I have read your comment a few times. I feel like I am missing something. Making a logical case for a visceral emotion, such as horniness or anger, seems pointless. The emotional states arise from a set of biological responses, but a person winds up hungry or angry or horny in the fire of the moment. If I could argue myself out of being angry or horny, I'd be a happier person. Instead I "take it outside" when I'm angry or masturbate when horny. I relieve the emotional strain so I can resume sanity. I had always run on the assumption of the biochemical urge for sex. Those that are not interested in sex will simply not have it and thereby not make it any father in the gene pool because they'll have no offspring to pass that trait. Until I got married, I never even thought of making a logical case for sex. Now I sometimes have to explain to my wife that sex would be a good idea at time X, as it would help us synchronize. However there is also a deeper point: we both want to have sex, but we have let other aspects of life ruin the mood repeatedly. So we actively choose a moment and see what happens. You stated I feel like I'm trying to explain a sunrise. Even if I do it, I'll never puncture the sheer awe of seeing the sun come up over the horizon and knowing it kindles something inside me."if there was no need to have sex, there would be far less
[sic] stressful people."
I agree, but that misses the point. The gonads drive endocrine production, create the urge to go on, push for success and make stress to create that need.
Well, take it as explaining sunrise to a blind person. Thank you for your reply, I understand what you are talking about. Still I see that rejection, failure not getting what you want and biological pressure generated down there makes the stress even bigger, people get angry and vent it outside by drinking, aggressive driving or doing something else silly and harm people on their way. The characteristics and emotions of people are shaped by so many things - genes, parenting, environment, society, social status and we cannot just simply explain "why you, another human being, are repressing me and making me sad because you do not give me your body".
I am glad you put it as "explaining sunrise to a blind person". I can move forward from that understanding. I agree about the pain of rejection leading to horrible stress. We used to have a very simple, though not very kind, solution to the pent-up energy: military drafts. You thin the herd a slight amount, but you also channel the energy of young people and give them structures for adulthood. The closest we have to this now is working fast food jobs. However there is something else implicit in your last statement: pain from not getting someone else's body. This suggests sex is a zero-sum game: one person gains from sex while the other loses. This is not how it should work. Instead the process of maturing in sex teaches how each partner gains pleasure. Thinking about that led me to some other concepts. One is that many of us develop our feelings about sex early in puberty, when we're at a terrible point of self-awareness. one thing stands out above the horror of high school and the pain of growing up: the intense pleasure from giving oneself an orgasm for the first time. If someone gets that strong a feeling from another event, then that event would make sex far less important. If someone had a religious revelation or found deep enjoyment in public performance, then the stress would transfer. In my youth that I was hung up on words and music, math and history. So I groused about not understanding the opposite sex, but I was more keen to listen to new bands and read more challenging non-fiction. I was not ready to deal with the opposite sex in a mature way until I was halfway through university. The sunrise is light piercing the darkness, a strong note becoming a chord and then an orchestral crescendo against the quiet of an opera house. It's not impossible to get enough of an analogy to appreciate, to synchronize an emotional response. It's also not everything -- by 11 am, you're wishing that ball of light would hide in a rain cloud.