Verband tussen seksuele selfbeheersing en kulturele prestasie

Kyk ook: Die Bybel oor sonde Die Bybel oor seks voor die huwelik Die Bybel oor homoseksualiteit

JD Unwin se navorsing het gevind dat daar ’n positiewe verband tussen die kulturele prestasie van ’n volk en seksuele selfbeheersing bestaan. Dit bevestig net weereens dat die linkses, wat losse sedes bevorder, besig is om die wêreld kultureel af te breek.

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Sex and Culture – JD Unwin

Joseph Daniel Unwin – social anthropologist at Oxford and Cambridge (1895-1936) – studied 80 primitive tribes and 6 out of the 16 known civilizations ( Sumerians, Babylonians, Hellenes, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and English) through 5,000 years of history and wrote a book Sex and Culture. The humanist and universalist Aldous Huxley, contemporary of JD Unwin, regarded this work as extremely important.

Unwin claimed there was a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe. Where there are no boundaries, morality will lapse. The mere facts of history show that to us.

His findings are an example of research that does not come from theology but from anthropology. The findings are however remarkably similar. Sexual restraint foster flourishing communities.

Some of Unwin’s findings

“What we call ‘civilization’ has always been built up by compulsory sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, p vii)

“Psychological researches reveal that the placing of a compulsory check upon the sexual impulses, that is, a limitation of sexual opportunity, produces thought, reflection, and energy.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 156, p 317)

“Compulsory continence must be regarded as the immediate cause of a cultural advance. Any extension of sexual opportunity must always be the immediate cause of a cultural decline.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 158, p 326)

“A female emancipating movement is a cultural phenomenon of unfailing regularity; it appears to be the necessary outcome of absolute monogamy. The subsequent loss of social energy after the emancipation of women, which is sometimes emphasized, has been due not to the emancipation but to the extension of sexual opportunity which has always accompanied it. In human records there is no instance of female emancipation which has not been accompanied by an extension of sexual opportunity.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 161, p 344)

“If pre-nuptial chastity be the rule, the amount of social energy displayed by any society depends on the rigour of its post-nuptial regulations.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 167, p 368)

“In the records of history, indeed, there is no example of a society displaying great energy for any appreciable period unless it has been absolutely monogamous. Moreover, I do not know of a case in which an absolutely monogamous society has failed to display great energy.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 167, p 369)

“We must always remember that the social energy which is displayed at any time by any society depends not only upon the sexual opportunity it enjoys but also upon that enjoyed by the two preceding generations. It takes at least three generations for an extension or a limitation of sexual opportunity to have its full cultural effect ; and if we happen to observe a society which is beginning, or has just begun, to extend its sexual opportunity, the full effects of the change have not yet been felt. The society still displays an energy which corresponds in some part to its old regulations. (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 167, p 370)

“Though Christians may dislike it, the effect of their teaching upon uncivilized societies is not to tighten but to loosen the sexual regulations. The reason is that the Christians merely forgive and forbid those sexual lapses which under native rule were effectually prevented.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 167, p 376)

Some of his conclusions

Unwin uses the three laws of thermodynamics to express his conclusions about human communities. The first law is that energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system. The second law is that entropy (decay) will always increase in a closed system. The third law is that without new energy from outside the system, the entropy in a closed system will increase to a constant low value of zero.

He identifies two primary laws of all human societies:

1. “Thus the cultural condition of any society in any geographical environment is conditioned by its past and present methods of regulating the relations between the sexes. This is the first primary law which operates in all human societies.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 160, p 340)

2. “Now I can formulate the second primary law which operates on all human societies. … It is this: No society can display productive social energy unless a new generation inherits a social system under which sexual opportunity is reduced to a minimum. If such a system be preserved, a richer and yet richer tradition will be created, refined by human entropy.” (JD Unwin – Sex and Culture, para 174, p 414)

https://archive.org/details/b20442580