Trying to lock children out of erotic leads to the sad dirty sex of adults. Learn better how to adore children to Learn Romantic Love.
“What do you expect, they’re just kids”.
This was the reaction of my Kenyan girlfriend when I asked her if they really tell children here in Kenya that Mary lives in heaven on the crescent moon and holds the Christ child in her arms and breastfeeds him. Yes. That may be true. It doesn’t matter, they’re just kids. Well, my mother used to explain the evening red sky to me during Advent by saying that the Christ Child was baking cookies in heaven. And if you put a piece of sugar on the windowsill and the stork finds it, then he will bring you a little brother or sister as a thank you.
[I recommend keeping this music video playing in the background while you read]
Yada
Change of scene, same day. The five-year-old boy next door, Jaden, comes to me after kindergarten, as he does every day. His mother is then still at school, together with my girlfriend, she is learning German and comes half an hour later. Jaden wants to watch cartoons on my tablet, as usual. But today it doesn’t suit me. I explain it to him. But he doesn’t understand, starts crying. And doesn’t stop at all. I’ve known Jaden for a while. He is very kind, very friendly. But he also has a very low frustration tolerance. I think he has to learn that. Otherwise he would not succeed in life.
I explained this to my S-daughter, the 9-year-old Brinnah. She understands, though she thinks I should give him the tablet anyway. Otherwise he would get a beating from his mother, who would be coming at any moment. I am quite shocked. “Why is that?” I want to know. Brinnah explains it to me: for the same reason, because I don’t want to give him the tablet. So that he doesn’t cry right away when something doesn’t go the way he’d like it to.
Brinnah looks at me. I look back. What happens between us in the next few seconds is a deep erotic mutual affection, called yada in Hebrew, “to recognize each other.” . We no longer need to exchange words. We understand each other because we love each other.
You know these moments at least from Hollywood movies. After the first date, two adults say goodbye. They want to shake hands. Or do they want to hug? But then they suddenly recognize each other and kiss or, depending on the movie, they race right into the apartment and have their first sex. This mutual erotic recognition is so strong that it is also the word for sexual intercourse in the Bible. Yada, Recognize. Adam and Eve recognized each other and had their first baby…
Brinnah smiles at me. In her features I recognize again her soul, a wisdom at least equal to mine. Without waiting for a verbal answer, she takes the tablet and hands it to Jadon. She didn’t have to wait for a verbal response. Because between us is yada, erotic love. She explains something to him in Swaheli. Jadon stops crying. The mother arrives minutes later. Jadon is spared a beating. Thanks to Yada, the erotic connection between Brinnah and me. The latter now sits down briefly with me.
She strokes the hair on my forearm with her small hand. She likes to do that. Then she gets up, goes to her room and paints her next picture. Brinnah can paint much better than I can. She knows that. She knows that I know that. She knows that I am one of the few adults who would not tell her about a Virgin Mary sitting on the crescent moon nursing the Christ child. And don’t get me wrong: when I talk about love and eroticism between Brinnah and me, there is nothing in it that anyone could take objection to.
Platonic love is erotic love is yada is romantic love.
There is a huge difference between what Plato meant by love and what we call “Platonic love”. The same applies to the concept of romantic love. I will not go into the different types of love in ancient Greek (agape, philia, eros) at this point, nor into the two common misunderstandings in modern usage. Thus, “Platonic love” is often understood as a purely amicable love without eroticism or at least without the realization of eroticism, or even the Christian monogamous eroticism is associated with Plato’s idea of the spherical man. According to this, we would look for „The One“, our other half, from which we are separated, but which is waiting for us somewhere.
As I said, I will not go into it here. It is more important to understand what Plato, respectively Socrates understood by erotic love. And even more important for us Cynics is to bring together our virtue claim of Parrhesia, i.e. the self-realization, understood as the way of becoming God, with the Hebrew Yada and the claim of romanticization in Novalis in the concept of eroticism.
–> Learn more about cynicism and parrhesia
Parrhesia, i.e. self-realization, is not a process within a self understood as a closed system that could simply be exposed alone or therapeutically. Self-realization is a lifelong dialogical process. Dialogue with the other, with the world, with God. We assume that we miss being God, so to speak. We seek God in order to unite with him in love and find God as representation in the Beautiful and Good1The good Greek, not Christian modern understood: better to think of “good” as “strong” or everything that makes us stronger. For Cynics, the virtue parrhesia, self-realization, is the good par excellence. We also look for parrhesia in the beautiful, which we want to idolize. in the world.
