The Ontological War

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Cynthia and Ann are talking, and Cynthia says she and Graham made a videotape. Ann then states

You can’t trust him. He’s perverted.

Ann’s resolute comment is a 180° change from her feelings about Graham a few days earlier, and there are several possible reasons for it:

• She thinks sex is ok, but sex videotapes are not.
• She likes or maybe even loves Graham from her realself, but then she finds out that he made sexual videotapes of many other women.
• She likes or maybe even loves Graham from her realself, but then she finds out that he made a sex tape with her sister.
• She feels betrayed ontologically, “You can’t trust him,” because she feels she and Graham were developing some kind of deeper relationship, and then she learns that he made the videotapes or videotape.

It’s impossible to say exactly how much of Ann’s negative and angry feelings about Graham are based on her belief that the videotapes are inherently perverted and how much of her feelings are based on what she feels is his ontological infidelity with other women, with her sister, or with both. Whatever the reasons, she feels they were developing a realself-to-realself relationship, but that relationship has failed and is now over.

Ann doesn’t know it yet, but one of the question she will need to answer as she continues moving forward ontologically is Are the tapes truly perverted or are they something else? She will need to answer this because the answer will go a long ways in determining if Graham truly is perverted, and that answer will go a long way in determining if she should continue developing a deeper relationship with him.

In another ontological area, we have all grown up in a socialself world, and so we have all assimilated a lot of socialself, and even decreasing realself, negative ideas about sex. This assimilation presents a problem for people who are increasing their degrees of realself because they have to understand these ideas in their true ontological context if they are to continue moving forward. Among the many other things she has to think about, Ann is confronting some of these ideas—such as the fundamental question Is sex dirty or perverted?—that are incompatible with the greater and greater degrees of realself she is becoming. She is a woman with a lot on her mind and a lot of strong emotions swirling around within her.

All in all, there isn’t a lot here ontologically; this post is included mainly to set up Ann’s ontological world and then show in the next post how two statements by Cynthia potentially have a great impact on Ann’s changing her mind about Graham.

Number 14 in the Sex, Lies, and Videotape series. All the posts in this series are listed in the All the Series’ Posts page.