What is the Hedonistic Value of Promiscuity?
CC99
Say yes to the sex industry!
Despite appearances, I'm actually 50/50 on this issue and would like to see some serious arguments from the other side on this. I specifically want to ask y'all because I know most of this board disagrees.
This isn't a judgment of people's lifestyles btw, do not apply this to the real world or to other TUSCL members at all. The only arguments you should be making are on a philosophical basis.
So hedonism is a fairly simple philosophy. Pursue pleasure, avoid pain.
In high school, I used to think the more people someone fucked, the more hedonistic they were. This is the message we're generally given. Charlie Sheen is your archetype of a hedonist, not the married Christian man who only has sex with his wife. Going through college dramatically changed my opinion on that though. From what I've seen, someone being promiscuous is no more hedonistic than anyone else. In-fact, at this point, I do not see how its even possible for a promiscuous person to live as hedonistically as a married person can.
In terms of pursuing pleasure, we can measure pleasure in terms of how often someone has sex and how good the sex was. In terms of frequency, a married man can easily have significantly more sex than a promiscuous man can. Even if the promiscuous man is a class A seducer. The married man has his wife living at home with him, he can have sex with her pretty much whenever he wants. While the promiscuous man has to worry about how busy she is, how busy he is, whether they are going to have visitors tonight, or whether or not he can pickup a random girl from a bar, the only thing stopping a married couple from having sex is somebody choosing not to. Even if you work all day and have friends over for dinner, you still share a bed which means you can theoretically have sex at the end of the night.
This means a married couple can easily have sex every day. A young married couple who has no children and youthful bodies can have significantly more though. A young married couple is capable of having sex two, three, or even four times a day. They are living with you so the only thing stopping you is someone choosing not to. Promiscuous people have an extremely difficult time reaching these numbers. Even once a day is a stretch. Most promiscuous people I meet think once a week is a lot of sex. Even if somebody has a FWB or a fuck buddy. Many promiscuous people who have FWBs or fuck buddies do not see them every day, and consider seeing them more than twice a week to be too much time together. Which means in order to have sex every day as a promiscuous man, you need to have at least four fuck buddies at all times.
But let's go further. Let's assume the promiscuous man is either an extremely seductive person or extremely wealthy and can hire prostitutes every day. It still doesn't work out. The reason being that sex significantly improves upon learning someone's likes and dislikes. You get better at having sex with a person the better you know them. So a promiscuous man who is extremely seductive still suffers from the fact that he isn't experiencing the higher quality sex that the married man is receiving.
If you measure hedonism, then surely the married man feels a much higher degree of pleasure on a much more frequent basis than the promiscuous man does. So this means that monogamy probably increases the amount of pleasure in your life. Its more than just that though. Promiscuity adds a lot of unnecessary pain to your life too. And part of hedonism's ethics is avoiding pain. So let's completely disregard the social consequences of promiscuity and only focus on the physical aspects. How does promiscuity add pain to your life?
Mainly because it involves an enormous amount of work for a promiscuous person to achieve the same amount of pleasure as the married man receives. You have to go out to bars all the time, you have to spend countless hours flirting with girls you don't know. If you are not a master seducer, you will have to spend incredible amounts of money on prostitutes. You have to deal with the flakiness of fuck buddies. Overall, even if a promiscuous person found a way to have sex every day the way the married man does. It would involve so much work that most promiscuous people don't bother trying. The reason married people tend to have more sex is because high volumes of sex come effortlessly for the married couple.
The main argument for why promiscuity increases your hedonic value so to speak is that it provides variety and a higher number of sexual partners. Okay fair enough. But it seems like a lot of sacrifices to make in order to get variety. We talk about promiscuous people as though their brains are more primed for hedonistic behaviors. But if I was trying to maximize the hedonic value of my life. I'd much rather have a monogamous mindset that is happy fucking the same girl over and over again. It seems then that the monogamous person is actually primed more for a hedonistic lifestyle. And as for a higher number of sexual partners. How exactly does a higher number of sexual partners provide a higher amount of pleasure? Sex does not feel better just because you did it with a different person. The only logical reason I can see, from a hedonistic perspective, for switching partners is because the other girl is more beautiful than the girl you are with. But assuming you have a girlfriend who's a 9/10 or 10/10, what reason is there for ever choosing a different girl? You would almost certainly be choosing a less attractive girl.
