Book Review: Sex 3.0 ? Beyond The Sunset

?This book is not a book,? J J Roberts states as the first words of Sex 3.0: Sexual relationships in the 21st century and beyond. ?This book is a map.? As indeed it is ? or rather, it?s a set of directions to help you make your own map, of a ?terra incognita? of sex and sexual relationship beyond the possessiveness, jealousy and relationship duress that turn ?love? into a twisted trap. It is a guidebook to a different paradigm of sexual relationships, one based on mutual reward, and?founded on communcation, honesty, trust and respect; a relationship that Roberts labels ?Sex 3.0?.

Roberts has written?Sex 3.0 in accordance with what he calls ?Pure Form Theory? ? taking a complex subject and simplifying it, purifying it, compressing it, filtering it, again and again, until one comes up with the simplest and purest form, expressed with the fewest words possible. And his first ?pure form? concept invokes Alfred Korzybski, the father of General Semantics, and his famous declaration that ?The map is not the territory!? (Our sense?of reality is the ?map,? but we confuse it with reality itself,?which is the ?territory.? Where the map doesn?t match the territory, it?s not the territory?s fault.) Roberts? first contention is that ?if you?re having trouble with sexual relationships, it?s because your sexual-relationship map sucks,? and he places the blame on Society and on the relationship duress?that Society imposes on us through cultural norms.

The first major problem is that Society?s norms set us up to pair-bond, and to be ensconced cozily?in monogamy for life. That Society labels this ?fenced relationship? as??normal? says only that it is what Society expects of us, not whether-or-not it?s ?natural? (in accordance with human nature).?The pressure to conform with this expectation is immense, and that pressure often precludes any corrections that might need to be made. So we build our life on those expectations, on the flimsy map, instead of on reality, the territory itself. How can we be surprised when things collapse?

(There is an alternative to the ?fenced? relationship. Chapter 6 of Sex 3.0, ?There Are Only Two Kinds Of Sexual Relationships,? goes to some length to explain this.)

Roberts goes to some length to describe what he calls ?Sex 2.0,? the Society-branded ?normal? of exclusivity, jealousy, possessiveness, and delusions of ownership. This model is based on property;?and as he points out, it dates from the earliest agricultural societies, where your survival depended on your yearly harvest and your genetic furtherance on whether-or-not those children were yours.?Out of this ?paternity concern? come the prizing of virginity, the Madonna/whore dichotomy, and the definition of ?each other? as sexual property. We are supposed to express our sexuality in a monogamous relationship, perhaps a series of monogamous relationships, as enforced by custom and expectations; a ?fenced relationship? ranging from ?going steady? as a couple, up to and including Church-blessed and State-sanctioned marriage.

Sex 2.0 is the system that pushes us to find a mate and declare ownership. As Roberts puts it:

Women are raised?and taught their entire life that they have to sell their sexuality?in exchange for security. Ultimately the security of marriage to a?man.

Men are taught?that, their job when to comes to sexual relationships is to take a?woman?s sexuality, throw it in a box, slam the lid shut and stamp?and label the box as their property.

And it?s Society?s pressure, the relationship duress from the enforcement of those norms, that substitutes the chains of custom for the bonds of mutual reward; that enforces the marriage contract, often at great cost, when the mutual rewards of a marriage have been allowed to crumble and dry up. The most corrosive forces, though, are personal, inside of you ? the ?twin-headed monster,? the forces of possessiveness and jealousy.

And from that fact arises the remedy that J J Roberts recommends. It is a personal remedy, an intensely personal one: Kill that twin-headed monster within you, and don?t let anyone else re-introduce it into your life ? or your relationships. ?Whatever work it takes to ?kill that beast? will rebound to your advantage,?and not only in marriage or in sexual relationships.

As an alternative, he offers a??Pure Form? definition of?relationship?that is well worth considering:?Mutual reward.?A relationship doesn?t need to be held together by Society?s expectations and pressures, as long as mutual reward is maintained. Roberts presents that the pure-form, ?mutual reward? relationship is supported on four pillars: Communication, Honesty, Trust, and Respect. This is true of all relationships ? parent-child, employer-employee, between siblings, between friends, and of course between lovers.

?Sex 3.0? is such a relationship; a?sexual relationship that is based on mutual reward, and a system that removes fear and control from the core of the human sexual design and replaces it with freedom of choice. Sex 3.0 presents you with the choice of ?fenced? and ?unfenced? sexual relationships,??and gives you the clarity on your map?to correctly negotiate the territory regardless of which version you choose.

I?ve only covered a smattering of the Pure Form concepts in Sex 3.0 ? the book is very well simplified, very well filtered, very well crystallized itself. It is a handbook on ?inner cartography?, on the mapping of human relationships; its purpose is to help you guide yourself out of the wilderness, to help you de-program yourself of your old ineffective indoctrination, and to make yourself a new map so you can navigate your future relationships simply, and effectively, and well.

Sex 3.0 is available, in Kindle and iPad formats, from the Sex 3.0 website.?

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Source: http://beijaflorbeyondthesunset.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/book-review-sex-3-0/

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