Americas Ultimate Concern :: Essays Papers

Americas Ultimate ConcernThere are entirely a handful of universal truths to be found, and evoke is unmatched of them. Other than biography, death, and the need for food, shelter, & society, sex and all that it entails is a fundamental and pervasive fact of human existence. Augustine knew of sex all too salubrious. He guiltily wallowed in & enjoyed it for the majority of his life. When it comes to sex, Augustine was not real different than the millions of Americans who live today, some 1,500 years after him. The world is made up of approximately 7 billion males and females, all of whom are genetically and culturally wired to make and/or enjoy the pleasures that the sexual experience provides. Yet how does this simple scientific and psychological fact account for the unbelievable sexual statistics and facts closely accepted American and global society? How does one explain that, in a comprehensive two-year study done by Alexa Research, a prima(p) web intelligence and traf fic measurement service, sex was the most usual term for which people searched? Why is it that 54% of men judge about sex at least every day and 19% of women think about sex at least once per day? And why, in 1998, were 87% of American high-school students having sexual intercourse? These few facts alone, as well as other obvious overwhelming evidence, should cause us to depend on up and ask questions such as Why are humans, and in particular Americans in this case, so obsessed with sex? Why has sex, pornography, and self-pleasure become a predominant ingredient in every-day society? Why are we not able to overcome our infatuation with sex like Augustine did? When following Augustines sexual journey through his Confessions, one can see that the only way to examine and overcome Americans obsession with sex is to understand their ultimate concerns, just as Augustine understood and re-defined his own.Augustine was naturally very sexual. As an adolescent he experienced the bubbling impulses of puberty that conceal and obscured his heart so that it could not see the difference between cacoethess serenity and zests darkness. In his Confessions one reads of how Augustine struggled with lust and his sexuality, eventually giving wholly into a carnal lifestyle by taking a concubine at the age of 17. When he was a student at Carthage all around him hissed a cauldron of outlaw(a) loves, and from the time when he was nineteen to twenty-eight he lived a life of being seduced and seducing.