A short introduction: the body of this thread was prepared by for another forum. The original contained music links and much more vulgarity. The below is basically a copy/pasted and edited (yay censorship!) version of the original. So, if at certain points you are a bit confused as to why I referenced a song without a link, or why I chose a set of words...well...it was originally written for a different audience (most of whom are atheists and...to a degree...hedonists and consequentalists). You are all seeing a censored version. So, without further ado:

Alright, peoples...Shoot me again (Metallica song...may contain vulgar language, if you want to hear it, youtube it)...I ain't dead yet! Before I get to the thrust of the thread, though, I have to muse for a moment that whereas I've ripped on St. Anger with just about everyone else, I find that more and more St. Anger is the soundtrack of my life. It is not, of course, my favorite album. My favorite album is either one of the first three or Death Magnetic. Those are Metallica's best albums musically. Still...more and more, I find that St. Anger is increasingly becoming the most cathartic album for me. It is, I think, at least better than Reload. I'd rather listen to "All Within My Hands" than "Devil's Dance." The raw sound of St. Anger, the almost doom-metal like guitar riffs at certain points, the almost chaotic sound of it all...it somehow taps into my emotional state.

In any case, I once again had last night the existential angst that is The Unnamed Feeling (it contains vulgar language...if you want to hear the song, youtube it or something). You all know, my newfound friends, that I am as of yet still one who has never had sex with a woman. I've never had a real girlfriend. So great is the miserableness of my state that the one chick I was even ok friends with (a girl I hung out with last summer)...she wouldn't even sit directly next to me.

In any case, my loneliness has ultimately produced in me, with the sure aid of my philosophical background, a certain existential way in me of thinking about relationships which can only be called Levinasean/Jaspers-esque. Of course, it should be no surprise to you that one who has never been in a relationship or had sexual relationships thinks so much about them both. After all, was it not this same loneliness which called both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to writing?

Yet, last night between (not all at once) 12:30 in the morning till like 2:30 in the morning, there I was on the telephone with a certain girl I've had a crush on since my freshman year of high school (I'm in my junior year of college now) This girl is, alas, my Sweet Amber (if you want to hear the Metallica song, go to youtube...may contain vulgar language). So there I spoke with her, and guess what? She's having more relationship problems. Ha!

Of course, this all led to my suggestion that perhaps if she were to stop approaching relationships in such a vain way and...y'know...getting with a dude to whom she may be less attracted, and who though may be less able to offer her material crap...well...still nonetheless can respect this broad. I suggested that it would, and I love how poetic I am, perhaps "be a breath of fresh air for your urban lunges." I know. Just. Like. Virgil. :ninja: For some reason, though, she didn't seem all that interested (I didn't expect otherwise...though she did show me a certain lewd pic of herself in her undergarments, oddly enough.

Whatever the case, the point is that somehow this all led to a dialogue on sex and relationships (that happens a lot with me). Her position was that I ought to first worry about procuring the sexual act, and then pursue a relationship with someone intellectually around the age of 30. My position was that this way of seeing things is entirely wrong. I don't see relationships as being based in sex. I see romantic relationships as being basically friendships in which two people have committed themselves to the other in an act of decision.

So I talked with her on the telephone, and she explained to me that thought it was better for one to lose his/her virginity to someone who isn't his/her first boyfriend/girlfriend. She, of course, disagreed with my view of relationships. Hers are generally based primarily on sex, and develop out of her sexual promiscuity. For her it's sex first, and then relationship.

Of course, I have to admit my wit here: "Sure...but I have to ask...how's that working out for you?"

"Right now? (Censored...a variation of a four letter word to the effect of 'not good')."

"How's that ever worked out for you?"

"(Censored...see above)."

"I thought so."

The circumstances of all this, of course, were freaking fantastic. It was almost as freaking awesome as Plato's set up to the Phaedo, in which Socrates sits within a prison cell, waiting for the hour of his death. This dialogue all happens directly after she frantically (while she's on the telephone) is searching for her a certain instrument of her lewdness, and directly after she consummates a certain lewd action. That miserable beast really loves that instrument probably more, I think, than she loves most people. I could almost hear, even as we speak, the saliva dripping from the lips of that disgusting swine as she caressed and hugged (I can only imagine) the instrument for dear life.

This all stirred me to righteous outrage. This was my answer, and now that I think of it, I think it's good enough to offer all of you too, my newfound friends:

The moment you approach another for casual intercourse is the moment that the Other person ceases to seem to you a person. That person becomes an object which you can manipulate to your own sick desires. Here is not "Joan," that woman, but rather "Joan," a walking set of genital organs. As Kant rightly points out, as Levinas stresses, and as Jaspers seems to hint at...people aren't objects. People. Are. People. And the moment you reduce another person to an object is the moment that you cross over into the most heinous of immorality and ethical abomination.

Approaching sexual relations in this fashion not only perverts the nature of the act (which is at least in part unitive), but it undermines the dignity of personhood and destroys the very fabric of social relationships.
People aren't objects. People are people.

Furthermore, in this same way of thinking we find the most miserable moral privation of fornication. "But I love my girlfriend," you tell me. "I respect my boyfriend," is the lie that you force out through your teeth. If you were not approaching this other person as an object at all, I tell you that you would marry that person first, for in marriage alone is there is a total unifying of persons. In marriage alone does one person fully receive another person into his own life...in marriage alone, whereby "two become one flesh."

But it stands, the Other for you is not another PERSON. The Other for you is not One who should be loved and respected...not in this or that way, nor because of this or that "aspect" of him...but as a total person. The Other is something, for you, to be reduced to objecthood.

And. I. Despise. You. For. It.

Here I stand in full appreciation of the sexual act and romantic relationships, and long for it "as the watchman awaits the waiting of day," and She (women in general) mocks me with the cruelest of scornful laughter which bites to the very bones of my soul like an enraged dog...and there you stand in "possession," so to speak, of all of it...yet not in awe of it, but with the prodigality and carelessness of a rich grandson.

I despise you all.