MY DAUGHTER, THE ORIENTAL GODDESS (repost)

Li Qin poses for her Goddess-loving father Li Zhuang Ping

These iconic paintings are by Li Zhuang Ping, a romantic-realist artist born 1948 in Szechuan, China. Though technically flawless, Li's compositions can be said to be mostly derivative, borrowing heavily from the work of well-known European masters like Raphael, Renoir and Velázquez. What has brought this particular collection - popularly known as the "Oriental Goddess" series - to international attention is the fact that Li used his beautiful 23-year-old foster daughter, Li Qin, as his model.

"Qin's perfect form and her natural beauty are what I had in mind for the image of a goddess," Li told an interviewer. "I created the 'Oriental goddess' series with her. She serves as both my model and muse. She inspires as well as lends form to the work. In that sense the paintings are a collaboration between us."

"And, yes, my wife approves," added Mr Li with a smile.

Li Qin, herself an artist, said she began modeling for her foster father five or six years ago, and worked closely with him to create the 'Oriental Goddess' series of oil paintings on canvas which instantly gained notoriety in the Chinese art world.

As to be expected, murmurs of disapproval were soon heard amongst the more conservative. Some critics aver that, while there might be no biological relationship between Li and Qin, the paintings constitute a form of "artistic incest."

My personal take on Li Zhuang Ping's "Oriental Goddess" series? I think the paintings are too kitsch to qualify as "high art" but Li Qin's exceptional beauty certainly deserves to be celebrated. And who better than a doting father (albeit a foster father) to do justice to such distinctive feminine beauty? Transmuting paternal affection, aesthetic ardor and erotic desire into art is the most sublime expression of a father's love I can imagine. What a delightful way to mark the end of the long, dark patriarchal era - when fathers traded off their daughters for social or political advantage, sold them to the highest bidder, intimidated, raped, humiliated, mutilated or impregnated them... or murdered "wayward" daughters to save the "honor" of the family.

Li Qin with her proud and doting grandfather

[First posted 14 March 2009, reposted 16 January 2015 & 16 May 2016]

Uninstalling Sexual Guilt & Shame (reprise)

I may well be one of a tiny handful of humans who somehow managed to escape the all-pervasive systematic programming that has instilled a hardwired sense of sexual guilt and shame in the collective human psyche.

None of that occurs among animals, insects or plants. What makes humans so different? I would venture that it’s our capacity to abstract general ideas from everyday experience and convert them into language. The power to name and objectify and be programmed by words; to be encoded from birth by alphanumeric, auditory and visual symbols – that same power is also our greatest weakness.

A long time ago I wrote an essay titled “The Fig Leaf Syndrome” which discussed the ostensible erotophobia common to the Abrahamic Agenda (“ostensible” because it more often than not serves as a camouflage for a perverse species of ego-driven erotomania). Those who publicly preach modesty and abstinence are invariably sexual predators of the most loathsome kind, personifications of false piety and genuine hypocrisy.

But what about me? Am I not also a “sexual predator”? No, I’m a dator, not a pre-dator; I love the dating game, especially if it leads to mating, which doesn’t necessarily have to result in progeny, only a bit of harmless erogeny.

Sex is nature’s way to encourage procreation, but many animals (including humans) have discovered sex as recreation, an intensely pleasurable use of leisure, which facilitates intimacy and deep bonding (when conducted without deceit or guile, and with childlike innocence and purity of feeling).

However, it must be played on a level field, with mutual consent and without coercion, intimidation, unfair advantage. Otherwise, sex becomes a game of power, of domination and submission, master and slave. This loveless species of eroticism leads to a reality construct populated with (and to a large extent controlled by) energy vampires, hungry ghouls, fiendish appeasers of their own bloodthirsty demons who derive atavistic pleasure from reliving carnivore (and even cannibal) cellular memories.

19th century erotic art by Aubrey Beardsley

Unfortunately, humans who fall prey to infestation by astral parasites (you may have heard of them as Archons or Jinns) often serve as agents (witting or unwitting) of cruelty, inflicting pain and terror on others deemed disadvantaged or powerless, especially women and children.

Their total disconnect from their hearts and complete lack of empathy makes them ruthlessly manipulative – which fuels their egoic ambitions to dominate everyone around them and claw their way to the top of the proverbial food chain. This explains why the so-called elite bloodlines are almost always predatory, pedophilic and vampiric, addicted to tyrannical power over others and greedily feasting off negative emotional discharge in the form of grief, pain, misery, despair and terror.

When we consciously uninstall sexual guilt and shame from our neural circuitry, we effectively delete any ideological implants we may have inherited from our own ancestors or acquired through cultural and religious imprinting. Implants that undermine our sense of self-esteem, that mark us as “sinners,” “fornicators,” “libertines,” “sluts,” “dirty-minded” or “unclean.”

