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Alain de Botton on Sex


(clap)
Thank you so much.
What I want to tell you tonight is how to have a better sex life.
Now there is good and bad news. The bad news is that it will not be like doing exercise.
I will not be able to recommend any creams, ointments or special situations. (Laughter)
I do not think bad sex starts with a lack of ointments.
I think it unfortunately starts in your head.
Although we think we think about sex a lot, perhaps we do not think enough.
Or not properly.
I would start by asking,
What makes something exciting?
As is common practice. Before we look at the problems caused by sex to us.
Let’s keep in mind what makes something exciting.
Why are certain moments, situations, specific situations exciting without others?
I think it has to do with loneliness.
In most of our lives we are isolated creatures, strange and lonely.
We do not find some of our deepest needs in the people who are giving us.
We live in large and unknown cities
Then suddenly, sometimes something miraculous happens.
Someone allows you to walk deep into their mouth.
You can put your tongue above the top of your upper lip.
(Laughter)
You can smell
And it is wonderful!
It is also disgusting.
When we talk about it.
No sexy chic does not be disgusting when it is with the wrong person.
This is intended. (Laughter)
The thing is particularly exciting because it is special,
Because it is utopia “virtuous city” mini created with another person.
Think about oral sex.
In oral sex, the dirty, poisonous, defiled part of you is welcomed by someone else.
You are no longer dirty.
Dirty became dirty.
Sex cleans us symbolically
The presence of someone else who accepts us with all that is in us is a miracle and exciting.
it is exciting. We call it “exciting”
It is lustful, but deeper than that.
It is psychological enrichment, makes us feel our humanity.
Consider violence in relationships.
In intimate relationships, people will hit each other,
They scribble each other’s appearance,
They call each other names,
They pull each other’s hair.
What’s going on?
Confidence. Strangely it’s trust. It takes a lot of confidence
In intimacy
To allow someone to beat the other
Violence, sex dolls, all these things
They are not signs of corruption. They’re specific signs
Our aggressive motives are being accepted
Within the social arena. There is a tremendous sense of well-being that results
I want to ask
Why do some people feel excited, what is an interesting person?
Now, evolutionary biologists have an answer to this question.
Evolutionary biologists tell us that an exciting person is a healthy person.
What is called “sensational”
Is a harmonious person,
His face is harmonious.
Evolutionary biologists have studied diseases in the womb
In the early years of life
They concluded that
People who have facial deformities in life
Almost all of them have undergone some kind of thing
Of the Biologian attack in early life
So the person we call beautiful
Is a person who shows healthy proportions
We are deeply attracted to it, as biologists tell us.
Here a man worked in St. Andrews
Who looked at the pictures of lots and lots of beautiful women
Then he mutilated some of them and asked his students
To evaluate according to the scale of any images they found attractive or unattractive.
If here is a pair of photos of St. Andrews.
Now, I think most of you will find this lady more attractive.
It’s a copy of these, but these have something wrong in the opening of her nose.
And a slight error in that eye
That is why we do not want to ask her out for a Grammy appointment.
(Laughter)
We want to ask these.
Because they are perfectly consistent
And we are really excited because of consistency
Because we want to have children with her
This child will have a better chance in a long and happy life.
Now, the problem in evolutionary biological analysis of life
It is not a mistake, it is true, it is certainly true.
The problem is that it is very boring.
It’s very boring. Well, then what if that’s the case.
This really does explain the abundance of why some people feel excited
Check out this lady.
I think exciting. It was painted by Ingres in the 19th century. It is called Madame Dufuselli
It’s perfectly consistent.
Beautiful Face.
The researcher from St. Andrews will find it perfectly healthy
From a biological point of view.
But it is much more interesting.
When you feel excited,
Not only that – it’s healthy – it’s exciting.
It is a fact that we can read
Psychological features in her face.
It shows humorous, tolerant, and dignified
It is open but powerful.
When we say that this woman is exciting,
We are thrilled not only by their authenticity,
But by a full person.
We live in a culture where we are often very nervous of the body,
Of the surface. We hear that phrase,
“She just admires me for my body”
“He just impressed me for my exterior appearance”
That takes as an insult.
I want to argue that many of us are in the physical envelope.
It is not an insult to tell someone “you excite me”
This can be a deep analysis of who that person is, not just a superficial analysis.
Now let us think, why does not all of us raise the same person.
That’s because we all have different backgrounds.
That’s because, if you are heterosexual (straight), we have very different mothers
According to our mothers,
We may get stronger or weaker motivation to take one of these ladies out on time.
Now, let’s imagine that your mother
It was a nice soul, very reliable,
Very nice, but a bit boring. In fact a bad day will be, a little repellent, a little strict.
Now who we want to go out with, of course, we wanted to take Scarl.
They are more unruly.
There will be no such problem – the stalemate – with Scarl.
It’s a more chaotic end, as Felipe would say.
So we need a little of that if we lean towards rigor.
However, if you have a very chaotic mother,
She was dynamic, she was attractive, but she was everywhere.
Your real needs are not taken care of. OK,
Natalie has to look much more attractive.
So, in other words, when trying to analyze what excites us,
Ask, “What is missing in us?”
The person who provokes us, will be inside,
All kinds of psychological qualities
Which we attract to it, but a little short.
