I had this wacky train of thought come to me.
Hope viewers of this post find it entertaining/interesting.
The whole idea of romantic relationship is a societal/cultural/civilizational/human-organization based construct.
If all humans just lived wild,
Males would randomly have sex with 100s of women, and probably have 30-40 children each or more.
The male would not know who his child is.
Also, there seems to be no easily observable causality linking the sexual act to the consequence of pregnancy, and the consequent children that come from that.
There is just a wild instinctual desire for the male.
Similarly women too feel this same wild desire, in certain time periods, and depending on their mood they may run away, resist, or allow the sex to happen.
The man in his prime years would probably be more motivated, since he can easily manage to do 1 or 2 every day without any time-off periods.
The things is, after the sex, the woman too may not be able to causally connect the act of sex to the pregnancy that happens after.
Could she not take it as something that just naturally happened from God?
So the causality is not known from either side, male or female.
The female would bond with the child from the oxytocin and breastfeeding period, and that bond may result in the child and mother recognizing each other.
But there is no way the child will know the father, and neither will the father know.
It could be anybody.
If the woman has had sex with 5 men in a day, and gets pregnant, how would she have any idea who caused the child OR if the 5 acts had anything to do with the child at all?
The first symptoms of pregnancy after all come much later, probably a fortnight later at least, right?
Another aspect is that, if the child grows up away from the mother from a young age, it is doubtful if the mother can recognize the child.
The child may recognize the mother, because her age may not change her appearance as much in the 15-45 zone, but even that may not be easy.
So it seems like the entire notion of civilization/society is to regulate birth and to ensure the spread of resources to everyone.
By putting the responsibility on the father, the father is deterred from following his raw instinct and seeking new mates.
Similarly, a responsibility is also put on the mother, to take care of the child for much longer than she might have otherwise done.
The socialization/enculturation/civilization process is to suppress the sex instinct’s wildness, and instead redirect it into the structures of society, that is, to gain status/position/rank and then seek out the opp-sex of similar status/position/rank etc.
This I guess spawns the whole matrix of mating/romantic fantasy and social status/rank/position/specialness.
The fantasy of being the elite and mating with other elite,
Like the notion of kings/queens, emperors/empresses, prince/princesses and so on.
Names are used in societal organization to TAG the person.
It is an identifier similar to your debit card number, social security number and so on.
Similarly even the roles of mother/father are tags society puts on folk.
Like XXX is the mother of XXXX —–OR—— XXXX is the father of XXXX.
Also the agreement of marriage itself, is really a contract/agreement that serves the children who will be born from the mating of the 2.
Marriage was essentially a system created for the bringing up of children.
Nowadays people use it for companionship, but that is a conscious contract of sort, and it does not have much binding, since both the parties are independent.
It is only the child that is born helpless, and needs a lot of nurture at least till the age of 10.
There seems to big rift in the way “natural biology drives/impulses/instincts” operate and in the way we view everything from the “societal/cultural/civilizational lens”.
The former is generally subsumed into the latter in the process of socialization.
I guess, based on seeing the consequences, ramifications, and aftermath, birth causation etc. – Wise people with vision created systems such as culture/society/civilization to organize and regulate the different drives so that the system could serve in the longer term as a win-win for everyone.
Society/Culture then seems like a long distance vision of how people can live together and mutually fulfill all their needs .
As more needs get satisfied, people may become conscious of finer and subtler needs, which would gradually make their way into modifying society’s formal or informal structures.
The game of masks
The game of masks:
Some people wear an [identity/mask/role/act], enjoy it, and then remove it.
And once alone or in a safe place, they remove the mask and then reflect on the act/mask/identity/role from their Real Self.
Some others NEVER remove the mask of identity/role.
They want to wear it 24×7 and lose themselves into believing they are that.
Someone like a sociopath has a very tough and thick mask, because it has been created from very early in life from “extraordinary levels of shame”.
So accordingly, since structure = power, they exude more confidence, charisma, and power.
And then, they try to play the game of masks with others, lose themselves into their game, and a corollary/extension of that is that “they apply the same principle in terms of what they are interested in when it comes to others”.
Since they themselves are actors and are trying to find the ultimate act to lose themselves into, they are always on the lookout for how to make the mask stronger.
So they look at other people wearing masks, and are attracted to them, and they are always curious about what mask/act to wear.
Because that is their very mission statement “Find the greatest personality/mask/identity/structure/role, that will give the greatest rewards and goodies from everyone.” More importantly they want a mask that is invincible and indestructible -> because all masks are “inherently insecure” and are really dependent upon others and social systems for their mere survival.
So really, they are enslaved to what is allowed/tolerated/celebrated in the matrix because their entire identity/mask/role is really a socially and other-conferred one, and rests on mercurial flimsy ground.
They are living off the alms of others, in the most fundamental sense.
They are aware of this, and that is why there is a heavy investment in manipulation and defenses – so that not only are they never detected, they also do a preemptive offensive attack on anybody who even attempts to disillusion them of their act/role/mask/identity.
They try to secure love and admiration everywhere, shaping themselves into whatever it takes to get the maximum of that, as a permanent antidote to insecurity.
They are constantly on the lookout for conventional positions of power, because then with that stable position, they have much greater security, and people are far more likely to tolerate their whims, tantrums, oppression and so on.
They are also hyper-controlling of everyone around, they frame control everything everywhere, because really THIS is only an extension of the REAL frame control they are constantly doing to themselves in order to constantly make them believe in the mask.
A kind of self-hypnosis, that becomes automated in them to such an extent, it then extends itself into controlling all of their environment and all of their interactions – inevitably coming across as oppressive to others.
To make up for that, they go into episodes of love-bombing, great people-pleasing, gift-giving, inflating their value etc. something to compensate, something such that the pros outweigh the cons, to keep up the idea that it is worth/valuable/great living with them, and that they are great people basically.
Underneath all of that is toxic shame.
A shame so terrible, they would do anything rather than look at that.
Isn’t that the reason anybody would choose to wear a MASK 24×7 and choose to never ever remove it?
Imagine if someone close to you did that one day, wearing a full mask the whole day, what would you ask them? “What is wrong, did you get mumps? some lip infection? some acne? some other skin infection? some scar? some injury?”
Would you not associate this with something along the lines above?
This is the basis for all those who wear masks and never choose to remove it.
The shame behind those is so much, that it turns off self-reflection irrevocably/totally/completely.
Even if someone with that level of toxic shame reads this whole essay, it will still not motivate them to look at the source of his shame.
Rather he might try to use all of this information as TOOLS to manipulate someone else, to strengthen the mask itself, rather than USE THIS TOOL for his OWN reflection.
Such is the power of shame = More often than not, they will choose death over self-reflection.
Is shame worse than physical death? = Is a good question to ponder.
One thing is clear though, the deepest origin of all MASKS (when one chooses to lose themselves completely into it) is SHAME.
From a more abstract level:
The individual is the microcosm, while society is the macrocosm.
An individual suppresses/represses things depending on the severity of shame present.
The same holds true for the larger collective we call society.
Society suppresses/represses things in its own scale and this affects all the individuals too.
There is shame at the level of the collective/society itself.
Look at the criminals in jails, asylums etc.
They all represent what society has rejected.
Certain behaviors/potentials of god are considered acceptable, while certain others are simply not-tolerated/suppressed/shunned/or even attacked.
Journey to the Abstract 