Humans are biologically constituted to be social beings. Research has long shown that to be mentally healthy we need regular association with other people, and we need a certain amount of physical contact. The standard for adults—in the West, at least—is the equivalent of twelve hugs per day. The West is something of a touch-phobic culture. "Too much" physical contact is frowned upon in public. What this means varies, but commonly, (opposite sex) hand-holding is ok, as are a smattering of quick, chaste kisses. Hugging in greeting or parting is acceptable, but if the huggers hold on "too long" they risk being labeled needy, provocative, overly sentimental or "too sensitive." Women can hug women, but men hugging men, while grudgingly acceptable, is seen by many as effeminate. Men should never kiss, even on the cheeks, unless an adult male relative kisses a pre-teen boy on the forehead or cheek. Quickly.
Any displays that seem homosexual are strongly discouraged, and are grounds for being ejected from malls and other places for "disturbing the family atmosphere" or some similar charge. Same-sex affection in public may not get you arrested in most places in the US, but you will very likely meet with overt disapproval from nearby witnesses. "Community standards" vary widely in different regions of the country, or even in neighboring towns.
Some forms of non-affectionate physical contact are acceptable almost everywhere. Violent contact in sports is not only acceptable, it is celebrated, and a substantial number of sports fans complain about "sissy" rules that are designed, for instance, to protect quarterbacks in football. As long as no one is seriously hurt, physical scuffles on the street are more acceptable than men holding hands or kissing. Often, even when one or more combatants are injured, fighting is rationalized. "Boys will be boys," parents, and even judges, are likely to say. It is not unusual for boys who have gotten into trouble for fighting to be enrolled into an aggressive sport, "to give them a channel to release their aggression" in acceptable ways. These activities are said to build character. So, incidentally, does military service.
The people who use these rationalizations don't like it when someone points out the myriad cases of men who have become abusive as a result of their "character building" military service or sports activities. They are not rare.
The sad truth is that non-aggressive physical contact between men is deemed by all too many as passive or effeminate, and therefore as a threat to "masculinity." This is one of the bedrock principles of the patriarchal mind-set. Males are supposed to be aggressive, and females are supposed to be—relatively, at least—passive, and preferably submissive to males.
Despite some progress in gaining similar if not equal rights for women and minorities, patriarchy still reigns supreme in our culture. It appears it will continue to do so for quite some time. True egalitarian culture remains strictly fantasy in spite of optimistic pronouncements by some cultural progressives. The reasons for this are fodder for another work. Here, for now, we are interested in the consequences.
Because we live in a sexually schizoid and moderately no-touch society, a lot of people do not receive the accepting physical contact they need to be psychologically healthy. Only happily married couples and those who are in physical relationships are likely to get their daily minimum equivalent of twelve hugs a day.
This contributes to the production by our society of masses of people who feel chronically isolated, unworthy or rejected. Their self-esteem is damaged, and they often have feelings of free-floating anxiety, depression and existential guilt. Some argue that, because our institutional religious roots and our technological culture have separated us from a vital sense of connection with the environment, our whole society is experiencing all of these symptoms en masse. This explains why we seem set upon a collective suicidal spiral, with our super-weapons and politics of brinksmanship and domination.
It seems plausible. Early on, what would become orthodox religion in the West declared the body (and especially sex) sinful and degraded. As if that were not bad enough, mainstream science has reduced the body to nothing more than a complex biochemical machine, and life itself to a wildly improbable physical and chemical accident. While the world-views of science and religion differ in their metaphysical outlooks, both in their own ways separate human life from the rest of nature. And unless one signs up to take advantage of the religious escape hatch of faith, both define human life as either evil or meaningless.
That simply has to impact the psyche, collectively and individually.
So, in our culture, a large majority of us are conditioned from birth—if not before—to "know" at some level that our own bodies are enemies, or at best simply animated meat. Paired with the knowledge of mortality, this is what pundits call the human condition.
Maturity in our culture consists largely of coming to terms with this human condition and getting on with the business of chasing status and the almighty dollar. There are variations, but the basic game is to rise as high as you can on the social ladder and accumulate as much money and property as you can before you die. How well you do in these twin pursuits defines what society calls success.
In divorcing ourselves from nature and demoting life to nothing more than a gigantic statistical anomaly, we have exchanged the values that emerge from conscious awareness of a dynamic relationship with a synergetic environment that is composed of interdependent living systems, to those that grow from self-promotion in a world of separate things that have to be either mastered or acquired. In other words, we have exchanged the values of connectedness, balance and cooperation with those of separateness, greed and domination. The former generally support life. The latter degrade and destroy it.
However we did so, we have moved from a life-sustaining culture to a widespread—even global—death cult. To many of us, this seems like a bad thing.
So how do we move away from the culture of death into one that values life? It is a long process, and one that must grow from the ground up. It must be a revolution of individuals, couples and small pockets of people who are willing and brave enough to confront the programmed "values" of the death cult and redefine their personal values for themselves.
Where to begin?
