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.
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.