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The sex and death list

Lark

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OK this is the plot to a movie I've been watching but it got me thinking and I wanted to pose it to the forum to see what other peoples thoughts were too, you have a list of names provided by a magical oracle machine which are all the women you will have sex with for the rest of your life, do you keep and use the list to track the ladies down or do you dump it deciding not to have knowledge of the future?

The list is finite, so you will inevitably reach the last name on the list, now that does not mean you are going to die, it could, but on the other hand it may simply mean that you dont have anymore sex until the day you die but you still live a long life beyond that. You dont know. Its incomplete knowledge of the future in that respect but do you dump it as a result of thinking about this?
 

Cellmold

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I think I would dump it.

The knowledge would control and influence me too much, to the point where I would spend my time obsessing over determinism and by trying so hard not to be influenced by it that I end up making it happen anyway. Similar to how curses and voodoo work, or rather: don't.
 

Qlip

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I would go into a deep depression knowing that the laws of the universe allow us knowledge of the future, but only in the form of of a sex list. The implications would be boggling, then I would start obsessing about the composition of the paper and the ink, it's origins, etc. I'd probably just allow the names to come up as they were meant to.
 

Lark

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I'm not sure if I phrased the question right you know, like would foreknowledge of sex be enough for you to deal with foreknowledge of your own death?
 

Cellmold

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I'm not sure if I phrased the question right you know, like would foreknowledge of sex be enough for you to deal with foreknowledge of your own death?

Everyone has foreknowledge of their own death, it's called living. But I know you meant in the extremely specific sense so ok.
 

grey_beard

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OK this is the plot to a movie I've been watching but it got me thinking and I wanted to pose it to the forum to see what other peoples thoughts were too, you have a list of names provided by a magical oracle machine which are all the women you will have sex with for the rest of your life, do you keep and use the list to track the ladies down or do you dump it deciding not to have knowledge of the future?

The list is finite, so you will inevitably reach the last name on the list, now that does not mean you are going to die, it could, but on the other hand it may simply mean that you dont have anymore sex until the day you die but you still live a long life beyond that. You dont know. Its incomplete knowledge of the future in that respect but do you dump it as a result of thinking about this?

...or it could mean you met "The One" (TM) and remain exclusive to each other from then on.

Geez, learn the think logically.
 

Mole

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Sex, Death and Dread

Sex and death are intimately related in our psyche. Sex is even called, la petite mort (the little death). So it becomes plain that those who have sex for fun are using sex as a psychological defence against death.

It seems we are like hedgehogs with our spikes arrayed as psychological defences against anything that threatens us, particularly death.

Such an array of psychological defences does protect us emotionally and psychologically against threats, but at the same time such psychological defences deaden our capacity to feel alive.

So to defend ourselves against death, we deaden ourselves.

This goes some way to explaining our fascination with movies of The Living Dead, 'cause we are the living dead.

The living dead having sex with the living dead.

The human condition is one of dread.
 

Mole

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Now, I know I can be cheesy, but that movie is the cheesiest... like the cheesy butternut squash cavatappi bake my sister made. :sick:

You're right, the movie The Living Dead is dreadful. It is full of the dread we deny daily in order to 'stay on track'.

Who can look dread in the face and smile at our children? So we hide our dread in a cheesy movie, so we can peep at it out of the corner of our eye, and say it is only a movie.

Looking dread in the eye is like looking into the eyes of Medusa: we are turned to stone.

So we can only look at dread seen in the rough reflection of a shield, or in the rough reflection of a cheesy movie. But both the shield and the movie shield us from dread.

Or dare we live in dread?
 

Lark

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...or it could mean you met "The One" (TM) and remain exclusive to each other from then on.

Geez, learn the think logically.

Learn the think?

Yes, it could mean that, although I'm more interested in the scenario in which you have advance knowledge of all your future sexual partners but the downside is that with the last hook up your dead.
 

Rambling

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Learn the think?

