Stop having Sex already!
No, seriously
Honestly, this fixation on sex is not like me. Under most conditions, I don’t care how many times you’re having sex; where you having it, who you having it with, or what colorful outfits you wear while doing it. It’s not my area of expertise nor my problem.
But with all the extra time I’ve had on my hands the last few months, I have found myself digging deeper into certain related statistics and as a result, find myself worrying more about what they mean.
For example, since I woke up this morning and started writing this article, about 150,000 people have been born worldwide. That’s roughly 4–5 every second of the day. 15,000 born every hour; 360,000 people every day.
These numbers get so high that they become a little unreal, and out of focus. Like watching Fox News, after three large margaritas.
Since the year I was born, people have replicated themselves 5,000,000,000 times.
Do you have any idea how many, 5 billion is, of anything?
With you and your Lexus driving 400 miles per day, it will take just over 34,000 years to log in that number. I wonder if the warranty will last on this one.
If 5,000,000,000 people stood on another’s shoulder on earth, we would be able to make about 10 round trips to the moon.
The problem with numbers is that they become too abstract and after a certain point cease to relate to actual things — like people and families and what they need to do to survive. They become abstract concepts.
Watch some of the news reports again from March and April, when the Covid-19 numbers started hitting their stride. By the time they started talking 1 million cases and 100,000 deaths, my mind got a little numb and to save itself, moved away from viewing this as 100,000 brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers dying. They just became statistics.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
When dealing with earth and its population, it’s as if Sex and all its pleasures and levels of intimacy are on one side of the world — let’s say the Bahamas, and all the possible outcomes of that act are the other side of the world — let’s say, Fiji. As these two parts of the same act never get to see one another. Never get to understand what those 5 ½ minutes of fun resulted in, because, you’re in the Bahamas, we don’t see what we are actually doing to ourselves and our environment. We don’t see the struggle being created each day.
RELATABLE FACTS
In the United States Midwest around 1820, there were over 50,000,000 buffalo roaming the plains. Eating, pooping (often) and turning the plains into one of the most fertile regions on earth. By 1880, there were fewer than 10,000 of these animals left. This is what happens when our actions and their consequences go unheeded and become disconnected in a small window of time. When what we do and what these actions mean are not viewed at the same time with the same level of importance. This same level of disconnection is still happening all over the globe right now.
According to some studies approximately 500 species have gone extinct on this planet — 500 that we are aware of — in the last 100 years. But we’re still working on this. It’s a number we seem intent on increasing.
So, what’s the point?
On one hand, sex is the point and on the other, it’s not. Having sex safely and responsibly is a great way to have fun and burn calories. Sex is also something that we think about often and do nearly as much and yet, based on the stats and the ever-increasing population across the planet, we are not thinking about the consequences very much at all.
Once again, sex, and what happens when we have it, are not being connected. The dots are not being linked. Crudely put, wham bam, thank you ma’am, is pretty much what we have going on and it’s not working.
WHERE WE ARE HEADING?
As a society we get lost in the doing until we lose sight of the repercussions altogether.
Look around us right now. Look at the protests. The objections to the way policing is being done. The way violence has crept into the concept of protect and serve. It didn’t start in January 2019. It’s been gradually happening and increasing for the last 200 years in the United States. Happening and being accepted (by default) until we stop noticing it. And then, George Floyd happens and others like him and then, the problem moves from the indistinct shadows of common practice to the foreground, where everyone gets to look at what’s actually being done and can cringe and wince a little, before wondering what happens next.
We, in an almost, anti-Zen situation, remain so firmly planted in the moment that we don’t look out beyond it.
And policing shouldn’t take the brunt of this. It’s just in the spotlight right now. We burn certain types of fuel; fail to heed warnings until the ozone layer above us has a large gaping hole in it. We take drugs too often to remedy minor ailments and “suddenly” 55% of Americans take prescription drugs regularly.
According to the United Nations, about 10% of the global population goes to bed hungry or is eating less than is required to maintain a healthy body. That’s roughly 800,000,000 people each day.
And yet, through a different study, (USDA) it’s believed that about 30% to 40% of all food produced in America ends up in the landfill. Food that goes bad in the fields, and during processing, on its way to the market; over purchasing by large supermarket chains and restaurants, on and on. And this is only the US. Is this as good as it gets?
Stop Having Sex Already is a metaphor for all the things we as a society are doing without taking enough time to look at the repercussions.
We take far too much for granted. We, in an almost, anti-Zen situation, remain so firmly planted in the moment that we don’t look out beyond it. We see ourselves eating and drinking and taking drugs for the heartburn and then do it all over again, because it’s happening in a new moment of time, every single day.
Sex is not the problem, we are. We like what we like and want what we want and we’re not seeing the cost in providing all of this for us. We are not connecting the dots.
Everything we do or see or eat or drink can be done in a life sustaining way. We just have to invest the time and attention and wherewithal to make it happen.
You don’t have to stop having sex. That’s just a title to get your attention. But now that I have it, I hope I made my point. Doing things, the right way generally takes a little more of your time. Like manually removing the weeds from your driveway, without using the latest chemical weed-killer that might kill more than your weeds and probably melt the concrete as well.
It’s easy to live life on auto-pilot. Get up, get out, get on with it, day after day, with everyone doing their bit in isolation. Ironically, our recent enforced isolation has made life slow down. We are seeing more clearly how one person’s life and job, interacts with another, and another, until we are finally seeing the dots being connected. They always have been, but because life and us were moving so quickly, things became a blur.
From 2000 until 2020 about 2.8 billion people were added to planet earth. While the birthrate is trending down, that’s still too many. If we don’t consciously look for and change what isn’t working, it will keep on happening. It always has. It takes time and effort to change things.
But it’s worth it. We are worth it.
Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.