"It's a funny world, where having sex,...is seen as empowering. It seems not to matter because nothing does. Sex is just another activity, like shopping or making compilations for your iPod. The claims made for its significance in former times seem portentous and overblown. A liaison between consenting adults is no longer such a big thing, even to the wounded parties in an extramarital affair. The fact that they may still appear hurt is a tribute to the persistence of the old romantic script.In her survey of international infidelity, "Lust in Translation", American writer Pamela Druckerman notes the ease with which we fall into these old emotional habits, even though our professed attitudes seem on the verge of becoming more French. They 'consider affairs to be part of the fairy tale of a marriage, not a complete rupture in it',...
We are in control of it, we believe. We are making the choices. This unromantic delusion blinds the modern mistress to the reality of her passivity,...
Unable to take responsibility for their destinies, they store up trouble for themselves just as surely as Anna Karenina. This will come as a big surprise, as the modern mistress naturally assumes that the old romantic laws will not apply to her situation. She will not be morally tainted or forced to confront the consequences of leading a false life,...
She will be indignant when the scarlet A of social approbation affixes to her breast. She is not guilty, she protests. Her crimes were not weighty, so she can't explain the shadow that has fallen over her biography. Looking ahead, her future seems occluded."
- From Charlotte Raven's essay, "Why Mistresses Are Still Mattresses (The Idea That Loveless Extramarital Affairs And No-Strings Sex Are Empowering Is Nonsense)" in The Guardian.UK.
BTW - For those of you that care, after just over two years, I'm dating again: A musician who likes philosophy. (Lots of talk about "trust",...) I don't ever want to be with another idiot who can see lies as part of life and, then, try to blame her delusions on me - because I'm "a man".
That shit's a no-go forever more,...
From the linked Amazon review:
ReplyDelete"...people in poor countries cheat a lot..."
Or, perhaps, it's really, "...people who lie and cheat a lot produce poor countries..."
Unless they have loads of oil (or some other raw resource) and outsiders willing to pay them to set up operations in their countries - but that's still not wealth -creation- on their part, just acquisition by geological happenstance. And it only lasts as long as the resource or its market.
By example: Emerati men are known to keep apartments specifically for cheating, not to mention all the sexual abuse suffered by foreign maids tricked into entering the country for work before having their passports confiscated and being kept as slaves. Their great towering centerpiece, Dubai, was designed by Western and Japanese engineers, built by slaves imported from Asia - and has already begun to rot even as its crown-jewel (the Burj, designed by a firm from Chicago) struggles towards completion... sans tenants.