Human
existence is a rupture
in the harmony of the universe.
Schopenhauer
It
is wonderful to look upon the things
of the world, and terrible to be them.
Buddha
In
our part of the world, it is usually happenstance that brings
us to the encounter: a dog mounting another dog. In India and
Nepal, it’s predictably monkey business. If we’re
in the business of farming, we might be there to not only witness
the coupling, but actively encourage it for the purpose of increasing
the herd or, pace animal husbandry, perfecting the species.
What is universal in our bearing witness is the mixed emotions
we experience watching animals bare it all. We simultaneously
marvel at and envy their freedom from self-consciousness while
trying to wish away the wish to be like them for as long as
it takes to conclude their business. Since one of the ways we
come to understand the world is anthropomorphically, we might
experience the unease or awkwardness that stops us in our tracks
when we inadvertently infringe upon someone’s privacy
– even though we know the dumb animal doesn’t give
a neigh. If we are more than one person looking on, we might
suddenly fall prey to the blush of embarrassment and shame associated
with voyeurism.
After
observing monkeys copulating, Paul McCartney composed the song,
“Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” Since Sir
Paul is a songwriter and not an ethologist, he left unanswered
a huge question that raises not only the issue of privacy but
the etiology of the private sphere. After all, there was the
longest time when the notion of privacy, which the dictionary
defines as “quality or condition of being secluded from
the presence or view of others” didn’t exist. And
then, in a mere evolutionary blink of the eye, a new species
comes along for whom privacy or the private sphere becomes not
only a quasi essential requirement; it is deemed so indispensable
that, in certain situations, its trespassing will not be forgiven
and may be defended to the death. No surprise to learn that
we are physiologically rewarded when, after a long day in the
public domain, we remove ourselves to the private sphere: stress
levels fall off, we enjoy enhanced immunity and the brain produces
more serotonin, all of which are positive indicators of well
being.
From
our earliest years, we are encouraged to show, exhibit and display
our skills, talents and accomplishments: singers want to be
heard, athletes want to be seen, painters want to exhibit, proud
parents advertise their children’s grades and deeds. From
the tritest (the stuff of Guinness Records) to the most serious
endeavour, for the occasion of our successes we want others
to bear witness – except when it comes to the act we should
be most proud of: coupling for the purpose of propagating the
species. Yet we not only shy away from doing it 'in the road'
(while doing almost everything else), copulating in the public
domain is subject to (under Indecent Exposure Acts) criminal
prosecution in almost every country in the world.
The
German philosopher Schopenhauer situates the conundrum thusly:
“But now the act through which . . . man arises is one
of which all are, in their inmost being, ashamed, which they
therefore carefully conceal; nay, if they are caught in it,
are terrified as if they had been taken in a crime . . . it
is an open secret, which must never and nowhere be distinctly
mentioned”
Seeing
that even the most evolved animals do not distinguish between
the public and private spheres, we infer the private sphere
is identified and named as such when life becomes conscious
of itself, when man becomes ‘man,’ an object for
himself (his understanding) and for others. But this development,
however monumental, does not explain our preference for coupling
in private since we deliberately place ourselves before the
gaze of others when we are proud of what we do and accomplish.
Of all the life- affirming activities that fall within man's
purview, shouldn’t he be most proud of his natural inclination
to copulate? Is this not man’s highest biological calling,
the mother of all imperatives?
But
alas, with self-consciousness comes the great separation or
loss of innocence (fall into knowledge). For the first time
in the history of life there is an ‘I,’ an independent
self or ego that knows itself as it finds itself in a sea of
others just like him upon whom he depends for his very survival.
He quickly discovers there is no escaping the brave new paradigm
that leaves him constitutionally vulnerable to any number of
possible negative perceptions and judgments that originate both
within and without: his unflattering position in a hierarchy,
being aesthetically disadvantaged, or simply flawed and imperfect
when compared to the very best or a younger self, one or all
of which might have excited the need to conceive of and withdraw
into a private sphere. But there would still be those exceptional
males who would be positively viewed in every way by everyone
and who, in theory, should be proud to flaunt their status,
attractiveness and virility; but even these alpha males instinctively
gravitated to the private sphere to conduct their coupling.
