The Power of Thought

Do thoughts have power? Do the things that we think about, in the dark, dark recesses of our minds, have power? Do we have an inherent 'right' to anything and everything we can think of?

I think that, for most of us, the answer is going to be a resounding "Yes!", we don't even think about it, of course we have a right to think about anything we want. And, for the most part, I would agree with you.

But now you're about to see a side of B.B. that will prove, beyond any doubt, that I am, in fact, about as extreme as they come. I believe that thoughts have power. I believe that we must be responsible for, not just our actions, but our thoughts as well. I believe, particularly when we're in a relationship, that thoughts are indeed very, very powerful and it is our job to KNOW what is going on inside of our heads.

I believe that thought produces action. Not all the time, perhaps not even MOST of the time, but sometimes, too many times, it does. And this is all well and good when the thought we're thinking is along the lines of "I want a piece of cake" and this thought leads us to getting a piece of cake. No harm, no foul.

I believe in equality in thought. I believe that thought is one of the single most powerful things we have at our disposal.

But, this theory of culpability is quite an unpopular theory. It could be the single most poignant example of my Extremist tendencies. People do not, under any circumstances, want to be held accountable for their thoughts, for their fantasies. People, by and large, want to be able to be utterly 'safe' to think any number of nasty thoughts and not be held accountable for them.

Here's an example. You see a woman at a club; she's attractive, very attractive. Later that night you go home and masturbate to the thought of her fucking a donkey. Is this acceptable?

Here's another one. Your wife doesn't like anal sex; she's repulsed by it in fact. She refuses to let you put your member anywhere near her ass. Instead, you sequester yourself in the bathroom and masturbate to the image of you putting it to her anally. Is this acceptable?

For me, the answer is a resounding "No". And this, I think, will ruffle many a feather.

"Beaver!" You cry indignantly, "Fantasies are harmless! What are you now? The frigging Thought Police? First you tell me Porn is bad and I should get rid of it, NOW you're telling me that my THOUGHTS must ALSO be censored! You've gone too damn far B.B.!"

About this time I hear the usual slew of protests. 'Just because I fantasize about it when I masturbate doesn't mean that I'm going to DO it!', 'Fantasies are harmless, they're simply harmless fun!', 'People have LOTS of fantasies and they don't act out on them!' the list goes on and on.

Perhaps you're right. But I'm going to throw out another scenario for you. You don't have to tell me what your gut instinct is, but I would like you to pay attention to it.

You have a friend, a male, whom you know from work. You, your wife, and this fella get together quite frequently to play cards and chat. One night, after too many beers, this guy gets a little loose in the lips and admits that he masturbates to thoughts of 6 year old girls a lot, to thoughts of HIM having sex with 6 year olds. You had planned to ask your friend to watch your 6 year old daughter the following weekend, are you going to let him watch her now?

Well, if you don't believe that people act out on fantasies, if you truly, honest to god believe that fantasies are utterly and completely harmless then you should go away the following weekend and leave this man alone with your 6 year old child while you and wifey-poo have a fun-filled weekend.

Now, quell the anger and indignation in your gut because it is at THIS point that I begin to lose people. Yes, I've had this discussion before, I've debated it to its conclusion many, many times. Even poor Dim faced this theory from me and invariably, when I bring up the above scenario, I manage to piss them off for good. So calm down a sec and think logically about it.

Why is the last scenario different from the first two?

If people don't act out on Fantasies then why is it different? If fantasies are as dangerous as kittens and butterflies then why won't you leave your child with the man who admits to having these sexual fantasies with children?

How about this one ladies, you've started dating a man. He seems like a nice guy but, one night, the conversation turns to sexual fantasies. He admits to having many rape fantasies, violent rape fantasies. He admits to masturbating to images of women being raped by him. He admits that he's even had a fantasy involving YOU where he raped you repeatedly.

Are you going out on that next date with him? Or are you headed for the hills?

Here's the deal. Most people have 'bars' in place, they have reasons that they don't act out on a given fantasy. For example, you may have a fantasy of having anal sex with your wife, anal sex which she utterly refuses to give you. The only way for you to get anal sex from your wife would therefore be to rape her, and dude, you're not like that, you have NO intention of raping her. The means to get the fantasy, to play it out, is NOT one of your fantasies. You don't fantasize about rape, you fantasize about anal sex and you're not willing to rape your wife to get it.

