Diver dan:

What is the point of maintaining societal norms just for their own sake? If they do not make sense then why continue on with them? Traditional families might make sense but that does not mean non-traditional families do not make sense. There are many ways in which human beings can choose to live with other human beings. What is relevant is that they are human beings and as such they all have equal rights. Rights are distributed to people because they are people and not because of the way they structure their relationships.

Just because you do not like the way some people structure their relationships does not make them any less a person and all people should be treated equally. You seem to want to favour only those who structure their relationships according to your preferences. That is not a very just kind of society

Dear Alan,

I make suggestions, not demands, suggestions which I believe are for your own good, but which you don't need to follow.

The vast majority of us are not ready for celibacy, so the way forward is to gently and gradually lean in this direction and try to limit your sexual expression. One should not attempt to run before they can walk: just limiting one's sexual expression to one sexual partner is in itself a great and admirable spiritual achievement.

While we should not waste our time trying to change biology, we can let our biological bodies be what they are and the way they are, but without identifying ourselves with them.

Anyone who identifies with a biological body, when that body has sex, orgasm and other sensual pleasures, they too feel elated - but when that body is in pain, they too suffer; when that body is disabled, they too feel disabled; when that body is deprived of touch and other stimulations, they too feel lonely; and once that body dies, they too experience death - but whoever overcomes this association/identification with a body, never suffers, is never disabled, is never lonely and never dies!

LOL Mating, the core of it all: BY Don Aitkin, 10/2/2017

Yuyutsu writes: "One should not attempt to run before they can walk: just limiting one's sexual expression to one sexual partner is in itself a great and admirable spiritual achievement."

One excellent reason [not that I ever gave it deep consideration], for completely ignoring the "spiritual" when sexually engaged.

"Nature, Mr Allnutt, is what we are put on this Earth to rise above." So spake Miss Rose Sayer [Katharine Hepburn] in the film The African Queen. The story unfolds on several levels with a simplicity, elegance and skill rarely encountered today. It makes a nonsense of your remonstrations.

Asceticism, of the kind you idealise, is a benign form of sado-masochism and is not for everyone.

Preference for self-deprivation before pleasure is to be found more often today in the religious dilettante who endures his martyrdom in a lounge chair before a warming fire with the companionship of a newspaper and a glass of Glen Fiddich rather than the confines of a draughty cave with a piece of mouldy turnip to fend off starvation and an odiferous bug-ridden dhoti for warmth.

It is an ineluctable fact impervious to the assault of would-be ascetics who claim favoured access to the Holy Ear, that involuntary monogamy, practiced as Yuyutsu would have it on an industrial scale, is an offense against nature and has all the earmarks of "unnatural asceticism"....self-mortification without a shadow of a doubt!

Lastly, it is an equally ineluctable fact similarly impervious, that an embarrassment of evidence confirms Homo evolution from an ape-like ancestor. The species Homo sapiens sapiens [a pompous descriptive if there ever was one] is a integral feature of the Natural World, the bioshphere. Humankind has attained that exalted station in the biosphere of being the most intelligent, top predator and top parasite. This is attested to by humankind itself. Advocacy for a higher status is unabashedly hubristic and devoid of merit, for there can be no higher station. We are of Nature, we cannot be outside it. Nothing we do or think is unnatural.

OLO Mating, the core of it all by Don Aitkin

Yuyutsu writes P1: "Mating is a weakness that human bodies inherit from their animal ancestors. Identifying with this biological feature can badly distract us and consume our energies so we have no time left for seeking God."

You'll be delighted to learn thant I have several intimate friends who combine the two endeavours with astonishing success. In a transport of sexual ecstasy they seek god with an impressive piety and fervour. So all is not lost with your fallen bretheren I assure you.

Yuyutsu: "Unfortunately, this cannot be said for all families in general, some of which instead direct their children away from God and towards all manners of distracting indulgences."

My son began swimming lessons at 18 months and ceased at 14 years to concentrate on high school studies. He chose to do well academically and spent much time studying. I took him to my favourite golf course and had my friend the pro give him golf lessons. Tried him out on guitar lessons but he's not developed an ear for good music yet. He's talented at art and one of his high school teachers has his computer art hanging on her wall [next to a Manet print]. He's now begun his first job as an electrical engineer with a very large firm starting on $80k p.a. He has a beautiful car and a motorbike. He'll travel the world in his work and on my advice will probably marry at about 35 years. I raised him as an atheist. I guess I've ruined his life, huh? Oh, and somewhere along the way he squeezed in gaining a black belt in karate as well. Cont...

Cont..Yuyutsu P1: "Equality, justice and fairness are our birthright, part and parcel of our true divine original nature, but are unnatural and never possible for our flesh-and-blood human bodies....."

Contrary to your pessimism and melancholy opinion of humankind, we have institutionalised all three in our custom, our morality and our laws. And we've been highly successful at it. But good news does not make newspaper magnates happy because it doesn't sell newspapers so the world continues to live in harmony in the vast majority of places considering there are roughly 7bn of us. The good stuff, the happy stuff hardly ever gets reported. The records of it are so scattered or non-existent as to make listing and correlating nigh on impossible. The unfortunate pessimist is a victim of propaganda and his own preparedness to see what he is told to see. His discriminatory faculties have been atrophied by cynicism.

Yuyutsu, back to P5: "but whoever overcomes this association/identification with a body, never suffers, is never disabled, is never lonely and never dies!"

Fantastic news for the disabled! When can we expect all those severed limbs to begin growing again? How many of Yuyutsu's colleagues, maimed by accident or birth defect, have been witnessed by him to become whole and abled?

Congratulations, you're beginning to sound like a street-corner evangelising huckster by the minute.