Symposium is a philosophical text and a very famous treatise on desire ever written by Plato dated between 385–380 BC. Plato describes a drinking party or symposium in which Aristophanes, one of the seven participants (Socrates is also one among seven) spells a mystical story of why we humans have such deep longings for union with each other and explained why our acts of union can sometimes be so unsatisfying.
Long back humans did not look the way we look today, instead we had two heads, four legs and four arms. A perfect asymmetric creature, two people seamlessly united into one being. We came in all the three possible gender variations: male/female blend, male/male blend and female/female blend (I believe in some way this explains why homosexuality and heterosexuality exists). Since we all are blended together with our perfect partner, we were happy and proud. Thus, these double headed creatures were perfectly contended and lacked nothing, no needs, wanted nobody and we were whole. We became overly proud and neglected to worship God, hence God punished us for our neglect by cutting all the double headed, eight limbed humans into half. Which lead to the creation of one headed, two armed and two leg miserable humans as we exists today. In this mass amputation, God inflicted on humans a deep, dull and constant sense that we are not whole. We always long for our perfect other half, the lost half which we love almost more than we love ourselves. This other half is out there some-where, we are made to search relentlessly to get back to our original form.
In fact the original cleaved half humans were far scattered for any of us to ever find the perfect pair to become contended species. Aristophanes says, God has given humans the gift of orgasm out of pity, so that we would not die of depression and despair. Some humans believe that they have found the perfect half, sadly all we have found is somebody else who is searching for his other half equally desperately for reunion. The perfect melding never exists, Gods curse.
1 comment:
interesting thought Dr. Muneer. twice of everything...2 heads, 4 hands, 4 legs hmmm....and why did god create the differences between men and women and why did he make it the reason for attraction (also distraction ;)) and conflict.....Is God basically a MEAN, EVIL, SADISTIC Biologist ????
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