I heard a radio program once interviewing a guy who had been tortured by somebody (can't remember who). He said the process finally burns off everything that can be degraded and reveals something that can't be controlled by anyone else.

Francis Bacon. :pray: :pray: :pray:

:up: Cubists had made paintings that would fuse multiple views into a mangled, splintered whole as if to say that unity of world is a lie. I think of that with those portraits you posted. You usually only see a portion of the people you know or meet. What if you could see everything at once?

Reflections of the beast within him.

I'll take that as a big NO. — charleton

Do you have reading comprehension problems? A refusal to answer does not signify either yes or no. Either big or small for that matter. That should be obvious, but some people are quite dull-headed.

Please refrain from talking on subjects you know nothing about. — charleton

By the way, just for your knowledge, I've answered the question before on the forum, however, I refuse to answer it in this case since you harbour some prejudices which ought to be investigated. And so it is good to provoke you. I know precisely why you were asking that question. You want to imply that if someone did not have sex, then they do not have knowledge about sex, and therefore cannot speak with any authority or relevance about it. You further imply that the more sex someone has, the more they know about it. That is all as a means to justify your own insecurity and lack of knowledge.

First of all, even if one never had sex (for the time being I'll qualify that as vaginal or anal intercourse) it does not follow that one knows nothing about sex. This is to misunderstand the multitude of ways to learn about something. And in fact, it is a popular prejudice amongst the less cultured and the poorly educated, so it ought to be better addressed.

With regards to the above, sex is one of the few activities where, in popular culture, someone is taken not to know what they're talking about if they haven't done it themselves. To see just how ridiculous this is, let me just give you one example. Back when I was in University, we had a professor of engineering (structures). He never practised as an engineer, he was always an academic. So there was this relatively large and special structure that was going to be built. And guess who the company who had contracted it went to - to him, an academic. They did not go to the engineer with 30+ years of practice. Why? Because the academic understands the phenomenon much better than the engineer, who has really learned useful rules of thumb, and understands how to quickly navigate the rules & regulations governing engineering and the implementation of projects while minimizing costs. The practical engineer does not understand the phenomenon better than the academic who never worked as an engineer in his life, but has spent all his time studying different phenomena and publishing research.

So in literarily all other fields of life, when we're looking for the expert, we go to the theoretician, who has a grasp of the underlying phenomenon much better than the person who is always busy with encountering it in practice (that person may be, for most projects, quicker in implementation, etc., but he will not be more knowledgeable).

So, when it comes to sex, why do you think we ought to do differently? Why should we go for advice to the person who has had the most sex? Is personal experience the best way to learn about sex? Or should we rather go the expert, who understands human life, who has spent time to think about his own life, and has read about the lives and experiences of hundreds or thousands of other human beings with regards to sex and has all those experiences at his disposal to judge?

Here are ways to know about sex without doing it yourself:
• Read about it, both technically and stories of people who have done different kinds of sex.
• Watch people having sex.
• Have a very developed sensitivity & imagination.
• Talk with others about sex and listen to their experiences.
• Understand your own body sexually.
• Understand the mental side of intimacy (including sex).
• Be intimate (without having sex) with another person.
• Read sex manuals (Kamasutra, etc.)

These are all valid ways of knowing about sex. I know you have adopted the attitude of uncultured philistines of thinking that only personal experience gives you knowledge (no doubt, someone who is so poor as to only have his personal experience wants to privilige his experience above everything). And remember, it is you who were looking for a battle here, so I will give you one. Trust me on this, I will not let you go easily now. We're going to see just how well you understand (or don't understand) sex, and it will be really a big shame if after all the sex you claim you've had, you understand it worse than a man who only had sex with one woman in his life and is half your age :lol:

What makes for a positive sexual experience? I think that a brutal man, a violent man, a dogmatic man, who is always in a hurry, cannot have a positive sexual experience. He can encounter merely the release of sexual tension, but nothing more. It takes tremendous intelligence (and I don't mean academic intelligence) and sensitivity to truly relate with another person. And this is something that cannot be achieved through the understanding of the mechanics of sex. The mechanics cannot tell you what to do. No amount of sex will teach you, by itself, such intelligence and sensitivity.

Most people have a lot of hangups about sex. Do you think sex can be positive for such people, regardless of how often they do it? Or is rather the person who never had sex in his life, but is entirely open to the experience and to the other person, with his whole being, with no false prejudices, no desire to impress anyone, no fear - do you reckon this person is infinitely superior to the one who has had mechanical sex thousands of times before?

What about if someone is athletic, and really understands their body, and has developed physical strength. Do you reckon they will be superior in sex, that they will be a more enjoyable partner - for example by being able to adapt to any tempo, to any duration, etc.?

Or what about the man who has so sharpened his emotional intelligence that he perceives every movement of his partner's soul and understands their desires like no other. Tell me, you reckon they will be a better sexual partner?

Or what about the man who has developed the skill to get their partner to open up, not to be afraid, to be entirely present in the experience, without judging. Do you reckon he will be superior?

Given your superficiality on the forum, I wouldn't be surprised if you don't understand half of the things written above.

A famous Chinese advisor had a saying: "I only drew my sword out once, but I have sharpened it my whole life" - once, timed rightly, was enough to become Emperor.

Now anyway, I've said all this to clarify on a popular misunderstanding that I see with regards to sex. You are merely the opportune moment, because you represent this popular tendency well. Now, to address you more particularly, I really suggest you practice your reading comprehension.

