Moving Away From Each Other

Michael Huemer writes:

“First world problems” are problems that only become salient when your basic physical needs are met. They’re not the worst problems; people in the third world regularly suffer from worse problems, such as malaria, malnutrition, and war, and they probably don’t think much about the sort of problems that we in the first world face.

But since you probably live in the first world, first world problems are probably important to you. Among the biggest of these is the difficulty most people have with romantic and sexual relationships. So I’m going to talk about why this problem exists, why it’s bad, and how it might be addressed.

1. The Mating Problem

If there is a God, He did not intend us for happiness. There are multiple fundamental aspects of life that are obvious recipes for pain and misery…

[…]

1. Most men desire multiple partners. However, there are not multiple times as many women as men, nor do many men want to share their partners with other men, so men’s desires are incompatible with each other…

2. Most men want women to be promiscuous with [women]…

3. Men want to have sex a lot more often than women do…

4. …

5. …

6. …

2. The Biggest First World Problem?

This is among the biggest of the first world problems.

I’ve left out a number of paragraphs there, and extracted only those relevant to this post. If you’re interested in what he writes in total, I recommend clicking through, but this chopped excerpt is a good place to start.

With these facts stated, let’s ask the following: “Is promiscuity in and of itself a bad thing? If so, why?”

Let’s take the harder of the two paths here and assume that someone might say: “No, there’s nothing wrong with promiscuity. It’s just a choice between consenting adults. Whatever negative consequences there once were with promiscuity, they have been resolved either through technology or cultural progress. As long as you’re cautious, honest, and practice safe sex, there’s really no issue with promiscuity.”

I don’t believe this is completely true, and it’s not in accordance with the culture I was raised in, but for the sake of this post, let’s be generous and accept that it might be accurate for some people. Everyone is entitled to their way of life, so long as it’s peaceful. I certainly don’t mind people indulging in various activities that I consider unhealthy, so long as those activities aren’t causing me and mine a problem. Just do it over there, where it doesn’t bother us. Problem solved?

Not quite. Promiscuity isn’t the only problem, nor is promiscuity so easily solved. People tend to reveal their desire for sex, or things about their sexuality inappropriately.

Examples:¹

1. Gay men coming onto other men and boys inappropriately.

2. Straight men coming onto women and girls inappropriately.

3. Inappropriate dress regardless of sexual orientation.

4. Inappropriate displays of affection regardless of sexual orientation.

5. Rude behavior in general regardless of political or sexual identity.

Some of this can be summarized by saying, “Mind your manners,” but other parts go beyond mere manners. To these people we might say, “Clean up your culture.”

But let’s imagine that I’m wrong. Let’s assume there is someone in the crowd who says, “Actually, there’s nothing wrong our behavior. What to you is sexually inappropriate, or just inappropriate is actually generally acceptable to us.”

Okay.

In this case, what can we do? We disagree about the appropriateness of your behavior.

It seems to me that much of this disagreement can be resolved by moving away from each other. Does that work for you? It does for me.

In fact, many of our problems can be solved by moving away from each other.

This is especially true of socialism. If you want to be socialist, go ahead — just do it in a way that doesn’t infringe on our rights. Create your own commune for example.

Does that work for you?

Let’s call this solution divorce. No that’s not accurate. Let’s call it federalism.

1. This is not a compressive list. What other examples might you include?