Is Sex the Missing Piece of the Puzzle?

What if we’re looking for answers to the self-inflicted “problems” of the world in all the wrong places? What if — like in the fairy tales we read as children — the answers can be found in the place we were told NOT to look? And that place is between our legs. What if we’re fucking up the world because our fucking is fucked up?

7 min readSep 19, 2022

by I. J. Weinstock, author of the new book, OUR SECRET SEX LIFE: The Key to Humanity’s Destiny. This article and his essay, “Abortion, Sex, and Survival,” are adapted from that book. He’s also written the fantasy series THE SECRET SEX LIFE OF ANGELS—an epic quest exploring the mystery of sex.

Why?

Why — despite all the wisdom of our religions and philosophies — is the world full of hatred and greed, violence and cruelty, injustice and poverty?

Why — despite all that we’ve learned from history — can’t we create societies that thrive, communities that are just, and civilizations that last?

Why — despite all our scientific “advances” and technological “progress” — do we seem headed for global disaster?

Perhaps we’ve been looking for the answer in all the wrong places.

Perhaps, the answer to that eternal question is hidden in plain sight, in a place we were told not to look. And that place is between our legs.

Perhaps the reason we’re fucking up the world is because our fucking is fucked up!

SEX — WTF Is It?

Sex is more than we realize. More than procreation, more than pleasure, sex is fundamental to our humanity in ways we’ve forgotten and consequential in ways we can’t imagine.

It’s time we explored the mystery we call “sex.”

Sex is much more than just the physical act. In fundamental ways, it’s the source of our humanity. Along with Natural Selection (fitness to survive), Sexual Selection (fitness to reproduce) has shaped the evolution of Homo Sapiens. Another way to think of Natural and Sexual Selection — the twin drivers of evolution — is that death is evolution’s “stick” and sex is evolution’s “carrot.”

Out of the approximately three million sexually active species, we Homo Sapiens are probably the only ones that uncoupled sex from reproduction. Sexually we are an evolutionary exception — a mammal that engages in sex all the time. This profound evolutionary change in our sexuality is, in many ways, a source of our uniqueness and a key to our humanity.

In the Beginning was the Word…and It was “Sex”

Human sexuality differs significantly from most other mammals. One major difference is that the female doesn’t go into periodic “heat” to signal she’s ovulating. Other primates like chimpanzees and apes experience regular periods of sexual availability called “estrus,” during which the female displays her readiness to mate. As a general rule, it’s only during these times when females and males are interested in sex.

Human females are the only primates that experience concealed or hidden ovulation. As far as survival goes, this presents an evolutionary problem — reproduction becomes hit or miss. To compensate, evolution expanded human sexual availability so that it’s potentially any time, all-the-time.

With reproduction no longer purely instinctual in humans, Sexual Selection had to evolve more sophisticated means of communication between the sexes so they could negotiate the who, how, where, and when of this unique hyper-sexuality. To survive, humans had to choreograph a new kind of evolutionary “mating dance.” Some researchers theorize that these new communication demands required the development of speech, complex language, and ultimately human culture.

The Story We Tell Ourselves About Sex Shapes Society

Yuval Noah Harari, the noted historian, has said, “To understand the world, you need to take stories seriously. The story in which you believe shapes the society that you create.”

I agree with Harari and take this idea a step further. In my new book, I propose that the “story” we tell ourselves about sex functions like an Operating System for humanity, creating not only progeny but also the society in which we live. The idea that sex is a core program of human civilization is the basis of my Theory of Sexual Relativity and Human Destiny.

Our uniquely human hyper-sexuality is so much more than the physical act; it’s the hidden, underground root system of how women and men relate and society functions. The story we tell ourselves about sex — how we conceive of, feel about, and engage in sex — governs gender identity, shapes relations between men and women, dictates the dynamics of family, and ultimately influences the values and structures of society.

