Sex and the SPS guy

J. Epstein

Sex and the SPS guy

Hi Jeffrey:

I've been thinking more about the virtues of sex with a 40-year-old woman who you know well and have come to love. This is a good thing. Here's why:

Claim 1: Factors that make someone physically attractive trigger the desire to procreate, and those factors have this effect throughout life
    Justification: For males, it's possible to continue to father children very late in life, so this makes sense from the point of view of the species.

    Claim 2: But even if sex were just about procreation for our ancestors, it's not mostly about procreation for modern humans.
    Justification: The vast majority of sexual acts (well over 95%, according to surveys) have nothing to do with procreation.

      Claim 3: In addition to its role in procreation, sex has been "exapted" (to use Gould & Vrba's term) to facilitate intimate relationships. This is by analogy to the way that the nose evolved initially to direct scents and warm air but then was able to be pressed into service holding up reading glasses.
Justification: Children are demonstrably better off when raised in a stable family structure. To the extent that sex keeps the family together, this is good for the species. Thus, individuals who had the capacity to use sex this way may have had more offspring that survived (and they had more offspring that survived, and so on), and hence this characteristic was propagated through the species (either assuming that it is partly genetically determined or simply that it is transmitted as a meme).

      Claim 4: Intimate relationships do more than create an environment for raising children; they also promote the personal development of the individuals.
Justification: Intimate relationships are defined in terms of allowing oneself to be vulnerable to others, to allow them to learn one's "unmanaged" characteristics and to provide direct feedback. Why would anyone do this? It's not because the other person "holds up a mirror" - a mirror simply reflects back what you already can see. Instead, the other person can get beyond the surface, can peel back the skin, and lead you to see what was not previously apparent. Such information allows one to "work on" characteristics that one deems inappropriate or not optimal - that is, to "grow."

    Claim 5. Older women are better able to be "intimate partners."
Justification: With age and experience comes sophistication, allowing them to see you more clearly and to provide more useful feedback - and hence to be better at helping you to grow.

Claim 6: Personal growth is important.
Justification: To the extent that one grows, one knows one's own strengths and weaknesses and becomes better able to interact with others. This in turn brings one closer to GOD (in the SPS sense), with all that that implies.

Ergo: Sex is not just about pleasures of the flesh. It's also about pleasures of the mind. And older women are better able to provide such sophisticated and nuanced minded-sex.

--

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Stephen M. Kosslyn
830 William James Hall
Harvard University
33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

voice: 1-617-495-3932
fax: 1-617-496-3122
web: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~kwn/