Interview with Dr. Christine Overall

Bio material: Dr. Christine Overall, FRSC is universally regarded as one of the great feminist scholars of our time, especially in the field of reproductive ethics. She is a Professor of Philosophy and associate dean at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, and was the first woman in the Philosophy Department's history to earn tenure.

She is the editor of several books (including "The Future of Human Reproduction"), and is author of numerous others including her most recent offering: "Aging, Death,and Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry" (2003) which was winner of the Canadian Philosophical Association's 2005 Book Prize and the Abbyann D. Lynch Medal in Bioethics. From 1993- 2006 Dr. Overall also authored a feminist column, "In Other Words".

You can email Dr. Overall at cdo@queensu.ca

Q1- Isn't calling someone "non- monogamous" somewhat similar to calling a person of color a "non- caucasian", and isn't repeatedly- associating "polyamory" with infidelity and something like "force emotional-entry" unkind, unrealistic, and unfair?

A- You are referring to a paper I started writing in the early nineties and published in 1998. I freely admit to its errors and weaknesses:

Fifteen years is a long time in the life of any human being, and my views do not remain static. What primarily interested me in that paper were cases where one partner is monogamous and the other is not-and this difference has not been negotiated and agreed to by both of the partners. I wanted to understand why human beings who are themselves monogamous tend to feel very bad when they learn that their partner is not monogamous. And I argue that in such a case, the monogamous person's identity is, in a way, being compromised or undermined by the unchosen entry of the third person into the coupledom.

Having said that, I do not have criticisms of consensual polyamory-although I do believe that in practice it may be more difficult to sustain, at least in some instances, than the participants anticipate.

Q2- Monogamy and traditional polygamy (one man with multiple wives) clearly favor the twisted reinforcing of the Patriarchal Paradigm whereas celibacy (including auto- erotic celibacy) and equality- based polyamory do not. Do you agree or disagree, and why?

A- Many philosophers would say that the presence of consent and the absence of harm are the two main criteria to be used in evaluating human practices, including sexual practices. I agree, but would make two additions: a) Not merely consent, but free and informed choice is ethically necessary; b) the assessment of whether or not a practice is harmful should take into account not only the immediate individuals who are affected, but also the ways in which the practice functions within society more generally.

By reference to these criteria, then, I would think that monogamy is not inevitably unethical, provided it is freely chosen, and provided it does not cause harm. Arguably, the latter can be hard to assess, and the practice of monogamy has certainly caused social harm in the past and may still do so. Nonetheless, there are also many examples of monogamous relationships that have enhanced the lives of their participants, their families, their friends, and their other connections.

I definitely do not think that everyone must be in a monogamous relationship.

Polygamy is inherently unequal if it is interpreted to mean only polygyny; that is, one man with more than one woman. If, however, polyandry (one woman with more than one man) is also available, without stigma, and if the relationships are freely chosen and non-harmful, then polygamy is not necessarily unethical. As currently practiced, however, at least in North America, I think there is plenty of evidence that polygamy involves the rape and forced marriage of young girls, and therefore it ought not to be condoned.

Q3- Why aren't more professed "feminists" championing the cause of sisters held captive and tragically oppressed by anachronistic patriarchal tyranny? Is it terror of the tyrants and, if so, what's the point?

A- I am not sure why "feminists" is in quotation marks. Those of us who are feminists, by my definition (that is, we condemn gender injustice, inequality and oppression, and we oppose it in whatever ways we can) have to make decisions about how to be activists. Many years ago I decided that my own approach to feminist activism would be via teaching and writing. I have directly influenced the lives of several thousand young and not-so-young students over the course of my career. Through my books and papers, and most of all through a newspaper column that I wrote for thirteen years, I have affected thousands more. But if I tried to oppose all cases of "anachronistic patriarchal tyranny" I would not be able to eat or sleep; every moment of my day would be taken up with feminist activism, and then I would still scarcely make a dent in global sexism.

I cannot speak for all feminists, but I am sure that "terror of the tyrants" I would not be able to eat or sleep; every moment of my day would be taken up with feminist activism, and then I would still scarcely make a dent in global sexism. Referring to feminist activism, one woman wrote, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is bone tired." Feminists and other progressive people do what we can. We are fallible.

And there are limits to what we can accomplish.