Given the philosophy of hedonism, how is it possible for a promiscuous person to reach the potential levels of pleasure that a married man is capable of reaching? And how is it possible for them to do so without enduring the pain that it requires to reach those levels?
This isn't a judgment of people's lifestyles btw, do not apply this to the real world or to other TUSCL members at all. The only arguments you should be making are on a philosophical basis.
So hedonism is a fairly simple philosophy. Pursue pleasure, avoid pain.
In high school, I used to think the more people someone fucked, the more hedonistic they were. This is the message we're generally given. Charlie Sheen is your archetype of a hedonist, not the married Christian man who only has sex with his wife. Going through college dramatically changed my opinion on that though. From what I've seen, someone being promiscuous is no more hedonistic than anyone else. In-fact, at this point, I do not see how its even possible for a promiscuous person to live as hedonistically as a married person can.
In terms of pursuing pleasure, we can measure pleasure in terms of how often someone has sex and how good the sex was. In terms of frequency, a married man can easily have significantly more sex than a promiscuous man can. Even if the promiscuous man is a class A seducer. The married man has his wife living at home with him, he can have sex with her pretty much whenever he wants. While the promiscuous man has to worry about how busy she is, how busy he is, whether they are going to have visitors tonight, or whether or not he can pickup a random girl from a bar, the only thing stopping a married couple from having sex is somebody choosing not to. Even if you work all day and have friends over for dinner, you still share a bed which means you can theoretically have sex at the end of the night.
This means a married couple can easily have sex every day. A young married couple who has no children and youthful bodies can have significantly more though. A young married couple is capable of having sex two, three, or even four times a day. They are living with you so the only thing stopping you is someone choosing not to. Promiscuous people have an extremely difficult time reaching these numbers. Even once a day is a stretch. Most promiscuous people I meet think once a week is a lot of sex. Even if somebody has a FWB or a fuck buddy. Many promiscuous people who have FWBs or fuck buddies do not see them every day, and consider seeing them more than twice a week to be too much time together. Which means in order to have sex every day as a promiscuous man, you need to have at least four fuck buddies at all times.
But let's go further. Let's assume the promiscuous man is either an extremely seductive person or extremely wealthy and can hire prostitutes every day. It still doesn't work out. The reason being that sex significantly improves upon learning someone's likes and dislikes. You get better at having sex with a person the better you know them. So a promiscuous man who is extremely seductive still suffers from the fact that he isn't experiencing the higher quality sex that the married man is receiving.
If you measure hedonism, then surely the married man feels a much higher degree of pleasure on a much more frequent basis than the promiscuous man does. So this means that monogamy probably increases the amount of pleasure in your life. Its more than just that though. Promiscuity adds a lot of unnecessary pain to your life too. And part of hedonism's ethics is avoiding pain. So let's completely disregard the social consequences of promiscuity and only focus on the physical aspects. How does promiscuity add pain to your life?
Mainly because it involves an enormous amount of work for a promiscuous person to achieve the same amount of pleasure as the married man receives. You have to go out to bars all the time, you have to spend countless hours flirting with girls you don't know. If you are not a master seducer, you will have to spend incredible amounts of money on prostitutes. You have to deal with the flakiness of fuck buddies. Overall, even if a promiscuous person found a way to have sex every day the way the married man does. It would involve so much work that most promiscuous people don't bother trying. The reason married people tend to have more sex is because high volumes of sex come effortlessly for the married couple.
The main argument for why promiscuity increases your hedonic value so to speak is that it provides variety and a higher number of sexual partners. Okay fair enough. But it seems like a lot of sacrifices to make in order to get variety. We talk about promiscuous people as though their brains are more primed for hedonistic behaviors. But if I was trying to maximize the hedonic value of my life. I'd much rather have a monogamous mindset that is happy fucking the same girl over and over again. It seems then that the monogamous person is actually primed more for a hedonistic lifestyle. And as for a higher number of sexual partners. How exactly does a higher number of sexual partners provide a higher amount of pleasure? Sex does not feel better just because you did it with a different person. The only logical reason I can see, from a hedonistic perspective, for switching partners is because the other girl is more beautiful than the girl you are with. But assuming you have a girlfriend who's a 9/10 or 10/10, what reason is there for ever choosing a different girl? You would almost certainly be choosing a less attractive girl.
Given the philosophy of hedonism, how is it possible for a promiscuous person to reach the potential levels of pleasure that a married man is capable of reaching? And how is it possible for them to do so without enduring the pain that it requires to reach those levels?
