The polarity between male and female, between egg and sperm, sits at the foundation of all advanced life on earth.
This polarity has defined life on earth for 10,000 generations of humans and generations beyond counting for the rest of the animal kingdom.
For us humans, the family has always been the primary unit. Sometimes extended, sometimes nuclear, it was predicated on blood ties. Which come, ultimately, from the union of egg and sperm through sex.
It has always been dangerous. Giving birth is difficult and dangerous. Their were and are a tangle of rules around both.
Sex and death are the great framers of meaning in our societies and our individual lives. Because we are conscious creators of our experience reproductive sex has spilled over into sex of all kinds, but it still remains a generative impulse, however it plays out in actual life.
To test this, think about how many of our customs, in any society, revolve around family. Families are related through blood or marriage, both of which involve sex.
My reasoning: every blood relative you have is the result of a sexual union resulting in a combining of DNA. The shared DNA is what makes a family, also known as a collection of blood relatives.
A human child begins in the meeting of egg and sperm, and enters naked through a woman’s vagina as a screaming infant.
Our most sacred commitments revolve around either sex or death. We make commitments in marriage and to our children. We wage war and honor the soldiers who died. We light candles in remembrance. We attempt to leave a legacy for our families.
Most of our arts, from literature to cinema revolve around these themes. Along with transformation through the divine, they run like bedrock through all our stories.
Our laws are built and on handling resources across generations. And, along with money, it is what people lie about the most.
All of these ties had their origin in that basic male-female polarity.
These physical realities are gritty and visceral. And their power can’t be denied. Sex brought every one of us into this world and death will take all of us out of it. This is the great imponderable mystery of life.