Sex, Economics and Pyramids

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Some time ago now, I was reading a review of the film Ghost. The reviewer commented on the fact that, because the male lead becomes disincarnate at an early point in the plot, the film had to open with him and his girlfriend having sex. This is, of course, a novel variation on the two main characters having sex in the middle of the film or at the end. But this wasn't what impressed the reviewer. He thought that this approach of getting the obligatory sex scene in early, leaving the rest of the movie for character development, was an idea whose time might well have come.

Given the secular West's understanding of sex, he may unfortunately be right. While the idea of having sex now and, if it's good, maybe getting to know each other later is called the 'Playboy philosophy', the seeds go back long before the genesis of that well-known magazine. I was reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel around the same time - a form of escape literature to which I was then much addicted - which dealt with a young man's efforts to win a girl with whom he had fallen in love at first sight.

Now, nothing could be more sexually upright than Wodehouse. Any couple who discover a mutual attraction instantly become engaged, and there are frequent allusions to Scripture (although lies and deception, not to mention theft, are often means of resolution in the highly complex plots). No, the sexual innocence of 'Plum' proves, if proof were needed (and I suspect actually that it is) that wall-to-wall orgies are not a necessary ingredient of best-selling twentieth-century novels. But note the method of determining a life partner. The young man sees a woman for a few minutes, does not learn her name, but nevertheless becomes determined to change it to his own. Here are the seeds of the 'Playboy philosophy', though the sexual morality of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse and Hugh Hefner could not be further apart if they existed on separate planets.

I once heard a very effective critique of the 'love-at-first-sight' approach by a beautiful Southern Californian university student (beautiful, that is, even in comparison with other Southern Californian university students, who have a high average rate of glamour). I have no doubt she spoke from experience when she referred to men who attempt the instant pick-up. "That's so tacky," she said. "It's so superficial to judge people by what they look like."

We can absolve her, I'm sure, from any suspicion of sour grapes. But in an age of instant everything, glossy marketing and superficiality in all aspects of life, she will continue to be on the bad end of a cultural practice based solely on her appearance. And, perhaps more tragically, her 'unattractive' sisters (with 'unattractive' again defined solely on the basis of appearance) will continue to be on the worse end - regardless of their intelligence, personality and character. These days, you have to market yourself to get anything - a job, a friend, a spouse . . . Everything has become a part of the consumer culture. If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than his neighbor, he'd better get out and market aggressively or he won't be able to afford to live in the woods.

Well then, let's look critically at this culture in its own terms. In any society where commerce is important, so will commercial terminology be in that society's figurative speech. So let's discuss imports and exports.

Imports and Ideology

What you might call 'sexual economics' has many parallels to the economic theories current in the rest of society. There are the free-market advocates, who think that no controls should be imposed and that 'market forces' that is, what people want or can be made to want - should decide the issue. There are the interventionists, who want strict government control to bring about the result they consider ideal, but which they do not believe will occur spontaneously. But the theory that most modern Westerners actually live by is that of Adam Smith - 'enlightened self-interest'. In other words, if everybody acts primarily in their own interests, the end result will be best for all.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work any better with sex than it does with those other two human obsessions - money and power. Essentially, if I'm only in this for what I can get, and you're only in it for what you can get, neither of is going to end up getting it. The flow goes something like this:

[Unfortunately I don't have the software to reproduce the diagrams. Imagine the words "I want you" with an arrow beginning from "I", leading around the words through "you", and then coming back to "I" again.]

rather than:

[Imagine the words "I want you" with an arrow beginning from "I" and leading to "you".]

The flow is from self through other to self, or even just from other to self - an import economy. The second diagram is of an export economy, where the 'balance of trade' is in the outward direction. The words? How often, in TV, movies, and books, do you see the first substituted for the second, as if they were synonymous?

Of course, the implications are wider than for our sexual relationships. All our relationships in life can involve import and export. Most will probably involve both. There is nothing wrong with import in and of itself, of course. It is necessary to a healthy economy. What is important is the way it is done.

Two Parables

Imagine two third-world nations - call them Atake and B'give. Atake is ruled by a military junta. It is completely paranoid about attack from its neighbours, and given its - let us say indifferent - relations with them, it is probably right. It is not only right, but Right - a right-wing junta - so the world's leading democracy is the one which sells it the large quantity of weapons it believes it requires to stave off attack from its neighbours (and, incidentally, its increasingly restive citizens).

Now the Congressman who (in this entirely fictional scenario - no reference, of course, is intended to any country living or dead) is the main negotiator of military aid to Atake owes his election largely to the unsolicited generosity of certain wealthy men who happen to own large quantities of shares in companies which manufacture world-famous trousers, fizzy drinks, and fast food. This of course is entirely unconnected with the unusual ease of granting of import permits for these goods to be brought into Atake - after all, the people of the country are very grateful to their powerful ally, and anyway everyone knows that the whole world wants to imitate that country's culture, because it is so superior.

But I perceive that I am becoming political. Never mind. The point is that Atake borrows immensely to import the military and cultural paraphernalia, and quite apart from the long-term ecological destruction from inappropriate industries run by foreign multinationals at the expense of the local people, the country will consequently be indebted for the entire 'foreseeable future' (a mythical beast in any case, and so often ignored by governments with more immediate problems). The people will continue to be in grinding poverty, whether or not they get a much-desired change of government, because unfortunately departing governments do not take the national debt with them, except in the form of Swiss bank accounts. This is the import economy.

