SAL RESTIVO'S BLOG: THE SOCIOLOGICAL COGITO

I get my health care through the OneMed health care service. They send out occasional memos to members on health matters. Today they sent one out on: HUMAN TOUCH CAN IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH Marvin Gaye said it best, Sexual healing is something that's good for me. And he was right: Physical touch can make you happier, lower blood pressure, lessen anxiety, and even boost immunity. So whether you’re getting up close and personal with your summer crush or just hugging friends and family, remember that human interaction and touch are important — and good for your health. Following are excerpts from my The Treachery of Realities: Safeguarding Truth in the Age of Science Denial (Brill, 2025). If you are going to find meaning anywhere, it’s going to be in your community, in your networks. And it is going to involve sex or more generally sensual pleasures. We haven’t learned the first thing about sex. The first thing is that sex is everywhere all the time, like gravity (labelled “Sexi...

Yes,there are aliens who walk among us. But you wont find them at Area 51, or in secret UFO files at the Pentagon. You can find them in the Lousiana governor's office, the office of the Dean of Social Science at Harvard, and in Washington, D.C. where they boldly walk the corridors of the Congress and the Supreme Court. Louisiana classrooms now required by law to display the Ten Commandments,Stephanie Gallman and Dianne Gallagher, CNN: Wed June 19, 2024 Louisiana public schools are now required to display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms, after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the requirement into law Wednesday. A Harvard Dean Causes Firestorm With Call To Limit Faculty Speech, Michael T. Nietzel, June 19, 2024 Lawrence D. Bobo, Dean of Social Science and the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, wrote an op-ed in the June 15th Harvard Crimson, in which he asked: “Is it outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member ...

PART I Passed the final frontier, into the infinity of emptiness, nothing left behind, nor nothing before us. Just a far echo, with the cries of those who stay. A heavy layer of oblivion, covers remains of a futile existence. In the horizon, nothingness, looking back, nostalgia. A void of silence, an abyss of solitude, the deepest darkness, unending travel to nowhere. Only dust left behind, in the horizon, nothingness. Band Dantalion Album Return to Deep Lethargy (2012) Type Album (Studio full-length) Genres Atmospheric Black Metal Labels Unexploded Records

In an earlier post, I posited the idea that sex is everywhere. This is true phenomenologically. But the more primitive force underlying sex is the eroic force.  The eroic force, like gravity, is every.  Just as we are bathed in gravity from the moment of conception until we die, so we are bathed in the eroic force throughout our lifetime.   That is lesson number one.   Until we learn this lesson, we will continue to make life miserable for humanity.  Lesson number two is that sex, as a manifestation of the eroic force, comes in many forms, is multi-dimensional, and more complex than anyone has yet imagined.  Lesson number three is that sex exists for humans of all ages, keeping in mind that sex is a particularly focused form of sensuality.   One must be sensual first.   Lesson number four: touching is the alpha and omega of life.   In an important sense, nothing else matters without it.  Now what?     ...