You buy a brand of ice cream that sends proceeds to benefit the rain forest. You channel your savings into socially responsible investment funds. Your bath products do not rely on animal testing and you rarely go to a ” rock concert that isn’t sponsored by Amnesty International. Yet every other day, after the credits roll on Charlie Rose, you and your partner engage in an activity that has no social implications. For nearly an hour every week, you are expending energy in a way that will aid neither the endangered rain forests nor the oppressed women on the Indian subcontinent. Of course this puts a strain on a consciousness so finely tuned as your own.
Thank Gaia, the forces of social concern have enabled us to mobilize our commitment to larger ‘moral questions every second of every day, including in our sex lives. In the back of magazines such as Mother Jones, Harper’s and the New Republic, there are advertisements from organizations that can help us put our phallus in touch with our consciousness. Some of these organizations, such as Good Vibrations, sell the tools that allow “thinking persons” to experience sexual energies in enlightened ways. Journals such as Blue Moon and Libido merge sex and sensibility, and offer turn-ons that fuse with larger concerns, such as environmental degradation and income inequality. Finally, there are many how-to guides that offer exhaustive advice on performing sex acts in high-minded ways.
