As he notes in there, this is really just a mainstreaming of the S & M already somewhat implied by the vampire/human relationship in Twilight. He loves her, but there is always a tension between his desire for her blood, and his ability to control that particular form of lust.
I have likely said this before, but I can’t remember: my take on BDSM is that it is a logical answer to a bad question. The bad question is “How can I create a temporary illusion of meaning and identity?”
I don’t doubt that the people who do it more than once on purpose get something out of it. I don’t doubt that it feels like a roller coaster ride–which is also intended to facilitate acute discomfort and fear–and leaves a suitably close feeling to catharsis.
But, and this point is critical, it is not in my view actually CATHARTIC. It is a substitute for mourning, not mourning itself. Mourning must be specific.
As I believe I have mentioned somewhere, I am currently reading (concurrently with Ferguson’s Ascent of Money), Trauma and Recovery. One point she makes there is that the treatment for traumas, in terms of dealing with hyperarousal and intrusive (unwanted thoughts) symptoms, is walking back through the trauma in detail, complete with feeling, and particularly somatic sensations. What I found interesting, is that EACH trauma that stands out as separate for the victim ought ideally to be processed separately. They cannot each stand in for the other. I had come to this conclusion six months or so ago independently, but found it interesting that I was apparently correct.
BDSM does not do this. In fact, it strikes me as a somewhat addictive but artificial substitute for it.
Our national malady, I am slowly coming to believe–and this is perhaps a disease of modernity (which for my purposes could more or less be conflated with Scientism and Socialism) generally–is that we have lost the ability to mourn, as individuals, and particularly as groups.
We are fed, indirectly in most cases, the idea from an early age that life is supposed to be easy; that if we just solve technical problems x,y, and z, then there will be no more suffering, no more aging, no more CHANGE that we don’t want. This is a fool’s hope, and one that, now, is CAUSING a huge increase in suffering.
We are not meant to live forever on this planet. We are not meant to be able to avoid loss. We are meant to learn how to DEAL with these things by attaching ourselves to a transcendant joy, and detaching ourselves from all that is mutable.
But if you are an atheist, this is hard. And if you are an atheist and believe that suffering is anomalous and to be resented and rejected, then it is IMPOSSIBLE.
I think most of us from a common sense perspective view BDSM as mentally ill, as transgressive in a way that cannot possibly be fully rationalized. In a sense, this is true, but my method and my aim is not oriented around creating dichotomous relations between people and ideas. We always exist on a continuum with others; we all have the capacity both to enjoy the loss of our freedom, and to enjoy inflicting it on others.
As I know I have said before, the best way of living is, in my view, to take large pleasures in simple things. If you do that, then you will quite unable to understand how people reach a level of emotional decay that they NEED this sort of stimulation.
Watch this video. Doesn’t it make you happy? This is what most of us miss, if we are honest: the straightforward, if occasional, expression of sheer pleasure in living and movement.
Our elites are increasingly dominated, though, by the simple desire for power. Consider this book What would Machiavelli do?
For family/work balance, and healthy outside interests, are substituted work, weird sex, booze, and golf. This is satire, but it described well the environment of the company I worked at when I first read it.
I lay in bed sometimes, and think “maybe we should assassinate some bankers”. You know, the usual suspects in the Federal Reserve mafia. Then I think: where has that ever worked for a general improvement? Answer: nowhere. The methods dictate the results, which will be a different tyranny than the one before, but no less odious.
Our only way forward is education, which includes not just factual knowledge, but increasingly cultivating the ability to feel both positive and negative emotions, to be emotionally well and intelligent, and to work with those around us in what will hopefully be many widening circles to gradually engulf the human race in a form of life worth living, and in which this sort of pain has no place, because there is no need for it.