THE MOST SOUGHT AFTER COMMODITY IN THE WORLD : SEX

Man is a social animal. His behavior in society or in private is therefore largely determined, partly by the intensity of his primal instincts and partly by learned beliefs. The decision mechanism is like a see-saw with instinct sitting on one side of the plank and belief on the other. Decisions  tend to tilt towards the the side with higher force . Theoretically speaking,  infinite number of permutations and combinations of differing amounts of the two force on the see-saw exists, and each combination capable of bringing about a different behavioral outcome than the other. But in reality, only few combinations of the two force is selected by Man and this is formulated into a generalised set of primary decision rules upon which all future decision gets based.


Instincts are permanent in nature and do not change over time. They also lack variety, in fact there are only two core primal instincts, self preservation (manifestations of which can be seen in greed, anger, fear, timidity, selfishness, ego etc.) and gene pass-on (as observed in craving for sex, ability to identify suitable partner with stronger genes etc. ). Beliefs on the other hand constantly change to reflect the changes in  environmental elements or the discovery of new truth e.g. it was a change in belief which prompted Libyan people to overthrow and mercilessly kill Gaddaafi, a beloved leader once. Every response, of every human being on earth can be traced back to the subconscious impact of instincts on the judgmental process and the degree to which these instincts get vindicated or get denounced by beliefs.

Beliefs bring with them notions of good-bad, right-wrong, love-hate etc. forcing Man to constantly keep rating himself and his surroundings on a 10 or 100 point bi-polar scale (similar to a semantic differential scale). Man is required to constantly keep on computing his scores from the rating exercise in order to truly understand his exact place in society. This system of internal ratings and positive feedback created a internal checks and balances system   commonly known as 'morality' which prevented Man from indulging in socially undesirable behavior like inflicting pain, murder, rape, theft, etc.  Instincts on the other hand are raw untamed force, nature's gift to its creations, so that they could protect themselves and multiply. Without the presence of instincts in living creatures. there would be no consciousness, no realisation of the self and no incentive to reproduce. Trees lack instincts, and are therefore devoid of any idea of the self. One can easily walk up to a tree, pee all over it and then cut it down into thousand pieces. Not once will the tree protest, not once will it attempt to save its life.


When the first societies got settled, Man must have realized that he would have to sacrifice some of his his instinctual cravings in favour of larger benefits which came from communal living. Formation of society basically stemmed from the realization that more could be achieved by living in communities than in isolation, where the chances of being eaten up by a stronger animal were infinitely higher. Societies  needed rules for organisation and establishing order. The initial rules must have been simple instructions, gradually however as societies evolved, societal rules evolved, putting more pressure on a Man’s primal instincts. Advent of religion brought about even more bizarre (bizarre in case of the context outlined) rules on board like practicing celibacy, chastity monogamy etc. which were in direct conflict with Man’s primal instincts.

Then came a period where Socialism took the excesses of religion to an altogether new height. The underlying assumption of a socialistic state is that Man is capable of fully relinquishing his instincts (primarily greed, selfishness, ego etc.) in favour of a society built on the premise of equality. Therefore for socialism to succeed, Man had to become selfless, devoid of any ego , pride or greed. The socialists painted the picture of such ideal men through their propaganda machinery. But suppressing instincts is not easy. Researches done in the field of psychology shows that longer  the period for which instincts are suppressed, the more it tries to gather momentum and finds avenues to surface itself. Surprisingly, such is not the case with beliefs, which if suppressed, get erased from the memory over time. Socialism failed not because it’s intentions were wrong, it failed because it’s underlying assumptions especially with respect to Man’s capacity to ‘do good’ for others were wrong.

The unchallenged rise of capitalism post felling of the Berlin Wall, has put more economic and political freedom in the hands of the people. Freedom of expression and Speech, have provided to people as a fundamental right and so is the right to practice or abstain from any religion. A capitalistic state only imposes limits on instinct driven actions where the said actions are likely to cause harm to society or the person himself. Just enough rules are formulated, so as prevent a situation where Man driven by his instincts, starts harming others. Greed, selfishness, ego, sex are all encouraged within the set boundaries defined above. One can have sex with any number of women, at any point of time, so long as the women are willfully participating in the act. Given the new found freedom (at least in developing and under-developed countries), men of all shapes and sizes seem to be in a rush to satisfy their wildest  sexual fantasies. This has turned SEX into the single most sought after commodity in the world. No other word is any where near it's popularity. In fact, the second most searched after word on internet,after sex is PORN. 

The following is a small ‘jugaadu’ research which shows preference of Indians with respect to 5 key elements of modern living - 

Everyday millions of internet users use Google to search any website, document or web resource on the internet. To use Google, a user has to type a key word or key phrase describing his requirement into the Google Search Box on the Google home page. Google Insights another service by Google provides researches an estimate of how many times a certain key word has been searched over a given period of time.

To understand the extent to which instinct drives behavior, four keywords have been used 1) Sex,  2) Love 3) Money  4) Job and 5) Life. Google Insights was used to track the number of times these words were searched on Google, over the past one year. All charts shown below depict search originating from India, except for the final chart which shows the distribution of search originating from USA.

YF - IThink.

Distribution for USA