Author: Todd Vickers

Non attachment and love

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By Todd Vickers How can we say ‘yes’ to life and not be attached to the people, things, events and outcomes. Non attachment is a vague notion that wrongly suggests that we could be attached in the first place. Even our own body changes happen outside of our control and every particle in the body is different from what it was a moment before. ‘Our’ livers, as important as they are, do not consult us about their job, much less the needed symbiotic organisms that live in our gut…. Read More

Sexual deprivation and deceitful seduction

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How many of our sexual beliefs result from conforming to or rebelling against arbitrary, indirect and unrelated suggestions? Things like a belief or a product that our sexuality could easily exist without. Let’s consider letting go of sexual ideals as a compass and let morality be guided by joy and love rendered harmless through reason. How much sexual discovery exists beyond the things we habitually associate with sexuality?  Do we allow sexuality to be a life affirmation? Do we want sex as a delightful, living impulse? Most of us… Read More

What Desires Are Politically Important?

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What Desires Are Politically Important? Bertrand Russell – Nobel Lecture Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have chosen this subject for my lecture tonight because I think that most current discussions of politics and political theory take insufficient account of psychology… Read more or listen to audio of the speech at nobelprize.org Tonight I will be posting a new piece about how our sexuality becomes associated with unrelated things. Todd Vickers Read More

Sex as an end unto itself

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If we learned we should achieve something through sex, other than the instinctive joy, then we learned sex is a means to an end. Even sex to have children, is sex as a means, but harmless sex can also be an end, something that is worth doing because its good, even if nothing else comes of it. Let’s not miss that value because we’ve been taught that if sex doesn’t lead to anything else, it is worthless. The brief video infers from anthropology that our hunter gatherer ancestors must… Read More

Other benefits of non-monogamy

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The tertiary benefits of open sexuality might easily be forgotten. The intensity of emotion that may, at times, needlessly drain into drama or fictional fears can also give vitality to the little tasks of life. We feel our blood pump with the ‘yes’ to a date. The joy of discovery makes for a life well lived and gratitude. When that vigor happens and others are not frightened by it, it becomes contagious joy. Read More

A monogamous irony

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Would you like to see some different views that challenge beliefs about sex? We’ve got articles, videos, slide shows and memes you can peruse, contemplate, share and comment about. Consider a four part series discussing jealousy, or read about cathartic orgasms. What about going beyond rules in polyamory or how different non-monogamous people hold different views? We link to articles of interest and shine a light on controversial questions. The majority of the content is free. Come check it out!   Read More

Beyond Satisfaction of Desire

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What would you choose, the experience of love being equal in both instances. Love with truth Love without truth If the value is only the feeling then one is not better than the other. Love outside the truth is much more easily attained. Lies are the most commonly used aphrodisiac. But if we value love with truth, we realize that the truth adds something to the whole and the more of it, the better. But what if the truth is our beloved wants to make love to others?… Read More

Stop admiring hypocrites

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We risk losing some opportunities telling the truth. Regardless, the growth of a seed in a consciously sewn garden is not retarded by noxious weeds and briers overtaking the blossoms and choking them with shadow. “When we attempt to live consciously without monogamy we don’t solve possessiveness as a problem by adding more lovers to possess. Imposing the expectations left over from monogamy on non-monogamous circumstances seems to me a mistake. If our ideas do not adapt to new circumstances, let’s modify our ideas, not people.” How do we know if monogamy doesn’t suit… Read More

Go beyond cheating

Video

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Cheating ImageThis brief video looks at one of the mistaken value judgments hidden in the deceit of cheating.

A lie debases our longing for more joy and pollutes our morality. When we habitually use affections, including sexuality as a means, we forget those affections are something that makes life worth living, simply by themselves. This includes sexual affection for more than one other.

Let’s welcome sexuality in honesty.

Affections for their own sake is one of the things that make life worthwhile. Let’s not pretend sexual affection is unimportant when it is.

Non-monogamy, a growing morality

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The impulse to a more relaxed and open sexuality is not merely instinctive, but also moral. We see this (re)emerging morality* in conflict with established customs, like the conflict illustrated in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Huck contemplated turning in his friend Jim, an escaped slave. All his life, Huck had learned that it was a sin to help a slave escape. He also knew that a reward would be involved in turning Jim in. He even wrote a letter to inform the slave… Read More

Facing facts, sex and climate change

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What do sex and climate change have in common? Both involve facts we sometimes feel tempted to ignore or alter them to suit our existing ideas. Here is an excerpt from the Elephant Journal article Accepting Polyamory as Natural might help us to Accept Climate Change. {Adult} Sometimes an experience outside of what we know changes our beliefs forever. At the age of 24, my beliefs about sex were upended. In a safe, free-love community experiment, a group of blindfolded men and women met each other silently by touch only. Body to body, I noticed vast… Read More

Social hypocrisy about sex

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“Our powers of conception come with a risk. Again, we use thought like paint on the canvas of our minds, using our fears and wants as the brushes. We create and judge not only the future, but, also, an image of our world today. Seekers often surrender this power of the mind to the direction of leaders. However, we no more live in our concepts than a painter can live in a world he fabricated.” Excerpt: The Relevance of Kabir, buy the e-book here Read More

Love instead of… Paintings at 2016 Saguaro Man

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Painted Polyamory Problems Probably the best way to illustrate what I’m doing with this art is to criticize it. One of the strongest objections to these paintings, they are all negative. They show problems, not solutions. Even the title of the show is negative – Love instead of . . .   Against the fact standing above I say that the art is about the beauty of love and open sexuality. And nothing reveals love like its conspicuous absence contrasted with what is so destructive; the habitual… Read More

Slut shaming – How men can stop it

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Author Todd Vickers writes at Elephant Journal and looks critically at slut shaming. The good things around sex often become mixed with a variety of useless pains. My heart weeps at the double messages spoon fed to all of us, especially women. We cannot be reminded too often what culture imposes on our lovers, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. These maddening attitudes toward sex persist in a mix of admiration and shame, desire blended with disdain. Read More… Read More

Controlling crowds with sex

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Those with influence and interest will try to deny access to rainwater and then either sell it back to us or use it for their own purposes. Sex controlling crowds is an old game through societal norms often born of religion, try to deny or restrict access to sex and then create alternate paths to get access. We become consumers purchasing access in one form or another, directly or vicariously. As with rainwater, the question becomes how to claim harmless sexual joys when we were… Read More