Some years ago I wrote an article entitled Life Lived as High Art. My thesis was that life can be lived on the animal level: eating to survive and working to eat. Or, with a little planning, flare, dedication, and a smidgin of luck, eating, working, and leisure activities can be approached as forms of High Art. Our French cousins can teach us a good deal about this. The present paper is written as a further chapter in that thesis. It is intended neither as another "Pleasures of Sex", neo- Kamisutra, or tour of erotica. Rather, it is written in the spirit of a swimming coach who warns beginning students that they should stay away from the deep end, at least until they learn to doggy paddle.
I was fortunate in growing up with parents, teachers, and spiritual leaders united in instilling in my generation an understanding that there was a Wisdom of the Ages and that we would be well advised to heed it's counsel, adhering to the established moral order -- defined to include the value of postponed satisfactions (high on the list of which was postponing adult sex until we'd concluded our education and entered on a career in which we could afford to purchase a home and maintain a wife and family) -- an order reflecting the tried and tested experience of untold generations.
With maturity, experience , and a good deal of reflection, I'm convinced that these home truths were well founded despite the scoffing of contemporary situational ethicists and today's enjoy-it-all-as-soon-as-you-can philosophers. I am persuaded that God's Ten Commandments and His ancillary prophetic commentaries expanding His views on morality, are based on His infinite wisdom, experience, and knowledge of the human condition. And that He did this for the purpose of optimizing human pleasure and satisfaction rather than with the intention of crabbily injecting into life a bleak and arbitrary series of "Don't do this', and don't do thats", as many wrongly and short-sightedly prefer to interpret matters.
The age between twelve and seventeen, commonly known as the "teens", is one of the most formative and memorable passages of life. It can be filled with the excitement of learning and experiencing new things, providing choice memories for eternity, or it can be a literal hell for teens without adequate home support, good friends, or established limits beyond which they know and understand that they will encounter dangers beyond their abilities to cope.
I've come to appreciate the wisdom which surrounded youthful social encounters until the last generation with such innocent pleasures as Pass the Message, during which boys and girls experienced the exquisite excitement of whispering a message (always humorously garbled by the time it makes full circle) close to the face of one of the opposite sex a couple or three years before getting up courage to try a first kiss; of playing Pass the Button, during which one
experienced the infinitely erotic sense of momentarily touching a pretty young lass's hand, long before one has worked up courage to actually walk hand in hand with a girlfriend; or dancing the Virginia Reel or Dashing White Charger, presenting the opportunity to measure all the young people of the opposite sex in one's social circle against one's mental persona of the ideal mate, long before undertaking serious dating. And all of this pleasurable misery of early sexual awakening taking place without the danger of pregnancy to an unprepared young woman or scotched life plans (or, more often, denied responsibility) for the boy.
Recent surveys suggest that eighty per cent of American youth have engaged in sex by the age of seventeen. And a study by some BYU professors puts forward the argument that the numbers, while significantly lower among LDS youth, are still startlingly high. What an extravagant waste of youthful innocence. While it's perhaps hard for the present precocious generation to believe, our Victorian forebears testify to the erotic excitement of merely glimpsing a well turned ankle as a long gown was lifted to enter a carriage or mount a staircase. Nor is literature devoid of examples of the pleasures of generations of young folks growing up without sex at age twelve or fourteen -- viz. Tom Sawyer's innocent infatuation with Becky Thatcher. The Wisdom of the Ages teaches that by postponing the act of jumping in at the deep end while still learning to swim, the "pleasurable misery" of teenage sexual awakening can be extended for years. Anyone familiar with the concept of diminishing marginal utility knows that any pleasure taken in excess is soon sated and, indeed, can turn bitter, i.e. become a disutility . But the delights of ice cream (or sex) -- indeed, any special taste -- taken in moderate doses can give joy for a lifetime.
As can be seen from the foregoing example, the writer is an economist by trade, and in addition to trafficking in utilities and disutilities and profits and losses, economists are much given to the concepts of maximizing, optimizing, and "satisficing" (i.e. obtaining a minimally acceptable result with least effort -- "getting by"). And for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would wish to "push beyond the envelope" just for a momentary thrill, before one has yet learned to doggy paddle, reducing or eliminating a long-term pleasure which any sensible person would wish to maintain and extend as long as possible. Certainly there is place in life for seeking the adrenalin rush of such dangerous sports as skydiving, sailplaning, and rock-climbing. But even the most daredevilish teenager is well-informed enough not to try his luck at any of these activities without adequate prior instruction and practice.
