ETHICAL HEDONISM

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Ethical Hedonism M .A .N .I .F .E .S .T .O 3
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Scene from our Eros Day Passion Play

"Sex is a Comedy, Not a Tragedy"
Camille Paglia

Sexual Values

Sex & Violence
The way most mainstream media--not to mention most culture critic politicians--portray sex and violence, they go together like soup and sandwich. Of course, in everyday life, that's hardly ever the case. Violent people often come from strict, strongly anti-sex backgrounds, and folks with good, relatively free sex lives generally don't go around bludgeoning each other. Yes, when I say generally, that's what I mean. There are always exceptions, which tend to quickly become scandals. Sex is complex.

But generally, good sex, acceptance of one's erotic nature, and sharing mutually fulfilling pleasures serve to soothe the savage beast. In Botticelli's famous painting of Venus and Mars, the War God is sleeping peacefully, his bellicose nature softened, literally pacified by the sheer pleasure of sharing time and space with the Goddess of Love. He looks as if he just had an orgasm, pacified by pleasure. Moral of the myth: You can't be killing while you're coming. Botticelli may have never met a bonobo, but this is the Bonobo Way.

Boticelli's Venus & Mars

Here at the Institute, we encourage men and women to explore and express their wildest, most outrageous sexual natures. Pornographers mix with professors, Sunday school teachers, political operatives, cops, models, carpenters, couples who called the show, corporate executives, ex-cons, a sprinkling of famous people. LOTS of horny people. Violence is practically non-existent. Passions are channeled into the erotic. Conflicts occur. Sometimes arguments ensue. But respect seems to reign (knock on wood). Sensuality flows.

According to developmental neuropsychologist Dr. James Prescott, who studied violence and sexual behavior in forty-nine cultures, "Our brains have a built-in reciprocal relationship between pleasure and violence. When the pleasure systems of the brain are activated, they inhibit the neural systems that mediate violence." One way to inhibit violence is to activate our pleasure centers. That's the Bonobo Way. And the springboard to Ethical Hedonism.

Ethical Hedonism turns the sanctimonious call for "family values" inside out into something real: personal, sexual values...

More and more people, tired of hypocrisy and politically correct brutality, are actively supporting these values. The media loves to report on mass murders, underscored by the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Religious Right. But statistics repeatedly show that societies that are more sexually adventurous and tolerant are less violent.

What we are seeing is that sexual freedom is not usually accompanied by murder and mayhem. In fact, sexual freedom in the form of Ethical Hedonism, the Bonobo Way of Peace through Pleasure, generally seems to mitigate violence in the individual, the couple, the family and society.

Why aren't more of the pundits pointing this out? Why is this so scary?

Why Is Sex So Scary?
Sex is fabulous, funny, sweet, essential. But sex can also be profoundly frightening in a variety of ways, some as new as the 21st century, others as ancient as life itself. Sex is scary. Big-time scary. It can change your life, for better and for worse. Which is one reason it's so funny, and so fascinating.

Eroticism is a subversive, outlaw energy. Our society spends vast amounts of its precious resources to co-opt, channel and distort eroticism, using its power to exploit, impeach, incriminate and accuse. We all participate in this, and we all pay a price for it. We pay in lost pleasure and peace. We pay in the rage, guilt and shame we feel as we torment others and ourselves. We pay in the destruction we wreak when we blame innocents--often those closest to us--for the pain that we feel. Some people go to jail for it. Some are hounded out of their offices. Some become artists-in-exile. Some just lead lives of quiet sexual desperation, refuges of erotophobic society.

Dr. Martin Klein and others have termed our civilization "erotophobic," deeply afraid of our own sexuality. Fear of sex has been pervasive, thanks, in part, to our Puritan beginnings and, most recently, to the media's intensive exploitation of those two great audience-grabbers: fear and sex. Then there are the erotophobic pundits, the Bill Bennetts, Dr. Lauras, and Ayatollah Asscrafts who preach to us. According to them, Ethical Hedonism and the Bonobo Way are either plots to corrupt "the children" or a front for a Columbian cartel.

One consequence of erotophobia is the withholding of accurate information about sex. Lack of sex information makes the typical sexual events of childhood--like masturbation or menstruation-absolutely terrifying. "Normalcy-anxiety"--the fear of not being what society deems "normal"--also keeps us deeply afraid of our own natural sexuality.

Ethical Hedonism Manifesto continued

FIREEYES ....,,,,..... Video Self-Portrait: Dr. Susan Block

Ethical Hedonism Manifesto continued

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