So, what I’m trying to say is,
The concept of sexual excitement is not rejected as merely a superficial category.
It’s a very deep concept.
There is a lot of human psychology in surface analysis.
Now, let’s think about sex problems. What are the problems of sex.
Well, there are two really big problems in sex.
Either we have sex very little. From here fuck a little too?
(Laughter)
Yes, is there anyone? Well, amazingly we have a good sex audience
(Laughter)
And us who fuck very much. That’s where you fuck so much?
(Laughter)
Who is under the control of sexual obsession?
We will come to this later. We’ll talk in the bar.
And now.
Why do some of us fuck a little too? Part of the problem,
Is that the person we have sex with, in general, is the same person we try to do a lot of other things with.
As you know that in some cultures and at certain periods of history,
People sharing roles.
“This person will only make accounts with him”
“This person I will raise children with him, and this person will have an interesting sexual relationship from him”
But now we have assembled the roles in one person.
“This person will be my husband or wife”
“I will do everything with him”
“I’ll throw the trash with them”
“I will raise children with them”
“I’ll have sex with them”
“I will do the calculations with them and I will plan the interior design of the house.”
The problem is that sex is crushed between all these different priorities.
This means that if there is a problem in achieving any of these goals,
The sexual relationship will be affected by it.
So go back again
To practice sex more,
What you need to try to do, is to remember how it was
See this person when all you are trying to do was have sex with them.
(Laughter)
And now.
There is a website
He tries to encourage you to do that.
Do not open it now, later.
Named “postyourpartner.com”
In this site, you put naked pictures of your partner
You practice a secret habit of sound, the idea that others are watching your husband
Or your property.
And that’s a lustful thing, what’s going on there?
What’s going on there (Laughter)
What happens there is that you use the sexual desire of others to remind you of what it was like to give in to your partner before you start throwing garbage bags with them.
You are using them as a guide to remind you what a feeling of excitement is.
Now, for those of you who did not like the site “postyourpartner.com”
There is an alternative.
This Hyatt Park hotel in Tokyo will cost you around $ 400 per night,
But perhaps this solution is more noble than solving the website, but the same thing happens.
The hotel separates other tasks
It reminds you again
Who was this person before
They became very confused
With other things.
Coincidence,
What we are asked to do is recapitulate something that has always existed and we do not look at it properly.
In other words, the problem of not having enough sex,
Does not mean we need to know how to look properly.
We have to look at things as seen by painters.
Take Edward Manet as an example,
Who painted some asparagus in the 19th century
The striking thing is that we all ate asparagus thousands of times and did not think about it twice,
But Manet made one of the greatest works of the 19th century by looking at them correctly and looking at them carefully
My suggestion for you is to look at your partner
Manit also looked at asparagus.
Bring them back to life! (Laughter)
With the same degree of respect and complexity.
Now, let’s think about the other problem,
Who fucks heavily, or rather has a sexual obsession.
The problem with sex is that we often use it so that we do not think about painful things.
Sex comes and fills the void.
Learn as you do when you do not want to think
There are pressures. The arduous tasks you have to do
You are in front of a computer. What can you do? You guys? What can you do?
You know what you will do. is not it?
You know what you will do. You will open things online, right?
You may fall prey to sexual obsession
Because you use sex to distract you from anxiety. This concern is important
And you flee from him, to sex.
Do not do it
Now, some people in history have tried to tell us,
Not to have too much sex
We do not think about it much. Because they realized the power of sex.
They tried in various ways
Not to think about sex much.
When we think about these people, we think, “Oh my God!
“Cover themselves from head to toe”
As you know, “feeling excited by seeing an ankle.” This sounds ridiculous.
We believe in the modern world that we are liberated, right?
We do not need to worry too much
My physical and pornographic sex is because it does not really matter what you look at.
You may think, as you know, in microbiology or in the fate of mankind.
It will not be distracted by some visual images.
This will not deceive you.
You will not change your priorities just because someone is taking a sunbathing, almost naked by your side.
Mature
Now think … My analysis is “Yes we will be scattered.”
Many of us, very intelligent people, are very, very affected by this kind of thing.
Now I do not necessarily recommend this,
But I think, let’s think about the strength of sex at times, to pull us away
About things that are so important.
Let’s not let sex be used as a distraction for internal processes that are very necessary.
Let us sometimes recognize
That a certain amount of control
And suppression
Not only for the Victorians,
It is not only for religious people,
It’s all ours. If we are trying to get a good life.
Part of that good life
It will include some censorship
Some suppressed
at the end,
We will be awfully sane
If not we have
Sexually motivated.
We will be very mature, respectable people.
We can take ourselves seriously, seriously. We can be almost overbearing
About the quality of the people we are. How smart and wise
And nobles.
Fortunately, we have a sex drive
This motivation
It does not allow us too much time to think of ourselves as rational beings, because we know what is happening in our minds.
We know every day we ride the subway, we walk the streets
There are things in our minds
That is if a video camera is put there
We will show quite absurdly.
And that’s a bit silly, somehow. Let us respect how sex makes us silly
It gives us enormous amounts of pain.
But also
It gives us that vitality
And the philosophical lesson
To remind us not to take ourselves seriously.
Thank you so much.
(clap)
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