For countless generations, we were insidiously programmed to believe that pleasure was sinful - and pain somehow, perversely, virtuous. 

Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)

Well, even a single-celled organism like an amoeba has the good sense to be attracted to pleasure and repelled by pain. Only mind-controlled humans are crazy enough to believe that the more we suffer, the more we qualify for a reward in the afterlife.

Once we reclaim and embrace our right to experience pleasure guiltlessly and shamelessly, we stand a good chance of also freeing ourselves from any martyr complex we may have unconsciously acquired as children, listening to insidious tales of famous martyrs like Jesus, Saint Stephen, Joan of Arc, Mahsuri of Langkawi, the Báb of Persia, or any number of poor, misguided jihadists who blew themselves (and others) to pieces believing they would find themselves in a halal version of the Playboy Mansion, surrounded by nubile nymphs, all virginal. (I wonder if female jihadists entertain erotic fantasies of waking up in paradise to a bukkake and gangbang orgy with members of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.)

Look at how the Roman Church glorifies suffering as virtue, by choosing as its symbol the crucified Christ. Can you imagine anything more BDSM than that? (Well, if you lift up the loincloth, you might find that his royal scrotum has also been nailed to the cross).

Be like the cat, the dog, indeed any creature that lives, and openly enjoys being caressed, hugged, kissed, licked, sucked and fucked (without any hidden agenda). Then all humans will finally be released from the pain-follows-pleasure cycle and will no longer experience so much suppression of the libido (or kundalini energy) that their passion erupts in destructive, invasive, exploitative ways.

Don’t just have sex, make slow and tender love. But do so as consciously as possible, with heart wide open and a totally clear conscience. Feel the emotional bond with whomsoever you are intimate with, and allow it to deepen as much as it can. By all means swear undying love in the heat of excitement, but never promise exclusivity, (unless you’re a sucker for guilty pleasures and the embarrassment of being eventually shown up as a liar and hypocrite).

________________________________________________________
Postscript: The only other activity I have found as gratifying as (if not more than) making love, is making music, so it’s easy to understand why the opening line of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night describes music as “the food of love.” But alas, the nexus between food and love often manifests in mildly cynical songs (written in my youth) like Strange Flesh and Black Widow.

[First posted 4 June 2020]

Why in Malaysia KILLING is okay ~ but KISSING tak boleh!

"Violence against sexuality and the use of sexuality for violence, particularly against women, has very deep roots in Biblical tradition." ~ James W. Prescott (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland)

A neuropsychologist contends that the greatest threat to world peace comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and which are most repressive of sexual affection and female sexuality.

BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE
By James W. Prescott

Human violence is fast becoming a global epidemic. All over the world, police face angry mobs, terrorists disrupt the Olympics, hijackers seize airplanes, and bombs wreck buildings. During the past year, wars raged in the Middle East, Cyprus, and Southeast Asia, and guerrilla fighting continued to escalate in Ireland. Meanwhile, crime in the United States grew even faster than inflation. Figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation show that serious crimes rose 16 percent in the first six months of 1974 - one of the largest crime increases since FBI record-keeping began.

Unless the causes of violence are isolated and treated, we will continue to live in a world of fear and apprehension. Unfortunately, violence is often offered as a solution to violence. Many law enforcement officials advocate 'get tough' policies as the best method to reduce crime. Imprisoning people, our usual way of dealing with crime, will not solve the problem, because the causes of violence lie in our basic values and the way in which we bring up our children and youth. Physical punishment, violent films and TV programs teach our children that physical violence is normal. But these early life experiences are not the only or even the main source of violent behavior. Recent research supports the point of view that the deprivation of physical pleasure is a major ingredient in the expression of physical violence. The common association of sex with violence provides a clue to understanding physical violence in terms of deprivation of physical pleasure.

Unlike violence, pleasure seems to be something the world can't get enough of. People are constantly in search of new forms of pleasure, yet most of our 'pleasure' activities appear to be substitutes for the natural sensory pleasures of touching. We touch for pleasure or for pain or we don't touch at all. Although physical pleasure and physical violence seem worlds apart, there seems to be a subtle and intimate connection between the two. Until the relationship between pleasure and violence is understood, violence will continue to escalate.

As a developmental neuropsychologist I have devoted a great deal of study to the peculiar relationship between violence and pleasure. I am now convinced that the deprivation of physical sensory pleasure is the principal root cause of violence. Laboratory experiments with animals show that pleasure and violence have a reciprocal relationship, that is, the presence of one inhibits the other. A raging, violent animal will abruptly calm down when electrodes stimulate the pleasure centers of its brain. Likewise, stimulating the violence centers in the brain can terminate the animal's sensual pleasure and peaceful behavior. When the brain's pleasure circuits are 'on,' the violence circuits are 'off,' and vice versa. Among human beings, a pleasure-prone personality rarely displays violence or aggressive behaviors, and a violent personality has little ability to tolerate, experience, or enjoy sensuously pleasing activities. As either violence or pleasure goes up, the other goes down.