This brings us to Novalis. Novalis claims that we can only love God through a representation. We need something that we can see and then deify.
Novalis calls this idolizing romanticizing.
Novalis is here entirely on the same page with the evangelist John , who clearly says: whoever claims that he loves God but hates his brothers and sisters is a liar. For how could one love something that one does not see, but would not be able to love what one sees. Both in Socrates (Plato), in Diogenes, in Jesus and finally in the Romantics, such as Novalis, the adoration of the beloved erotic object is not blasphemy, on the contrary. Precisely this adoration is the function of eroticism. We learn to love God from the erotic object. Only — and this is important — when we want to erotically love only the beloved person as The One! , we betray God by adding an idol to him.
Read on: The Gods Of The Cynics
In erotic love, understood in Greek, we desire Kalokagathia, that is The Beautiful and the Virtuous (=Good). Sexuality, understood as drive and action for the preservation of the species, is only one form of erotic expression. With the Enlightenment, eroticism was reduced to sexuality, understood as a reproductive function, thus only possible at all between sexually mature persons.
This culminated with Freud, who devalued any eroticism not aimed at procreation as perverse. Sexuality is already fully present in the child, according to Freud. But it is regularly less intense and above all not genitally oriented towards procreation.
The child is therefore polymorphously perverse.
Novalis answers: whoever understands nature only empirically will find only dirt in it. And indeed, the sex of most adults today is a rather sad filthy affair. Understood more deeply, Novalis warns, among other things, precisely against putting eroticism in the service of procreation. This way we only recognize the mechanics of procreation and we lose its sense! This sense supplies alone the eroticism! It stands therefore far above the sexual function.
After eroticism was overthrown from the throne with the Enlightenment, sexuality was also freed from the reproductive function in capitalism and re-evaluated to a purely hedonistic need. Consequently — because, as said above, the reproductive function cannot provide a reproductive sense. Fucking now has only the sense to fuck. The noblest has been devalued to the dirtiest.
Read more: Get rid of shame
Wilhelm Reich, the alleged “sex pope” of the sexual revolution of 1968, also complains about this. During sex, mostly only armored bodies meet and rape each other.
Love is “the rooting of God in man’s cleanest depth. This depth is there from the very beginning of life. Propagation is only added to genitality in puberty. Godly genital love is there long before the function of propagation; therefore, the genital embrace was not created by Nature and God only for the purpose of propagation.”
“In real man, the god-given genital embrace has turned into the pornographic 4-lettering male-female intercourse.” [fuck]
“Godlike love turns into lust, the embrace into a hideous, grinning fuck, an expression of hating, getting, grasping, holding, possessing, ripping off or ramming in, jerking-it-off and rubbing-it-through, give-her-the-works and the marital-obligations racket, with lawyers, reporters, public defamation, tearing children’s love apart, revenge, alimony and acrimony”
Reich, Wilhelm. The Murder of Christ . Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle-Version
Protect children from the “sexual” dirt, not from erotic love
But if neither the reproductive function, nor mere pleasure satisfaction, but erotic attraction gives meaning and power to sexual activity, then the argument that children’s sexual interests are radically incompatible with those of adults falls.
The US social scientist David Finkelhor is one of the world’s (especially in the German state-university discourse) most prominent activists against any decriminalization of sexual acts between children and adults. His argumentation is perfidious and dominates legislation and prevailing opinion worldwide to this day.
He does not even try to invalidate the flood of sexology research papers presented since the 1950s, which empirically prove the harmlessness of sex between children and adults. He concedes to the protagonists of decriminalization that
1. the argument of “unnaturalness” does not apply, because this argument could be invalidated here just as in the case of homosexuality,
2. he also rejects the argument of “early sexualization” often used by conservatives. Children would be indisputably sexual beings.
And 3rd, he also acknowledges the empirical studies that show the harmlessness of sexual contact between children and adults.
Instead, he attacks the proponents of liberalization at the very core of their argument: voluntariness. The main argument was that the state should not establish moral laws, but should sanction only those acts that would violate sexual self-determination. Acts that were voluntary on the part of the participants should remain unpunished.
