Re: Is there something I am not getting

I think you are making excellent points here. It does indeed come down to needs and very honestly expressed needs. The chances that all such needs coincide are quite remote and that is why a lot of folk post here, asking how they can persuade a partner to try the lifestyle out. It is why my own thread in praise of Emily includes so many offerings. The experiences are highly unusual, even surreal, and yes they evoke all sorts of thoughts and feelings inside me. Any idea that I as a dominant male can completely orchestrate and control things is clearly nuts. I am learning, and trying to share that learning in the thread. The lifestyle is insecure, exhilarating, thought on speed as it were. In this sense it is above the ordinary and perhaps it is this that seems compelling to so many. Vanilla sex plods (as it were), cuckold sex works with instincts and yes, they are competitive, elitist, and not always empathetic. Perhaps it is the case that society has become too safe, too refined, for sex to function as it once did?

Rosseau suggested that people can be thought of as instinctively good, as collaborative and considerate of others. He made arguments about education on the basis of that-how you motivate learners. Punishment was out and exploration was in. Carl Rogers continued the ideas many many years later. But it is unwise to automatically equate collaborative with equity. Social groups can co operate on an inequitable basis. Different cadres within the group can secure, and use (we hope wisely and responsibly) greater authority. This is the basis of the argument that before religion guided human society, back when we lived in tribes, that unequal collaboration was the order of the day. The strong ruled, and carried responsibility. The alpha male (the strongest back
then) got the major share of procreation rights but they also had to bring home the meat from the savannah too. I can’t pretend to explain why inequality is then so appealing for some. But it does have a hold on many and it might relate to such primal instincts.

Whether this is ‘dark’ depends on whether a life is consensual. Taken to extreme inequality and elitism is part of the political far right, and we know what horrors that produced. But in moderation it is a right wing insistance that a decent society values opportunity, getting on , being rewarded for ability or skill. This society insists on minimum standards and rights for all, but as part of capitalism does not promote equity (save in opportunity).

I’ll leave it there-others are welcome in too. We can cover a lot on human nature here. Jezz