|
Lust got some people in trouble last year.
It brought down Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. It ruined U.S. Rep. Mark Foley. It split up Christie Brinkley and her philandering husband. It was a blow to the union of Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock and may have been a factor in the breakup of Britney Spears and whatshisname.
Those are only a few examples of lust's bad reputation. It's blamed for everything from cheating spouses to our growing interest in pornography to the overall decline of Western civilization.
But lust — good, old-fashioned carnal curiosity — can often be a good thing.
Jason Pellegrino couldn't agree more. "Without lust, we're dead in the water," said the New Jersey entrepreneur.
Pellegrino said there's nothing wrong with admitting that physical attraction is important or even a priority in relationships. That's why in November he launched HotEnough (www.hotenough.org), a dating Web site for people with above-average looks. He makes no apologies for creating the site, which promotes physical beauty. Lust, he says frankly, is what drives the Internet dating world. Other sites may ask you what's in your heart (inner beauty is not without its merits), but HotEnough.org is chiefly concerned with top-shelf beauty.
If we take a page from Lust: The Seven Deadly Sins by University of Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn, we need to reclaim an appreciation for lust and embrace sexual desire as a life-affirming virtue. In other words: Get real about one of the most primal and driving forces in our lives.
Instead of punishing ourselves for objectification or guilt-tripping about our sexual desires, philosopher Blackburn writes, lust is "not merely useful but essential."
Terri L. Orbuch, a nationally known research scientist better known as "The Love Doctor," agrees to a point: "People want to be attracted to another person, but they also want other qualities. I think it might be refreshing in a sense that we can acknowledge (lust) as an essential part, but it's not the only part."
| 
