Zuehlke

There are two options for the future of humanity with respect to sex.

The first and most obvious, for it is already under way, is one in which technology increasingly eliminates the negative effects of copulation. That would be done by creating a more potent contraceptive technology, by elaborating more powerful medicines to deal with sexual diseases, and by restoring sexual abilities with anti-impotency drugs.

This option would allow people to have their cake and eat, for it would permit an ever growing amount of sex while having less of its negative side effects.

The other option is one in which genetic engineering would reconfigure the genetic code of people so that they would have a much lower sexual appetite.

This second option seems as the less exciting of the two, but in reality it is not. We can already take a glimpse at how it would look because there is a small percentage of the world population that already has that encoding.

There is a tiny share of individuals that is naturally born with a very low sexual appetite and usually goes for years without any sexual activity. In spite of that, they dont have a feeling that they are missing on the best in life. The biochemistry of their brain simply releases less of the substances that generate the strong sexual craving that most people experience and as a result they do not feel bad about being lonely.

Studies show that there is a link between intelligence and sexual activity: the higher the level of education, the lower the sexual appetite. High school drop-outs are on average the most promiscuous, then come those with a high school diploma, then those with an undergraduate degree, then those with specializations, and then the scientists.

This last group usually has more than ten years of university education. They are spontaneously driven towards knowledge and spend most of their time delving into books while neglecting their social and sexual life. Their life seems dull, but it is not. Their lower sexual activity does not carry with it less fun for they find it more entertaining to learn science than to party.

As paradoxical as it might seem, reconfiguring the genetic code so that the world population would be more like scientists, would actually run in parallel to the demands of religions. Religions have always opposed sex, deeming it as evil and immoral. They have also opposed science because this last has the habit of debunking all their ludicrous ideas. However, for once, science and religion could be singing the same song.

As unromantic as a sexless world would seem, such a place would be a much better one.

The fact is that at present there are a zillion diseases that are incurable or are only partially curable. Those diseases make life miserable for billions of people and the only one that can come to their rescue is science. In a world with many more scientists, the rate of medical progress would be much faster.

For those who insist that a sexless world would be a boring one, it is worth remembering that when people suffer from diseases, it is very hard to have sex or to love or to undertake any other form of entertainment.

What this world needs is more scientists and not more promiscuous politicians, sportsmen, singers, actors or workers. Scientists are the most valuable resource of our specie because they are the only ones that make progress possible with their inventions.

Therefore, a world in which the majority of the population would deploy most of its time into trying to figure out how to cure diseases would be a much better place than the existing one. At present, men spend most of their time trying to seduce women and women spend most of their time trying to make men fall in love with them. That ultimately leads to nothing.