Asceticism and Eroticism in Gandhi, Thoreau and Nietzsche: An Essay in Geo-Philosophy (Special ISSUE: RELIGION AND Sexuality) (Essay‪)‬

Introduction: Preliminary Work for a Future Morality A short while back just into this third millennium, I was in a mall. It could have been in the United States or in India or elsewhere. Surrounded by shops and hoardings, I was struck by a question, so distant now but such a vital part of the human past that we might pause for some wonderment over the waning of this aspect of our collective inheritance. The question: how does human desire come to be attracted to frugality? To clarify, I am not talking about prohibitions, my question is, how is desire attracted to frugality? The 'rational' answer to this question came to me soon afterwards. This kind of moral imperative seems explicable when there is some accompanying incentive such as heaven, or some other world in which the self-imposed hardships of this world will be suitably compensated, for instance, in what is famously called the Protestant ethic. So then, is there no inducement to frugality for those of us with an ethic bound to this world? The answer to this question, of how less comes to seem more, it seems to me, will have a number of future environmental consequences and will crucially influence whatever differentiation of lifestyles there is to be in the capitalism of tomorrow.