Intimate Adventure

Linnea defined Intimate Adventure very well:

You'll find my view at
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

Linnea Sinclaire wrote MAY 21 2007:
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What does it take to push beyond those boundaries? What does it take to tell your parents, your village, your society to take a hike, get lost, leave me alone and let me love? What does it take to risk it all, to throw away everything that has heretofore defined you as a person? What does it take to open your heart, fully expecting rejection?

What kind of person is that?
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That is a hero on the road to Intimate Adventure, that's what kind of person that is.
It takes more courage to be emotionally honest (especially with yourself about WHO and maybe WHAT you are) than it does to be physically honest -- to admit mistakes, wrong-doing, or bad judgement, or to impose your idea of right upon others by your mighty sword.
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Kimber An commented on Linnea's blog entry of Monday May 21, 2007:

I wondered what would drive a girl to do something she knows will get her killed if she's caught? My thought is that her home life must be so devoid of love and joy that when she finds it somewhere else, she grabs it for all she's worth. All human beings need love.

I wondered why would it be the death penalty for a girl to fall in love with someone? My thought on that is that a girl represents an unused sexual object. Men are terrified of being rejected by those they want to have sex with. Most men develop the courage to cope. In some societies and individuals, they don't. Rather than risk rejection, the girl's basic human right to choose her own sexual partner is taken from her. Like a non-sentient animal, she's not allowed control over her own body. To say nothing of her heart. This is rape, but some people dress it up in a religion or whatever.

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Kimber An has the makings of a field-changing author! (not just writer; AUTHOR).

This is the kind of thinking we all need to be doing on so many levels.

Deep inside what Kimber An has said here lies the key to World Peace.

And that really has nothing whatever to do with sexuality or choosing a mate. It has to do with taking an idea (such as Linnea tossed out for discussion) and turning it over, inside out, analyzing Linnea's idea and synthesizing it with other bits acquired elsewhere, to create another idea.

Science Fiction is the Literature of Ideas.

Science is nothing more than the organization of knowledge that's been verified by cross-checking (peer review journals being an example). Ideas can't just sit there. They get organized, rearranged, strangely juxtaposed, and turned upside down.

Fiction is all about finding the invisible shape of things that lies within the interlaced and overlapping fog of tiny ideas and facts. We swim in a sea of trivia, bits and pieces and shards and pebbles of nothing much all clumped around and thus hiding nuggets of Infinite Joy.

The writer's job is to pare away the dross and expose that underlying, intrinsic, meaningful pattern of true joy. That is, generally speaking, what art is for, what artists do.

The universe is such that the bits of dull matter and negative energies (which includes most acts people tag as evil) we swim in are attracted to the bright Joy, clump around Joy, cling to it and disguise it -- not destroy, disguise. As a result, it's very easy to live your life convinced the world is nothing but angst, boredom, overbearing men, and pointless toil because that's what you see on the surface.

It takes the penetrating gaze of the mystic to spot the hidden Joys. And then it takes the Artist to portray that Hidden Joy emerging from hiding in such a way that ordinary people can go out and about their lives and actually SEE Joy they never knew was there.

From there, it's possible for the oridinary person to internalize and experience that Joy for themselves.

That's why we read Romance Novels -- in any sub-genre. We know that our lives can be changed if we can SEE what's really there rather than the husks of dullness and negativity accreted around our joys.

Finding the right mate is only one of those many Joys in life, but let's look a little closer at what Kimber An has said.

Now why would a girl (woman even, maybe) be willing to risk her very life for something different than she has right now? How terrible does it have to be for you to prefer death to continuing?

That might be the wrong question.

It isn't how bad conditions are here and now that drives people to risk death. It's how GOOD they think it MIGHT (fantasy-romance?) be elsewhere.

Look at the Mexican and Hispanic illegal immigrants -- they come seeking a BETTER life, not fleeing the life they have. If the USA weren't their northern neighbor, dangling all that forbidden fruit before them on TV signals, would they be flooding north?

But look at Iraq - it's bleeding population to every surrounding country, people walking out with what they can carry, desperate for a place to live that isn't exploding all the time.

But though they are refugees, they aren't moving because conditions are horrid where they are.

They are moving because they believe conditions are better WHERE THEY ARE GOING.

If the other countries were in the same or worse shape, they wouldn't move.

They are trying to "get away from" horrid conditions -- and that means being able to imagine that conditions are better where they are going. Look at all those still sitting in the mud. They're the ones who can't imagine conditions are better elsewhere.

Look at those who are sticking it out in Iraq, (likewise the Balkans, Northern Ireland, various African countries, Darfur comes to mind). Horrid conditions don't make them move. Why? Things will get better here by and by, and then things will be horrid "there" (wherever there might be) eventually. Home is always better. For some people.

Some people can imagine the Joy hidden within the layers of angst in their current position. Sometimes that Joy isn't really there -- but people are more motivated by imagination than by facts.

People are more sensitive to LURES than to GOADS.

It's a psychological principle. You get people to alter behavior faster by offering rewards, not punishments. Even works with dogs.

Confidence Operators use that principle.

So women denied the right to choose their own mate won't leave, won't murder the power-mad whip-wielder, won't murder the unwanted husband or legally licensed rapist, and won't strike against the system.

Why? Because conditions are horrid in the marriage system? No. Because they can't see that it's BETTER anywhere else, or how any other system might work better. "All men are the same."

However, because of TV, photos, the internet, tourist travel, telephone etc. etc., women the world over are being exposed to other ways of looking at the problem, other solutions, places where things work better, where they can imagine it's better, where they can imagine Joy exposed to their sight.

And so the world is changing. That change is causing a backlash against "Western Civilization." There are those who are striking out hard against freedom to choose, even to choose wrongly.

But make no mistake. In the animal -- birds, squirrels, dogs even -- it's always the female who gets to choose the mate.

Just watch in your yard or in the park at this time of year and you'll see female birds rejecting randy males, just flittering away before they can mount. And the poor male has to sit there and watch her fly away. (saw this the other day and felt so sorry for that piteously drooping male bird -- then he went after a different female.)

Human civilization will swing back to accomodate this pattern because it's inherent.

So as SF writers, we should be wondering what would happen if some Alien Species landed on the UN Plaza and offered women something BETTER. What if so many women left Earth that it put the species in danger?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://www.simegen.com/jl/