Finkelhor now makes what he sees as a moral argument that children are incapable of giving consent to sexual acts. He distinguished between simple and informed consent. So even if a child would agree to sexual acts with an adult or even actively seduce the adult to such acts, one could not assume informed consent. This is impossible because the child cannot understand the full consequences of a sexual relationship with an adult. Finkelhor compares the moral situation to the therapist/patient relationship:
“Adult-child sex is similar to sex between a therapist and a patient. There may be cases where the patient benefits, but it is still wrong due to the fundamental asymmetry of the relationship.”
Finkelhor, D., “What’s wrong with sex between adults and children?” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. 49, 1979, pp. 692-697
Children, Finkelhor argues, cannot possibly have voluntary sex with an adult because of the power gap with the adult. Consent is therefore completely irellevant2completely irellevant, really. The penalties for sex with children in German criminal law are now very high. Use of force hardly makes a difference in the sentence (3 months), voluntariness is no longer taken into account at all, thanks to Finkelhor’s influence. . Just as it has been seen in the therapist/patient relationship since the early 60s.3Neither Freud, nor Jung, Perls or Goodman had such ethical concerns, just to name the best known pioneers of modern forms of therapy. Another Gestalt therapist, Polster, even describes in one of his books how he had sexual intercourse with a patient during a group session [sic!] because he felt it was helpful for her in the situation. As said, Finkelhor does not deny the possible benefit even in the therapeutic context. Nevertheless, it would be wrong because of the power imbalance.
The notion that consensual sex is only possible in a power-free space has become pandemic. For example, the entire “me-too” movement is based on the idea that young actresses had to get into bed with a director in order to get the part. The fact that it is nonetheless consensual sex is simply denied. Recently, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, got into trouble. He had asked a new flight attendant on his private jet to give him a hand job. The latter felt harassed by this, although massage was explicitly stated in the job description.
I do not want to go further into these excesses of tabooing sexual contacts between adults, when there is an alleged power imbalance, whereby even adults are judged to be incapable of giving consent, even if they have given their consent..
But at least children should be protected from such power differences. Surely their sexuality should be allowed to develop innocently among their peers, away from the influence of power?
Power imbalance in groups of children
The idea of the naturally innocent child is, just like that of the noble savage in nature, a far-reaching invention of the Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau. The will to might already shapes the life of the suckling child in its intercourse with its mother. And children’s groups as well as children’s friendships are anything but free of power imbalances.
I was maybe 11 years old. An orgasm with ejaculation was still unknown to me. But I began to be more interested in girls. However, I attended an all-boys school. The intercourse was rough and distant. From most of the other children we knew only the last name. We were competitors for better grades. Friendships were not planned by the state/capitalist school system.
Now in class, nevertheless, I noticed a classmate whom I found very attractive. He had girlish features. And he was friendly! We began to talk in the breaktimes. Eventually we got into the habit of walking home together after school. That was a walk of almost half an hour. And we had to carry heavy school bags along the way. Satchels we no longer wore, that would have been childish. And backpacks weren’t fashionable back then either. So we dragged our heavy school bags.
And then it happened: Detlef, that was the boy’s name, held out his bag to me as soon as we had left the schoolyard: “Carry this for me,” he demanded. I obeyed, thinking that maybe he wanted to tie his shoes for a moment or had some other reason why I should carry his bag for a short time. But no. He simply walked beside me. And made no effort to take the bag back. I will never forget the moment when I realized this. The sensation was so strong that I can still recall the feeling in my memory after now more than 50 years. A heat flowed through me all over my body, my penis became stiff. I was trembling with excitement. I looked at Detlef from the side. He was smiling.
And I had instantly fallen deeply in love with him. Detlef enjoyed the erotic power he exercised over me. And I enjoyed being allowed to serve this beautiful boy like a god. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that I was not only bigger and stronger than my new friend, but also more dominant in everyday life. Just because I was “a Heck” and we were a total of 8 boys in the extended family who had formed a strong “gang” known in the neighborhood, I enjoyed a certain respect in class, school and also on the street. Not infrequently I protected weaker ones from getting thrashed by all the classmates. And so I became also in the external relationship with Detlef his protector, his body guard. Just as he was my angel, whom I missed after school hours. So that I soon followed him to his swimming club. And we became inseparable friends for the next few years.