This is not an entirely new idea. Ancient civilizations like Egypt and Sumer understood that sex is more than procreation or pleasure, that it’s fundamental to our humanity, and that our beliefs about sex — whether Original Blessing or Original Sin — determine what “fruit” the Tree of Life bears. Those ancient cultures revered sex because they understood that if the “root” is damaged, the “fruit” will be poisoned.

In contemporary tech terms, sex is one of humanity’s core programs. Our SEX OS is so fundamental and consequential that what we believe sex to be shapes our “reality.” And, ultimately, our destiny.

Our SEX OS Has Been Hacked

Our SEX OS has been corrupted by religious “bugs,” infected by patriarchal cultural “viruses,” and distorted by shame-based “malware.” Tragically, our SEX OS has been hacked! And the consequences are catastrophic! Our hacked SEX OS may be the root cause of humanity’s self-inflicted, existential crises.

In psychological terms, the collective trauma of shame our patriarchal, Original Sin-sourced culture inflicts on everyone has traumatized puberty, estranging us from our bodies and consequently from the body of the planet. This traumatic exile from our human nature has also exiled us from the greater Nature of which we are inextricably a part.

Has this collective trauma driven us to commit the insanely self-destructive act of “poisoning our nest” and destroying our world? Is humanity committing slow-motion suicide because we’re a life-form, probably the only one on Earth, that’s ashamed of how it reproduces itself?

Dirty Words

Language holds the key to our beliefs, and our sexual shame is deeply embedded and expressed in our language. For example, the word “masturbation” (the term we use to describe the act of sexual “self-pleasure”) originally meant to defile oneself.

Not so long ago, our genitals couldn’t be spoken of in polite society because they were “unmentionables.” Eventually, our genitals became our “private parts” and, more recently, our “naughty bits.”

Engaging in sex — the act of creating new life — is described in thousands of degrading and demeaning variations of “bumping uglies” or “doing the nasty.”

Why are so many things related to sex considered “dirty?” Calling them “dirty jokes” and referring to them as “dirty words” expresses how we’ve been conditioned to feel about our sexuality. We’re ashamed.

Why is the word “fuck” (which means sexual intercourse) the worst curse you can hurl at someone? Why is this four-letter word unprintable in the mainstream media? What does it mean that the word “rape” (a horrific crime) can be uttered on TV and given a boldface headline in the press, but the word “fuck” (which isn’t a crime) can’t?

Why do all those words get bleeped on TV?

Why can murder and mayhem and all the instruments of destruction be seen everywhere in the media, but the sight of our genitals, the instruments of creation, are prohibited?

India’s ancient Vedas warn that a society which doesn’t revere the genitals as sacred instruments of creation is doomed. The urgent question we must ask ourselves is — Can a species that’s ashamed of how it creates new life survive?

Sex & Survival

Psychology has taught us that our “shadow” — the parts of us we’re ashamed of and have disowned — can cause us to engage, often unconsciously, in self-destructive acts. Sex is the great shadow of civilization since it’s the primary thing that’s been hidden and that we’re ashamed of. Humanity must deal with its shadow and bring what’s been hidden into the light to be healed. If humanity heals its sexual shadow, it will free us in ways we can’t imagine. It might even stop our headlong rush to self-destruction.

If we dare to look in that place we’ve been told not to, we might find the missing piece of the puzzle: the reason why we seem to be committing slow-motion suicide. Hidden between our legs is the trauma of collective sexual shame that’s driving us to destroy our world.

As humanity confronts a perfect storm of self-inflicted, existential crises, it’s critical that we awaken to sex’s fundamental and consequential importance before it’s too late. It’s time to engage in an adult conversation about sex that will inspire the healing and collective upgrading of our hacked SEX OS. Not just for personal satisfaction or better sex lives, but for society’s health and, ultimately, civilization’s survival.

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I. J. Weinstock is the author of THE SECRET SEX LIFE OF ANGELS novels — an epic quest exploring the mystery of sex. This essay was adapted from his most recent book, OUR SECRET SEX LIFE: The Key to Humanity’s Destiny.