Why is »chastity a virtue, and what is its relevance to our existence?

Imagine someone who fasts regularly, compared to someone who always eats. The one who is fasting »begins to gain new senses; to merely »smell food, becomes a complex novel array of experiences that ordinarily disappear when regularly eating food. Over time, this can expand in ways that would appear ‘supernatural’, yet are entirely ‘ordinary’ to one who fasts regularly.

Imagine the difference — merely in »ardor — one dimension of relation… that would accrue to lovers who were absolutely committed to each other, had »chosen each other… but resisted the urge to couple, sexually. Physically. Materially. Try to imagine what might arise between them over even six months of constant relation and contact, but … the mutual agreement to preserve the manifold of potentials that exist »prior to sex, and are profoundly inclined to collapse once sexual contact arises.

In this model, we can see that their ardor and desire, their sensitivities and senses… would not merely expand, but »continue to expand over time… creating »new possibilities for intimacy that generally fail to arise in physically sexual relationships. New »senses. New roles. New »forms of relation.

An effectively endless array of them.

Many people who claim to be ‘sex positive’ suppose that the idea of chastity is a nonsensical or domineering feature of religions or culture. While this is not entirely untrue, if our desire is to understand the nature of virtues in general (and this one in particular) we should look beyond this rationalization in an attempt to understand why chastity might be »actually virtuous, regardless of metaphysical narratives.

Most of the virtues have been weaponized, distorted or ejected within our common thought and experience. Alternately, the undergo a series of ‘simplifcations’ such as those we see in ‘hypothetical’ questions. But the nature of actual virtue is not in words or concepts, ideas or thoughts. It is in »behavior.