Bodies or Battles?

Given a choice would you give pleasure or remove it? This is not a complex question. If you had the ability to make everyone on earth as happy as they could be or you could remove all of their joy, which would you choose?

My money says you didn’t even have to pause. I would bet in a heartbeat that you would choose to be the best at giving joy. (If your name is Snape or Lucifer, kiss my tuckus and go watch Fox News) This is why people become singers, teachers, dancers, artist and strippers. Giving joy is not only a great thing to do but it also will be the skill that always leaves you wanted in the market.

Where do we find joy? Brownies probably make you joyful, unless you are diabetic. A job well done may make you joyful but other times it is just tedium. A good piece of music may leave you joyful but eventually it will get old. It may be the 500^th time in a row you hear it but it will get old.

So what does work? What works across every culture and throughout time? What brings enough joy to make people risk their lives, surrender their income, start wars, alter their appearance and tell a million lies? Sex, baby! Bumping uglies. Rocking the casbah. Knocking boots. The horizontal mambo. A vigorous game of hide the sausage. The bedroom rodeo.

Now, what removes pleasure? What things can you think of that would remove not only pleasure but any chance of pleasure? Sure, taxes come to mind. So does borscht, if you have retained any knowledge of decent cuisine. However, taxes do not remove all pleasure and there are people who enjoy borscht. I don’t know how, but there are.

How about war? All of it. Not the glorious, identify with the hero, B.S. you get form Hollywood or the stories you were taught to revel in form G.I. Joe cartoons and bad T.V. where you either survive or die instantly but the real version. The ‘My god my face just got ripped off and all I can do is produce guttural screams and moans out of my now-jawless mouth while no one cares because their own asses are on the line’ type of war. The needless suffering and civilian casualty version of war. The part where it doesn’t even matter if you are good at it because artillery can end your pasty ass form miles (or continents in modern warfare) away while you think it is lunchtime type of war. Finish this sentence: “______ is hell.” Not even borscht or taxes fill it adequately. Only war.

War is the end of physical, emotional and intellectual joy. Ask anyone who has lost one, they will tell you. At least the non-maimed, non-paralyzed, still-sane people will tell you. Even the winners come back with scars, seen or unseen. War damages even those who do not participate. Name me a war that stopped so a group of children could get out of the way. Name the war where no innocent person died. Please, list me the wars that included only volunteers who all came out thinking ”Not bad, we should do this again sometime.” Go to a thousand Hallmark stores and you will not find a single “Thanks for the war!” card. Not one.

While we are being so truthful about all of this let’s discuss, well, being truthful. I would not suggest lying as a day to day activity for anyone (questions about buttock appearance in new dresses aside) but I would say we should especially leave it out of anything we choose to call education. Can we agree on that? Telling schoolchildren that the North American continent is made of peanut brittle and the sun is a ball of leftover Christmas lights is not what we, as a society, have as an aim. We attempt to be honest even when we fudge around the edges or use language in tricky ways. (Remember that whole story about Columbus ‘discovering’ a continent that had 10 million people on it? Hell, my local Wal-Mart only has about 400 people in it and I am not allowed to just bop in, plant a flag and claim it!)

So how did we get caught up in debating Sex Education? Seriously, how? We have been duped again. No sane person would even stop to pretend there should be a debate. What is the question anyway? “Well, Bobby, we seem to have a method for people to share near-ultimate bliss and if they don’t know how to do it properly their little peckers will fall off and their lives will be ruined by having to drag a little crotch-monkey to Senior Prom. Not to mention a burning sensation in that particular area of their body with a stunning concentration of nerve ending for the rest of their lives. Should we tell them about it or just expect them to figure this genital rocket science out on their own?” Is that a question any sane person would ask? And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the whole ‘Smart enough to know abuse and name who did it’ protection form Catholic priests and other monsters’ aspect.

How, as a culture, did we fall for the concept of pre-emptive war with far away cultures but stop to argue about whether Dick and Jane should be told how to play with their dicks and, well, janes? Should we not be mastering the equipment we are born with before mastering the taking of human life? And while we are at it, maybe a map to the clitoris for Cletus instead of a map to the Persian Gulf for the Pentagon?