Desire: Destroyer or a Creator?

Human desire is a loaded topic as everyone's individual desire is ultimately their guide for action.  These desires in a martial sense are to be controlled, as only a tamed desire can allow one to choose  the manner of their own death.  Those who cause the most damage to themselves and others while dying most violently have little or no impulse control, nor have they found ways to sublimate their desire in healthy ways.

The martial artist treats desire as something to be neither restrained nor unleashed.  Rather, desire is to be guided toward satisfactions that maximize individual and collective benefit.  Why care about the desires of the collective?  Because the rest of society can become a powerful enemy.  Therefore, the martial way is to satisfy all one's desires in ways that maximize control over one's manner of death.

The most loaded sort of desire is sexual due to the purely self serving nature of the act.  Either one's genes are spread or they go to waste.  Sex is not fair, nor kind, nor good, nor bad.  Like killing, it is a neutral act until it yields good or bad consequences.  Sex can accomplish one of two directives: destruction or creation.

Scumbags and schneevies delight in the destructive sexual desires.  The divine Marquis de Sade details these desires in his works, such as 120 Days of Sodom, which is a textbook description of the motivations which plague the lives of scumbags and schneevies, driving them to depths of depravity unimaginable to civilized persons.  People such as these revel in nonreproductive and destructive sexual acts, such as sodomy, cuckoldry, torture, coprophagia, pedophilia, zoophilia, and other aberrant fixations rightly condemned by almost every civilization.  These fixations greatly influence the life goals of these individuals making them sadistic, masochistic, and generally unpleasant to others.  Often schneevies and scumbags will get in relationships with one another predicated on mutual victimization.  As long as they are arguing, fighting, hurting, and betraying one another, they remain "happy."  People who harbor these fixations tend to represent cowardice, androgyny, disloyalty, and dishonesty in their dealings with others.  Their life paths usually foster destruction and dissatisfaction.

What distinguishes good people from schneevies are not the nature of their sexual desires, but their means of channeling these desires in civilized ways.  A grown man who finds young girls attractive might role play with his wife.  An anal sex fixation might be enjoyed in the context of a committed relationship.  A sadist might play with whips and implement a safe word for their partner.  In all cases, sexual exclusivity, loyalty, and reliability are hallmarks of civilized people who CREATE with their sexual desires rather than destroy.  They create relationships, families, and communities, even if they might harbor kinky desires behind closed doors.  By channeling their desires, rather than being consumed by them, they create a greater community around them.  Further, these individuals do not treat their desires as the primary foci of their lives.  They define themselves by what they create and accomplish, rather than what gets them off.

Further posts will discuss ways of channeling and controlling desire for constructive ends.