[papermill]

Sex, food and shelter are necessary conditions for an "awesome life" for most people. You could argue they aren't sufficient and you need more ( like spirituality, community, etc ), but it's disingenuous to dismiss it as an unnecessary condition that you could distract yourself with hobbies.

Response to (sridca):

Yes, I'm well aware of the difference between need and desire.

But you can't have an "awesome life" if your major desires ( food, shelter and sex ) aren't met.

Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic ailments.

Can you live without sex? Sure. Can you live an "awesome life" without sex. I highly doubt it. But people are willing to rationalize anything I guess.

Food, sex and shelter are pretty much our biological imperatives. Not sure how you can live an "awesome life" without your basic natural desires being met.

But if you are happy living a sexless life, then all the best to you. This is a difference of opinion that we are just going to live with.

[rofo1]

> Also, I said sex is a necessary condition for most people to live an "awesome life", not all people. You misread that part. And by most people, I mean everyone barring the exceptional minority with physical or genetic ailments.

Strong disagreement here.

Sex is not necessary. It's way overblown, and anyone that has regular sex (or the potential to get it) will concede that point. It's definitely not worth the drama that usually follows it.

Food is necessary, cause without it you will die.

Shelter is necessary, cause without it you will die as well (eventually, not immediately)

Sex it not necessary. In fact, I was always confused and flabbergasted by the lengths people will go to to get it. It's remarkable - it's probably evolution at work, but still never ceases to amaze me. People will tolerate the most insane things I've ever witnessed just to put one reproductive organ into another. If an alien race was watching this, they'd die in laughter.

Also, the obsession with sex that modern cinema, newspapers (think scandals etc.), indirectly facebook/instagram, on every billboard hot naked women are selling you something (hot naked women cleaning service, hot naked women car wash/sales/etc.) cannot be healthy. Just cannot be! I don't understand this obsession at all. Don't people have literally anything better to do? Do people really have this much free time?

OT: I'm glad to see this topic on HN cause the human bonding in general is a very interesting topic. Wish we could discuss it more, cause it feels like we, as a society, just go with the momentum instead of sitting down and thinking long-term consequences of what we are doing. It's almost shameful and definitely looked down upon to suggest traditional values and roles, even though those traditional values were result of thousands of years of various attempts. Surely the previous generations weren't all imbeciles that couldn't conclude what works and what doesn't. I think it's safe to say that what we are doing now cannot work long-term.

[AQuantized]

It seems like it isn't necessary for you, but you can't project that lack of desire onto the majority. The reality is that if a large subset of people have a strong instinctual desire that goes continually unfulfilled, many will not have satisfying lives. That's not to deny that some won't move beyond it, through focus on other areas or deconstruction of their desire. However, that's unrealistic to expect for the majority.

[tomp]

It's a drive. A biologicaly need. In not so recent past, many people (mainly men) risked death (becaues being gay was illegal) just to be able to have sex (and in many places that is probably still true).

So it's unrealistic for you to just dismiss it as "unhealthy obsession".

Edit: life would obviously be much easier and better if we were perfectly natural and had complete control over our instincts. But we're not (well most of us) and we have to deal with it somehow. Maybe sex robots or VR :)

[sridca]

Yes. If it were not for the suffering engendered all this obsession with sex would be highly amusing.

And personally as someone who favours individualism -- despite having grown up in a culture where arranged marriages are the norm -- I would not go back to "traditional values" especially as there is no indication whatsoever that traditional societies were any more authentically happier than we are today.

The only way forward is individual autonomy (mentally, emotionally not just economically).

[sridca]

Do you know the difference between need and desire? Can you comprehend how desiring sex is different to needing food and shelter?

It is true that most people, as you indicate, are apparently unable to live an awesome life without sex in horizon. But that does not automatically make sex a "necessary condition" for an awesome life.

> Not sure how you can live an "awesome life" without your basic natural desires being met.

A desire, unlike a need, is not set in stone. Aggression is a "basic natural" instinctual passion too; does that mean you are rendered incapable of living an awesome life without going about killing your fellow human beings?

It is clear that you are not "well aware" of the difference between a desire and a need.

[zaroth]

You’re arguing pedantry and missing the point. Sex is not a need like food and water, you could say the same thing about any degree of human contact whatsoever.

And yet we know that humans isolated from other humans generally do not turn out well and sexual isolation is a very significant milestone on that spectrum.