Glinda Goodwitch, in the Wizard of Oz, says, "It is always best to start at the beginning." In this case, the beginning, for us as individuals, is to reclaim our bodies and souls.
We reclaim our souls by looking for, or inventing, a spirituality that affirms life and does not declare our bodies sinful, degraded or evil. Or our souls. A spirituality that does not coerce, but rather invites participation and does not condemn others for not "believing."
Spirituality can be religious, but it doesn't have to be. You don't have to go to church or cast a circle or tote a special book around to be a spiritual person. Spirituality is not about acting like you have the exclusive right to declare who, or what, is moral or "right." It is about respecting yourself and life and recognizing that there is more to the universe—and you—than materialist science acknowledges. Theology can be accommodated, but it is not necessary.
We begin reclaiming our bodies by recognizing that they are more than animated meat; they are, at the least, the vehicles through which we, as spiritual beings, experience this journey through temporal life. As such, our bodies deserve respect and care.
How many of us really know our bodies? What does it mean to know your body? It doesn't hurt to know the bones and muscles, the organs and systems. But that is just knowing about the body. Knowing your body means being in touch with it; being aware of the information it brings to you through the senses; having a sense of where you are in space and how you are oriented to your surroundings; being comfortable in your own skin and having a good idea of your body's capabilities and limitations. It means not just living in your head, but living with, and through, your whole body. It's all yours, so you might as well use it all.
Try this experiment when you are alone and have an hour or so. If you are feeling really brave, try it with a friend.
Make sure the temperature is comfortable for you, then take your clothes off. No cheating; take it all off. Are you comfortable? If not, why not? Is it healthy to be uncomfortable with your own body...even alone? Stay naked for an hour and pay attention to how and what you feel, both psychologically and physically. Do your senses sharpen? Do you feel subtle air currents moving over your body that you don't normally feel? What other senses are more sensitive? Does your internal state change over time? For instance, do you feel more or less comfortable after a few minutes or half an hour? Are you more or less relaxed than usual? Has your mood changed?
If you do the experiment with a friend, consider all of those questions, plus a few others. Like how does it feel to be naked with your friend? Are you, in the beginning, at least, ashamed or embarrassed? How do you feel about your friend's nudity, and how do you feel about his or her nudity as opposed to your own? Some people find it easier to deal with other people's nakedness than their own, and vice versa.
Anxiety about being nude is a symptom of that cultural programming trying to assert itself. It is saying you are going too far, you have crossed the boundaries that have been set for you and strayed into forbidden territory. But is that really so bad? What is the danger? What good purpose does discomfort with your own body (or others') serve?
One purpose it serves, which seems less than good, is that fear, loathing or anxiety about your body, or others' bodies, or sex, keep you a fearful, obedient servant of the cultural power-structures and their minions, the status-quo police. There are no guarantees, of course, but if you accept the authority of those who tell you that sex is evil and your body is an enemy, you are more likely to believe them when they tell you that those people over there are bad and we have to go kill them, or that, "for your own good," you have to surrender your freedoms and suffer intrusion into your home; surveillance everywhere you go; inconvenience and public humiliation that, if anyone else were inflicting it on you, would be considered abuse. You will be less likely to object when they tell you, for instance, that highly reactive chemicals they add to your drinking water are safe, as are radiation levels in your food that exceed what the EPA standards were before they were suddenly raised last week.
Conspiracy theory!
Well, not really. It is just that the Church found the doctrine of original sin to be a handy and powerful tool to keep the masses from becoming too independent and aware. And it was easy and convenient to attach sexuality to original sin. After all, that is how original sin is passed on. Once sex is implicated, it is easy to declare that nudity is too "stimulating" and arouses temptation that is extremely difficult, if not quite impossible to resist. Even when you are alone.
It is all Eve's fault, of course. She let a talking snake convince her to sample the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. One wonders what else she had been eating, and if we can have some. This mutinous mastication brought sin into the world. Then she gave the fruit to Adam, who ate it after offering only the flimsiest of objections. Presumably, if Adam had refused the fruit and denounced Eve as a disobedient hussy, only women would be mortal and suffer the curses God laid on them. But sex would still be the medium of propagation of original sin.
According to the story, immediately after partaking of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, Adam and Eve became aware that they were naked. Heavens to Murgatroyd! Intense shame accompanied the realization of their created condition, so they hid in the bushes, irrationally afraid that their Creator would be offended by what had been a perfectly normal state of affairs for...well, however long it had been since they were made.
The Creator provided fig leaves to cover the rebellious couple's naughty bits, which seems more like punishment than compassion. Fig leaves are very scratchy! A truly compassionate Creator would have given them fine silk. Or just told them, "Posh! Nakedness is nothing to be ashamed of. Get over it."
But then, the textile industry would have taken a huge hit, unemployment would have skyrocketed, the job market would have contracted and free-market capitalism would have been threatened.