Yes, it could mean that, although I'm more interested in the scenario in which you have advance knowledge of all your future sexual partners but the downside is that with the last hook up your dead.

Without knowledge of the 'rate' such knowledge is useless...some folk have 100 partners before they are 20, some never have sex at all. So what?

Unless in some way this is different if you're in the film industry, where I suppose a Groundhog Day kind of repetition might be endlessly possible...:newwink:
 

Lark

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Without knowledge of the 'rate' such knowledge is useless...some folk have 100 partners before they are 20, some never have sex at all. So what?

Unless in some way this is different if you're in the film industry, where I suppose a Groundhog Day kind of repetition might be endlessly possible...:newwink:

Hmm, it does depend if you put value on that, which I assume most people do, this is the two things which everyone obsesses about idea, like Freud's Eros and Thanatos.

Would the plus of information you want, if sex doesnt matter substitute something else, be worth it if you were also made conscious of something you did not want to know, if death doesnt matter substitute something else.
 

Rambling

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Hmm, it does depend if you put value on that, which I assume most people do, this is the two things which everyone obsesses about idea, like Freud's Eros and Thanatos.

Would the plus of information you want, if sex doesnt matter substitute something else, be worth it if you were also made conscious of something you did not want to know, if death doesnt matter substitute something else.

So you are in fact asking an existential question about attitude to life...I didn't grasp this at all from the previous framework.

I think you're asking something like:

Enjoyable activity A is finite in number; does the particular knowledge that it *is* finite *and* the further knowledge that it will lead to unpleasant activity B at the last occurrence, mitigate your pleasure in activity A. And I add to that the assumption that both A and B are in some sense inescapable activities of a lifetime...by which I mean that avoiding A completely would not mitigate B...

Have I got the question right?

My answer to that particular conundrum is that given that B is inescapable by any method, I am not at all concerned that A provides a countdown method to it. Especially since as I already commented, no knowledge of the *rate* of occurrence of A is available. (By contrast - if I knew that A happened once a year, and that there were fifteen As before death B, then I could usefully employ an accountant to plan my finances so I exactly ran out of money in fifteen years time...)

About death and also about repeated experiences in life...I don't think any two experiences are ever the same, not really. I might celebrate my birthday every year, but each year the people and the place are a year different from before. In that way *every* occurrence of A is special and to be enjoyed in the moment, and also every occurrence of A is a small death, a small letting go, a small falling into the totality of momentary Joy, never actually repeatable and thus exquisitely treasurable and uniquely irretrievable afterwards...both fully alive to every moment and fully non-regretful of the past which has been eternally released...

I think that's how I hope to feel about my life...being in the essential flow of eternal life encapsulated in death, or vice versa, depending on how you prefer to describe it. Life in death, or death of life so life might spring clear from it... I hope that is an existentially framed answer which answers what seemed to me to have become an existential question.

Tl;dr I'd enjoy every moment of the sex, without limit and without foreshadowing, treasuring each time as special and each partner as unique and rare and precious. I'd drop the counting machine behind the bed and not make any notches on my bedpost either. :)
 

Lark

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So you are in fact asking an existential question about attitude to life...I didn't grasp this at all from the previous framework.

I think you're asking something like:

Enjoyable activity A is finite in number; does the particular knowledge that it *is* finite *and* the further knowledge that it will lead to unpleasant activity B at the last occurrence, mitigate your pleasure in activity A. And I add to that the assumption that both A and B are in some sense inescapable activities of a lifetime...by which I mean that avoiding A completely would not mitigate B...

No, not really but it was interesting to see what you wrote, cheers, and I could see how you thought that.
 

Coriolis

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...or it could mean you met "The One" (TM) and remain exclusive to each other from then on.

Geez, learn the think logically.
That sounds like thinking wishfully.

But then nothing says you can't go back and have sex with one of the earlier ones again.

Who writes this stuff anyway? Sounds like a rather lame plot device.
 
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