I Blame Sex

We are often being told that the love of money is the root of all evil. Well, I wonder how true that is? If we’re looking for the actual root of evil, surely we have to go back further than that, by which I mean that there must also be a root for the love of money. I think we might be getting close to it if we conjecture that the love of sex is a deeper drive towards iniquity. It could be argued that the desire for sex is the motivation to everything we do. After all, why does any of us desire money in the first place? The answer to that is that we believe that money will make us more attractive to others. Money provides us with the ability to buy nice clothes (for example), but why do we want to have nice clothes? Because we think that by wearing them, whoever we might wish to attract towards us will find us more desirable, that’s why.

Why do we do anything? Why do we want to drive fast cars, or achieve artistic or sporting greatness, or grasp political power? Some of us fool ourselves into thinking that we may be doing some of these things for altruistic reasons, but even those amongst us who recognise that these desires are merely ego-driven, are still unaware that the ego is only disguising the real coercion – the need for sex. We believe that without money, nobody will be interested in us and therefore nobody will ever be willing to pull off their clothes and climb into bed with us. If you don’t believe me, then why is there an ever-present craving within us to look younger, a craving that is so much more easily met by the accumulation of wealth?

So, I submit to you that the hinterland of immorality is not the desire for money at all – it is the desire for sex. But maybe we have to hack even further into the undergrowth for the root of that desire too? Could it be that our primeval urge isn’t really about procreation at all, but about the underlying yearning just to be liked? I’ve talked before about our search for our soulmate and so I now conclude that this simple, natural force within us is – paradoxically – the real root of all evil. This is an injustice, for if the seemingly innocent need to be liked is the cause of our malevolence, then it would appear that there is no hope for us at all.

Notwithstanding that we are hopeless as a human race, I also hear this morning that more specifically, there is little hope for us as a nation too. Apparently, the latest edition of The Rough Guide To England says that we are a nation of “overweight, binge-drinking, reality-TV addicts”. Seems a little harsh – I for one am neither overweight nor am I interested in reality-TV. Who are these libellous cynics? Damn them, I say!

Onwards and Upwards.