Sensory Deprivation

The reciprocal relationship of pleasure and violence is highly significant because certain sensory experiences during the formative periods of development will create a neuropsychological predisposition for either violence-seeking or pleasure-seeking behaviors later in life. I am convinced that various abnormal social and emotional behaviors resulting from what psychologists call 'maternal-social' deprivation, that is, a lack of tender, loving care, are caused by a unique type of sensory deprivation, somatosensory deprivation. Derived from the Greek word for 'body,' the term refers to the sensations of touch and body movement which differ from the senses of light, hearing, smell and taste. I believe that the deprivation of body touch, contact, and movement are the basic causes of a number of emotional disturbances which include depressive and autistic behaviors, hyperactivity, sexual aberration, drug abuse, violence, and aggression.

These insights were derived chiefly from the controlled laboratory studies of Harry F. and Margaret K. Harlow at the University of Wisconsin. The Harlows and their students separated infant monkeys from their mothers at birth. The monkeys were raised in single cages in an animal colony room, where they could develop social relationships with the other animals through seeing, hearing, and smelling, but not through touching or movement. These and other studies indicate that it is the deprivation of body contact and body movement - not deprivation of the other senses - that produces the wide variety of abnormal emotional behaviors in these isolation-reared animals. It is well known that human infants and children who are hospitalized or institutionalized for extended periods with little physical touching and holding develop almost identical abnormal behaviors, such as rocking and head banging.

Although the pathological violence observed in isolation-reared monkeys is well documented, the linking of early somatosensory deprivation with physical violence in humans is less well established. Numerous studies of juvenile delinquents and adult criminals have shown a family background of broken homes and/or physically abusive parents. These studies have rarely mentioned, let alone measured, the degree of deprivation of physical affection, although this is often inferred from the degree of neglect and abuse.

One exceptional study in this respect is that of Brandt F. Steele and C.B. Pollock, psychiatrists at the University of Colorado, who studied child abuse in three generations of families who physically abused their children. They found that parents who abused their children were invariably deprived of physical affection themselves during childhood and that their adult sex life was extremely poor.

Steele noted that almost without exception the women who abused their children had never experienced orgasm. The degree of sexual pleasure experienced by the men who abused their children was not ascertained, but their sex life, in general, was unsatisfactory. The hypothesis that physical pleasure actively inhibits physical violence can be appreciated from our own sexual experiences. How many of us feel like assaulting someone after we have just experienced orgasm?

The contributions of Freud to the effects of early experiences upon later behaviors and the consequences of repressed sexuality have been well established. Unfortunately time and space do not permit a discussion here of his differences with Wilhelm Reich concerning his Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

The hypothesis that deprivation of physical pleasure results in physical violence requires a formal systematic evaluation. We can test this hypothesis by examining cross-cultural studies of child-rearing practices, sexual behaviors, and physical violence. We would expect to find that human societies which provide their infants and children with a great deal of physical affection (touching, holding, carrying) would be less physically violent than human societies which give very little physical affection to their infants and children. Similarly, human societies which tolerate and accept premarital and extramarital sex would be less physically violent than societies which prohibit and punish premarital and extramarital sex.

____
James W. Prescott, a neuropsychologist, is a health scientist administrator at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Humanist Association. This article appeared in part in the April 1975 issue of The Futurist, published by the World Future Society, and is reprinted here with their permission. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Institutes of Health.

Read the full essay here.

Well... in Malaysia we aren't allowed to watch people kissing on TV - that's utterly haram but killing is halal. Perhaps that's why local law enforcement agents will spare no efforts to prosecute and imprison a guy accused of indulging in anal or oral sex; yet turn a blind eye to massive corruption, cruel treatment of housemaids and pets, even cold-blooded murder!


[Thanks to John Kaminski for forwarding James Prescott's article. First posted 9 September 2011]

WHAT'S THE POINT?

This post is dedicated to Hassan Ali, Selangor PAS chief (who was offered the Mentri Besarship if he aligns with Umno and helps topple the Pakatan Rakyat government). Apparently, as head of the Selangor government's Islamic Affairs department, Hassan Ali has been spearheading a campaign to harass and persecute a tiny Islamic sect in Selangor who call themselves the Ahmaddiyah. Hassan was also responsible for the dropping of PAS moderate, Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad, from the PAS state exco. I read somewhere that Hassan Ali was formerly with Umno and that his mentor was Muhammad Muhammad Taib. Methinks we're all better off if Talibanheads like Hassan Ali defect back to Umno. Enough said!

[Originally posted in January 2007]