The fourth law we all obey is mating, regulated by a "strategy" that tends to be monogamous with possible, even frequent, exceptions:what is the state of the art?
I anticipate possible objections, concerning a minority of the population of our species, but diversity is wealth, potentially generating evolution: not all subjects of our species mate, and those that mate do not necessarily do so in view of the generation of offspring.
The vast majority of humans mate, and here we exclude, deferring to when we will reflect on the fifth law, all the aspects directly related to the offspring.
We certainly include, in our observations, all human subjects, regardless of their specific sexual orientation.
How our sexual behaviors work, and why, it have been said in many, written in many: for our purposes I consider sufficient and acceptable what elaborated by a well-known academic and popular science author, Jared Diamond, to whom I refer more than willingly, specifically to the second part of one of his good works of some years ago, The Third Chimpanzee[1].
Although the mentioned study is explicitly related tol heterosexual mating, we can recognize that those lines describe the other types of coupling with sufficient precision.
In many countries of the world, the freedom to mate according to one's sexual orientation is severely coerced and restricted, openly and often violently, even legally prescribed, when dealing with non-heterosexual minorities.
And even where the law recognizes equal rights, and prohibits, on paper, any discrimination based on sexual orientation, life for non-heterosexual minorities is hard.
Heterosexuals get better, but again there is no shortage of sanctions and duresses, both accepted in formal, national and international family laws, and exercised in homage to local "customs", for example with regard to the conduct to be held with respect to extra-marital relations.
The exercise of violence, brutal, physical violence to force mating is generally sanctioned, in most countries of the world: but not in all countries, and not always even in the others.
Theoretically much more difficult to identify (practically it is not) we found two other "illegal" behaviors: the first is the exercise of non-physical violence.
The number of legal issues against celebrities, accused of taking advantage of their position to obtain sexual favors from partners otherwise not available to grant such favors, have recently exploded, well-known formulas: if you want to make a career, if you want to be in charge of, get that good status, if you want to become ABC, then you...
We know that the number of cases of this kind is vastly higher than that reported, infinitely higher, it is a practice that is widespread and hypocritically criticized in public and accepted, often cynically, in private.
The same course of action adopted in relation to so-called friendships of interest, forms of sexual "low dosage" mating, but still mating, which very often transfuses in the second, very well-known, and generally not permissible by law, complementary behavior to the abuse of position.
It is generally called seduction, the "free" offer of sexual favor in exchange for career, prestige status, etc., recognisably a substantial variant of the less welcomed (in public) prostitution.
It is clear to us that we are dealing with limits (and concessions) that, yes, have to do with the mating strategy of humans, but that actually regulate the intersection of mating strategy and caste membership, rights of access to resources, survival, protection, in short all the repertoire that we have identified in relation to the government of obedience to the three previous laws.
Complex, there's no doubt about it. We can simplify a bit. In summary, it is the intersection between human mating strategy and all forms of current, largely legalized, property management.
Child brides, arranged marriages, burlesque in elegant dinners, pornography, legalized and non-legalized prostitution, abuse of position, seduction, sexual corruption, rape of war, the list goes on, are the specific fruit of that specific intersection.
And no, I don't think we're here.
Let's leave aside the not insignificant aspects related to the generation of offspring, we’ll see them later, we keep the focus on how the expression of mating, independently from sexual orientation, is "treated".
And the obvious repercussions that the current order has on the development, maturation, deployment of all the other potentials of each human subject.
It is difficult to dispute that the free, non-violent (and this aspect certainly must be carefully guarded), consenting (more difficult to preside over,but not impossible,not with the current technologies available) expression of mating according with any sexual orientation, at any age, is a condition to be pursued since intrinsically generating good fruits, individual and collective.
It is difficult to dispute that what is usually expressed in common language with "free self-expression", is a formidable motivational driving force, and simultaneously a direction in which many of the energies available to each subject can be conveyed, with fruit and benefit of the individual and the community.
It is difficult to dispute that the free expression of one's sexual orientation is a considerable proportion of each person's self, throughout life.
It is impossible to dispute that orgasm is among the most desired and desirable rewards of human acting, intrinsically and irrevocably intertwined with the expression of one's sexual orientation.
And we see no sound reason to inhibit or hinder its research and obtaining, which is, moreover, easily obtainable well within the limit of the resorting, certainly prohibited and to be prohibited, to violence.
Are we talking about love? We will have to talk about it, and a lot, but not here and not now: here we only deal with some aspects that we can identify as systemic premises to the unfolding of love events, with the precise aim of separating and clearly identifying which aspects relate to obedience to the law of mating, and which do not.
All the deleterious aspects and forms that we have seen sticking, related to the mating strategy, have little to do with this or that sexual orientation, with obedience to the fourth law.
They certainly have to do with the search for good or better conditions of survival and possibility of reproduction, and with the forms of containment and management related to this, as we summarily described in the former posts.
The history, ancient and recent, is full of the evidence of the results of attempts to eliminate what we can, must, consider perverted forms of obedience to the fourth law, child brides, arranged marriages, burlesque in elegant dinners, pornography, legalized and non-legalized prostitution, abuse of position, seduction, sexual corruption, war rape, etc.
So far, in short, a total failure.
We now begin to understand, I think, with increasing clarity, why, over the millennia, we have not succeeded: a trivial diagnostic "mistake", we have taken them for phenomena that arise autonomous and independent, to be countered individually.
We begin to have elements that allow us to see these perversions for what they probably are, side effects, symptoms, expressions of other, other left and kept in the shadows.
And it is on this other, partly obscured to date, that we will probably have to act, in short, intervene on the root of the bad plant that prejudices and spoils the work and the harvest of our species, and get rid, at once, of dozens of harmful side effects.
Increasingly aware of the impossibility of depriving ourselves of any of our deep roots, on pain of our death, and of the need to wisely govern its nurturing and development, variants of the primitive nourishment, cut and bend,in order to be able to grasp the fruit of the good coexistence and survival of the planetary community we all belong to.
[1] The third chimpanzee. Rise and fall of the homo sapiens, Diamond Jared, Hutchinson Radius publisher, 1991