Ideational and Sensate Culture

Transitional Causes from Ideation Culture to Sensate Culture

In its early stages the American culture observed a lot of decorum in how it depicted the human body in visual arts. However, in the later stages the Americans started getting increasingly preoccupied with sexualized display and eroticism. The modest sexual behaviors in the American culture started being impacted by visual arts which led to the loosening of the American society’s modest morals.  This eventually led to an overall lose of societal sexual morals, an overall lose of the culture’s creativity, waning stability in families and rapid domestic discontent.  However, the ascetical tensions in the early Protestantism and catholic counter reforms temporarily brought to a standstill this inclination (Cuzzort and King, 2002).

Nonetheless, this not withstanding in the 20^th century the American society more and more started discarding its older religious restraints as well as their strict moral values on sex and sunk into a sexual revolution. The detrimental results of this sexual revolution to the general well being and overall health of the American society cannot be exaggerated. There was an interval of time in which these sexual morals could be reversed. This is because the American society had just begun undergoing the change. Those who had been brought up in the years of good morals had retained most of their old traditions as far as restraint and self-discipline was concerned. Apart from that, their children had in them concrete parental role models to look up to as a limited restrictive influence (Jeffries, 2010).

The greatest impact of this sexual revolution occurred in America’s third generation. This is because the entire generation was brought up in a societal setting that comprised of elders who stemmed from a sexual liberation and lost their capacity to focus their libidinal energies in a dynamic and restricted manner. The third generation was thus faced by cultural decline, advanced dissipation, general economic decline, diminished creativity and antisocial behavior.

According to Sorokin behavior that allows chronically disorderly, excessive and illicit sexual activities drastically contributes to waning cultural creativity. On the other hand, regimes that confine sexual activities within the marriage institution provide a platform for the creative growth of their culture. The American sexual revolution resulted in more sexual pervasiveness of their culture through the media and arts (Sorokin, 2005).
How This Transition Has Influenced American Culture

This transition greatly influenced the American culture in various ways. In the first stages of the transition the sexual revolution leaders made a deliberate attempt to destroy the family and marriage institutions. Free love was hyped through the representative glass of water theory; if an individual was thirsty it did not matter the kind and type of glass he used to gratify his thirst. The legal peculiarity between casual sex and marriage was eliminated. The Americans thought that through sexual pervasiveness of casual sex, pre marital sex and extra marital affairs they would increase their birth rate and have more babies than if there society was sexually retrained but this did not occur.  Instead within two generations they started facing a decline in their population (Cuzzort and King, 2002).

Today’s American society is averse with individuals who are lost in thought about sexual pleasure and excitement. Consequently, they do not want to be bothered by the burden of raising children. This is because this obligation would be an impediment to the realization of their pleasures. The birth rate is thus forcibly reduced through various means such as: involuntary sterility, abortion, contraception and infanticide. Men and Women in America were not and are still not enthusiastic about marriage and incase they get into marriage they are more often than not a childless union or if they bring up children its only one or two kids. Consequently, their population becomes static for some time before it starts declining. A combination of increased life longevity with low birth rates leads to a radical upward distribution of the population. The population would not have many young people but would contain many old and middle aged people (Sorokin, 2005).

Apart from destabilizing entire family lines and cultures the sexual revolution upset the fragile psychic equilibrium of the numerous individuals who yielded to its fascination. Divorce is very easy to be legally obtained so that some marriages have lasted a record few hours. Conversely to the image created by most of American film, literature and psychology the inner world of individuals that are sexually enlightened is that of inner tension and turmoil (Jeffries, 2010).

 The Effect/Outcome of This Transition

American sexual adventurers are dominated by sexual desires and lusts and are continuously bothered by external stimuli that confront their fragile internal c.............