Free Love- Why it is a HIGHER Ideal

There are two ways of seeing ethics.
One sees ethics as timeless. They are set in stone, set forth at the beginning of time.

The other sees them as evolving to suit societal needs, a set of rules by which we govern ourselves, rules made with the ultimate object of human happiness in mind.

And the second must be so. After all, in the Age of Reptiles, what morality was there?
Morals are rules we make to keep our society functioning.
As society changes, so too the rules which work best.

For example, during the middle ages, rules of chivalry dictated all sorts of tight codes of conduct.
For example, a woman riding alone was safe. A woman riding with a knight was under his protection, so challenge him and beat him, you just take the woman. THAT was the code of chivalry.

I don't think many of us want to see that type of morality restored.

Much of morality is there to serve the needs of the society it exists in.
Leviticus contains long lists of rules in place to make sure people lived longer, didn't fight eachother and everyone knew what was going on.

so;
1. Don't eat things which have a tendency to carry disease if not stored properly or cooked properly; mainly Pig flesh, things made from blood, etc.
2. Keep tabs of who is having sex with who- property is inherited by sons, so we need to know whose son is who's.
3. Sex carries a lot of diseases. Don't do it, unless it's for baby making purposes. And don't have sex with your relatives. The children don't turn out too healthy.

It's really a kind of 800 BC health and safety manual. These things are wrong, because they are dangerous.

Remove the dangers attached, and they stop being wrong.

The fact is, with contraception, DNA testing, the demise of primogeniture, huge steps made towards the eradication of VD, we just don't need these attitudes to sex any more. They cause more harm than good.

How much misery has been caused over the years to those attracted to others of the same sex, due to the maintenance of a rule initially instituted to prevent unnecessary spread of VD?

And that's just a part of it.

Let's just look at Monogamy.
Of course it can work, it DOES work, for some.
But clearly, not very well for most people. It did, in days when it was enforced, when it was a NECESSARY part of the social structure.

The institution is receding, because the way we live is changing. There are no longer any powerful social dynamics favouring the institution.

Human beings live a lot longer and are sexually active for longer, than they once were.
And more importantly, we are loving, communicative creatures. Loving one person does not make us incapable of wanting to form emotional bonds with others.
This is the point, 'the exclusion of all others.'

How is that Love?
You cut yourself off from the rest of the world, living in a couple feeding off eachother, close connections to all others denied.
And we see this as good. As the song says 'When a man loves a woman, he turns his back on all his friends.'

How CAN this be a positive ideal for an enlightened society?

Free Love has NOTHING TO DO WITH LUST. That is a myth peddled by it's opponents.
Who have good reason to do so.

Monogamy DOES serve a purpose in strengthening the INGSOC structure.
It keeps people in couples, isolated from other couples, sitting in their boxes, watching boxes, working and coming home to eachother, controlled isolated human cells.

And there's no need to do so.
It creates misery.

It creates misery, because it forces people into an all-or-nothing choice they don't need to make.



Nobody wants to lie alone night after night. No matter how many friends you have, we all need to feel the warmth of another human being at night.

But does everybody want to live as one half of a couple? Sharing a bed should not have to mean sharing lifeplans. In days when men provided for women, it was a deal. Sex in exchange for providing a roof. Not now.

Why cannot men and women retain their separate identities? He keeps his friends, she keeps hers. They share moments of tenderness, but there are large areas of their lives kept separate.

And both are free to care for the other people they care for at whatever levels they care for them, without the other party believing themselves to have rights of veto over them.

People in 'relationships' are forced to carry them like a millstone round theirs necks. There is an insidious ideal at work here, where 'partners' feel they have a right to the lives of the other party, coming before their jobs, their ideals, their other personal relationships.

It shouldn't be that way. Take me, for instance.
My job will always take precedence, when needed, over any personal relationship, as it should. And several of my friendships will always be closer and deeper, due to the length of time they have existed, than any romantic relationship. And that, in my view, is perfectly correct. There is a sense, in which those relationships have a higher importance, because they are based primarily on intellectual connection.

I haven't the time to devote to just one person. This has always been a major problem with past relationships.
Every single one has felt they don't have enough of my time, I have almost always found myself thinking that they are trying to take up too much of mine.

And now certainly, with the average time elapsing from leaving home to returning home, being eleven hours, with this blog demanding time, with extensive social commitments, I have not much time free for a loved one.

Yet I'd want her to be loved.

Here society creates a problem for me. Give her all the love she needs, or none.
I can't do the first, the second makes me miserable.

But I can love a woman enough to tolerate her seeking elsewhere the love I can't give her. In fact, at least I'd know she was happy.
I can't see WHY anyone would WANT to 'commit' to me, nor what they'd get out of it. So a situation where they don't have to, is ideal for me.

Such is modern life and we shouldn't try constrain people's attempts to find love and happiness so rigidly.

Free Love is not an immoral concept. It is not the spirit of orgies. It means that everyone is free to express LOVE, to whomever and whenever they please, without feeling tied.

It's not about giving way to rampant desires, it's about people being able to share passion and tenderness without being shackled perpetually to another human being. It's about deciding to go for a drink after work with a mate and not having to justify that decision, indeed to decide to stay out and maybe come home next morning, no explanation needed.
It's about being able to share what you want with someone, without them demanding you share those aspects of your life you choose to keep separate.

It's about loving someone without that love being conditional.



It's about 'Why don't we just lie here and enjoy eachother, emotionally, intellectually and physically, in the here and now, without there being a price to pay?'

We as a society can make that possible. Because all the obstacles are removed.

In a more communally based society, mothers could bring up their children with the support of the whole community. Children, in fact, would be safer. Everybody would be equally responsible for all children. No more children being abused in dark corners of sink estates.

Sex, can be what people want it to be. It can be a physically rewarding bout of energy and passion between two lust driven strangers.
Or, it can be a loving gesture of union between two souls desiring to unite.

Love, more importantly, can be freed. Love, the EMOTION.
After all, why CAN'T I love every one of you?

Why must I love one person to the exclusion of all others?

More importantly, why would I want YOU to love me and me alone?
I'm not worth THAT much.

There's six billion people out there, and the more we all loved eachother, I mean REALLY loved eachother, the better it would work.
That emotion, Love, we should be able to feel far more than our society permits.

Go out, bond with eachother, LOVE eachother. I don't just mean sex. I mean opening up to eachother, letting people in, emoting to eachother on real human terms, not within the narrow constraints of social convention. Touch eachother's souls.

Let's take the concept of the marital bond and make it not an exclusive ideal, but an INCLUSIVE one.

Let's live as if we are ALL married to EACHOTHER.

THAT'S Free Love.