Book Review: Eros and Civilization, by Herbert Marcuse

This book sucked, I really hated it.

Unfortunately, if you want to understand why today's teenagers and twenty-somethings are sooooooo stupid, Eros and Civilization is unavoidable.  Herbert Marcuse is a Godfather of today's debased culture.  While Marcuse's prose is poorly written and almost incoherent, his conclusion is terrifyingly accurate: Sexual Licence makes all forms of Utopianism an easy sell.

Utopians have used Sex to promote their evil schemes since the dawn of time.  In biblical times, Jezebel use sexual licence to convince King Ahab to subsidize the enemies of God (sidenote: Times NEVER Change).  The French Revolution is notorious for HORRID acts of sexual depravity.  In just the past year, we've heard about people going to Occupy Wall St. to get laid.

Herbert Marcuse, once you penetrate his incoherent ramblings, sought to use sex to reshape American culture.  While Marcuse never states his ultimate goal, in general it's a Marxist and Pagan scheme to create Heaven on Earth.  Marcuse channels Franklin Roosevelt to redefine freedom as "to live without anxiety (150)."  Since morality creates anxiety, for Marcuse man "is free only where he is free from constraint, external and internal, physical and moral -- when he is constrained neither by law nor by need (187)."  Predictably, Marcuse is not a fan of Judeo-Christian values, or traditional nuclear families.

Marcuse's primary strategy is to remove taboos against sexual perversion, making physical sensation the primary objective of human existence:

the perversions uphold sexuality as an end in itself; they place themselves outside the dominion of the performance principle and challenge its very foundation.  They establish libidinal relationships relationships which society must ostracize because they threaten to reverse the process of civilization....Moreover, licence in the practice of perversions would endanger the orderly reproduction not only of labor power but perhaps even of mankind itself. (50-1)

That quote speaks for itself.

This is evil stuff.  Unlike most Utopians, who advocate force, Marcuse advocates sexual temptation to undermine our better angels.  According to Marcuse, the human body would

 [N]o longer be used as a full time instrument of labor, the body would be resexualized....The body in its entirety would become an object of cathexis, a thing to be enjoyed -- an instrument of pleasure.  This change in the value of and scope of libidinal relations would lead to a disintegration of the institutions in which the private interpersonal relations have been organized, particularly the monogamic and patriarchal family. (201)

 That, of course, was the original Marxist goal.

As I've written before: "Cultural Marxists use sex as a smokescreen to sabotage the discipline necessary to delay gratification."  Sexual licence ALWAYS begets chaos.  Once chaos ensues, Utopians know they can lead people to Marxism and Paganism.

Free Love is an easy sell to ignorant people.  That's why evil people use sex as a smokescreen to advance their agenda, which is usually some form of Marxism or Paganism.  Eros and Civilization, in spite of the fact it's a poorly written incoherent slog, is a necessary step to decode that agenda.