The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [86]
Communicative, financial, and sexual frustrations are not easy to deal with. Under the abnormal circumstance of rock stardom, maintaining a monogamous romantic relationship becomes exponentially more difficult. The seductive power of good music seems to make even the strangest looking musician extraordinarily desirable to hordes of women. Throw in biological urges, musicians’ peculiarly hyperactive need for attention, and long periods of touring away from the family unit, and maintaining a relationship becomes very difficult, indeed. Mick’s case brings with it a seemingly unbridled sexuality that threatens to annihilate the legitimacy of the long-lasting, traditional relationship. Which brings up an important question: what is a tradition and should tradition dictate anything?
A Footloose Man
In his 1946 lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Jean-Paul Sartre talks about his approach to ethical judgments and gives a precise explanation of what “existentialism” means. For Sartre, there are two ways to understand humanity. He calls them “essentialist” and “existentialist.” The essentialist describes human beings as if there is a blueprint for how humans are supposed to act—that there is such a thing as a pre-existing “essence.” What is an essence, you might ask? An essence is a quality that makes something uniquely what it is. Cut my hair off, and I’m still essentially me, so my hair isn’t one of my “essential qualities.” Take out my brain and my sense of humor, and perhaps I’m not essentially me anymore.
Usually, essentialism presupposes that there is some divinity that has designed humans, created a static human nature, and defined each individual’s essence before bringing them into existence. That is, an essentialist supposes that the life and essence of Jagger was in the mind of God long before the material Jagger ever came to be. For the essentialist, Jagger’s essence preceded his existence. Imagine essentialism in the context of a car factory: the design and nature (the essence) of Keith’s black Bentley is determined long before the metal is shaped and the car finished. All cars are essentially and conceptually dreamed up before they are created.
Sartre supposes the opposite, that we exist first, then we create our essence based on our actions: existence precedes essence. For Sartre, human beings show up, develop on the scene; we are born into the species and into the world first. Only after we exist do we begin acting in the world, conceptualizing in language what are known as our “essences.” There is no such thing as a pre-existing human essence, according to Sartre. “Essences” are simply conceptualizations created by human beings after the fact. Marriage and family structure was (at some point in our pre-history) simply conceived or “made up.” If we follow the trail of bones of our species back to the trees, one has to come to terms with the idea that conceptualization, symbolization, and language was a development of the human species—not something implanted as an essential quality. But then again, what do monkey-men have to do with marriage or The Stones?
It hasn’t always been the case that monogamy was the norm. There are a great number primates who have various forms of group mating practices. The bonobos seem to be doing quite alright with their arrangement.40 Even amongst our own species, there have been any number of cultures whose practical mainstream did not include monogamy. Like it or not, however, the intellectual, economic and moral ideas regarding romantic relationships have been dictated by the West over the course of the past two thousand years, which has meant that monogamy is now the popular tradition.
What Sartre wants us to see is that the existence of monogamy has been a human choice mandated through authority—it is not some absolute