Sexual Hedonism destroys civilization

1930s anthropologist observed that sexual hedonism destroys civilizations

J.D. Unwin observed that when strict prenuptial chastity was forsaken by a society, a type of 'human entropy' — a gradual descent into disorder — set in.

An Oxford University social anthropologist’s decade of work have shown that there is a direct correlation between unbridled sexual freedom and the demise of cultures.

His research and conclusions were done nearly 100 years ago, long before the sexual revolution exploded in the western world.

The work of J.D. Unwin in his 1934 treatise “Sex and Culture” is prophetic.

His findings have turned out to be incredibly predictive, having been affirmed by the history of nations over the course of ensuing decades and till today.  

Unwin observed that when a society forsook strict prenuptial chastity, a type of “human entropy” — a gradual descent into disorder — set in. Monogamy, belief in God, and rational thinking disappeared within three generations of the shift toward greater sexual freedom. He concluded that sexual revolutions have long-term, devastating consequences for culture and civilization.

This Oxford researcher, who died in 1936, looked at 86 societies and civilizations — stretching from the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Romans to Polynesian and Micronesian societies to the Dakota, Hopi, Chickasaw, and Crow Indian tribes of North America — to determine if there is a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures.

In a recent blog piece titled - “Why Sexual Morality May Be Far More Important than You Ever Thought”- Christian author and speaker Kirk Dunston has distilled Unwin’s massive study, conducted over a lifetime.

“Increased sexual restraints, either pre or post-nuptial, always led to increased flourishing of a culture,” while “increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later,” explained Dunston. “The single most important correlation with the flourishing of a culture was whether pre-nuptial chastity was required or not.”

“The most powerful combination was pre-nuptial chastity coupled with ‘absolute monogamy,’” noted Dunston. “Cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.”

“When strict prenuptial chastity was no longer the norm, absolute monogamy, deism [religion], and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations,” wrote Duston. And if total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing,” and was usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.

Dunston wonders: “How are we doing as we enter the second or third generation since our own sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century?”

His conclusions reveal how closely Unwin’s findings have been predictive of the unravelling and weakening of American and European culture since the start of the sexual Revolution:

As predicted, unequivocal monogamy has already been replaced with modified monogamy. Common-law relationships are becoming the norm. Although divorce occurred prior to the 1970’s, the mainstream of our culture still maintained the view that marriage should be for life, and common-law relationships were regarded with unfavourably. That has clearly changed. Those who actually practice life-long commitments in marriage have become the minority, with couples born prior to the sexual revolution much more likely to maintain a life-long commitment in marriage.

Deism [religion] is already rapidly declining, exactly as predicted. Prior to the 1960’s, a combination of rationalism and a belief in God was the norm for mainstream culture.

Not only has belief in God greatly decreased since the 1960’s, but there has been a trend to remove the concept of God from government, the educational system, and the public forum. Those who still believe in God sense a strong societal pressure to keep deistic [religious] beliefs private. In its place, is a surprising rise in superstition, classified by Unwin as a “monistic” culture, two levels down from the rationalist culture we had prior to the sexual revolution. There has also been a huge increase in the percentage of the population that classifies itself as non-religious, a symptom of the lowest level of Unwin’s categories.

The swiftness with which rational thinking declined after the 1970’s is astounding. In its place arose post-modernism, characterized by “scepticism, subjectivism, or relativism” and “a general suspicion of reason”. But it gets worse … post-modernism is giving way to “post truth”. In direct contrast to rational thinking, a post-truth culture abandons “shared objective standards for truth” and instead, stands on appeals to feelings and emotions, and what one wants to believe.  People can now “identify” themselves as something which flat-out contradicts science and rational thinking and, in many cases, receive the full support and backing of governments and educational systems. Not only do people feel they have a right to believe what they want, but any challenge to that belief, even if supported by truth and logic, is unacceptable and offensive.

“Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism [religion], and absolute monogamy — are all well underway,” noted Dunston, “which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible ... the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation, somewhere in the last third of this century.”

Evidence of the destructive trajectory of the sexual revolution is everywhere, leading to a great cultural unravelling: the increase in children born out of wedlock and more than 60 million unwanted babies aborted annually. Every letter in the acronym LGBTQIA+ — the movement that continues its ascent in popular culture and political power — stands for a peculiar type of rejection of science and nature visible in the anthropological complementarity of man and woman. The immutable definition of marriage has turned to dust, and now “some men have cervixes” and “some women have penises.” The number of religious believers has dropped precipitously, accompanied by a corresponding rise of the “Nones,” those who have no faith. And now chaos — the end product of entropy — is increasing in very real ways due to Antifa and other groups bent on anarchy.

Unwin’s “research provides strong rational justification for the inference that God’s moral laws pertaining to our sexuality, although they may restrain us from some immediate pleasure, protect us individually, but also as cultural and national groupings, from enormous long-term suffering while maximizing our long term flourishing,” concluded Dunston.

Aug 25, 2020   -  Doug Mainwaring