I cannot speak for all feminists, but I am sure that "terror of the tyrants" also plays a role. This is obviously true in nations where being a feminist can mean prison, rape, torture or death. But even in North America there are dangers attached to being a public feminist. In the past I have received abusive phone calls, harassing letters and email, angry and almost-violent confrontations, and even, on one occasion, a death threat. There are many ways of repressing dissent, and feminists are just as much the target of them as others who oppose oppression.

Q4- How can the practical application of philosophy contribute in more than an abstract way to the vision of a free, compassionate global society?

A- I passionately believe that "doing" philosophy is one of our most important human traits, and that the capacity to philosophize is present in everyone who is not severely brain damaged. Even children as young as four raise philosophical questions. Moreover, philosophy is not necessarily abstract, "merely theoretical," or remote from human concerns. Philosophy is a normative discipline; it is about what is good or bad, right or wrong, justified or unjustified, true or false. We all engage in normative judgments-about whether God exists; whether a particular political system is justified; whether education can be improved; whether religion is harmful or beneficial; whether human beings are inherently good; and so on.

What philosophy can do, if practiced thoughtfully and taught carefully, is to help people to recognize philosophical issues and to think their way through them. It can help people to acknowledge that every normative issue has at least two sides, and that no normative point of view should be rejected without good reasons. It can help us to look for good evidence for the ideas we hear, and to detect fallacies, rhetoric, ideology, and propaganda. Philosophy is about thinking well, and thinking well is essential to a free, compassionate global society.

Q5- Dr. Overall, what is the kindest, most compassionate thing we can do as human beings to help assure a less dangerous, more benign planetary future?

A- There are many things that we can do, and what is best for each human being to do may depend on her/his talents, abilities, experience, and education. In general, however, I think that one thing that all of us can do, in our own way, is to recognize that children are full human beings who deserve respect as persons. This does not mean letting children do whatever they want. But it does mean genuinely listening to children, talking with them, encouraging them to be active and to think well. The best parents are those who manage to pass down as few of their own hurts as they can.

But helping children to flourish is also something that everyone can assist with, whether or not they are parents. It might mean reading to one's grandchildren. It might mean refusing to over-generalize about children, and recognizing that they are all individuals. It might mean just smiling at a baby going by in a stroller.

BIO: Daniel Pinchbeck is an investigative journalist (articles published in "The New York Times Magazine", "Esquire", "Wired", "Harpers", "The Village Voice") and is the author ("Breaking Open The Head" and "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl"). He is also one of the founders of "Open City", an art and literary journal, and independent book publisher and is editorial director of "Reality Sandwich", a visionary online magazine.

Daniel can be contacted through his website, http://www.breakingopenthehead.com

Q1- I'm at the place in your fascinating book "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" where you seem to be weighing your "erotic curiosity" against the commitment of your long term relationship/ family needs. Did you finally choose monogamy or poly, or do you remain ambivalent?

A- For the time being, I remain polyamorous- I don't know if I have chosen it or it has chosen me. I went on a date with an astrologer who asked for my birth information first. When she met me, she said, "We can be friends, but we're not getting into a relationship. I looked at your chart and you are completely non-monogamous."

I think that if human consciousness can evolve, we will develop society so the individual has more choice, and also remove the moralistic tinge from sexuality (it is amazing how much this has changed in the last decades). I don't believe that everyone will be polyamorous, but it may become very common for people to have more than one sexual partner or love mate. This will no longer cause scandals or disrupt political careers.

What makes us stupid on many levels is that we ignore the dimension of time in human affairs. The pheromone- intensity of most love relationships lasts 2-3 years. After that, in many cases, there's a natural propensity to stray. Instead of people having to abandon their partners to satisfying natural desire, it would seem more intelligent to recognize the realities of human behavior, and plan for them accordingly. Some couples do maintain happy, long- lasting monogamous bonds, and that is great also, but that is no reason that other expressions of love should not be explored by those with different desires.

Beyond "polyamory or monogamy", I would like to see a conscious re-sacralization of Eros. I agree with many mystical traditions that sex energy can be channeled and utilized to reach higher states of consciousness. The most mechanistic distorting of sex energy in modern culture is a powerful technique of social control.

I recommend Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" Gerald Heard's "Pain, Sex and Time" and Julius Evola's "The Mysteries of Eros", among other works. Marcuse say in the 1960's that direct repression of sexuality has given way to what he termed 'repressive de-sublimation'. He tried to theorize why society could liberate sex and sexualized imagery without leading to a deeper liberation. He didn't understand that sex is a lower form of expressing an energy that can be used for purposes of spiritual transformation as in sexual alchemy ot Tantra. Heard say that the human hair trigger sex drive and excessive capacity for suffering pointed towards a species mutation, an inner change of the psyche.

