Masturbation feels wrong. It feels unnatural, artificial, and even devious. It feels as though there’s something wrong with the whole picture. Why are we masturbating at all? It reeks of misconduct.
For me sexual misconduct must necessarily include masturbation. I cannot, in good conscience, exclude masturbation from the annals of sexual misconduct. A celibate man who masturbates is not a celibate man. Buddha would say, a man like that is wearing the mask of a celibate man, though he is not one. Baba said sex with one’s wife is not sexual misconduct. But the problem is this: according to most studies, 95-98% of even married men masturbate, leaving 2-5% who are clearly lying; and these statistics include me. According to a recent study the average male masturbates 18-22 times a month. For women it is something like 8~9 times a month. The numbers for women are slightly behind in most studies.
So here lies the problem. If Baba’s New Humanity is going to be the most awesome people ever, I can tell you this, they are not going to be a bunch of ‘whackers.’ But how is Baba going to achieve this monumental feat of transforming all of humanity into non-masturbators? How will this be possible? Then, one day I got the answer.
To read the article yourself, just click below.
Where Masturbation does not exist.
It was during the time scientists were busy gathering semen samples from all the various ethnicities for genetic profiling. To their surprise they ran into four ethnic tribes that do not masturbate at all. We are talking of large cultures, ranging from 30,000 to 300,000 in number, where no one—absolutely no one—has ever masturbated. These people had no idea about masturbation at all. They didn’t even have a word for it. How can this be true? Yet it is true.
The actual content of the article assumes the Western man as the “default” human being and tries to answer why these tribes don’t masturbate like us ‘normal’ people do. They looked at these non-masturbating tribes and said “something is seriously wrong with these people, lets try to find out whats wrong with them.” However, for me, these cultures got me to question human nature itself. The ‘default’ human being was now in question. I found myself questioning my ‘self’, and the ‘social construct’ that I was raised in–asking questions like:
Why do we masturbate?
Whats wrong with us that we are masturbating?
What really is the true ‘default’ human being?
What’s wrong with our culture? our social environment?
WEIRD!
Luckily, Cambridge University thought the same thing. Here is an excerpt from another article on masturbation:
In 2010, Cambridge University’s Behavioral and Brain Sciences published a review: “The Weirdest People In The World?” Its authors pointed out that scientists routinely make broad claims about human nature, using samples drawn almost entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic – WEIRD – societies. Fully 96% of the subjects whose behavior has been reported in top psychological journals were drawn from only 12% of the world’s population.
The Euro-American human sexuality literature gives the impression that male and female … masturbation are common if not human universal, in part, due to a reliance on several systematic and detailed studies conducted in [WEIRD] nation states. One textbook states that:
“masturbation is a very common practice among adolescents, and that the vast majority of people masturbate at some time in their lives.”
However, in the Hewletts study in 2010, they were astonished to learn that neither the Aka nor the Ngandu were aware of masturbation. Here is an excerpt from that study:
They laughed as we tried to explain and describe the sexual activities. We thought that maybe they were shy or embarrassed individuals, but this would have been uncharacteristic of the Aka we had known so long. …
It was difficult to explain self-stimulation to the Aka. They found it unusual and said it may happen far away in Congo, but they did not know it. A specific word did not exist for it. We asked men, in particular, about masturbating before they were married or during the post-partum sex taboo and all indicated this did not occur. … [emphasis added]
Masturbation also appears to be rare in other forest areas. We asked Robert Bailey … about his experiences of trying to collect semen for fertility studies from Lese men in the Ituri forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He indicated it was very difficult to explain to men how to selfstimulate to obtain semen samples. He said that despite explicit and lengthy instructions three of four semen specimens came to him mixed with vaginal secretions. pp. 113-114
But there,s more. Here is what I found out about the Aka on Wikipedia:
Fathers of the Aka tribe spend more time in close contact to their babies than in any other known society. Aka fathers have their infant within arms reach 47% of the time [5] and make physical contact with them five times as often per day as fathers in some other societies.[3] It is believed that this is related to the strong bond between Aka husband and wife.
Throughout the day, couples share hunting, food preparation, and social and leisure activities. The more time Aka parents spend together, the more frequent the father’s affectionate interaction with his baby. —Wikipedia
So why do we masturbate? What is different about these cultures that don’t masturbate? The burning question became: What is it about our social construct, our social structure, our families that causes masturbation? I was surprised by the answer.
Masturbation is a function of Captivity
”monkeys have been observed masturbating in captivity but not in the wild.”
“Lots of animals masturbate, but none with the intensity and ejaculation frequency of human males—except when in captivity. ” — (Leonard Shlain, MD).
In a study done by the Indian Government concerning primate masturbation in 9 Indian zoos, monkeys were observed to masturbate regularly. But at the monkey God temple, where monkeys are treated well, free to come and go from forest to temple–where there is no semblance of captivity—they do not masturbate. ***Or is it because they are on holy-ground?
Here is another excerpt from another article:
Some researchers have been surprised to find so little masturbation among other primates. Said one such animal researcher, Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton,
Of all my male monkeys only Jocko has been observed to masturbate. After a few days confinement he would masturbate and eat part of his semen. I have reason to believe that he lived under unnatural conditions for many years before I acquired him.
Notice how confinement is a condition of Jocko’s behavior. I submit that today we are living under some seriously “unnatural conditions!”
Many Primatologists are making the connection between masturbation and captivity. But some will argue that pandas have been known to masturbate in the wild. When you consider the fact that most of the bamboo forest has been wiped out—and say three pandas are left in a tiny bamboo forest, and one is masturbating—I’d say that that is a function of captivity. When there is only one water hole available in the Kalahari desert, and the lions are waiting next to it. The wildebeest who needs that water, IS, in a very real sense, in a state of captivity. The state of Captivity does not necessarily require walls.
I believe the New Humanity of Baba will be a non-masturbating bunch of people. They are a free people–Free in body, mind, and spirit. If masturbation is a function of captivity, we can see how the New Humanity would have to be a truly free people in every way. It also follows that we must currently be living in a state of captivity—a social construct of captivity. Thanks to the Aka we are led to suspect whether we are currently living in a state of captivity. Thanks to them we can now seriously examine wether “a prison for our minds,” has been created, wherein we imagine ourselves to be free all the while remaining captive to the system.
Thanks to the Aka and the other non-masturbating cultures, it has now become believable that the New Humanity will be an awesome, non-masturbating, and free group of people. Thanks to these cultures, my conviction in the New Humanity has been renewed & strengthened. I now see the New Humanity as not only possible but as systematically inevitable.