Life can be visualized as a test, in which the most able and dedicated receive high marks in terms of personal satisfaction, peer admiration, and material rewards, while dullards just stumble through with a passing grade, and loafers fail the course.
To be sure, there is a role in life for "satisficing", i.e. doing just enough to get by without investing umwarranted time or effort to achieve goals not worth higher investment of resources. But why, with regard to one of life's most elemental and pleasurable features, would one wish to rush into the test to "prove oneself" before adequate preparation, failing or merely satisficing rather than maximizing (or at least optimizing) one's long-term enjoyment. Which is exactly what the teenage passage is intended by nature to permit, through providing six or eight, or ten, pr twelve years for more or less innocent exploration and experimentation with the mysteries and eroticism of sex before taking the plunge at the deep end.
Much of the problem is, of course, that with the good medical attention and adequate nourishment available in the modern world, humans are maturing at an every younger age. First menses occurred during the Middle Ages on average at eighteen. Twelve is not uncommon today. Studies show that that marriage most commonly occurs five years after the start of serious dating. With twelve year olds now starting to date, where fifteen or sixteen was more usual a generation or two ago (and, of course, the formality of marriage before sex is and ethically far less compelling consideration than formerly), the current generation starts with a strike against it in trying to stay the course until adulthood. Of course this is just one more powerful argument for parents to hold firm on not permitting dating untial age sixteen.
At another time and in other cirumstances, the Mormon leader Brigham Young once said that "an unmarried man of eighteen is a menace to society". And taking into account what has been said above, this is perhaps no less, and maybe even more so today, though socially, it is impossible for a young man to complete his educational preparation for life so soon, adding yet another dimension to the problem of youth and sex.
Notwithstanding these problems, good students start with page one of a well-written text adapted to the learning needs of the uninitiated, proceding carefully laid out chapter by carefully laid out chapter, answering the questions provided at the end of each section before proceding to the end of the text. Of course, one can always cram the course, reading the first chapter, skimming a few pages in the middle, then jumping to the end. And so it is with approaching mature sex. As one who's taught in half a dozen universities in seven countries over the past quarter century, and has seen four of my own children successfully make the teen age passage, I can assure young readers that no crammer, to my knowledge, ever receives much more than a middling grade for the course. And who wants to be a middler in one of the most pleasurable and significant aspects of life, relating not only to one's personal satisfaction, but affecting one's posterity to the last generation of mankind?
Let's take a closer look at the sex act itself, which under contemporary circumstances so many thirteen and fourteen years olds seem so anxious to race towards, being willing to sacrifice in the process the innocent erotic experiences of more gradual maturation, which, as has been argued above, are no less worthwhile or rewarding. And which is our generation of extended educational preparation take on even more importance than in previous generations.
It should be understood, but usually isn't, by such precipitate young people, that after completing the initiatory steps, say, taking in a special movie, play, or musical presentation with the object of one's affection, perhaps followed by a late meal in a favorite restaurant and some preliminary nuzzling on the way home (all the enjoyments of which are available even to those willing to restrain their final sexual appetites), the sex act itself, however pleasureful, takes no more than three minutes to perform, including its "high" of at most
fifteen seconds.
And while anyone still engaged in the profound experience of discovering the other sex may find this hard to believe, most of the truly memorable "highs" of life are family or workplace not sex related.
While one may vividly recall half a dozen individual sexual experiences, usually associated with a special place or event, this is usually associated with the memory of the wedding of a well-loved family member, the birth of a child or grandchild, a graduation, promotion, desired work assignment, or memorable vacation trip which persist (the author of God is an Englishman had his protagonist remember where each of his children was conceived).
It is a fact however that ninety-nine point nine per cent of sex acts quickly fade into the tapestry of life.
The main problem with hastening sexual maturity is that while the frisson of looking forward to a weekend date can bring week long pleasure, and tentative shoulder to shoulder or leg to leg contact in the car while driving a date to a movie, ski outting, or dance; or an innocent tussle among double dating girls and boys while playing volleyball at the beach can keep one excited for much of the following week; but once one has experienced mature sex, there is no return to innocent eroticism. One must have it all from then on. And in regular doses.
