Social oppression, sexuality and polyamory

Imagination

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Here is a summary about a patients movement (Socialist Patients collective) that started around 1970 when some doctors and patients in a psychiatry began to cooperate on an equal level. Among many other topics, they encourage people to live a free sexuality – if they feel like it- and at the same time support each other and care for each other. Pretty much what could be called Polyamory today.

The teachings of the socialist patients collective are partly based on Wilhelm Reich, particularily when sexuality is dealt with. The overall idea is that illness is caused by the conditions of society. Our whole life is ruled by value (money) and the power (family, state, religion, health care, military, education corrupted science) that makes us stay in line. Power, which is an expression of the value thought system, can't unmask, because then the fraught would become obvious. When power unmasks it becomes physical - violence - and it results in illness. In illness the mutually exclusive matters value and violence are combined. Illness is the appearance of value and violence together, only in a changed form which is illness they can unite.

When we talk of sexuality, we reside within the frame of beaurocracy and the relationship of goods rather than human beings, the human species is still to evolve. Sexuality can only take place withing the boundaries that the economic, political, social and cultural environment of a society sets. Different forms of love or sexual relationships haven't necessarily anything to do with lust or sexual activity. Exclusively by making love and by having sex in a fullfilling way, a surplus of lust can be created. It is the only desire that is productive and not destructive when it is satisfied.

There would be nothing wrong or dangerous about boundless sexuality. The limitation of genital fullfillment, cleared of all restrictions of society, is set by the sexual activity itself respectively by its objectification. While making love possibly a subject – object (of desire) relationship turns into a subject – subject relationship. On both sides subjectivity becomes objective when the object of desire is internalized. The object no longer is (only) object of desire, but it becomes part of the subject. In all other cases (drives), the fulfillment of the need don't lead to a union, we still suffer from subjectivity respectively the flaw that goes with it. The objectification of the other fails, it has only the function to be incorporated into a formal subjectivity. For example, when we eat, the sensation of hunger, a reluctance or unpleasure, is gone for the moment, but there is no additional lust created, no union, no real-ization comes up, only the need to eat will come up again.

Because of the division between subject and object talk and activities that are related to sexuality can be intensely influenced by the rules of the capitalist programming (see above). To a large extent life is organized according to mind control. Second hand needs are created and exploited, as we suppressed our real needs and forgot about about them. An example:

Before we get sexually involved, we feel a kind of tension, narrowness, sexual back pressure and increased heart beat. While experiencing lust the pressure is released. If we are denied our sexual or other needs like movement – this starts in early childhood – we develop a disposition for reacting with fear. Precisely it's a disposition for drawing our energy from the peripheral parts of the body to the centre, which causes the feeling of pressure and narrowness, and at the same time fear comes up. This is an inward movement (unproductive) while lust is an outward movement (productive). A sexually crippled society can only by the enjoyment of fear have sensations that are similar to pre - sexual experiences (tension.) In extraordinary times like war our desire for fear can turn into a state permitted collective mass psychosis and sado-maso violence that is satisfied by genocide or the hunting of minorities. In peaceful times the demand for angst is met by profitable industries/ products like horror movies, horror news or criminal literature among others.

The precondition for this inhumane status quo is something like a double bind: For the inidividual there is a compulsion to intergrate into a power structure directed against its own demand for a fulfilled life, because the same power structure also offers needs and satisfactions which the individual dependents upon existentially.
Starting at early childhood we can see how those fear breeding structures work and what devices they use: For example religion and morals are compensations for the original fear that is created by parental prohibition of sexual expression and of movement; the ban is sexualized. Despite their cruelty the child wants - and needs - his parents to remain objects of love. Therefor it suppress the memory of the parents as the cause of frustration and instead admires the holy family or adopts morals. Thus religion and morals are results of suppressed sexuality.

We have unfulfilled sexual/ love relationship because we want our partners – in a way our parents did before- to love and benefit us, we long for artificial needs of social acceptance (by meeting morals)/ status/ self importance, we want to feel valuable, we want to own certain goods that might make us feel better, we compare each other, we want to be successful, we wish to be sexually attractive and to be desired, we use an abstract irrational system of thought and judgement (for example religion, morals or bureaucracy) the same way money defines in an abstract and unreal way how much things (labor and products ) are worth.

If we deal only with new forms of love/ sexual relationships (sexual reformation movements), we won't change change anything substantial. It has nothing to do with sexuality itself. On the other hand accomplishing (complete) sexual fullfillment or ecstasy always is directed against the repression of authorities. All aspects connected with these activities are political and revolutionary. People that from childhood on had learned to recogize their needs for self-production = their sexual needs would be immune to manipulations of the system. A society without sexual repression would be a free society. If we want to change our lives against the system of control, try out different forms of behaviour and successfully protest against the repression within and without, we should adress all the circumstances that have an influence on the way we relate with each other. Where lie the wrong assumptions that create a society of egocentric "individuals" with a subjectivity that stands for a disrupted life, a distorted perception of the world. How is the market and how are abstract values $€ represented in our minds? We all live under these conditions and that connects us. While reflecting the sickening foundations of society, we can find out what divides us and objectify what is going on. What divides us is that, which we have in common. From there we can go on and change for the better.
 
Who is further interested in this approach may look at:

http://www.spkpfh.de/index_english.html
 
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