What if she gets drunk at the Christmas party? What if the woman is falling down, puking, stinking drunk and you take her home and realize that she's passed out and will never wake up. You could have the college marching band in that bedroom and she ain't a movin'. Just about that time you start getting a bit randy yourself, and your mind goes exactly where you've trained it to go, it goes to anal sex. (I'll get into the bit about 'training' in another post) You look over at your wife whom you have utter and complete power over since she's passed out. She won't remember it, she sure as hell won't wake up. Do you try it?

Maybe not, maybe you realize that it would STILL be rape, and damnit, you simply can't fathom the thought of raping her.

So, let's move the bar around a bit. You come home from that Christmas Party and one of your co-workers calls you, she asks you if you could please, please, please, come and pick her up from the party and bring her home, she's too drunk to drive and doesn't have money for a cab. You kiss your snoozing wife on the cheek, knowing she's out for the count and head back to help out your female co-worker. When you get to her house she begins making a play at you. She's drunk and she's aggressively trying to get you to sleep with her, she mentions that she LOVES anal sex.

What're you going to do?

I'm sure that many of us aren't going to take her up on that offer. But then again, many of us might. The wife sure as hell isn't going to catch you; she's passed out and will probably not even remember the party itself.

The point is that for most people it's a matter of shifting the bar around. The more we THINK about something, the more we fantasize about it, the more desensitized we become to it. This is knowledge that everyone has, THAT'S why nobody wants to leave their child with a man who admitted to masturbating to thoughts of fucking children. We already know this on some level. We have accepted this and our guts scream to us, "HEY!! HEY!! Don't you DARE leave little Polly with that sick fucker!! She's in DANGER damnit!!"

Why? Because thoughts have power and we never really know just how powerful a given thought will be to a given person. We never really know just where we have to shift that bar to get them to act on their orgasm inducing thoughts.

We never know, do we?

Sure, we may know that WE may not act on a given thought, but do you know that your Wife wouldn't? Your Husband? The neighbor? With the rates of infidelity it's safe to assume that many, many people have wrongly judged just how powerful their S.O's thoughts are.

There are so many other aspects to this theory, there's the idea that you can't truly want sexual equality for your spouse if you put her into situations in your mind that she would find revolting. There's the idea that the desensitization issue, which is far too large to get into at this point in the post. There's the idea of 'expectation' and Power of Expectation (something I'll get into in a later post). Suffice it to say that THIS theory has many, many facets. It is also the most 'piss off the masses' theory that I have at the moment. (But never you fear! I'm sure that I'll come up with another, even more, obnoxious theory!)

The facts as I see them is that people want to see the world through their own lenses. Just because they may not do something they fantasize about sure as hell doesn't mean that someone else won't. We, as human beings, also have a really, really annoying habit of excusing OUR behavior because we like to think of ourselves as 'good people'. If we acknowledge that fantasizing about gang-banging a 12 year old girl could be wrong then we have to acknowledge that we were thinking 'wrong thoughts'.

If we acknowledge that a man who fantasizes about gang-banging that 12 year old may be more likely to actually, you know...try to be involved in a gang-bang of a 12 year old, we may also have to acknowledge that OUR fantasies, (which we've always thought of as acceptable and benign) may not be as harmless as we think. We may have to own up to the idea that if we're fantasizing about anal sex we could perpetrate great pain onto people that we love, that WE might just be capable of acting out, just like the sicko who thinks of the 12 year old.

The other factor is that we simply do not WANT to have to monitor our thoughts, that is an incredibly difficult and not-so-enjoyable process. If we acknowledge the other 2 things then we, as moral human beings, must make an effort to curb those thoughts which give us so much pleasure. There's already enough intrusion into our lives from the external sources (Think Bush here) that we really, really resent the idea that we should be responsible for what goes on in our heads.

Hmmm, I've written way too much for today. I'll come back to this post another time, although, I acknowledge that there may not be any readers for me to come back to after this post.

Oh well, if anything can be said for me it's that I have no shortage of things to talk about *grin*

~Biting Beaver