I tell this incident because here developed an erotic relationship between two children that did not take place at all in a power-free space. Other children could have seen that I was carrying Detlef’s bag and made fun of it. Detlef could also have exposed me. Conversely, he had to fear that he would have received a beating from me for his impertinent demand. But even more serious for me was the fact that Detlef was a boy. Although I immediately fell in love with Uschi in the swimming club, who, by the way, was also a power-conscious superstar in the swimming club and was constantly being fawned over by boys, which she enjoyed, my attraction to the boy, which in any case was also a mutual erotic attraction, remained between Detlef and me.
My worry was therefore soon whether I was possibly a “faggot“. This worry was quite burdensome. I could not talk about it with anyone at that time. And was therefore really very afraid. Because at that time it was still a big stigma to be gay. But the erotic attraction that Detlef exerted on me was stronger than my fear.
Imagine similar feelings if Detlef had been an adult. That would then be ammunition for those who would thus see the traumatic4As an aside: the term “trauma,” originally understood as physical injury, has had a hysterical career. If I once burned myself on a hot stove, the painful memory of it is something very healthy that does not have to be treated away as “trauma. consequences of such adult/child contacts proven. But we were only two boys of the same age. And most readers will rather smile about the childish fears I had endured than worry about the long-term traumatic consequences on my soul life.
Children are neither “innocent” in the sense of Christian slave morality, nor are they powerless. And they often have a better sense of the actual power relations than adults. This is because adults often judge a situation according to how they think it should be, rather than how it really is. In systemic counseling, we liken this phenomenon to adults often judging food by the menu than by the real dish. Children should not have erotic feelings. So adults overlook relevant behaviors. A child who strokes her genital area probably needs to go to the bathroom or may have an infection. Children should all be equal in their peergroups, so adults think there are no hierarchies in children’s groups. And they lie to the children, and often to themselves, by claiming they love all children equally because they think it’s their duty to love all children equally.
After my social work studies, I worked in a children’s home for the first few years of my career. Most of my professional colleagues had absolutely no clue about what was really going on in the children’s daily lives. And educators who at least suspected something was going on then spoke of a subculture that had to be fought. Even if today subculture is no longer necessarily associated with criminality, the first studies on subcultures took place in a criminal sociological research field in Chicago. Accordingly, in educational literature of the 1960s, one could still find hints on how to recognize and break up such subcultures in homes. Mostly it amounted to identifying so-called ” gang leaders” and then transferring them to stricter sometimes closed homes or to closed psychiatry.
It took me a long time to gain the trust of the children in the protectory. And I was almost the only “educator” who really had insight into their subculture. Most of the professional and well-paid educators had absolutely no idea what was really going on in the groups of children and with the individual children.
An extreme example: In a group I wasn’t even responsible for, a 13-year-old girl got pregnant. She didn’t tell the educators because she didn’t want to have an abortion and was afraid that she would be forced to have one. Almost all the children in the home knew about the pregnancy. I was also included so that I would talk to the girl. She persisted: none of her educators should know. She made me promise not to tell. In fact, it only became apparent when she was already 7 months pregnant. Smartly, she always wore a bomber jacket. And the educators had not noticed it all this time, although the belly was already clearly protruding.
In this home I once asked in my group, in which 11 “difficult to educate” children and teenagers lived, if they guessed who of the children I liked very much and who maybe not so much. One youngster, his name was Harald, came forward. I did not like Harald at all. He was always very loud, was constantly involved in fights and was otherwise a mess. And then something happened that I would never forget for the rest of my life: he was able to tell me exactly! the order in which I liked the children in my group. From my favorite child to him. Yes. He said that he also knew that I didn’t like him, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Because I was still much kinder to him than the other adults, he said.
Tears welled up in my eyes, which Harald noticed immediately and comforted me. It would really be all right, everything would be fine. And then he added something extra. I had only asked about the children in the group. But of course there was Nadja, who lived in another group. And everyone knew that this girl was by far the one I would have liked best. I was flabbergasted. The other children grinned. One of them said that Nadja was the most liked of all the children in the home, so I wasn’t the only one.
.
I could fill books about my time in this children’s home. But just one more story to show that children not only knew exactly the power structures, which was not insignificantly influenced by eroticism. When a young colleague started working there who was really very ugly, with a wart on her face from which a hair was sprouting, the verdict came quickly: this “wicked witch” would be expelled. And yes: the children would very likely have succeeded. I asked the children’s leaders, which of course included the aforementioned Nadja, for a grace period. I promised to keep a close eye on the new colleague. If it turned out that she not only looked ugly, but would also be ugly to the children, then I would also confide in them.
