Sex matters
by Campbell Campbell-Jack, A Grain of Sand:
Why is Western civilisation collapsing? The answer depends on whom you ask: every group and ideology has its own response. If only there was a disinterested social scientist willing to thoroughly examine many different cultures to see if there were any common factors in their decline.
Step forward J D Unwin, an ethnologist and social anthropologist at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, who a century ago painstakingly studied 80 primitive tribes and six known civilisations through 5,000 years of history. Unwin described his 600+ page book Sex and Culture as a ‘summary’ of his decades of research; a full disclosure would require seven volumes.
Although his study was published nearly 90 years ago, in 1934, it is still relevant. Robert P George of Princeton, one of conservative Christianity’s leading intellectuals, uses Unwin in his teaching and argues that no one since has matched him in the thoroughness of his study of civilisations. Unwin had no axe to grind; he was not a believer and his work reads like that of a scientific rationalist who has nothing positive to say about Christianity.
A Positive Correlation Unwin studied the art, literature, politics, science, architecture, engineering and other cultural activities as well as the social structures of the 86 societies. He was looking for the effect they had on the social energy, stability and cohesion of the group, as well as its ability to compete with and defend itself against rival civilisations. He concluded that there is a positive correlation between the level of cultural achievement and survivability of a society and the level of sexual restraint expected within that society.
When a society practised sexual restraint it flourished and all aspects of cultural life prospered. However, as societies develop and become prosperous they become increasingly liberal with regard to sexual morality and as a result they lose cohesion, impetus and purpose. This accelerates social entropy and the reduction of its creative energy. Unwin concludes, ‘Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.’
The sexual tipping point when society starts a downward trajectory is not some wild perversion such as bestiality or necrophilia but pre-nuptial and extra-marital sex, which began to be normalised in the West in the 1970s and 80s.
Unwin argues that this downward process is irreversible: ‘The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilised unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs.’
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