32 comments
very interesting subject.
oh I have to say is that I was married 35 years.
separated at 32 years.
so One and only for 32 of those 35 years.
After separating had a three-year relationship with a local lady. a lot of days we are averaging sex four times a day. but she moved on. so most definitely the only sex I get now are strippers I encounter.
Hope that answers your question.
Only single young men believe this fallacy. Poll guys married 10+ years to see how well this holds up. So many factors effect libido, (hormone levels, stress, exhaustion, family obligations, etc.), that married couples whose sex drives are in sync over the long haul are probably in the minority.
I like your arguments so far.
So your argument is basically that in the ideal world, it may be fantasized as one way but that in the real world it often does not end up that way. Libidos don't sync up, divorces happen, and it can lead to arguments.
So my argument is actually related to the potential of it rather than how it works in the real world. Basically, if somebody was to live an ideal married life, they were happy the whole time and their libidos remained synced up with their partner, that the married person actually has the highest potential of every lifestyle to live an ultra-hedonistic life.
@JAPrufrock
So think of this as a video game. If the philosophy of hedonism was turned into a video game, sex earns you say, 100 points, good sex earning you 200 points, and extremely good sex earns you 400 points. Let's say that the work of picking up a girl subtracts points due to the pain of working to get someone into bed. Every time you try to go to a bar and pickup a girl and it fails you get -10 points subtracted.
You can think of it as the players with the highest scores are probably married. And I'm not sure how someone can, in-fact, be one of the highest scoring players unless they were married.
@Jascoi
So I'm curious about what circumstances led to such a high quantity of sex. Did the two of you live together?
I guess the basic part of my theory is that sexual partners living together have the highest potential. But this might expose a crack in the married life idea. Because of what @JustinToLook said about the potential problems that can occur from long term marriage, does this mean that serial monogamy which involves cohabitation for varying periods of life actually has the highest potential?
Sure, a lifetime with your "ideal" mate would be the ultimate. When you find that perpetually horny supermodel and you can tolerate each others idiosyncrasies, by all means put a ring on it.
In the real world, I've been down that road twice and find the avoidance of suffering outweighs the potential of pleasure when it comes to marriage.
Lol no.
@JustinToLook
Well like I said, this isn't actually to be applied to the real world. As this argument fringes on the idea that pure hedonism is the sole motivation of one's life. In reality most people's motivations are based on a variety of philosophies with hedonism only being one of many.
How about the serial monogamy + cohabitation argument? Can this compete with the potential of say, marrying a perpetually horny supermodel?
I don't really go along with goal of hedonism. Life has challenges and it has suffering. Sex is good, but not because it alters any of this.
And the idea of promiscuity is a very loaded subject, very moralistic.
What I would suggest is instead the well known Either/Or, and my thinking goes more along with his.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Either/Or
SJG
SJG
Sounds like with a woman who drinks that much, things would be hard.
May ex did not drink, not really. But she was a rage-a-holic. Though she never admitted this. Her thinking was always very screwed up in my opinion. She believed that she could act destructively, and that there would be no consequences, until she was actually faced with them. She had an idolatrous relationship with money, and got involved in stupid things with people. I did not understand this until the end. It was impossible to make life with her work, beyond what had been our dating relationship. A more full relationship which of course requires shared plans and goals, was always impossible.
Thinking of what you have described is helping me to see this.
SJG
This isn't based on advocating anything. This is more to understand the underlying principals of certain philosophies.
@Jascoi
Sorry for your loss. At least it was good while it lasted.
SJG
But even without marriage problems and sexual frustration, I’d say that it all depends on what is motivating a particular nonmonogamous individual.
There’s two basic categories I can think of:
Thrill of the chase: The pursuit and “conquest” of it. And that is just as important, or perhaps even more important, than the sex itself.
Pleasure of sex: Just simply enjoying sex and the variety.
If you want me to comment on hedonism, then I’d rather those two categories be separate because those are two different motives.
—
Also, not all individuals rank individual partners quite like that. No one person can be *all* things.
(Example, its possible for one to be attracted to both the sensitive artist and the go-getter entrepreneur. Or a thin blond girl and a busty Latina) In both cases, neither individual would be very good at trying to replicate the other but it’s alright they are appreciated as they are.
And going for one isn’t necessarily because the other is deficient. (Tho some individuals may be motivated by that reason)
Its true that there's hedonistic value in variety. I guess the question becomes a matter of if we were to take Charlie Sheen and put him in a room with a devout Christian who's only had sex with one person. Common wisdom says Charlie Sheen is significantly more hedonistic. But upon talking to each other, they figure out that they both have sex the exact same amount of times per week.