Not from what I've seen. — Agustino

I've not seen people in the club toilet having intercourse (for example), but I've seen and heard about people giving oral sex there very often, and they were strangers. But this is besides the point, but just goes to show how utterly superficial and lacking in intelligence you are. Similar to your dogmatic attitude with regards to religion. If you are as dogmatic about sex as you are about religion, oh man... It's really embarrassing.

:strong: :kiss: :fire: :monkey: :lol:

Similar to your dogmatic attitude with regards to religion — Agustino

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Religion is by definition dogmatic.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Religion is by definition dogmatic. — CuddlyHedgehog

Where do you take this statement from? Certainly not from the likes of Meister Ekchardt, Valentin Tomberg, etc.

It’s common knowledge. Now eat your pretzel, dear.

...and don’t worry about the funny taste.

I heard a radio program once interviewing a guy who had been tortured by somebody (can't remember who). He said the process finally burns off everything that can be degraded and reveals something that can't be controlled by anyone else.

I think this might be going in the wrong direction in regards to Bacon. The horrific image from Abu Ghraib reminded me of his painting, but this prison photo is a sadistic posturing and I don't get that feeling in looking that Bacon's spindly crucifixion. He was a functional masochist, and in so far as two adults can behave in a mutually acceptable manner, his masochism was not deviant, which is what I sense in the Abu Ghaib photo.

I think pain is how we learn to transcend the empirical. We seek to escape pain and our self awareness of it by trying to obtain a viewpoint outside or beyond it. Our feeling of pain, which I think is physically very similar in each each of us, is not the same as how we each react to pain. Some have a very high tolerance for pain and some do not. Some people like Bacon are somehow able to transmute their feelings of pain into a sense of strong erotic pleasure. His paintings recall his experiences of this pleasure in images, images which we might find disturbing, insightful and pleasurable all at the same time.

I learned a lot. You should write a book. :up:

He was a functional masochist, and in so far as two adults can behave in a mutually acceptable manner, his masochism was not deviant, — Cavacava

True, but cosmic sized archetypes are always on standby with sex. I was pursuing the idea of fate (determinism) and a struggle against it. But point taken, even if I knew Bacon personally, I probably wouldn't be able to explain him.

I learned a lot. You should write a book. :up: — Baden

What should the title be? :lol:

...and don’t worry about the funny taste. — CuddlyHedgehog

Oh dear... what did you do now?

The Hamster's Guide to Good Sex.

The Hamster's Guide to Good Sex. — Baden

Mmm, that's actually good, I bet I could get that to sell like crazy in eBook form :lol:

Yeah, it's ambiguous enough to target a wide audience. :grin:

This type of product isn't very difficult to sell actually. I even had someone who wanted me to ghostwrite & market a similar eBook for them (it was more about pickup stuff), but I refused on moral grounds.

Oh dear... what did you do now? — Agustino

Let’s just say the party is going to start sooner that you thought.

Let’s just say the party is going to start sooner that you thought. — CuddlyHedgehog

You should know that hamster stomachs can digest almost anything :naughty:

I think this is the first time I've wholeheartedly agreed with you on something. Commenting so that we both have it on the record.

I tried having sex with a man once. I say having sex with a man, it was definitely more 'try'. The thing I found most surprising about it all was that I could enjoy giving pleasure but not receiving it in that circumstance. I tried to go in without prejudices, and had fantasized about similar things before, my partner was skilled but accepting and tolerant of mistakes. I was still bored. Not disgusted, bored. To paraphrase the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality's Voldemort - indifference is a deeper antipathy than disgust.

Regardless of agreeing with you completely, there's still an element of surprise and self discovery in sex; I think it's a pretty large element of it - of shaping and understanding the desires of everyone involved. The conceptual apparatus surrounding it is of being surprised by discovered desires and methods of expressing them - expression understood in a (in general polyadic hur hur) relational sense of involved agents. Desire understood in its more general sense than mere 'sexual whim' (as if that's the only reason you can want to have sex with your partner).

In this sense, I think the relation of sexual novelty and desire is a conceptual opposite of novelty and desire in advertising, but also opposite of stoic contempt for the 'things indifferent and transient'. 'Humbling' yourself in terms of reaction/enaction towards your partner(s) and your own emergent desires is a manner of being shaped by the actions and delighting in the transience of it all. This then shapes how you have sex in the future and think about sex (and sex's role in relationships) in general. A model of learning in which nature puts reason to the work of desire. Poor wretch, willingly slave for a moment to a paltry girl, I find myself more free than I started.

calm down man. Writing an essay for one mere comment certainly says something about you....

calm down man. Writing an essay for one mere comment certainly says something about you.... — Count Radetzky von Radetz

Yeah, just like asking about the similarities between Moses and Jesus says something about you :rofl:

But now in all seriousness, I've addressed why the comment was so long in the comment itself - charle was the incarnation of a very pernicious & idiotic cultural attitude, which extends far beyond him. He was merely the pretext for me to fight my own cultural battle and unmask the attitude in question.

Nice to see you defending religion against hedgehog at least

Ah that's good, I thought I killed the thread. Thank you necromancers.

I refuse to answer it in this case since you harbour some prejudices which ought to be investigated. — Agustino

It's okay if you are celibate, or gay or whatever. This is the 21st C. You ought to be less sensitive and more honest - it might do you some good.

It's okay if you are celibate, or gay or whatever. This is the 21st C. You ought to be less sensitive and more honest - it might do you some good. — charleton

I said that you're not serious, and you're merely proving my point, running away from real engagement and discussion. Come on - what are you afraid of? Until now you were very loud-mouthed and belligerent, why the changed attitude? :brow: