HOME º PSYCHOLOGY HELP º  PHILOSOPHY HELP º ETHICS º  SCIENCE º MISTAKES º  ECONOMICS  º ESSAYS º SEX º SHAKESPEARE º  ART º GALLERY º  TOP TEN º HISTORY º MOVIES º STORIES º UFOs º PSYCHICS º
Letter to a friend

On Releationships

Geoffrey Hamilton
June 8, 2004


As far as the philosophy of love goes, I cannot say I have the answer, but I can say I have found my answer. Perhaps you can listen to my understanding and then relate it to your own situation. I think, first of all, the social context that you find yourself in must be identified. People keep on imposing values on you in the selection of a mate. "They" tell you to pick someone who is _______ and definitely ________ and they cannot be _________(you fill in the blanks). Most often "they" don't even believe in these values themselves, but when they are in a social setting they cannot admit to anything else. Answer for yourself what ideas you have picked up this way and treat them like an illness. Fight them in every way.

Next, in your most guilty or serene moments, see what makes you happy and don't forget them, they are the real values. These are the treasures....

GRH
continued

The Meaning of a
Yellow Rolls Royce

How Shirley MacLaine's character in this old movie demonstrates that meaning comes from games not experience.

Geoffrey Hamilton

March 21, 2006

When we're little kids and our parents take us for a trip sometimes we feel there is nothing more torturous. Where do our parents get off taking us to Paris? How boring is that? Then, somehow, over time we change and we start wanting to go on trips and to see new things. This change is the turning point in a 1960s technicolor extravaganza called The Yellow Rolls Royce.

In this film Shirley MacLaine plays a spoiled gangster's girlfriend who is taken on vacation to Italy by her boyfriend, played by George C. Scott. The trip offers nothing of interest for her - nothing is beautiful and she loves no one. Scott buys a yellow Rolls Royce for the trip south to Naples because MacLaine has a partial liking for it.

In Pisa Scott fails to get any reaction out of MacLaine regarding the beauty of the leaning tower. Scott is frustrated - he wants MacLaine to be happy and see the beauty in life.

Then a local scam artist, a young good looking Italian man impresses Scott with his energy and balls and Scott takes him along. MacLaine can't stand the scam artist, then can't help but play along with his tricks; at least his lies are interesting and she is excited by the danger involved.

When Scott needs to deal with Mafia business in America Scott insists that MacLaine get something out of Italy and he forces her to enjoy herself and she is chaperoned by Scott's underling Art Carney. Instead of controlling her Carney lets her follow the scam artist around. She falls in love and they openly romance each other along the Amalfi coast, even making love in the yellow Rolls at one point.

She starts dreaming of a life with him and so does he with her. Suddenly Scott sends a letter informing them that he is returning early. His mission was successful and he killed all his rivals. Actually, he had secretly come back to MacLaine's villa first, then sent her the letter, so as to spy on her and see how she would react. The scam artist decides he wants to stand up to Scott and take her away with him, but MacLaine knows Scott will just kill him. MacLaine decides to fain a lack of interest in the young man so as to save his life and he departs brokenhearted.

Scott sees the whole scene and lets it all happen. He returns to MacLaine and outwardly she is the same disinterested girl he loves - but he knows she is crushed inside. Scott lets her think he knows nothing and he picks up where he left off - with trying to get her to appreciate the beauty of the Italian landscape. To his happy surprise she is now relishing sunsets and the gorgeous views of mountain villages - everything now has beauty to her. Without her realizing it, the love and heartbreak has turned her around and everything has meaning where there was none before.

Any emotion helps us remember an incident, but romance is one kind that is stronger than most. Heartbreak is about reminding oneself of that strength and of that power. The Yellow Rolls only became associated to that power by accident, but the car is no less important to her for being an accident. Such is the case with any incidental associations that happen along the way during her romance with the scam artist. Whereas years of her mere experience with the 'beauty' of the world produced no change in her and no love for what was around her, the accident of falling in love with a man she despised rubbed off on the entire world - everything meant more. Meaning and mystery grew in her heroic-heartache as she remembered the good times - even the insurmountable grandness of a sunset gained in meaning. What happened to Shirley MacLaine's character happens to all of us as children, but usually over what we naive adults call toys and childish things.

GRH

as page
All essays
Home
Romancing the Story

Geoffrey Hamilton
September 2002

The many books and advise columns purporting to help lovelorn or luckless individuals or couples in the romance department often hit the right note or even give sound advise (in total). What many fail to fully identify and expound on, though, is the complete picture of romance as a game. Romance must be played as a game and must subtly be seen to be a game.

When successful couples are asked how they met they must be able to turn it into a story game for themselves and others to prove their success. The more interesting the story, as a story, the healthier the relationship appears. Further, the more the story can be embellished the better the relationship will become. If you suddenly remember a choice bit of personal revelation, add it on and see what happens.