Q2- Within a negative context, what you identify as "erotic curiosity" often expresses itself as an almost demonic appetite that can be utterly insatiable and destructive, and may even leave massive corpses of 'emotional bodies' in its wake. Can you identify what "erotic curiosity" looks like to you in a positive context, and can you say how its gifts might be propagated with greater safety?

A2- If we are going to develop into a conscious species, we have to look at the roots of the destructive insatiability expressed by western society and its individual members, so we can address it with awareness. All of us have been subject to social and psychological conditioning that was inflicted on us. At the same time, there may be deeper karmic reasons for any individual complex, or fractal of the larger dysfunction. If you look at how children are raised in tribal cultures, infants are almost never separated from their mother's bodies during the first years of life. In our culture, as soon as a baby is born, we rip it from its mother and put it in a nursery. I would say that the trauma of the modern world's alienation from nature begins with this separation from the mother, which leads to a deep- rooted sense of insufficiency and insatiability.

My friend Morgan Brent notes that if we think about the complex of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it represents ways that our society takes our natural vitalizing impulses and distorts them into mechanisms of social conscription. On a higher octave, sex, drugs and rock and roll would become a Tantric approach to manifesting sex energy, proper use of teacher plants, and music that is not imposed by some celebrity, but represents the organic expression of a community.

As for 'erotic curiosity', I don't see it as separate from the larger field of curiosities and efforts to reach for various types of forbidden fruit, including knowledge of the visionary realms. Desire is by its nature evanescent and ever- changing. We don't really know what humanity's full creative and erotic expression might be like. One of my favorite books for exploring this subject is Gerald Heard's "Pain, Sex, and Time', where he looks at our species' extraordinary hair- trigger sex drive and our capacity for suffering as, potentially, suggesting an evolutionary development or potential for psychic mutation on a species level.

Q3- In certain Australian aboriginal cultures, women were considered to be sexy and desirable even at very advanced ages by the younger men of the tribe, apparently on account of these crones' vast store of metaphysical wisdom What would/ will it take for modern America to evolve into a more mature, intergenerational understanding of sex?

A- I am very interested in the prospect of taking design science, as pioneered by Buckminster Fuller, and applying it systematically to reinventing our social, financial, and political systems. Groups like the Australian aboriginals were amazingly durable as a culture. In a sense, they developed through trial and error, design science solutions to social problems. Men were not considered fully adult and could not marry until they were through a long initiatory process. These young men were often paired with older women.

I don't know what it would take for us to transform our understanding of sexuality to become more inclusively multigenerational. I think that we need to bring back the concept of initiation in order to attain a responsible culture. Uninitiated men are trapped in cycles of pointless aggression and frustration, and they do not have the discipline to work properly with Shakti energy, so instead of working with and transmuting this energy, they are dominated by it. As I discuss in "2012", this present age, the Kali Yuga, is actually the time when the demonic form of female Shakti is let loose. Initiation as a consciously- understood process is the means by which we can work with Shakti, who is currently unleashed as Kali in our technological and societal projections. A change in behavior could be engineered by directing the mass media for purposes of sustainable transformation on a rapid time scale, and a global level. TV and video games are great tools for entrainment and social conditioning.

Q4- As I'm sure you're aware, Terence McKenna said that half way to becoming angels our species stopped taking its medicine, the psilocybin mushroom. In a more perfect world, one in which the various sacred mushrooms and other psychedelic gifts of nature were legal and in wide sacramental use, how would the relationship between the neocortex and limbic brain potentially shift, and how might this impact our planetary sex life?

A- I think you kind of answer your own question, and I don't really know what else to say about this.

Q5- Daniel, what would you say is the kindest, most positive thing we can collectively do as human beings to help create a less dangerous, more benign planetary future?

A-I don't know. I try to stay away from generalizing about what 'we' collectively can or should do. I recommend that people might bring a more rigorous critical intelligence to bear on our present, extremely dangerous, but also exciting situation. There is the potential for the evolution into a new form of planetary culture where the internet could support an evolution of democracy to fulfill its initial promise of inclusiveness and responsibility. We may go into a rapid degeneration as fuel, money, and food run out. It is increasingly evident that the U.S. is poised for a large-scale economic collapse, and this is already starting to take place. The power of Internet social networks could replace 'top down' authority structures and governments which will not be able to function effectively as the economy melts down.