The story does not say so, but it is reasonable to believe that Adam and Eve took some aloe vera and plantain with them when they were expelled from the garden, because there is no record of the massive skin irritation and contact rashes they would have suffered from their impromptu clothing.
In many ancient cultures, nakedness was not that big of a deal. People worked in the fields naked, fishermen fished naked. Court dancers in Egypt danced naked. Athletes competed naked, and people enjoyed the public baths naked. A naked man walking through the market would probably only draw a few curious looks and a discrete, "Uh, hum...pardon me, buddy, but haven't you forgotten something?" Smart purveyors would understandably refuse to bargain with him. After all, where is he keeping his coins? That ain't no roll of denari.
We can see by these examples that ancient people did not automatically associate nudity with sex. And it seems they did not live in constant fear that naked people in the fields or dancing in a procession would incite public orgies. But if they did, perhaps the people would have just thought, Did I misplace my calendar, what festival is this?
Since the Church was THE authority in the West for roughly fifteen hundred years, its condemnations and dire warnings about sex and nudity were firmly ground into the psyches of the people. So much so that, when the Church's authority finally eroded in Enlightenment times, they carried on in secular society without a hitch.
Separated from religious dogma and fears of eternal damnation, nudity and sex continued to infuse shame, guilt and fear in the minds of the populace. Which is just fine with the secular authorities, who, like the Church, appreciate compliant subjects, even when they are pretending to promote freedom.
Not that propaganda against nudity and sex are the only chains that bind the minds of the people. But they are key ones, and powerful ones because they go right to the very core of people's sense of personal identity and what they are as human beings. That is a pretty good place to start if you want to rule over large numbers of subjects. From there, you can start piling on pre-packaged (no thinking necessary) concepts like patriotism, nationalism and civic duty. Not to mention proclamations about which economic theory is the best...or even the only "good" one to structure a society around. To seal the deal, you only have to convince the public that outside forces pose powerful threats to "our way of life." You can season this with hints of internal threats, as well. Call them radicals, or the now-popular term, insurgents. When talking about domestic folk, insurgents are unpatriotic people who are ready and willing to join forces with the external threats—the terrorists or communists—to bring the country down and put into power ruthless dictators who will destroy our cherished freedoms forever. Never mind that the very people who warn us about these dangers are themselves destroying those freedoms. "For your own good." Remember?
Keep the people fearful, complacent and compliant, and you can live far above them, do whatever you want with impunity and rule forever. The most dangerous person in a "free" society is a truly free one.
Real freedom starts with knowledge (the original sin!) of what and who you are. Those who want to keep you ignorant are playing God.
You don't have to be a...uh...stark raving nudist to break free of your programming. Although it might be fun to romp naked in the woods on occasion. If you do, keep a sharp eye out for poison oak and bring plenty of sunscreen.
The point is, to reclaim yourself—or claim yourself for the first time—a good place to start is with your own nature and the body you are spending your life in. These provide the bedrock of your identity, as a human and as an individual.
If the materialists are right, and we are nothing more than walking meat-puppets...well, then we can discard religion and all metaphysical concerns about the existence of the soul and the possibility of an afterlife. No more striving for Heaven and fearing Hell. No more guilt over sacrificing church for football, or vice versa. Morality becomes, for many, an abstract concept. The certainty of mortality and your imminent non-existence is a bummer, to be sure, but you can do nothing about it.
But if, like more than 99% of people have believed since forever, there is more to life, the universe and everything than meaningless blobs of matter occasionally bumping into each other, all of those metaphysical concerns rise from the dead and become very important. Suddenly being human means a lot more than being a bag of protoplasm that is driven by hormones to propagate itself for no good reason. It opens the door to the possibility that there is meaning to life. And that what we call life might be more than mere physical continuance.
If you are allergic to dualism you need not despair. The apparent duality of matter and mind, or spirit, may simply be an illusion on the spectrum of existence. Modern physics tells us that the fundamental components of matter have a core nature that is expressed in some circumstances as particles, and in others as waves. The "particle/wave duality" is only an appearance; the true nature is something that encompasses both "particle-ness" and "wave-ness." By a similar tack, the apparent duality of matter and spirit may only be a perceptive mirage that presents us with observable facets of a deeper nature that is the source of both.
The Holy Grail of physics is to explain all forms of matter and forces of nature as derivatives of a single, original force. Why can there not be a parallel metaphysical concept? For that matter, why not go one step further and marry the two ideas. What we are really searching for is the source of everything, whether material or non-material. We are looking for the source of being-ness.
Whatever the source of being-ness is, we are expressions of it. Think about that. If we are, each of us, an expression of the Source of all things, does that not seem just a tad significant?
Now, revisit the naked experiment, only this time instead of asking all of the questions, meditate upon this: Whatever you are, whatever your identity turns out to be, you are an expression of the Source of all things.
Forget evolution vs. creationism, or any other theories about human origins. None of that matters now. What matters is that you are here, you are a wonder, and you are part of the deepest mystery of all. You share the nature of the Source, because the Source has nothing to create from but itself.
This is the beginning of freedom.