Made for connection
A series of posts on the Song of Songs
Ancient Mesopotamians were gleefully fascinated by sex. But their sexuality was organized around a surprising principle: a goal of avoiding anything sexy.
That doesn’t just mean no compulsive pursuit of their sexual appetites. It’s a lot weirder than that. Even when they were having sex, they tried to structure it in a way that looks more like a relaxed, intimate conversation than an urgently passionate tangle.
This might seem nuts unless you know one simple fact: as human beings, we have a choice of whether our sexuality is driven by our blind and insatiable animal reproductive instincts… or by the bonding and attachment instincts that are at the center of what it means to be human.
And if we choose the latter option, everything is better.
This is a series of posts intended as a four-week group study on the Song of Songs, which belongs to this ancient tradition and argues desperately to maintain it:
In It wasn’t meant to be like this, I’ll explain how I discovered that connection is what we all (men included) really want and need.
In Two Sumerian men, I’ll introduce you to the fascinating world of ancient Mesopotamian erotic poetry and a sexuality of giving and receiving rather than taking and using.
In A desperate plea, I’ll show how the last and greatest of these poems, the Song of Songs, is an urgent attempt to preserve that model of sexuality.
And in Relinquishing control I’ll look more closely at the Song of Songs and explain how a sexuality of connection is fed by a lifestyle of awe, wonder, and gratitude for beauty.
I’ve also written two posts, Did they really do it like that? and What did it look like?, to dig more into ancient Mesopotamian writing and art to see if there is really evidence that my theory about their form of sexuality is correct, and to try to understand better how they thought about it.