So the colleague was given the grace period. And, as promised, I felt her out. It turned out that she was a very friendly person and she did not scold the difficult children, but was open and curious. I told the children that. And: the colleague was indeed received in a friendly way. Even friendlier by the children than at first by her colleagues, who were also rather skeptical. Soon, this social worker was even one of the few colleagues who let the children get close to her at all. So much for the alleged power imbalance between the naïve innocent children on one side and the overbearing adults on the other. This is simply a construction of how adults would like it to be, or perhaps how they really imagine it to be.
Finkelhor is totally wrong with his insinuation. Let’s just take Harald: he had to come to terms with the fact that the most popular home educator, of all people, didn’t like him at all. Which, by the way, changed permanently after his enlightenment: he quickly became one of my friends. Or let’s take 14-year-old Nadja, who was so popular with all the children (and with me). She was really very attractive, too. All pubescent boys, and that was most of them, would have liked to be her friend. But only a few of them had a chance. So the vast majority of boys had to come to terms with the fact that they would never have a chance to perhaps kiss Nadja once, at least to take her in their arms or even to have sex with her, which she, by the way, had on a regular basis, but which hardly any adult suspected.
One last example of what children suffer: a little girl from our home, she was perhaps just 5 years old, once said to me that she wanted to be my dog. I was startled. Why then that, I asked concerned. Well, then she could lie down in the dog basket in our apartment like my dog and sleep there. And sometimes I would stroke her. Of course, I immediately took her in my arms, stroked her and assured her — honestly — that I would definitely love her more than my dog. And that maybe she could spend some weekends with us. I would just have to clear it with my wife and daughter. If you, reader, still haven’t understood that children are often exposed to very violent power relations, both in normal everyday life and in their own erotic life, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to shake your fixed judgments. You will then continue to agree with the ruling consensus that a minor is not capable of consenting to erotic contacts with adults, because he cannot oversee the whole dynamic of the event and because he is in a powerless position vis-à-vis the adult..
How I learned to adore a child
No sooner had I left my own childhood behind and found myself, 16 years old, in a class with the goal of a specialized baccalaureate for social pedagogy, I had begun to betray childhood and with it myself. I suddenly saw children, at least outwardly, no longer as my equals, but as a completely different “species”, one that needs pedagogy, that needs to be educated. During a class party, the coolest guy in our class went outside with some kids to play some ball. When he came back, I asked him, “Well, have you had any pedagogical experience?”. I was very embarrassed by his answer: “Nah, we played ball, we had fun”. Obviously, he had not betrayed his own childhood as quickly as I had.
A few years later. I was 21 years old. Finally, despite my Catholic upbringing, I had had my first sex and was now even quite a popular guy. I lived in a leftist commune. And was now doing an internship in a left-wing kindergarten. In 1977 there was not yet a big gap between socialists/communists and us anarchists. Ah yes. I forgot: in the meantime I had become an anarchist. So I worked in a kindergarten under communist leadership. But almost half of the parents were not socialists or communists, but anarchists, like me. A trip was coming up. For a long weekend, the „Kinderladen” would take the children to a summer camp. The counselors were Petra, the director of the Kinderladen, two young educators who were both in love with me, and me. On the day of departure,
Jörg, one of the fathers, approached me. He wanted to talk to me. We went to a quiet corner. Jörg was quite a successful psychotherapist. He drove a new Volvo. That was a status symbol at the time. And this star among parents, Jörg, wanted to talk to me, the unimportant intern. All right. Jörg told me that he wanted to entrust his daughter, Anja, to me in particular, because he trusted me. This surprised me very much. Neither had I ever talked to Jörg, nor to his very attractive wife, nor to 5-year-old Anja. Anja was the star among the children. She had some aura that kept the children at a distance. She did not rage. She played rather quietly, she was mostly friendly. If she was attacked by a child, she immediately had another child as a protector. I had little to do with Anja. I was mostly busy with the noisy aggressive children, so there was hardly time for anything else.
And now Jörg said that Anja had told him that she trusted me the most, among the educators. That’s why he would ask me to be there for her. And then he added: “Anja is used to us stroking her to sleep. Would you go to her bedside in the evening and pet her so she can fall asleep?”
