Sensual needs

  "In times past, the stimulating and sensual texture of life used to be fulfilled on many levels, for example: sailing, weaving, fire-making, woodworking, cooking, the feel of tools, the handling and gentling of animals; travel that was not trajectory in an air-conditioned capsule; reading and real talk. Now in these times, life is so largely a spectator sport that the senses are starved, and it is still true that the devil finds work for idle hands. That is to say, unused energies explode where they can. For many, sex and crime are the only avenues to uniqueness and participation. In our controlled and increasingly homogenized social order, sexual expression is narrowed down to one channel, the erotic, so overloading it that it is becoming a burnt out case. Eroticism, in or out of marriage, cannot endow life with meaning, and sex retains its richness just so long as we bring meaning to it."  Advice to a Young Wife.