and better if we were perfectly natural and had complete control over our instincts. But we're not (well most of us) and we have to deal with it somehow. Maybe sex robots or VR :)

[sridca]

Yes. If it were not for the suffering engendered all this obsession with sex would be highly amusing.

And personally as someone who favours individualism -- despite having grown up in a culture where arranged marriages are the norm -- I would not go back to "traditional values" especially as there is no indication whatsoever that traditional societies were any more authentically happier than we are today.

The only way forward is individual autonomy (mentally, emotionally not just economically).

[sridca]

Do you know the difference between need and desire? Can you comprehend how desiring sex is different to needing food and shelter?

It is true that most people, as you indicate, are apparently unable to live an awesome life without sex in horizon. But that does not automatically make sex a "necessary condition" for an awesome life.

> Not sure how you can live an "awesome life" without your basic natural desires being met.

A desire, unlike a need, is not set in stone. Aggression is a "basic natural" instinctual passion too; does that mean you are rendered incapable of living an awesome life without going about killing your fellow human beings?

It is clear that you are not "well aware" of the difference between a desire and a need.

[zaroth]

You’re arguing pedantry and missing the point. Sex is not a need like food and water, you could say the same thing about any degree of human contact whatsoever.

And yet we know that humans isolated from other humans generally do not turn out well and sexual isolation is a very significant milestone on that spectrum.

[sridca]

The difference between a need and a desire is not a minor detail (which is what the word pedantry would indicate). Let me explain it for you.

    need /nēd/ 
    circumstances in which something is necessary, or that require some course of action; necessity.

    de·sire /dəˈzī(ə)r/ 
    a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

The very first thing to do is separate out needs from urges (desires): unless one is living as a hermit off nuts and berries deep in a remote forest one needs one’s fellow human beings for a whole raft of things (I need a shopkeeper to sell me goods as much as a shopkeeper needs me to sell goods to for example) and the most fundamental needs amount to five survival essentials ... air, water, food, shelter (if protection be necessary), and clothing (if the weather be inclement).

The fact that you fail to thoroughly appreciate this makes it unsurprising that you bizarrely place the condition of not engaging in sexual acts (an act of desire) with your fellow human beings to be nearly on the same level as living without being in contact (an act of need) with them.

[zzetsumei]

I'm no wordsmith but isn't it instinctual for humans to want to reproduce? The testosterone level in men are far greater than in women. I would say it's a biological "curse" but also a necessity for the continuation of the human race. It'd be wonderful if you could just train yourself to ignore the testosterone impulses nagging for a release but it seems impossible to me.

Speaking as a male in his late 20s, I've got fulfilling hobbies such as working on my car, biking, exercising and programming with friends. However none of those scratch the biological itch to have physical intimacy. I am actually quite offended you'd ask of me to deny my desires and to call me selfish for wanting to to pursue what is ingrained biologically in me. There is nothing to be gained from setting my bar low for what I want in life.

[sridca]

You'd be amazed how much of this so-called "biological curse" is software-based rather than hardware-based -- have you ever found yourself in the psychological state called "flow" where you momentarily forget about the rest of the world (including the much-cherished sexual desire)?

The human race, if it wants itself to continue, will make that decision just fine using its thinking brain (we are evolved enough to no longer need to rely on instinctual desires for the continuation of species; if anything it only gets in the way--just look at all the wars and suicides and murders and so on).

And no one here said anything about denying a feeling. Your offense is triggered by something you seemed to have imagined. Is sexual desire the new religion? Is questioning the validity of it to be automatically taken as an act of blasphemy?

By the way, aggression is "biological curse" too. So why are we not equally going about killing others and rationalizing it in a similar manner?

[zzetsumei]

Is there something wrong with wanting physical intimacy, sex, procreation?