“Why not?” I thought. It made sense to me. “Anja doesn’t have to go to sleep alone. Her parents stay by her bed. And that’s what I’m doing right now.”
While I was having these thoughts, I suddenly felt that I was being hugged. I was slightly startled. Because it was still very unusual in Germany at that time to be hugged by a man. And then for so long. He held me tightly in his arms, squeezed me tightly and then said goodbye to me. The two kindergarten teachers had overheard and laughed. I told them that Jörg had asked me to caress his daughter as she fell asleep. Aha. Nothing exciting then.
On the first evening, Anja reminded me of my promise. After all the children were in their beds and we sat together over a beer, I went back to the children’s bedroom. Anja was upstairs in a bunk bed.
“There, Anja, then sleep well” I said to her, while I began to stroke her head.
But she took my hand and gently guided it to the place where she wanted to be stroked. I was a bit startled. But only a little, because at that time, in all progressive families, communes and kindergartens, including ours, there was the sex education book Zeig Mal (Show Me) lying around. I had looked at all the pictures in it and also carefully read the somewhat unsettling texts in it. And years before, I had seen little girls in kindergarten lying on their backs and masturbating. But never before had a child asked me to stroke it. So I did it as she showed me, and after a few minutes her breathing quickened. She then took my hand away. She now looked at me. And asked, “Will you sleep the night with me? Please, yes? Please, please!”. “Gladly!” I answered. “I’m going to go back to the adults for a bit, then I’ll come.”
As soon as I left, I felt something strange that I didn’t know yet.
I missed her!
I wanted to be back with Anja as soon as possible. I finished my beer quickly. And then explained to the three women that Anja wanted me to sleep with her and that I would now. It was the most beautiful thing I could imagine at that moment. Sex with one of the two kindergarten teachers? Oh no. Exhausting and deeply unsatisfying. I wanted to go to my little Anja. Anja… Anja…
I had fallen in love. I was in love with a child, for the first time in my life and certainly not for the last time. I was happy. The next morning Anja woke me up. She was hungry, she wanted to eat a yogurt from the refrigerator. And she asked me if she could go into the kitchen.
„No.” The children were not allowed to do that. Petra had strictly forbidden them to do so.
They would all have to stay in the bedroom until they were called, namely when breakfast was ready. But it was still much too early. Everyone was still asleep. I looked at Anja. “You know you’re not allowed to do that. Do you want me to get you a yogurt?” “No!” she decided. And had understood that I would not – could not – forbid her to run to the kitchen.
She climbed out of bed and was gone.
When she came back, without yogurt, she just said, “Petra caught me and scolded me”. She talked to me as if I were another child, one of her friends. She had not protested the scolding. She had not said, “But Klaus allowed me”. She lay back down. I asked her if she wanted me to pet her again. “No. Only in the evening! was her clear answer.
What else happened? you want to know? Well. Nothing! Nothing you might have feared or hoped for. Anja and I were now friends. That was clear. Everyone knew that right away. You could probably even tell that we were kind of in love with each other. Anja now often sought my proximity during the day. We talked, played. And in the evening the ceremony was repeated: I stroked her. She fell asleep. I drank another beer with my colleagues, but I could hardly wait to lie next to her and eventually fall asleep.
Since then, my relationship with all the children has changed fundamentally and permanently. It was the first time with Anja that I preferred to be with her, a child, rather than with any adults. It has remained that way until today. I make no distinction between children, teenagers and adults.
Only a week ago, a young man came to me, whom I had once promised to possibly shoot a music video with him. He makes quite talented hip hop. But the man is also exhausting, talks a lot, wants many answers. So I asked him to leave, I just needed some rest. My little girlfriend Barakka was also with me. The man spoke to her a little in Swahili. The 7-year-old Barakka answered in English:
“No. I don’t go. Just because you say so. It’s not like I’m disturbing Klaus. And if Klaus wants me to go, he will tell me himself!”
I wondered at her courage. And smiled at the man. Gave him to understand that it was true. That she really doesn’t mind me, she watches cartoons. And it is pleasant for me when she is there. She would be my little angel, I explained to the man. Parrhesia was that: tell the truth about yourself”
Learn Romantic Love by Adoring Children
“She is the one!”? — That doesn’t work with children. It can’t. Even here, erotic affection for a child is healing. You can’t get stuck on loving this child, and only this child, for the rest of your life. Because it will only be a few years before this child is no longer a child.