Thus the wisdom of the ages which says this maximum pleasure of life should be postponed until both boy and girl have reached maturity and are prepared to enter into a lasting relationship which will provide love, protection, and assured mutual care, as well as care for the next generation, apart from the maternal and paternal attention which has watched over them during their own growing up process.
If mistakes are made (and the evidence shows that even well-informed youth simply do not take precautions before engaging in casual sex), unplanned and most often unwanted offspring can of course be given up for adoption, or an unplanned wedding take place -- often drastically altering the life plans of of the couple. Or in today's circumstances, resort can be made to abortion -- with all its as yet poorly understood psychological affects and risks to future reproduction. But evidence suggests that more often than not any of the three routes, results in bad memories dogging one for life. And if the child is kept, the immature mother is often handicapped in enjoying the lifestyle to which most young people of today have become accustomed.
The writer grew up in a loving, but reasonably strict environment. And the older he gets the more he appreciate the virtues of clearly defined limits, with emphasis on the values of postponed satisfactions which his generation (of both sexes) were expected to accept. While at that time the evidence was only beginning to appear in the literature, parents, teachers, religious leaders, and an occasional invited physician cautioned us against tobacco, alcohol, coffee (and premature sex).
Forty years later the evidence is in hand -- in overwhelmingly pursuasive form. Smoking is the principal cause of cancer, and cancer is second only to heart attacks as the principal cause of premature death in the United States. Almost ten per cent of humankind is pre-disposed to alcoholism, and the overuse of alcohol is a leading factor in career failure, family breakup, and premature death. Children born to alcoholic mothers suffer from low birth weight, resulting in mental impairment and chronic physical problems which follow them through life.
A little later in arriving, the evidence is now beginning to come in with regard to premature, illicit sex, as with alcohol and tobacco. And it tells us that unwanted pregnancy is neither as rare nor without personal and social penalties as some have argued.
Teenage pregnancies (and abortions) are rising alarmingly nationwide. More than half the births in the nation's capital are illegitimate. The school dropout rate is appalling, portending major problems for the future. Welfare payments to single mothers and their children are already a major item in the dangerously unbalanced Federal Budget.
While it may take some time yet for society to digest the fact that low quality (unplanned, illegitimate) sex is one of life's big "downers", like smoking, alcohol, and drug use, the pendulum will inevitably swing and the reasons society long ago decided to "license" marriage and restrict inheritance to "legitimate" (recognized in law) children will again be understood.
Sociologists and psychologists are coming to realize that mot only children but adults flourish best under stable living conditions, and that casual, unpredictable, and constantly altering relationships are damaging to the human psyche. A noted national columnist George Will has recently characterized the emergence of street gang violence as a reflection of the abandonment of traditional cultural norms societies had in the past learned by trial and error that it was necessary to inculcate in youth as firm limits to individual action in order to permit the emergence of civilization. With no such civilizing limits in today's "all is permitted society", Will sees street gangs as a genetically-programmed return by teenage boys to the "Hunter/Warrior bands" which characterized mankind during the millions of years preceding the last four or five brief millenia of civilized life.
Further, the unanticipated results of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy can be devastating, not only to the single mother, but to the child, often disrupting important intergenerational relationships with grandparents -- which are most often entirely foregone on the male parental side and often impose extraordinary and sometimes damaging burdens on the maternal grandparents.
And now we have the spreading epidemic of AIDS to confirm that an All-Knowing and All-Benificent God (or a keenly socially observant and extraordinarily insightful Moses) knew what he was doing in giving his Ten Commandments for living including the commandments against onanism, "unnatural relations", fornication, and adultery.
Given time, we humans, as His children, gifted in measure with His intelligence, will inevitably rediscover this wisdom for ourselves. He has simply tried to save us time and misery by giving us few pointers in advance about how to play the game of life, based on His experience as Creator of "worlds without number". If we would only bring ourselves to devote the same dedication we give to Great Music, Big Business, and Major League Sports to High Art Life and High Art Sex, we could add another dimension to the pleasure of living while avoiding many, if not all, the miseries of broken families, unwanted children, mounting taxes in support of rising social welfare outlays, and, now, the terminal threat of AIDS spread by casual sex with partners of dubious precedence.
It is hoped that more than few readers of this paper may choose to direct themselves towards becoming practitioners of Sex as a Component of Life Lived as High Art , including the decision to postpone fifteen seconds of instant gratification in favor of completing the teen-age primer of life so they can with appropriate preparation graduate to a lifetime of carefully optimized satisfaction and joy.
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