By contrast, B'give is ruled by an enlightened government which has the best interests of the people at heart (I told you this was fiction). However, it is extremely poor, like Atake, and also has very little to offer any other country.

So, the enlightened government of B'give institute (with the help of a Christian mission, since nobody else is interested) a development project whereby, at the cost of incurring a certain amount of debt, small, appropriate industries are started, employing national workers trained by foreigners to use and service the equipment. With this, foreign exchange is produced, and B'give starts the slow climb out of poverty and starvation. This is also an import economy, at first - at least, until it is able to become an export economy. The difference is that while Atake imports against the future, B'give imports for the future. The people of Atake will suffer in the future for the superficial benefits they are gaining now. The people of B'give, on the other hand, will benefit in future from the sacrifices made now.

So how does this relate to individuals? Consider Alf and Bill. Alf believes very little, but one of his primary beliefs is that sex and drugs and rock and roll are all his body needs (although famous brands of trousers, fizzy drinks and fast food are also an important part of the good life). Alf is one of life's go-getters. And getters, and getters, and getters. Being young, the effects don't bother him too much for a while, but just like Atake Alf is importing against the future, and ultimately he will pay the physical price.

It's not just physical, though. However he may disguise it to himself, Alf's friendships are based on what he gets out of them. If they ever start demanding more from him than they promise to return, he will end them and move on - a kind of relational slash-and-burn agriculture which uses up people at an alarming rate. And he is so sure that the people around him are hostile to him that he uses up a lot of his resources to build up defences against them, making it even harder to get close to him.

Bill, unlike Alf, is a Christian. He has had it subtly communicated to him by those all around him that he ought to be giving out to others. But he was one of Alf's cast-off friends, and is carrying a lot of emotional pain. He is no more equipped, though he is more prepared, than Alf to become one of life's go-givers. He needs, like B'give, to import for the future- to build up some spiritual and emotional assets with the help of other people, so that ultimately he can take part in a two-way exchange, encouraging and being encouraged. If too many demands are made on him too soon, he is in danger of exporting against the future, in a sense - growing emotional cash crops to satisfy people with wealthier economies, at the expense of his own nourishment. He may be justified in saying, "I need you". If his motives are once again to become a fully functioning human being, with something to give, let us not condemn him.

Three Pyramids

It's not only the direction in which western relationships flow that is flawed, though. It's the direction in which they grow. To return to the reviewer of Ghost: The natural chronological progression, for him (and for Wodehouse and Hefner and, let's face it, the whole of our society and that includes you and me, friend) is from the physical at the start to other considerations at the end - emotional, social, spiritual. After all, what someone looks like is the first thing we notice about them. The other things take a while to discover. And in a highly mobile, non-community-based society like ours, we are always meeting new people and dropping out of touch with old ones, so there will be a lot of first impressions. Odds are that the person you marry (if you marry) is not going to be someone you grew up with, the proverbial boy or girl next door. And getting to know someone (especially through all the masks we wear continuously) is a long-drawn-out process in an instant age. And when that process has to be compressed into a ninety-minute movie where it's not even the main focus . . .

The thing is, though, that we end up trying to build a pyramid point first. The physical side of love, as God intended it, is the capstone of a pyramid with a broad base of trust, acceptance, knowledge and commitment. The capstone is a miniature of the whole pyramid; an expression of trust, acceptance, knowledge and commitment compressed into a small space and time. And a pyramid without its capstone is, appropriately enough, known to geometers as a 'frustrum'.

When the only way some people know to get close to someone is to have parts of one inside parts of the other, you have people who are wearing their underclothes on the outside of their suits - something only Superman has ever been known to get away with. Sex has become an expectation of intimacy, rather than an expression of it. They are building their pyramid with the point at the bottom - so it isn't really surprising (though they are always surprised) when it collapses on top of them and hurts them.

But why are people so prepared to import against the future like this? Here we strike up against one of the great mysteries of western civilization- alienation from the body. It is because the governing junta of Atake is alienated from its people that it condemns them to generations of poverty in its own hunger for wealth and power. And it is because of his alienation from his body that Alf has no qualms about blasting his brain with drugs, his heart and lungs with cigarettes, his liver with alcohol, his eardrums with rock music and his genitals with promiscuity. (I'm told it is now possible to contract eight venereal diseases in one sexual encounter surely one of the twentieth century's most impressive bonus offers. This includes, of course, the only STD ever to have its own Disney movie - Herpes, the Love Bug.)

So why the alienation? Is it because the Greeks, our philosophical ancestors, believed that the body was evil? Is it the influence of Reformation Puritanism? Is it because modern science portrays us as simply bags of chemicals randomly dumped into a meaningless universe? I'm not sure. All of those could be influences. But few if any ordinary twentieth-century people wonder.

The twentieth century has seen good times, when prosperity brought, as it so often does, a decline in people's felt need for God. The parents of the baby boomers released their strong hold on the faith their parents had clung to through depression and war, and failed to pass it to their children, who saw it as irrelevant in an era of plenty. Now the plenty is at an end - and the former hope is gone, with nothing to replace it. The unexamined life is not worth living, but the examined life is not livable any more.

The question is, do we have anything to say to them? Do we have any hope that won't be defeated by viruses and stock-market crashes? Are we building our pyramids the right way up? Are we prepared to give a bit of aid to the Bills in our churches, until they can start exporting, without demanding from them too much too soon or expecting from them too little too late?

Can we be Jesus' voice at such a time?