Life As Performance Art 159

I am currently reading an article printed a couple of years ago in the online edition of the Guardian about why prostitution should not be decriminalized. The author, who is a woman and a feminist, gives some very convincing arguments, and for me, she is preaching to the choir. I still tend to have no clear opinion about the legal status, since that doesn't seem to do a lot to change people's thinking or behaviour, and that kind of change is going to have to be at the heart of any lasting kind of social change. This is not about changing language, nor terminology, nor substituting common words with politically correct euphemisms. One only has to look at the rise of right wing populism all over the so-called free world. That kind of pressure simply increases polarisation, because it leaves those who are not persuaded, or on the fence, into feeling pressured, judged and emotionally blackmailed, and the fallout is going to be resentment, resentment and resistance. When Hilary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as a basketful of deplorables she shot herself in both her feet and practically gave the election to what will likely go down in history as the worst US administration ever, run by the most deplorable president ever. But this doesn't really touch on prostitution, which has always been with us, and likely always will, unfortunately, which does not mean that we have to sanitize an industry that is so clearly toxic and damaging to the human soul and spirit and body. I see a lot of this all tied up with some very rotten aspects of human nature. We could call this our collective shadow, and for now, Gentle Reader, that is what I am going to dwell on, for this post anyway. It seems that people, or persons, are life supports for hunger. There appears to be a kind of unfulfilled void in the human soul, and so we have people looking for love in all the wrong places, and joy and relief in all the wrong substances. We are not complete. We have hunger, as they say in Spanish (tenemos hambre), or as we say in English, we are hungry, or, we are hunger. And being vectors of insatiable appetite can often have us doing some very nasty and unkind things to one another. We basically cannibalize others. We are consumers. This is what makes consumer capitalism so successful and so globally virulent. We are addicts, to affection, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, social networks, tech toys, shoppíng, you name it. Humans are one of the most interdependent species on earth. We are also among the most stubbornly individualistic, and this is especially problematic. We cannot function as individuals unless we are all collectively well-integrated, so dependent are we upon the support of one another. This is why a lot of the psychobabble that has become popular parlance is so useless. The word codependent, for example, I think more expresses the opinion that we are all rugged capitalist individuals and that there is something wrong, weak and sick about needing other people. Codependent relationships, no matter how we want to judge them, occur because people do not do that well on their own. When we live in a culture that abets and fosters loneliness and alienation, then we also become all the more needy and more likely to cling to close friends, family members and significant others as though we were all oxygen tanks for one another. And, of course, codependency is not healthy. But look at the social conditions that foster codependency. We are life supports for appetite, and anyone who boasts that they have no need for others, that they did it all on their own, without help, that they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and owe nothing to anyone, well there is but one word that will really and clearly define those boasters. Liars.