Love can be one of the easiest activities in our long and painful lives. This is due to how little cleverness is needed to maintain love. It is the main thing we can be bad at and still be relativity good for us. Just by being silly and pointless and a little different we can build a lasting emotion - most times.

Our partners may not know it but they are rating us by how well we play these games . If we let down the wall of fantasy (within the game) and they see us doubting its reality, they will eventually no longer love us. What is worse is if your partner gets the idea that you are a loser: meaning a game loser. The big L on the forehead kind-of reaction is about the end. Many times the calling of your lover "loser" is a way to get even with a partner who may have already implied that you are the loser.

Never doubt her laugh, or her touch, or her injuries and take seriously her every aimless project - that way you will be playing together and she won't head you off at the pass. But this does not mean you can't challenge the silly things, it only means you turn every silly thing, which you must take seriously, into an opportunity to play a game together.

GRH
Lamenting the Geishas
Geishas and dry sex, how are we ever going to return to the best sex there is?

February 28, 2006

The recent film Memoirs of a Geisha reminds me of how asexual the world is trying to become. With the growth of breast-implant style pornography, metrosexual men and Brazilian waxing you might think the world is more sexed-up than ever before. You would be wrong. Sex is so overblown and genitalized that the orgasm has become the defining act of sex. So whether it is romantic ("How good was it for you?"), scientific ("Her orgasm or lack of one means she doesn't wants to reproduce."), or barroom banter ("Did she cum?"), sex has lost much of its art.

In previous eras the idea of sex as an art had many kinds of heydays. There was burlesque, the courtesan, tantric sex and, of course, the geisha. ln the film a geisha's use of her genitals is highly prized only because it is made part of a long journey. Even when the goal is reached it is taken away again to a great distance in order to restore its value and allow a new journey to begin.

This game is acknowledged, as such, midway in the film when the old geisha sets up a dance performance by the young geisha for three suitors; the young geisha sees the setup as a mysterious game with rules only known by others. The dance in the movie is truly wonderful. The suitors bid high against each other making her hymen now the costliest ever in Kyoto. On one level this is a perfect example of how any business must be conducted. On the sexual level, it shows how games like dance and psychological manipulation actually increase the real meaning and value of sex.

But there is all kinds of sex that goes even further in not going all the way. The kind of sex that make the goal to never have intercourse is the best game there is. Usually that goal must be accompanied by some imperative, or pretext which sounds like some imperative. This situation happened twice in my own life. Both times the meaning, value, emotions -- everything became hyper-wonderful. A kiss was not a kiss anymore. A sigh was not a sigh any longer. There is the greatest sexual space created in the mind when nothing is done about a sexual feeling other than by touch. Love grows. Energy grows. Hope grows.

The geisha is all about creating those things and more. Of course, individual people today can create that again whenever they choose, but as a whole, except for the hostesses of Japan, the decline in that kind of experience is measurable by how you rarely hear anyone talk about abstaining from intercourse except as part of a 'ti-tantric' joke. Whether it is for money, as with the geisha, or for other values, this emotion is the most we can squeeze out of life.

GRH
All essays
Blogs in order
Home
"The genital activities of mankind are so natural, so necessary and so right: what have we done to make us never dare to mention them without embarassment and to exclude them from serious orderly conversation? We are not afraid to utter the words kill, thieve or betray; but those others we dare to mutter through our teeth." On Some Lines of Virgil, Michel de Montaigne, 1588

The goddess of stupidity speaking about sexual intercourse, "Thus from that game of mine, drunken and absurd as it is, spring haughty philosophers...kings in their purple, pious priests and thrice-holy pontiffs...." Erasmus, Praise of Folly(21), 1509

Summer, "What are you doing?"
Seth, "Nothing"
Summer, "Well if it's nothing, you won't mind me looking right? ....That's not porn."
Seth, "...making my inventories (of yakuza DVDs) is sort of...like masturbating or flossing my teeth where even though you know I do it I'd just rather you not witness it."
The OC, TV drama, 2006
Get Over it
Sex is a game


July 21, 2002

The major problem with how sex is viewed today is that it is considered the most important and central motivation among human beings and for the whole of life. From Freud, to evolutionary theorists, to today's advertisers, nearly everyone thinks of sex, with its resultant procreative consequences, as more important than any other goal. Sex, however, can be shown to be only one symptom of a larger need, the need to play games. This section will examine that idea.

When certain theorists claim that life forms behave in this or that sexual way because they want to pass on their genes, it is their typical attempt to put the cart before the horse. They have yet to demonstrate any being has ever acted to pass on its genes. It is like claiming that a man who tripped down the stairs was trying to get hurt merely because he fell.

While there can be little doubt that people and animals frequently have the goal of sex in mind when engaging in sex and even on occasion they have the goal of procreation (which is not the desire to pass on genes), nevertheless the act does not always include those goals and more frequently does not. If there are any exceptions to a rule, then the rule does not exist – and what we are looking for are consistent rules in nature........
continued
all essays