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HIGH GEAR/MAY 1977

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER: WHERE THERE'S A WILL....

The

attention-getting homosexual "vampire theory" currently espoused by Anita Bryant which absurdly claims that gays attempt to recruit future: generations of homosexuals among children has refocused attention on an aspect of our sexual orientation which has beweildered not a few gay thinkers. This aspect is

namely, that our preference is not conductive to biological reproduction.

Gay "theoreticians" have approached this phenomenon from several directions. Adoption is popularly recommended for those who wish to pass on their "family names". No doubt some gays fantasize about artificial insemination as it is rather schmalzily portrayed in The Front Runner. Ultra-radical lesbians promote the notion of test tube reproduction of women from two female donors of "X" chromosomes.

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Some gays ascribe to somewhat severe W.C. Fields attitude toward children. Few Movement thinkers have advanced outright anti-reproductive viewpoints, perhaps out of fear of outraging the non-gay majrotiy. Yet this is precisely what one of the greatest homophilic philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, did.

Born in Danzig in 1788 Arthur Schopenhauer came to be included among the most prolific German philosophers. He ranks with the great systematizers:

Kant, Hegel, Spinoza. Like them, he attempted to reduce the universe to a single, profound formula.

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timations. He remained bachelor for his entire life and was, sadly, extremely misogynous. He had an exaggerated and aggrandizing sense of "masculinity." Often admiring other males but always at a distance, he jealously heterosexual

Although we have no proof that the officially "asexual" Schopenhauer engaged in any homosexual liaisons, his world view was laden with homosexual resented and more especially homosenmanifestations. sual and homoemotional inFor example, he frequented an

English officers club for dinner. Before each dinner he would display a conspicuous gold coin on the table. At the conclusion of his meal, he returned the coin to his pocket. Finally, a waiter who felt he was being teased confronted Schopenhauer about the coin. The philosopher then explained that it represented a secret bet with himself to the effect that he would donate the cash to charity on the first day that the English officers would talk about anything other than horses, women or dogs.

Schopenhauer's first work, "The World As Idea," sold rather poorly at first, but became increasingly popular as he grew older. Hailing from an upper middle class family, however, he required no royalties to sustain himself.

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highly multi-farious plight of humanity is to resist the allpervasive "will." He maintains that since a homosapien is the

first and only existing system capable of reasoning and therefore evaluating the circumstance of reality; it is also the first and only agent capable of identifying and counteracting "will," (presumably with tranquility and happiness as the final product.)

One of his most controversial conclusions is that heterosexual activity is the foremost deputy of "will" as it is the key to the reproduction and proliferation of our species and therefore the higher evolution of human beings resulting in accelerated momentum for the demonic "will." He notes:

"The relation of the sexes... is. Schopenhauer's really the invisible central point centers around the idea that the of all action and conduct, and entire cosmos is permeated by peeps out everywhere in spite of "will." This "will," he interprets all veils thrown over it. It is the variously as a constant striving, cause of war and the end of forward movement, affinity and peace; the basis of what is force. In his way of thinking, the serious and the aim of the jest, "will" is responsible for the the inexhaustible source of wit, whole of evolution from the forthe key of all illusions and the mation of the universe to the admeaning of all mysterious hints vent of humanity.... We see it at every monent seat "Will" is fundamentally a Inegative entity and it evidences itself most vividly in pain. Pain, according to the philosopher, is the prime motivator for all human activity. Pleasure, he insists, is really the absence of pain or a distracting of one's self from a painful condition.

Thus, his solution for the

itself, as the true and hereditary lord of the world, out of the fullness of its own strength, upon the ancestral throne; and looking down thence with scornful glance, laughing at the preparations made to bind it, or imprision it, or at least limit it and

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