In his article, "Goodbye to All That," David Ritchie, poignantly illustrates many of the points in my article, "Sex, Love, and Marriage," as well as it's recent sequel, "Ayn Rand, Beauty, Love, and Tenderness."

Is Sex Necessary?

I'm quite sure that many people are surprised by David's assertion that he not only find's he is happy without sex, but happier. It did not surprise me. I said in, "Sex, Love, and Marriage:"

"There is a common unstated assumption ... that happiness is not possible without sex. Is sex essential to human happiness? If it is, than all those whom birth or physical trauma or other physical condition has made incapable of having sex are doomed to unhappiness by conditions beyond their control—a view inimical to objective philosophy.

Eating is pleasurable and sex is pleasurable. Life without eating would not only be painful, it would ultimately be impossible; life without sex might seem intolerable to some, but it is certainly possible. Sex is not a necessity, not to life, and not to happiness."

Why Sex is a Problem

While it can be understood that sex is not a necessity and it is possible to live a fully satisfying life without it, what is more difficult to understand is why someone who desires it and is capable of enjoying it, should express joy at being free of it. Why should something meant for pleasure become a source of such intense suffering that one discovers it is a great relief to have no more desire for it?

David's case, of course, is not typical, and may be a bit more intense and traumatic than most, but there is something about his case that is typical. Most may not find sex, even the desire and pleasure of it, a source of suffering, but it is apparent, many people find it disappointing. There is a very simple reason for that very common experience. It is because the pleasure of sex is being sought as an end in itself.

The Purpose of Pleasure

Whether it is the pleasure of sex, or any other kind of pleasure, when that pleasure is sought for its own sake, and only for it's own sake, however much one desires it, however intense or enjoyable that pleasure is, its enjoyment is always accompanied by a kind of dissatisfaction, even disappointment. It is because we are capable of feeling pleasure and pain for a reason and the direct pursuit of pleasure ignores that reason.

In their simplest physical manifestations, pleasure and pain are indicators that what we are doing is beneficial or harmful. Because we are volitional beings, and everything we do we must choose to do, pleasure becomes the reward for right choices, pain the punishment for wrong. In their highest forms, pleasure becomes joy and happiness and is the reward for living correctly, pain becomes suffering and torment, indicating something very wrong with the way one is living.

Pleasure, as an End in Itself

It is sometimes said that happiness is a byproduct, that it cannot be achieved by seeking it directly. But that is not quite correct. Happiness can be one's objective, but it cannot be the standard by which one determines their choices. That requires an objective set of principles that tell a man what he must do to be happy, how one must live to fully enjoy one's life.

"... the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by ... pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness—not by taking "happiness" as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take "whatever makes one happy" as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims—by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know—is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons ..., a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see." [Ayn Rand, VOS 1. The Objectivist Ethics]

The name of that view that makes "happiness," or, "whatever gives you pleasure," the standard of values is called hedonism. It is the dominant ethical view of our day.

Horrors of Hedonism

It is an irony that the direct pursuit of pleasure and happiness, as ends in themselves, provides neither, but results in their opposites, suffering and torment. Those caught up in the frenzied chase for pleasure cannot see the bizarre nature of a society dominated by hedonism, and even David could not see it until he lost the desire that made him part of that circus. His reference to Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights," is an apt metaphor for today's society.

When one does not have a rational objective set of principles by which to determine his choices, he has only his desires and feelings, which cannot even tell him how to fulfill them. Without principles there is no way to choose between a desire to write music and a desire to rob a bank, the desire to read a great book and the desire to watch a mindless TV program, one only has the intensity of their desires or emotions to guide them.

Every wrong or self-destructive act anyone has ever engaged in is because they had a desire to do it, but, even if an individual never had a desire to do anything wrong or self-destructive, if they only have their desires and feelings to guide them, or worse, a hodge-podge of half-reason and half-feeling, they will never be truly happy, and whatever pleasure they find will be a disappointment.

The hedonist, who is really a subjectivist, mistakes his desires and feelings for an ego, frequently imagining he is a "man of passion." In fact, the hedonist can never be fully passionate, because the hedonist can never fully commit himself to the fulfillment of any desires, which come from he knows not where, and can never be certain what he desires today, he will still desire tomorrow.

Only the fully rational man who knows exactly why he feels what he feels, and desires what he desires, can pursue his desires with that complete total passionate abandon that comes from certainty, the knowledge that what he seeks is right and what he enjoys always advances his life and happiness.

