An Exploration Unfolding

This open marriage journey has not only been physically stimulating and adventurous but, also, has provided fertile ground for intellectual pursuits.

I'm in the beginning stages of thought. No idea or direction is fully formed, it's only that awareness of my mind wandering and exploring. The faintest concept is in sight, that I'm heading into a time where I'll do what Libras do and reconcile the seeming irreconcilable to new heights of either personal benefit or that which may benefit others.

At the moment, my intellectual fingers are in many pies of thought and I'm beginning to see how they're complimentary. 

My journey has been sexual because I'm hypersexual and I always have been. The topic of sex has never been absent in any stage of my life. I've only ever approached it differently in accordance with either what I've needed to do for myself or in relation to other explorations. It's not a matter of nurturing, no one abused me in my youth, it's a matter of my nature. 

I am and have been, very interested in the concepts of nurture vs nature. Of course, I acknowledge that they're both a factor in making up who we are, but I lean heavily toward the idea of learning to understand and deal in terms of your nature rather than how you were nurtured. In my own experience, understanding and dealing with my nature is far more beneficial to me than getting bogged down with the emotions of blame toward something or someone I can neither change nor control. The only person - beliefs and behaviors - I can concretely do anything about is myself.

"But, your nurturing is part of understanding yourself." In part yes, but not nearly as much as understanding your own nature's response to the nurturing and to the nature of those who nurtured you. 

Let me illustrate: I'm a sibling. I'm raising three siblings. I was raised with the same nurturing environment as my sister and I am raising my children in the same general environment, the same general nurturing. "Nurture" neither accounts for the difference in paths my sister and I have taken nor the difference is paths my children will take. Nature explains the individual's response to nurturing. The evidence of an individual's response to nurturing challenges the belief that nurture should be the paramount focus on creating "healthy outcomes" in human development.

In contrast to the same general nurturing environment of my children - the same values, morals, lifestyle, and pace of living - is the ways in which our natures interact. That there can not be a universality and constant equality in my interactions with each child. My daughter's nature is complementary to mine, my middle son's is a challenge. I can not relate to them the same way, nor can they, by nature, respond to me the same way. So, my daughter may grow up and have fond memories of her time at home, and consequently mirror that experience in her family, where my son may view his upbringing as fraught with dissatisfaction and seek to correct that trend with his family.

The root of that is not nurturing but the interaction between natures. It will serve each child far better to say to themselves, "My mom and I related this way because of who we are.", rather than to look at the specifics of the general way in which they were raised and place blame there. For instance: I homeschool our children. They could grow up and either love or hate that experience and place a futile focus on the method - the nurture - while missing the more important exploration of why they liked or disliked the experience due to the confines of their own nature and/or interaction with mine. Blaming the external they can't change or control while ignoring the internal about which they can. 

In this exploration, I am bringing in and reconciling other, more specific fields of thought.

Astrology

My open marriage journey started with a renewed interest in astrology. While I generally reject the mystical aspect of the discipline, I see that there is some human-derived truth in it. I see it as being a fairly reliable diagnosis of our natures. Much like the personality tests I so enjoy engaging in, anything which can shed light on one's nature is bound to be helpful, for both understanding oneself and understanding others and how they impact us.

Science

In my journeying, I was as open with my partners, and those who came in and out of my communicative spheres, as I am here. I had several conversations about the Zodiac with people coming from a variety of thought backgrounds, a few with backgrounds in science. The idea was floated, by one such, that we observe that the full moon causes a brief period of unhinged behavior in some. "Luna", for the moon, being the base of the word "Lunacy". The moon holding sway over tides and our bodies being made up of something like 70% water, it makes scientific sense to us that the moon can impact some people. Astrology being heavily based on the movement of the other planets in our solar system, why would it be inconceivable to think that, as part of a system, those further away celestial bodies might also have more subtle impacts on our mood and behaviors? Might science have a part in the explanation of our natures that largely goes unexplored because the idea is found in a system of thinking that is based on mysticism? 

Both represent fields of intellectual pursuit which not only try to explain nature but, also, provide behavioral modification to overcome the excesses of our natures when they run amuck and wreak havoc in our lives. That is the reason we seek religion and/or therapy, yes? When our lives are a mess and we know we need to change ourselves to fix our worlds, we seek external help for what we don't, presently, have internally. 

The Lover recently asked if I thought religion (in my case Christianity) was the only route through which I could have gained that help. My answer was two-fold: Generally, and objectively speaking, the answer is, "No". There are multiple avenues of help available for people to access. However, for me, specifically and subjectively, the answer is, "Yes." I'd tried therapy and it did not help me. Christianity was the method of help that came into my life at the right time when I needed to gain control over my nature as it was wreaking havoc in my world. I think I'm particularly drawn to religion because, as you will see in the next section, in contrast to today's psychology, the focus of religion is on identifying aspects of your own nature which need to be corrected or controlled. You change your behavior for better outcomes. 

This is one of many reasons I am thoroughly disapproving of antitheists - people who want to remove options from other people are the enemies of freedom, the enemies of people who want to find health in options that work best for them. 

Politics

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know politics are an intense interest of mine. While looking up the difference between the arguments of nurture vs nature, today, I found this article on the popular website, Psychology Today. 

So, the answer is not one or the other: it is both [nurture and nature]. But if the issue underlying this controversy is whether we can and should build a society that does more to nurture wellbeing, then please come down on the side of nurturance.

Of course, you all know by now that I'll think and explore what I want and I don't give a flying fuck what the "authoritative" sources say. In this case, no, dear Psychology Today, I do not come down on that side and given what coming down on that means, governmentally, I will be a staunch opponent of coming down on that side till I take my last breath.

Coming down on the side of building a society of "healthy outcomes" through regulation of nurturing methods is coming down on the social and, far worse, political ground of communism.

Let's take a look at "can and should build a society ...". Can we? As I've already stated, I don't believe nurture accounts for the lion's share exploration of personal, individual mental health. Should we be trying to build a society based on one, systemic vein of psychology for the purpose of creating uniform humans? Abso-fucking-lutely not. Not on principle and certainly not within the current atmosphere of wielding the power of the federal government to bring the minutest detail of people's lives under the subjection of a version of "science" that is more an ideological religion than the actual exploration of how and why nature works the way it does. 

Sex

The various concepts are not mutually exclusive. To borrow terminology from my outcome-based counterparts, they can intersect to bring me to a path of usefulness beyond just the exploration of my own sexual nature. As far back as I can remember, sex has always been a part of who I am. That aspect of my nature is central, core, to me. I have spent a lifetime either learning to overcome and master my nature or embrace it and let it lead me down various paths of exploration. Both have been necessary, valuable, and have made up the person I am today and will be tomorrow. I have much insight and experience from this lifelong journey. I am beginning to ponder the ways in which my various thought interests can work together to lead me into taking this core part of myself and allowing it to make me a useful resource to others.