BOOK REVIEW: How to think more about sex

Columnist Michael Bywater writing for The Week, looks at the boredom of pornography, philosophy, and How to think more about sex:

WITTGENSTEIN wasn't just a philosopher. He looked like a philosopher. Bald, open-necked shirt, no furniture. "The world," he said, "is everything which is the case."

So the nine men who were jailed in Rochdale [UK]earlier this month for between four and nineteen years for sexually abusing girls: these nine are the case. The man who ran an under-age brothel from his kebab joint in Carlisle is the case. The tiny sub-set of morally vacant Pakistani men who were "overwhelmingly represented in prosecutions" of this sort, according to Martin Nary, former CEO of Barnardo's: they are the case, as are the policemen who have to try and sort this stuff out without accusations of racial profiling. The white supremacist Nick Griffin berk-alikes– leapt upon this as fodder for their damp, shrivelled racism: the case. And Alain de Botton, celebrated philosophe: he's the case, too.

Not because of anything sleazy but because of being a philosopher of sorts. Not like Wittgenstein, but more in the classical mode, a man who occupies himself with the questions of how we should live.

The day after Azad Miah, the kebab-shop pander, copped a startlingly lenient 15 years' pokey[jail] Alain was hosting a live Q&A on the Guardian website on the topic of his latest book, How to Think More About Sex.

An odd title, you might think, given that men are supposed to think about sex every seven seconds. It's a claim which turns out to be complete kidneys. I'd have said "bollocks" but that would have counted as thinking-about-sex and I'll have no part of that, even metaphorically. But really. Every seven seconds? It takes me at least that to come up with something to think about. Nobody would ever get any thinking done, except for people like Simon Cowell who might well not think about any sort of sex, ever. And that wouldn't really be thinking, would it?

So there'd be no philosophers, and since we've already demonstrated that philosophers like Alain are part of the case, and that Wittgenstein declared that the world was everything which is the case, then if men really did think about sex every seven seconds, there'd be no world.

Which may be false reasoning, but false reasoning is part of everything-which-is-the-case, too, You can see why philosophers so often go mad in the end.

Alain de Botton is wise to stick with the realistic end, like status anxiety and airports and, now, sex. And when he talks about "thinking more" about sex, he doesn't mean thinking about it more often, or for longer, but thinking about it better, and, perhaps, to some purpose.

Yet here he is on his live chat, on the subject of porn on the internet.

Pornography, like alcohol and drugs, weakens our ability to endure the kinds of suffering that are necessary for us to direct our lives properly. In particular, it reduces our capacity to tolerate those two ambiguous goods, anxiety and boredom. […] Furthermore, pornography weakens our tolerance for the kind of boredom which is vital to give our minds the space in which good ideas can emerge, the sort of creative boredom we experience in a bath or on a long train journey.

I can't help but wonder whether Alain's ever – accidentally, of course – seen any internet pornography.

The longest train journey – including an inexplicable pause outside Reading – or the most lukewarm bath is not as boring as that stuff. It's a sequence of events as clearly-defined and rigidly observed as any liturgy. He X, she Y, then B comes in and C+G+(X*Z) etc etc…. The Valley Pornographers have reduced the human form to a standard, affectless predictability, as dull as a diet of Big Macs, except the buns are firmer In the end, both would lead to an absolute lack of desire.

I also doubt whether the "overwhelmingly represented" minority of ratbag Pakistani men have much, if any, exposure to the stuff. It would scare them witless. What they do have is a dreadful moral vacuity, terror and contempt. A terror of women, provoked by their desire for women and their dependence on women to satisfy that desire. Look at them. No chance.

The contempt: necessary to overcome the terror. White Girls are Easy.

But the moral emptiness? That's the world for the teenage kid assaulted 25 times in one night by these unclean men. Our world may be wondering, with Alain, how to make intellect sexy (actually I always thought it was).

But in Rochdale, or in the Cumbrian kebab-joint are men with rather different ideas, men who wouldn't even understand what Alain de Botton was for but could tell you precisely what to do with a 13-year-old girl.

We should admit, for humans at least, it's culture that modulates our world, culture that's everything that is the case. To pretend all cultures are equally valid (or even humane) may be jolly nice. But it's not the case. Ask those sodomized teenagers. See how much they want to think more about sex, and how.

·         How To Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton, Macmillan. ISBN 978-1447202271