Individuals can take responsibility for helping the positive process of social transformation, as they go through their own personal process of development. I think a revival of Gandhi's Satyagraha 'truth force' movement, using techniques of nonviolent activism could work in our context to oppose climate change, corporate malfeasance, corruption, secret military technology, state- sanctioned torture, and a totalitarian doctrine of pre-emptive war. I don't think passive nonviolence or passive resistance is going to be effective, and we need to move rapidly now, so I think collaborating to revive a mass movement of nonviolent direct action might be the most positive thing to do.

Bio Material: Carol Queen has a Ph.D. in sexology and is the author or editor of eleven books about sex, including Exhibitionism for the Shy, Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, and PoMoSexuals (edited with Lawrence Schimel).

She is the co-founder and executive director of The Center for Sex & Culture (http://www.sexandculture.org), is Staff Sexologist at Good Vibrations (http://www.goodvibes.com), and frequently speaks at colleges and universities about sexuality. She lives in San Francisco with Robert, Teacup, and Bracelet, two of whom are cats.

Visit her at http://www.carolqueen.com
Contact: carol@carolqueen.com

Q1- Carol, all too often 'safe sex' is defined in society almost entirely in terms of the physical. Since Good Vibrations and its Off- Site Sex Education program (OSSE) have wisely, empathetically included the emotional- safety component as well, what would you say is the cardinal element involved in lovers' helping assure (for the beloved and for themselves) the probability of 'emotionally safe sex'?

A- I'd say the amorphous mix of empathy backed up with good communication is the most crucial. Partners need to understand one another's hopes and expectations, which is sometimes very challenging -- different sexual histories, gender-influenced stories about the role of sex and relationship, comfort in speaking out: all these things make a difference, altering the context in which sex happens and our experience of it. It's easiest to stay (emotionally) safe when you know what your partner wants and expects, and what it means to them. (And emotional safety influences physical safety, in part because it's the context of safer sex communication, in part because it plays a role in self-esteem.)

Q2- I believe that if humanity's closest relative, the bonobo (pan paniscus), could articulate what is has learned in the course of its evolution into non-violent living, loving and learning, it would attempt to do so through sex- positive channels like Good Vibrations. This having been said, can you speculate on why human societies have continued emulating male- dominant, violent chimpanzee 'culture' rather than nonviolent, co- dominant bonobo 'culture', sexy and orgiastic as it is?

A- Delightful!! The image of bonobos running a sex store is way too precious.

I think humans have learned to value power over pleasure, is the short answer, and to complexify it a little, it's partly because too few humans have felt great pleasure, nor have we (especially in the West and the Middle East, where anti-sexual religions have had a hold for so very long) been given permission to aspire to it. The anti-sexual focus of these religions can't be overstated even in its influence over people who do not consider themselves religious.

The more pro-erotic a spiritual system is, the more space people under its influence have to discover pleasure's importance. Dominance, struggle over resources (including war), a hoarding mentality and the political and economic systems that follow... all these things are associated with male domination, sure, but they can also be associated with a scarcity perspective that de-emphasizes sharing and abundance. I'd argue that a jealousy-based, male-dominated monogamy is comparable to that, and a pleasure-based system where jealousy is minimized and women have full power is its antithesis.

Q3- As a sexologist, would you there's one particular issue monopolizing the emotional landscape of monogamous and polyamorous couples (and other configurations of lovers)?

A- One *particular* issue? I might not go that far, but I can suggest some very common ones. The question "Am I (and are we) normal?" gets in the way of a lot of sexual exploration and comfort. The notion that there is a way we *should* be is truly a disruptor or inhibitor of both relationships and people.

The other thing involves our comfort in communication and sometimes the failure to notice when we've stopped (or ever adequately begun). This is related to assumptions, another troublesome set of "should's" -- "She should know I don't like that," "He should know this without my having to tell him," etc. When you get into the land of polyamory or multiple partnerships of any kind (including trios and casual multi-partner situations) this is especially tricky because it can be easy to assume one partner's likes, limits, or understandings are the same as another's.

And discussing this, of course, leads to the question of time and commitment, which can be as big an issue for monogamous twosomes as poly people, because it doesn't have to be one's time spent with another lover that leads a partner to feel under-appreciated -- it could be commitments to work, hobbies or friends that lead to jealousy.