Disappointment

I said that pleasure sought and enjoyed as an end in itself is always disappointing. It might be wondered why it would be disappointing if nothing more than the pleasure is expected. It is because we have a specific kind of nature, and whether or not one goes to the bother of discovering what that nature is and determining if one's choices are appropriate for a being with that nature, what we can enjoy and the kind of pleasure that will fulfill us is determined by that nature.

One aspect of that nature are man's emotions, which preclude the ability to truly enjoy what he has not earned and does not deserve. He can gain wealth without earning or producing it, but if he gets wealth that way, he knows his wealth is a lie, that the wealth that ought to be the concretization of his productive effort, is only loot, the evidence of his crookedness or his pandering to the weaknesses and vices of others; he can have pleasure he does not deserve, but can never enjoy the sense of human integrity that knows, "I am worthy of this pleasure and my enjoyment of it is both a reward and affirmation of my virtue." Ayn Rand called that sense of worthiness that makes true pleasure and enjoyment possible, self-esteem.

For the rational man, pleasure is the reward for right choices, joy and happiness are the rewards for living correctly, and their enjoyment is the proof of one's worthiness for life. The hedonist's pleasure is proof of nothing, a reward unearned, undeserved, and without meaning. Beyond the immediate pleasure it is pointless; if there is any kind of emotional affirmation at all of the hedonist's pleasure it is that he is a cheat and the overwhelming emotional state is not one of self-esteem, but guilt.

Obsession

The hedonist's pleasure can never truly satisfy because, though driven by his feelings, emotions, and desires, that emotional need for a sense of worthiness he feels so intensely, he can neither recognize or identify, because it can only be identified rationally. So long as he evades that need, he can never fully enjoy anything and is never fully satisfied. Since his only guides are his desires and his expectation for pleasure, seeking pleasure becomes an obsession, and the more he seeks it, the less satisfying it becomes.

The obsessive nature of hedonist desire is never more apparent then in the case of sexual desire. It is the reason why so many individual's sexual practices become an ever more wild and frenzied pursuit of pleasure that is doomed not to satisfy. It is why in our hedonist society, the levels of sexual excesses, violence, pervasiveness, and bizarreness know no bounds. It is the explanation of the horrors that sex has become which David describes so graphically in his article.

What's Missing?

There is an interesting comment near the end of the article:

"Better still is the discovery that I didn’t really want sex in the first place. I wanted to be hugged and held, not brought to climax. A sincere, warm embrace from a woman is worth more than 10,000 orgasms. That lesson, lost on me while I still burned for sex, became clear only when my libidinal drive disappeared."

Whether he has subsequently discovered it or not, David had not yet discovered what it is he thought his sexual desires where hiding from him. He has simply replaced one pleasure with another, one he supposes is 10,000 times superior. But I wonder if it is not better because it is closer to that which not only makes the enjoyment of sex appropriate, but makes it possible to be fully enjoyed without the dissatisfaction and disappointment that sex sought as an end in itself must always be.

That thing he has not discovered, or at least identified, is missing from his entire article. It is also missing from every discussion of sex today. That missing thing is love.

In my article, Ayn Rand, Beauty, Love, and Tenderness, I wrote:

"When one has found the one they love more than life there is a great desire to possess the object of that love; the ironic thing is, because the object of that love is the prize of their life, the thing they desire above all other things, and because they know the only price that can pay for that prize is their own life, there is a great desire to give oneself to the one loved and to be possessed entirely by them. Both men and women desire both to possess and be possessed—the desires manifest themselves in every way—even in sexual desire, there is both a desire to posses fully for one's own enjoyment the one loved, but there is also a great desire to surrender oneself completely to the other for their enjoyment."

It is only in the context of romantic love that the pleasure of sex has meaning, and only in that context that it can satisfy, because lovers seek in their lovemaking, not a pleasure as such, but to enjoy one another totally by giving themselves to each other totally. The pleasure of their lovemaking is the affirmation of their oneness, the realization of the highest ideal of man achieved, romantic love, experienced as a pleasure that totally consumes their consciousness just as their love consumes every aspect of their lives.

What's missing from every public and private discussion on sex, in all of sex education, in every book on sex, and in every report, investigation, and study relating to sex in academia and the media is the one thing without which sex cannot have meaning, or even purpose. So long as sex is seen as an end in itself, disconnected from any purpose or meaning, outside the only context that can give it meaning and purpose, it will continue to be a source of confusion, disappointment, frustration, obsession, and an ever-growing and frenetic search for a satisfaction that cannot be found.

All that the hedonist seeks can be found, but only in reason, and only in the context in which any particular pleasure has meaning. All that anyone has ever suffered because of sex or sexual desire can be cured, not by saying, "goodbye sex," but by saying, "hello, love."