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By Duncan Rhyne (2010)
I am aware that I have a better quality of life than most men. I am not as rich as Bill Gates, and I could do with more money. But to be as rich as Bill Gates actually would not be conducive to my quality of life.
A man's quality of life primarily depends on the quality of his sex life. And while this assessment covers optimal sexual function, and while optimal sexual function can be engineered better if one has the financial means to avail of the best possible treatments, the quality of a man's sex life also depends on a wide variety of sexual opportunities.
Yes, to be sufficiently rich definitely helps with a man's sexual opportunities, as women are more easily available to, and are more inclined to love, richer men. However, if a man's wealth reaches a certain level, it is best for him to stop accumulating, and to start spending. The point is: you never want to be rich enough to become a topic of public attention. Or at least: you do not want to be known to be rich enough to qualify for public attention.
But wealth isn't the only factor that plays a major role for a man's quality of life. A proper understanding of the meaning of life (or, in other words: an appropriate ideology) is even more important. If a man is religious (and for most religions, this means: religiously misguided), then it doesn't matter whether he has too little wealth, or too much wealth, or just the right level of wealth. He doesn't get it anyway.
In this respect, I do differentiate between different religions. Christianity, for example, is more of an obstacle than Islam. The more pious one is in Christianity, the more restricted are one's sexual options. For really pious Catholics, the proper path is priesthood, and that means that all sex is forbidden. Even though I assume that most of my readers are nominally Christians, and even though Islam is considered to be sexually intolerant and restrictive in the public opinion of Western, typically Christian countries, Islam is, in fact, sexually more permissive than Christianity. Just don't judge sexual permissiveness by comparing how apologetic a society is with respect to typical modern US boyfriend / girlfriend relationships.
While in the Christian afterlife, we are all asexual, the opposite is the case in the Islam heaven. Not only are Muslim martyrs promised a paradise with plenty of young, sexually willing playmates. What they actually get is virgins… girls that never had other men, and which they don't have to share with other men.
Even the most pious men in Islam (such as the late Ayatollah Khomeini) not only are allowed to have sex, families, and offspring. They don't have to, but if they want, they can have many wives. Throughout history, Muslim religious and worldly leaders often had their harems. Popes, by contrast, had to do their philandering in secrecy.
As recently as during the US war in Iraq, a religious leader their issued a fatwa that stated that Muslim warriors who captured female US soldiers could keep them as sex slaves.
I am not religious. I do not believe in God. When I state that my religion is called "opportunism", or that I would like to establish the "religion of sex", then I use the word "religion" only as a synonym for "ideology".
But if I were forced to live in the Middle Ages, and would be equipped with enough intelligence to achieve some wealth, and a secure social position, I'd pray to be placed in the Muslim, rather then the Christian world.
Even nowadays, and under certain circumstances, Muslim societies may be a better option than Christian ones (if simply for the fact that they are more immune to US cultural exports). Just let your own brain spin appropriate scenarios. This is a fantasy world. And don't castrate your fantasies by classifying them as plain fantasies. This world is far less determined than you used to think. Many of the ideas that you confine to the realm of "just fantasies" can actually be implemented. But only if you avoid the fallacy of identifying yourself only with the culture you have been born into.
Outside the US, or outside the Old World (which is Europe), and outside the New World (which is the Americas), there still is the Third World, which, on the one side, is determined by poverty, corruption, and mega cities, and on the other side by archaic fantasy-inspired alternatives to the modern world, as they could only blossom in the third millennium in an under-policed environment.
The world you encounter in the Third World, especially in Asia and Africa, can be so different that you may think you are dreaming. Are you dreaming? Let me guide your dreams.
You will need a guide because the Third World isn't fantastic everywhere. You need to find places with the right external conditions, and you need the right approach.
***
I started this article with contemplations on a man's quality of life, and the option of Third World countries. As in many Third World countries, and especially in archaic societies, matters of sexual conduct (apart from rape) have only in the past few decades become a legislative concern, I sometimes wonder whether I would have liked to be born, let's say, much earlier.
How much earlier? An optimal sex life requires physiological repair facilities. A major handicap of having been an adult of my kind before the end of World War II would have been pharmacological. Promiscuity before penicillin carried a genuine threat of lifetime gonorrhea, and, after Columbus, the additional risk of death from third-stage syphilis. On the other hand, since about 1985, AIDS has become the major spoiler.
Yes, some Third World countries must have had incredible potential before I came down on them, in the 60s and 70s. But it is not the case that I would be overly depressed over the missed opportunities because I settled in the Third World only at the beginning of the 80s.
And I can't predict whether the opportunities that will present themselves to some of my sons will be worse than those I enjoy today. It will depend not only on the course of history, but the wealth of nations.
I am certain that opportunities for men like me, and those guided by the same ideology, are inversely proportional to the richness of a society, and the welfare it can provide for its underclass.
Two possible paths f development are possible for today's Third World countries: either the path of Singapore, which made it from squalor to glamour in less than 50 years, or the path of, for example, Zaire, which has deteriorated from a rich colonial territory to a lawless Congo.
When Marx and Engels postulated that "das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein", they just summarized that we will always argue in favor of what causes us benefit. If the whole world were to be turned into a global Switzerland, this would not be kind to me and my type. I don't want to be regulated in my sexual adventures, and I don't want to live in a policed society, even though such a society may be in a good position to make sure that my cars aren't stolen, and my daughters are not molested.
Some Third World countries will likely become rich, such as, for example, China. But in other countries, the combination of unrestricted population growth and diminishing natural resources will probably make social progress difficult. And don't discount wars, or "low intensity conflicts".
And, because (in a dialectical analysis) fundamentalist Islam has become the opposing pole of American capitalism (after the demise of Communism), it isn't even guaranteed that the world overall will become more modern. It just may, in some parts, develop in the direction of fantasy pulp fiction, which combines sophisticated technologies and archaic mindsets into an addicting dream world.
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Copyright Duncan Rhyne