Q4- As I'm sure you know, a religious disinformation campaign has been underway for awhile now (via the Vatican) discrediting the wearing of condoms as a viable means for stopping the spread of H.I.V. What would you say to people who are taking this disinformation seriously?

A- Oh, where to start? My first impulse is to say "Consider the source" -- but they *trust* that source and have never been encouraged to think critically about it.

So really I'd break it down and say that medical research shows that condoms *are* effective, and the goal of medical research is to study and stop the spread of disease -- whereas religious and conservative sources of this "information" have a different goal, which is to stop people having sex out of wedlock (and even using condoms for contraception). And that's a perfectly acceptable goal to agitate for... not *realistic*, mind you -- but it's not acceptable to mislead people to achieve it.

This misinformation has one very problematic consequence: that people who believe condoms don't work won't use them, even if they do find themselves having sex. It means people won't be prepared for protection, and when desire strikes (or they are forced or manipulated into sexual contact), they'll be unprotected.

Q5- Carol, what do you believe is the kindest, most positive thing we can collectively do as human beings to help assure a less dangerous, more benign planetary future?

A- Treat every single person with respect.

Thank you.
Thank you!
CQ

Interview with Eliezer Sobel

Bio: Eliezer Sobel is the author of The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist's Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics and Other Consciousness-Raising Adventures.

You can read the prologue and learn more at: http://www.the99thmonkey.com. He is also the author of Minyan: Ten Jewish Men in a World That is Heartbroken (winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel), and Wild Heart Dancing.

In the 70s he was the Editor-in-Chief of The New Sun magazine, and more recently was the Publisher/Editor of the Wild Heart Journal.
See http://www.eliezersobel.com.

Q1- Wow, dude, you've had some really crazy sexual experiences, as related in your book "The 99th Monkey'! But is it possible that, gullible optimism aside, most all sexual experiences (excepting perhaps auto- erotic ones) are a bit crazy if we take them too seriously or not quite seriously enough, tough as it can be to even arrive at safe, sane discernment of boundaries and emotional location ?

A- First of all, let me be clear with whoever might be reading this that you have approached me not as some sort of expert on human sexuality, but basically as a sexual catastrophe who, like many men I know, has essentially made a career of masturbation with random, bothersome interruptions by actual lovers. One of my teachers and friends, Asha Greer, once told me that in order for a truly integrated sexual act to happen, "ten thousand elements need to line up." Meaning, each partner's psychological history, style, tastes, perversions, fears and vulnerabilities have to line up and connect just so, along with their lust, love, religious conditioning, health, mood, smells, desires, fantasies, beliefs, inhibitions, birth control issues, herpes, repulsions, physical fit, ability to let go, spontaneity, control, time available, life pressures, roles, and on and on and on. Taking all that into account, I'd have to say I've never truly made love to anyone! So yes, taking it too seriously would be problematic, as well as a set-up for failure. As another teacher once said, "You don't have to worry that you're crazy about sexuality, because you are!"

Q2- Cultural fixation, entrainment, mass obsession aside, is sex in general overrated, and is it a diversion from having to deal with the denial of death?

A- Well considering that it was designed to keep the species going, and to keep all species going, I don't think you can say it's overrated, because it seems to be quite a vital, original ingredient of the cosmic creation, without which this interview would not be possible! And if you say that it is a diversion from dealing with the denial of death, you'd have to say that about virtually everything we do: eating, reading, chasing money and careers. That's why the Buddhists tend to sit still and do nothing for months or years at a time. And if you do sit still long enough to confront the realities of mortality, of old age, disease and death, then what do you do when you get up? You eat, and read, make love, and do your career, or what they call "right livelihood." Chop wood and carry water. To quote Asha again, you have to have something to do between breakfast and dinner.

Someone once said that the average man has about 17 sexual thoughts a minute, which is probably not true, but what is true is that men in this culture do seem to acquire the cultural fixation and obsession you speak of very early in life, and judging from my own continued fascination and obsession with sex, it's not something that is easily relinquished. This situation has collectively resulted in the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, fueled by men, both hetero and homo, which is an astonishing testament to the enormous primal power of sexuality, even though it has become distorted, fetishized and made loveless in the process. So you could say that sex is actually underrated, like a gigantic elephant in humanity's living room.