Why?
Is
the shame associated with and inclination to conceal our sexual
desires and their fulfillment consequent to the influence of
religion? Archeological and anthropological evidence suggests
our preference for coupling in private long preceded any formal
religious intervention, and that with all due respect to the
word of God, man’s expulsion from the Garden dates back
to when he became self-conscious, a blow from which he is still
reeling -- into drugs, alcohol and the countless diversionary
activities that serve to anaesthetize that segment of the brain
where self-consciousness makes its unhappy home.
The
Spartans, regarded as the greatest soldier fighters who ever
lived, as part of their basic training, were encouraged to rape.
In all wars, rape is one of the spoils of war that goes to the
victor, and it very often plays out as a group activity. As
a proud and unrepentant participant in the equivalent of gang
rape, the vainglorious Spartan flaunted a trifecta of exceptional
attributes: his physical strength, virility and patriotism (reconfiguring
the enemy with his DNA). And while he was unambiguously demonstrating
in the public domain what he could do and do very well, he was
also revealing what he wasn’t doing: specifically, he
wasn’t ‘making love’ as we have come to understand
the term. In the act of rape, from the Latin rapere,
seize by force, the Spartan’s brute behaviour was more
consistent with the biological imperatives that govern animal
reproduction where the notion of consent doesn’t exist.
However crude and unbelaboured the act can be, making love precludes
consent; it is a physically and psychologically more demanding
and complex activity than mere coupling, where the latter subordinates
the conscious will of the individual to the unconscious will
of the species.
Making
love implicates a wide range of physical and emotional reciprocities
and endearments that constitutes the bond that unites two people,
a man and a woman, whose offspring will be their life’s
principal project. When Homo sapiens begins to make love it
is because he has already discovered himself capable of loving
another person. The gestures and affections, verbal and non-verbal,
that result in pair-bonding, are of a different order than straight
copulation. Only in the former do we recognize the harmony of
the spheres that characterizes loving couples.
As
man learns to negotiate the hazards of self-consciousness, he
discovers that he is two persons in one: a lusting and a loving
one, and that the latter is more likely to win the heart and
reproductive rights of the desired female. So when the occasion
presents itself (a cave, a niche, a leafy cache), he quickly
discovers he prefers to conduct his intimate life -- from courtship
to conjugal relations -- in the private sphere. In other words
he has already come to regard his loving and more gentle self
as a betrayal of his virility, and he arranges his life so as
not to be seen compromising a once inviolable sexual code of
conduct. And while we can only speculate on the details that
eventuated the reconfiguring of space into the public and private
spheres, we know as fact that the preference for conducting
intimacy in private is observed in every culture, primitive
and advanced, in the world. Even during primitive fertility
rites and festivals, copulating in the public sphere is extremely
rare.
The
reason we don’t do it on the road is that there isn’t
a man in the world who, at the end of the hard day's night,
doesn’t look forward to laying his weary head on the lap
of his beloved. Man’s preference to conduct his intimate
life in the private sphere is his confession that he is embarrassed
by his own humanity, his capacity for gentleness.
As
if to erase every trace of that softer self, in the public domaine
he continues to go to great lengths to show that his animal
self is alive and thriving. One only has to read the headlines
or look at the world -- as it squirms -- through the popular
metaphors of the day: ours is a dog eat dog world, the rat race,
animal farm.
*
* * * * * * * * *
Once
upon a time there was an unselfconscious time when the children
we were didn’t distinguish between being dressed or naked.
We went to the bathroom wherever and whenever nature called.
As with animals from one moment to the next, there was no beginning
or ending; it was the best of times, the worst of times. And
then one day we awoke, as if from an endless dreaming, and found
ourselves in the world.
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