Why we humans are so obsessed with sex, specially in the West? Is it the best escape that we have in the West?
Yes, sex is the ultimate pleasure that takes us away from our daily miseryâŚ
Peak years of fertility is what comes to mind with the word âobsessionâ. Otherwise, how much freedom is one willing to surrender to entangled relationships for the right combination of touch?
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I didnât mean to stifle the conversation.
(Hereâs a visual from a commercial I recently saw which exemplifies âentangled relationshipsâ.)
Modern life is hectic, filled with activity. There is little space for contemplation, peace, pause for reflection. It is more about mindless activity of thought, obsessive compulsive actions. We are also surrounded by thought and have lost touch with nature and passive awareness
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The teachings of K says sex has become extremely important because the self is absent at the moment of sex . I say the observer becomes the observed at the moment of sex.
La petite mort âthe brief loss or weakening of consciousnessâ and in modern usage refers specifically to âthe sensationâŚas likened to death.â[1]
Might it be related to the fact that we humans do not understand ourselves, our own nature, what it is to be human, to be alive in the mysterious, infinite, eternal, unknowable universe, what right action is, what the significance of our fleeting joys and tortured lives is, and so on?
We think we are supposed to be in control of our individual life, happiness and success, and also in control of others, of society (âthe worldâ) generally. No? Most of us are born with a natural sexual drive (some are not). That drive is part of our endowed nature, like hunger, thirst, thought, reason, and so on. We did not create or endow ourselves with the sex drive and the rest of it. Like most or all living things, most of us are born with the natural drive to reproduce. It seems to me that we are not born with the obsession for recreational sex. We can observe the sex drive manifest itself naturally in babies. But we now donât even associate sex with the natural drive to procreate which all living things are endowed with. We see it merely as a pleasure to be pursued at will. Thatâs how I see it.
So given that we consider it to be a personal choice of sophistication, a right to pleasure, sinful, good or bad, as a problem, as something to be controlled, indulged in, repressed, condemned, and so on â having the choice to indulge or repress makes it an obsession. So it is a problem leading to other problems, not a natural drive, a natural part of our given nature.
We experience life as a struggle, do we not, filled with choices to be made, and we believe we are supposed to be in control of our own life, success, happiness and pleasure, that we are supposed to be smart, winners, superior. Isnât that how we generally view life - that I must be in control and in charge of my own life, and that my personal life is my own exclusive business and domain? Do I, the human being, not believe that I am NOT part of a created whole, in the Creation of which I have played no part? That the whole of Creation is separate from me, irrelevant somehow?
Viewing it in this way, then sex is pursued as a fleeting relief from our constant struggle, our efforts, our sorrow. But it provides no actual relief from any of it. So we are obsessed with sex, continually seeking relief from the sorrow of life where there is no relief to be hadâŚ
Just questioning with you. (Iâm also not sure it mainly or only applies in the West.)
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Good to read you again Huguette! The only self image to have (since we seem to need to have one) is simply that of All Creation! Nothing left out, everything included. I suppose you could say (with modesty of course 
) âI am everything and nothing.â Psychologically limiting ourselves in ANY way seems to inevitably bring conflict and sorrow. So better to be nothing than something, no matter how wonderful that someone, something seems to be?
Now how to go beyond this tiny limited picture weâve framed as our Self? It by itself can only make changes, add and subtract, it canât get rid of itselfâŚâawarenessâ must be âbroughtâ in or âdiscoveredâ as @Adeen has been saying. That will reveal the illusion of the false reality that has since childhood, been created (helter- skelter) in the mind, a kind of waking dream of who, what, we take ourselves to be but actually arenât! Then with energy, intensity, silent passive awareness and luck, we may see that actuallyâŚâYou are the worldâ! 
No Dan, so sorry, I donât see it like you at all. And also so good to read you again (for a while at least, Iâm unable to sustain it). I see actual relationship even in a crazy forum like this, whether through reason or sometimes aggression.
I say and see NO image at all is necessary! â not even the image âI am everything and nothingâ. The image needs to be seen for what it is. The image of me separate from thought, no matter how reflective of the truth it seems to be, is still an image put together by thought, and thought cannot free man. No? Maybe nothing can. I donât know, I donât understand, I donât perceive the fact of it.
In this context here and now, âIâ does not refer to the image of me but to the human being that I am and, yes, I am the world because action in the world, in human society, is based on thought, ideation, emotion, and so on. Thought is a biological process which does not âhaveâ self-understanding or awareness, as I see it. And just as there is awareness of sensory perception, there is awareness of the fact that the living moment is not thought, awareness of what is thought and what is not the living moment.
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Just like most people are obsessed about food, or alcohol, or drugs, or smoking. The root cause is the same: obsession about something. Where does it come from?
Lack of awareness/acknowledgment that the body (senses) has a limited capacity (in the moment and over time) to respond with pleasure to the external stimuli.
Iâll share below my experiment with sugar.
Few years ago I took a 3 month break from consuming refined and naturally occurring sugar. When I returned to consume sugar, the first bite of a chocolate was too sweet. My sense of taste was unpleasantly shocked by the sweetness. The pleasure I used the get from one square of chocolate was now experienced as âthis is awfully sweetâ.
Over consuming sugar has desensitized me from sensing the taste of sweetness.
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Nobody has answered the question of why sex has become so important in the East and the West for humans?
@O7007 I think you have not attended fully to many answers. Sex is important during the peak years of fertility and that importance wanes with age and diminishing hormones. Orgasms have many health benefits and itâs not anything that one cannot provide for oneâs self.
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this is my answer 
In other words, I am saying that humans desire to have unlimited pleasures, and the body canât provide it, due to its physiology. So, maybe the question is: why are we chasing pleasure ? Why do we have an obsession for pleasure ?
PS: There is a consensus that sexual touch is the most pleasurable sensation of all. So, (some) people chase the highest⌠in sexual intimacy.
Krishnamurti speaks of importance, not obsession! And this âweâ in the title cannot be true. Itâs a complex subject, Iris Murdoch (writer who met Krishnamurti) spoke of sex as âa dark forceâ, but Krishnamurti simply equated sex with pleasure. Human beings are classified as such, that is, we as human beings look the same, but we can be very very different on the inside and it shows in our habits and drives. As De Niro says above sex performance changes with age, but it isn´t only that. That is a satisfaction that you get when you want, to put it simply, and the predator kind of human being can often resort to violence in order to achieve that satisfaction and it becomes a very dirty thing that we can watch these days every day on television and in films.
Yes, people are obsessed about sex, food, alcohol, drugs, smoking, and about many other things like knowledge, college degrees, professional titles, cars, houses, friends, etc., etc., etc. I say that this is the way things are because the world has not understood boredom. But the irony is that if the world could come to understand boredom, then it would be the end of it all, there would be no world, no desire, and civilization would not exist the way it exists today. So, thank you boredom for what you are and for what you do.
Sex has become important because at the moment of sex the self with itâs enormous problems is absent and there is freedom. But if one is free from the self and itâs insecurities then sex has itâs place and doesnât occupy the mind .
So in conclusion lack of freedom is the main reason for the importance that we or people give to sex.
WhewâŚglad we got that settled! 
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