Upon learning such information. How does one determine who has led a more hedonistic life between Charlie Sheen and the Christian man? Charlie Sheen has had sex with 1,000 or so women, but the Christian man has had a higher quality of sex upon learning exactly what he and his wife enjoy in bed?
I would say that there are additional motives for non-monogamy as well.
For one thing, there is excitement when with a new person who does not have to consent to sex. So it is new and it might not happen.
And then another is Sex Magic, it is a mystical and religious approach to sex, sometimes ritualized sex. And so people get initiated into this from a partner. And each new partner is a new initiate.
And then going back to where i started, most politics of the right is based on judgements being made about persons seen as deviant, like the poor, or those who have alternative sexual lifestyles.
So non-monogamy chips away at the politics of the right.
SJG
Hope that answers your question.
So here's what I'm thinking.
The objective way to measure subjective experiences is through comparison. So let's say one guy's brain is programmed like Charlie Sheen's and another is programmed to prefer monogamy. The guy who's brain is programmed like Charlie Sheen's is going to receive an extra hit of dopamine in the event of having sex with a different person, likely due to a novelty seeking personality. So referring back to structuring the hedonistic philosophy like a video game, the Charlie Sheen type guy, as a result of having sex with a new girl, is having the subjective experience of 200 point level sex each time he does so, and having sex with the same girl reduces it down to 100 point level. So the girl understanding what turns him on may not be necessary to get 200 point sex.
However, I still don't see how someone who's brain is primed towards promiscuity can possibly reach the level of hedonism a monogamous person is capable of. The reason why is because the monogamous person can easily find both quality and quantity of sex. If he prefers having sex with his wife over and over again he is getting 200-400 point sex every time and can do it every day. The promiscuous person is forced to sacrifice one of the two. Either go for quantity by getting into a relationship and having sex with the same woman, or go for quality which is in variety but finds it physically impossible to have sex with a new girl even close to every day.
Which makes me think that the highest scorers in the hedonistic philosophy pretty much have to be married men. The reason, however, that I think hedonism has come to be associated with promiscuous people is that promiscuous people are lacking in hedonism more and have to work harder to achieve it. Thus make a bigger point out of it. Not only that but their pursuit of hedonism tends to conflict with other life goals.
Monogamous people, despite possibly being far more hedonistic, have an easier time getting it. It requires much less work and they have better access to the highest levels of it. Not only that, but monogamy makes it easier to pursue other goals given that access to sex becomes so easy. Thus the monogamous person doesn't have to think about it. Similar to how a rich person will be more able to pursue other goals besides money given that money is taken care of.
Leading to the perception by both promiscuous and monogamous people that the promiscuous people are the more hedonistic ones.
WTF
200 point sex?
Sex any time you want it?
I wonder what you'll think about the stuff you write when you're 60 something.
I know I consider the 20 something me naive and fairly un-knowledgeable .
But it's cool, not talking politics.
I did clarify.
So my central argument has to do with the potential rather than how it works in individual circumstances. So a person who's brain is wired to enjoy promiscuity has automatically lost the potential for higher levels of hedonism that a monogamous person has. Being that a promiscuous person is forced to either choose between a low quantity of sex but higher quality for his subjective experiences by being promiscuous or choose higher quantity but lower quality through being monogamous. The monogamous person, however, can receive high quality sex very frequently due to their brains being primed for it.
Hope that answers your question.
I too, would like to find a girl that is super kawaii and knows she needs to be licked all over her body, on her smooth thighs, to sucking on her belly button, to squeezing her squishy ass and running my hands through her silky soft hair. I want her to suck on my mouth like its full of sweet nectar. Swirling around, licking every inch, shoving her tongue as deep as it'll go.
Got enough material to soak your tissue in jizz now?
"The reality for the vast majority of marriages, is that sex tapers off. And for many can become completely non-existent. Usually it’s the wife that starts refusing but there’s exceptions and all.
"
Nicespice, can you tell us what your source is for this information? And why do you think this is true?
Is your point then that we need strippers to take up the slack? :) :) :)
CC99, I have never in anyway supported the philosophy of hedonism. We could talk about this, but otherwise it is hard for me to directly engage with your OP.
As I see it, freelove, and even prostitution, chip away at middle-class mentality, and that alone is enough to make such desirable.
SJG