https://www.salon.com/2022/11/06/why-are-so-many-young-people-are-having-less-and-fewer-friendships/
[F]ar-right figures [...] have painted this phenomenon as a crisis of masculinity (even though under-35 women seem to having equally little sex).
Nearly 60 years ago, C. Wright Mills encouraged that we understand this kind of aggregated social data not as the result of personal failings, but as public issues that can be explained by looking to larger historical and structural relationships. When we look at other data points like the graph below, we find that it is not merely sexual relationships that are on the decline, but also friendships. This, from a sociological standpoint, reveals that there is something larger going on here. Untangling it means we must look at the at the larger economic, cultural, and political changes.
[A] bleak outlook brought on by economic conditions, changing social norms as a result of new communications technologies, and just simply feeling as though one doesn't have enough time to invest in their personal relationships. Thus, if we really do see this as a serious issue, then we need to make changes at a variety of levels.
Look I've fucked before, you're not explaining a new concept to me here. I'm just saying sex is the best when you're actively communicating with your partner to fulfill their and your needs and most people don't do that with strangers for plenty of reasons usually tied up to larger sociopolitical issues, hence https://hexbear.net/post/232087/comment/2967151. If you want to make someone's leg shake you should be asking them what they like and doing that. And saying sex is a skill is like saying fitness is a skill, are you really hitting all those muscle groups? You down to suck a toe? My partners like different things and, in my experience, hookup culture ends in too many faked orgasms because people don't communicate. Commodifying sex, which is what apps like tinder do imo, sucks and makes it worse.
I guess I'm making a weird esoteric point here that sex is great and all but just kind of a thing you do and what actually makes it great is the almost spiritual connection you share with someone when you do it really well for each other? Like fucking is the vessel for the shared humanity between individuals and amazing orgasms are how you breach that wall and momentarily shed the confines of your own individuality? I'm asking sincerely if that makes sense. I sometimes feel like that eating a really amazing meal, like it nihilates the ego and you feel connected to something larger. idk if that makes sense, the other day I came at the same time my two partners did and it felt like I saw god so maybe that's just me
I think that this is woo.
But I also literally never feel this sensation, in any context, in relation to any other person, or material article in my life. So IDK; but it doesn't sound like a thing.
Probably. In my mind it's the chemical sensation of [science] happening in your head that you experience as spirituality. Durkheim's theory of religious formation is that at the core of religious feeling is a social moment of effervescence in which the individuals experience themselves as the social organism/imagine god into being. It's very outdated writing and almost sounds like mysticism but I think effervescence is a true description of a more materially explainable brain chemical reaction. People experience this sensation while experimenting with drugs and pushing emotional highs - like feeling extreme closeness with a loved one - and it makes sense to me that our brains are wired eusocially otherwise I wouldn't be invested in this commie shit. Kropotkin and mutual aid here. And so this feeling of effervescence becomes a feeling of largeness, connectedness that people describe as religious feeling. First chapter of civilization and its discontents by Freud speculates a bit on the psychology behind this feeling, ofc he says its daddy issues, which, maybe. And so in a modern industrial era, man is further atomized and alienated away from his fellow man and this eusocial effervescence and thus Nietzsche is right and god is dead. Also Durkheim's work on suicide in early industrial cities which inspired him to go do the research into religion. He'd argue that the current crisis of atomization, and the dearth of this spiritual connectedness, is at the heart of the epidemic of deaths of despair we're currently experiencing. calling my shot on a third great awakening to fill the power vacuum or maybe the rebirth of micro-cults if things really start collapsing fast
IDK, I think I could live in a micro-cult if they'd take me.
unironically experienced 3rd impact