Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Had a conceptual breakthrough this morning, in terms of understanding social attraction.

In the interest of being more invested in relationships, I started thinking about how I should respectfully communicate sexual attraction to a female friend of several years, whom I will be seeing soon.

And I arrived at an understanding that seems profoundly healthier than my existing understanding, or lack thereof, of social attraction. And this is a conceptual framework, an artifact of consciousness which is here understood as “post-festum” (thank you @thirdform) relative to other bodily dynamics.

So a consciousness may be attracted to another consciousness, and a body may be attracted to another body, and a given social relation may involve one, both, or neither of these attractions, and the attractions may be one-way or two-way, and they may vary in intimacy.

A mutual attraction between consciousnesses can be grounds for love, a mutual attraction between bodies can be grounds for sex, and a mutual attraction between both can be grounds for erotic love, I suppose.

Depends on a bunch of semantics, like how you can love another person without your body being attracted to their body.

Also a ton of potential for damage and dysfunction here. I said above that mutual attraction between bodies can be grounds for sex, but obviously not all sex is had on such grounds. A lack of such attraction may yield to force.

I also said above that mutual attraction between consciousnesses can be grounds for love, but love may go unreciprocated.

This understanding, again as nothing more than a conceptual framework, a set of ideas abstracted from an interplay of bodies that long predates the evolutionary emergence of consciousness, can combinatorically yield insight into the differences across social relations, and the potential these relations have for ill health and dysfunction.

My other friend, let’s call him Gabriel, can be another example. Perhaps the strongest attraction my consciousness has felt to another consciousness, yet there is no discernible bodily attraction on my end.

In my case, my body generally exhibits no discernible attraction, i.e. physiologically discernible arousal, to other male bodies.

And yet, my consciousness exhibits no such bodily bias in its attraction to other consciousnesses, other people, other abstractions of bodies.

It seems a good deal of human social dysfunction may be better understood in light of our tendency to conflate these otherwise distinguishable senses of the concept of attraction.

That is, it seems, for example, many men would have a far less constricted and repressed emotional life if they understood intimacy and attraction in terms not limited to sexuality and bodies, but also in terms of attraction between consciousnesses, the latter of which not requiring bodily attraction to become intimately and deeply meaningful.

Two close friends may exhibit an intimate connection with or without bodily attraction being felt by either of them.

Anyway, I’m being much more academic and thorough in explaining this here, largely for the sake of posterity and documentation, than I plan on being if it comes up with my friend later on.
 

Leo

Well-known member
the mystery of relationships can't be explained, best not to try. forget about analysis, be senseless, surrender to passion.

it's supremely complex, yet also no more complicated than...

 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah I couldn’t really do that justice with my disclaimer of being “more academic and thorough”, but the attractions I’m talking about are more primal than our reflection upon them, our articulations of them. Again I was trying to encapsulate these thoughts, as such, as best I could for posterity.

But yeah I agree completely, to try to comprehensively conceptualize this stuff would be an off-base effort. Attraction isn’t an artifact of consciousness, yet alone rationality.

But I am a conceptually inclined person, deeply concerned with communicating ideas, which can only go so far in articulating attraction.
 
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sus

Well-known member
Stan when you have indulged in marijuana have you ever had sexual feelings toward this Gabriel

Gabriel is a very handsome name I think, he has a goatee and pretty skin/cheeks, he talks softly
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Feelings of admiration and enjoyment, but nothing sexual. His father is a jazz musician and professor in the Hudson Valley, and he, my friend, was raised completely off of junk food, which would seem to have gone far in building a healthy mind.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
When I indulge in this or that cannabis item, I rarely feel even social feelings, yet alone sexual ones. The high usually has an effect of exacerbating cerebral immersion, sometimes comparable to a rapids of thought through which I, as a locus of emotion, tumble and drag, often yielding interesting albeit fatiguing insight.
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
It's done, the smoking of spliffs that is, in the interest of farming insight, usually at the expense of tranquility. It also makes experience more lucid and heavy-hitting, which I think most micro-stoners would agree with.
 
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WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Live the fear

(not really, tinctures might help, v clear experience don’t want to hijack though)

Attraction? Remember - half of everything
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Watching a Kieslowski film after smoking would be my idea of lucid recreation and fun that may, incidentally, prompt insight as well, despite that not being the priority. Watching, while high, Christof Koch speak about the neural basis of consciousness would be less recreational and more rigorous, and insight farming here also is the effort, while gathering information as fertilizer.

Either way, these things have little to no social component, much less sexual.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Live the fear

(not really, tinctures might help, v clear experience don’t want to hijack though)

Attraction? Remember - half of everything
Sometimes I find your posts too consolidated to unpack, despite knowing there is stuff worth unpacking.

Half of everything?
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Bears might perhaps be better suited with your other mate

Think of him middle-aged, saggy, bronchial issues, haemorrhoidal to test love but a heavy beard

Legacies have been built on less
 
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sus

Well-known member
Craner's like my dad so I wouldn't list him, personally, but I won't be offended if you do
 
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