That is the tragedy of pedophiles fixated on loving children. Their love is not sustainable, after all, it cannot be.
Mohammed, who married his later favorite wife before puberty, but did not consummate the marriage until after her sexual maturity, was not a pedophile.
Even today, I am happy to offer any pedophile therapy aimed at overcoming the fixation on children, not at fighting the erotic attraction of children; on the contrary, any adult can only benefit from allowing the forbidden love of children. And above all, it would also be a great benefit for children if they were no longer sorted out by adults as “erotically inferior”.
I hope that at least one thing has already become clear in the text so far: it is not about hedonistic “sex with children”. It is about not blocking the greatest social energy, which is eroticism, between adults and children.
Don’t be afraid to idolize, but….
This text is about how to adore Children to learn romantic love. I am really convinced that most adults have forgotten how to love each other romantically. In fact, most people associate romance with some sentimental kitsch. But in fact, since Novalis, the Romantic movement was and is a resistance movement against the profanation of the world by the Enlightenment.
Romanticization means to deify the world again.
The prohibition against this idolizing is not primarily set up by the state churches, which here wrongly but not by mistake make out “idolatry”. But it is state-bearing ruling norm, in no case to connect power with Eros. Because power united with Eros is a constant threat of the rule of the coercive societies. So all relations should be “partnerships”, that means, power-free. Systems psychology warns5if this article in Psychology Today has not yet “convinced” you, here is the 2nd part against any breach of this taboo.
And under one condition these warnings are even appropriate. That is, if you see in the idolized one “The One”, and not only an Beispiel6We translate the German “Beispiel” with example, but the etymology of „Beispiel” refers to a spell (spiel –> spill/spell. Never underestimate an example… , a representation for The One, for God.
We Cynics automatically follow the rule of the Stoics:
Never say about anything, “I have lost it,” but instead, “I have given it back.” Did your child die? It was given back. Did your wife die? She was given back. “My land was taken.” So this too was given back. “But the person who took it was bad!” How does the way the giver asked for it back concern you? As long as he gives it, take care of it as something that is not your own, just as travelers treat an inn.
Epitetus Handbook (Absolutely recommended reading!)
So what we can learn in erotic encounter with a child and extend to adult contacts is to experience the child precisely as an example (Beispiel), but not “only as an example” (Beispiel). As long as the erotic idolatry of something and somebody serves a representation of the god, that is, as an Beispiel, that is what Romanticization means. we need not worry. The child grows up. Your wife dies or leaves you. Your house collapses. None of this was your property. God only lent it to you to serve Him. Now there are other things waiting to be idolized by you. Maybe it is you who should be an example for someone for God? Anyway, be beautiful and virtuous: practice parrhesia, show yourself!
And if you want to understand what I write better: maybe ask a child. At 5 years old, children are still good philosophers. Unfortunately, that then changes in compulsory schools.
- 1The good Greek, not Christian modern understood: better to think of “good” as “strong” or everything that makes us stronger. For Cynics, the virtue parrhesia, self-realization, is the good par excellence. We also look for parrhesia in the beautiful, which we want to idolize.
- 2completely irellevant, really. The penalties for sex with children in German criminal law are now very high. Use of force hardly makes a difference in the sentence (3 months), voluntariness is no longer taken into account at all, thanks to Finkelhor’s influence.
- 3Neither Freud, nor Jung, Perls or Goodman had such ethical concerns, just to name the best known pioneers of modern forms of therapy. Another Gestalt therapist, Polster, even describes in one of his books how he had sexual intercourse with a patient during a group session [sic!] because he felt it was helpful for her in the situation. As said, Finkelhor does not deny the possible benefit even in the therapeutic context. Nevertheless, it would be wrong because of the power imbalance.
- 4As an aside: the term “trauma,” originally understood as physical injury, has had a hysterical career. If I once burned myself on a hot stove, the painful memory of it is something very healthy that does not have to be treated away as “trauma.
- 5if this article in Psychology Today has not yet “convinced” you, here is the 2nd part
- 6We translate the German “Beispiel” with example, but the etymology of „Beispiel” refers to a spell (spiel –> spill/spell. Never underestimate an example…