Sex is not the answer (for The Outsider)

The very first point made by Colin Wilson's The Outsider (1956) is that sex is not the answer to the problem of existential alienation. He hammered home the point in many further books, including Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963).

Right up to his last books (such as The Angry Years, 2007) CW made clear how sexual obsession had often ruined the motivation, focus, creativity and integrity of genius-Outsiders (with tragic results for those of us who were depending upon such individuals to point the true way ahead).

Sex (as such, in isolation from married love) leads merely to the desire for more sex. Sex is  - like many intense pleasures, such as heroin - addictive. Furthermore, also like heroin, sex induces tolerance, requiring escalation of dose. In those in whom frequency has reached a maximum, there develops a decadent need to push boundaries and transgress - in order to maintain the desire and the response.

Yet sex is a sufficiently plausible delusion that it has captured and redirected the entirety of Western civilization - especially since the middle 1960s.

Sex (often explicitly, often covertly) has displaced and destroyed religion and politics - both of which are vestigial compared with 50 years ago.

Yes, sex cut-loose really is an addiction - and has the same propensities. It does not solve the problems of life, but shoves them aside and implies that sex is the problem instead, and this rapidly becomes a truth.

By becoming a society of sex junkies, the West has dispensed with Christianity, and with Thinking.

Instead of meaning, purpose, fulfilment, and family - we have a vicious cycle of delusional fantasies and brief ecstasies... always receding in power and duration; satisfaction always just out of reach.