Mind Nomad Writing

Of all the vestiges of human development perhaps the most difficult one to explain to younger humans is that of sex. Though, it could likely be said that the challenge specific to the pedagogical task within this topic has stood the test of time. If earlier, and supposedly intelligent, permutations of the species used terms like ‘the birds and the bees’ to explain this human activity then it stands to reason that this has never been an enviable task. Yet, it is a task that must be answered to and taken seriously, even now. Though our species has outgrown all functional purposes for which sex once existed, we are still left with a semblance of sex organs. Younger members of our species warrant our assistance in helping them make sense of the historically-encoded meaning behind their wet dreams.

In an effort to responsibly respond to this task, we have devised a sex education curriculum robust enough to answer to the gravity of the assignment. This new education includes rituals and a more sophisticated ‘coming-of-age’ practice, which is a significant improvement on those older practices of antiquity. The ones humans did back when they lived in forests (when forests still existed) and tents were much mystical in nature. Our practices are empirical and involve much less spilling of blood and other bodily fluids. In our didactic efforts we, like our predecessors, have found utility in applying cultural arts of antiquity into our lesson plans. Like hieroglyphs, the films of previous human generations have proven to be an ideal vessel for transmission of our lessons. The films from earlier iterations of our species are easily understood and lack subtlety so they are well-suited to the task of instructing the lagging nature of brain development in younger humans.

When they are still very young, for example, we gather the most recently spawned cohort and collectively watch “Gattaca.” This film is one of our most cherished treasures of old as it includes many important and self-evident insights we hope to instill in the minds of our youth. We have found that this film serves as a useful primer for discussing the superiority of human genesis in modern life. This is also a helpful exercise in scaffolding the learning about sex as we introduce the ways in which sex was fraught with physiological risk – disease, infection, infertility, death – all concepts easily accessed by our young pupils.

The psychological components of sex are somewhat harder to infiltrate but our teaching strategies have become more refined in this area. As the brain finally starts to catch up to physical development we move into modules designed to dissect the complex and dangerous web that is spun by sexuality. “Risky Business” offers a helpful teaching aid to distill the threats incurred by passion and lust. To explicate the destructive nature within the power-control-submission-and dependency involved in sex we rotate between “Love and Leashes,” “The Secretary,” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” depending on the responses we observe in each cohort.

We’ve learned a great deal from the previous permutations of humanity and their missteps in addressing the topic of sex. Their follies have proven to be fertile ground for the advancement of our instructional design. In their attempt to control the power of sex, they sought to bridle and moderate it. Abstinence gave way to monogamy which gave way to birth control. Taboo gave way to socially inclusive practices which gave way to celebrating sexuality in all its forms. They utilized biological interventions for psychological issues and contrived barbaric psychological solutions for biological ones. Yet, they cannot be judged too harshly for their ignorance. All attempts were misguided but offer helpful examples for us to examine with our students.

This important instructional process has not been without its learning curve. In early beta-phases we neglected to commemorate the fact that sex once produced life. While our species has evolved beyond our reliance on the degrading act of sex to maintain and promulgate life, it is still embodied in our biology, a small echo from the past. In this oversight, a few cohorts had to be aborted as they were found dabbling in the unnecessary acts of fornication. We hypothesized and tested many theories to determine where we had failed to appropriately instruct our learners. A handful of cohorts later we were able to pinpoint the issue.

Again, we owe our learning on this topic to our less-developed ancestors. What they may have lacked in pragmatism they more than made up for in an overcompensation of intuition. In the imbalance of deference to tradition, they stumbled upon the importance of events to mark rites of passage. Our sex-ed curriculum was finally fully refined when we adopted our final practice in a coming-of-age ceremony. While the ceremony still maintains many gory vestiges of our predecessors it has, thus far, successfully eradicated the fascination with the psychological aspects of sex. 

We start and end the ceremony as a community. We come together to commit to our shared purpose and reaffirm the commitment upon conclusion, together in unity. The middle phase of the ritual is intentionally designed as an individualized, private, and intensive intervention. Each young human is escorted into their own private chamber. Once inside they are directed by a recording to follow the instructions on the screen in their chamber. The video prompter goes on to direct the young humans to follow the detailed steps for self-stimulation. Interspersed with this instruction are spliced images and statements to ensure there is no error in the transmission of our crucial lesson (thanks to “Fight Club” for the inspiration on this idea). 

It turns out that subliminally building sexual tension to flashing images of a test tube and pipet conjure the innate fixation on the modern-day version of conception and the womb. It turns out that Freud was right all along – psychological sexual drives and discharge of all that bodily fluid was always aimed at replicating and returning to where one started. It turns out that climaxing to the flashing images breeds sexual compliance. Invariably, our curriculum culminates in the passing of our collective higher knowledge from one generation to the next. We end the instruction repeating in unison: “Sex offers nothing but death. It is the death of the individual lost in the joining with another. It is the death of a couple in the bestowal of parenthood. It is the death of humanity in disease of the body and the mind.”

#Vestigial