Q3- In "The 99th Monkey" (distinct from "The Hundredth Bonobo", not yet written), you say "I am a sexual casualty of a sexually- damaged generation of men." The first thought that comes to mind is in the form of a question. "Compared to what other generations of horny men?" But more importantly, do you see anything (short of celibacy) as a good medicine for we sexually- damaged men- a medicine powerful enough to help prevent us from perennially inflicting ourselves on women?

A- I only know about my generation, but you're right, I have a feeling that the cavemen told their partners they were going out to club an elk for dinner, but were secretly going off to masturbate in a cave on the other side of the valley that had dirty drawings on the wall. And just as it's easier for our generation to destroy ourselves and kill each other on a much bigger scale than any previous time, so too, it's easier for horny men to be perverse on a much grander scale. We now have access to any and every weird pornographic possibility in the privacy of our homes via the internet; once virtual reality catches on, which is fairly imminent, and which will eventually include full-sensory experience-smells, sensations etc-- we men who are already damaged and disassociated from real living women (and ourselves) may well get to a point where women are completely unnecessary for sexuality, or even for making babies, if the cloning thing takes off, which also seems inevitable. But of course women will remain completely necessary for little things like balance, connection, sanity, nurturing and love. The feminists used to say that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." In the near future, I can imagine our generation of pornographically-possessed, virtually-orgasmed men saying, "A man needs a woman like the sky needs a password."

Is there a solution, or medicine as you put it, for this disease, short of celibacy? (And given what we've seen in the Catholic Church, celibacy hasn't proven to be all that effective either, by the way. Horny celibates are clearly dangerous.) Various teachers say there is a solution, but I am not qualified to speak of it from my own experience. But the presumably enlightened ones say something like this: if and when we surrender and relax into that "always-already-present" true Self that is "always-already" one with, and identical to, the primordial God-Force/Awareness/Energy that permeates creation, then we no longer would crave the release of sex in order to achieve a momentary glimpse of that blissful, pleasurable state of connection that we are already enjoying. So that would change the whole motivation and picture. When our very being is already released, already satisfied and whole, we would no longer desperately seek release. At that point sexuality becomes lovemaking again, a human form of communication and expression, not a driving, pathological, out-of-control obsession. But coming from me, I'm afraid these are all just secondhand words and nice ideas.

Q4- In your charming, half joking, jovial manner, you make the point that in both (sexually) open relationships and (sexually) inclusive ones, someone eventually gets left out, and I think that's probably true, the loudest protest of egalitarian symmetry notwithstanding. Of course, by contrast: in 'exclusive' (hyper- monogamous relationships), someone isn't getting left out, but rather shut in. Does repeatedly 'getting left out' and then alternately 'shut in' over a long enough period of time finally drive one insane, and is this insanity a possible prelude to Ramakrishna- flavored enlightenment?

A- No, it's probably just a prelude to more insanity. Woody Allen told an old joke at the beginning of Annie Hall. "This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.'" Then Woody adds, "I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational, crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs." I've chosen the "shut-in" option because of the eggs-companionship, security, friendship, love, a sense of shared history and continuity and creating a life together. The price, for most monogamous couples I know, is little or no sex, and little or no passion or desire. Again, there are teachers like David Deida and Osho and Margot Anand who say there is another way, and there are those in the polyamory movement who claim to have broken through this dilemma, and I would be asking them about this, if I were you, instead of a neurotic and repressed Jewish guy whose idea of a good time, sadly, is twenty minutes on http://www.BlondeArmenianGirlsWithMediumSizedBreastsWearingYellowPanties.com.

Q5- What is the kindest, most positive thing we can collectively do as human beings to help create a more benign, less dangerous planetary future?

A- The cynical answer would be, "Get rid of all the humans and the planet will do just fine." The real answer is the obvious one: love each other, and as a start, cause no harm to living beings, particularly the humans we encounter every day, but also the critters, the air and the water, the culture. There are lots of ways to pollute, and one of the most insidious is through the ideas and images we inject into the shared human experience through our creations--our movies and books and music and newspapers and television and websites. Gandhi said something like, "Before your next act, ask yourself if it will be of any benefit to the poorest person on earth." Of course if you're not Gandhi, that kind of thinking can be a bit paralyzing and impossible, but I think we can at least ask ourselves if our next act, or our next comment, or our next purchase, will cause harm to anyone. If we can at least get ourselves up to non-negative, or neutral, we'll have made progress. Finally, as Aldous Huxley said near the end of his life when asked to sum up everything he had learned, we should just try to "be kind to each other."