The
following headline in the UK’s Guardian newspaper tells a many layered story.
Syphilis cases increase
by 163% in London in five years[1]
As we know
from history, sexual relationships are the cornerstone of any society. Without children,
a society disappears. If children are not raised appropriately, then the
society suffers. At the heart of this process is the family. The family is usually
defined by the sexual relationship that produces children. However, all of this
changed dramatically with the advent of modern natural science.
In the past,
nature was the guide for our behaviour. Nature modified by reason usually
sufficed, within certain constraints, to ensure the survival of a family,
community, and state. The community reinforced what nature and reason had
identified. What modern natural science did was to sever those links so that
reason could conquer nature and remove the apparent constraints that appeared
to inhibit freedom. Man could determine his destiny and move beyond what nature
and nature’s God suggested. Man was free because God was dead and man’s reason,
as expressed in modern natural science controlled nature. For a time, the
utopia, especially the sexual utopia, seemed within grasp. Men and women could
be free to indulge whatever sexual fantasy or behaviour that they chose.
The sexual
revolution gained full speed with the advent of the web. The web, applications,
and algorithms allowed men, women, and even children to find sexual partners.
Moreover, they allowed them to pursue them in ways that they appeared to avoid
any natural constraints. When the HIV/AIDS crisis hit many people changed their
sexual behaviour. Nature had a way of reminding man of what they owed it even
if man thought he could ignore nature.
The Guardian
story has the following comment almost as an aside without considering the deeper
story it contains.
The recent rise in cases of syphilis
comes after a historical decline in the late 1980s and early 90s, when the
spectre of the HIV pandemic encouraged many people to change their sexual
habits.
For a time,
man listened to nature. He realized that nature had not been conquered, tamed,
or even fought to a draw. Nature told him that he needed to change and he
listened for a time. What is curious is that no amount of rhetoric moral,
ethical, or medical could change the pattern of behaviour. Yet, the spectre of
nature’s intransigence suddenly spoke in words, or in a language, that could
not be ignored nor could it be negotiated or even tricked.
There is a
saying in Latin that gives us a glimpse of nature’s language. The phrase is:
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
This can be
translated as: “You can drive out nature
with a pitchfork, but she always comes back.”[2]
Nature will not be denied. What is curious is that the lesson was learned and
yet man in his pride thought that the lesson could be forgotten. With
technology, computer applications, and algorithms nature could be outsmarted.
Yet, it is nature that returns. As we apply more and more anti-biotics, we fail
to learn the basic lesson or listen to what nature has to tell us. There is logic,
a rhythm, to nature that we ignore at our peril.
Sexual
licentiousness is only one small way in which we ignore nature. The way that we
treat the environment is the best example. Even though we may debate the science
or even the consequences of climate change, one thing that is not debatable is
that we no longer live in balance with nature. We live within the age of pride. We believe that if we can think it we can achieve it. If we can achieve
it, then we must achieve it. For to deny what we can achieve, we deny our
freedom. For modern man and even post-modern man, there is no greater sin than
that which denies freedom or knowledge. It is as if we have forgotten Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus was a horror story and we
take it as an instruction manual to satisfy our deepest appetite for freedom.
Yet, our hubris has reached a reckoning. Nature will not allow us the digital domain
that will provide us a utopia where all our dreams, fantasies, ambitions
can be set free. Even as we agree to live according to an algorithmic master
that is harsher than nature or nature’s God for it promises us “freedom”, we
cannot escape nature.
We might reverse
all of this and see the error of our ways. We might try to live with nature or
even live in balance with nature as guided by our digital masters. However, the
damage is done. Man’s appetites cannot be satisfied for if HIV/AIDS was not
enough to restrain us, then neither will the coming plague that we will have created
in our prideful belief that we are masters of our destiny and command nature.
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