The late George Leonard

George Leonard, an important figure in the hippy/new age world, died a few days ago.  George and I were in the same circle of friends and crossed paths many times.

The obituaries I've read are accurate.  George was an original thinker and a Southern Gentleman, the two aspects I will comment on.

As a thinker, George contributed a valuable idea that I have used since 1974.  He pointed out that we were becoming an Insurance Society.  If you can't get insurance for an idea, act, performance or a public phenomenon it can't happen.  We are taking too much fun out of life.

We have become an Insurance Society because tort lawyers have succeeded in bringing popular mythology into the realm of the practical world.

The mythology is that engineering (and science) can prevent accidents from happening. Most of the public, that sit on juries, don't understand trade-offs.  For example: if a highway turn is banked too much, slow cars may slide off; if it is not banked enough, fast cars may fly off. So the lawyer wins his case by showing that engineers know a car going 70 mph will fly off the turn.

The same is true for a gas tank.  Placed between the driver and the engine the tank is less likely to be punctured, but when punctured it is more likely, because of engine heat, to burn the passenger.  The same gas tank in the rear is more likely to be punctured in an accident but less likely to burn the driver.  A trade off that juries can't understand so they award giant penalties to people driving too fast and driving a car with a rear gas tank.

George was a Southern Gentleman. As it  happens he married an ex-girl friend of mine.  I was a strong public advocate and practitioner of sexual freedom.  It looks to me like George, as a gentleman, was defending the purity of his new wife when, shortly after their marriage, they jointly wrote and published the book originally titled High Monogamy and later re-titled The End of Sex: Erotic Love After the Sexual Revolution and re-titled again as Adventures in Monogamy. I think George wrote that book as a gentlemanly response to me, his wife's previous boy friend.

The sexual revolution never actually ended, it changed.  Today the behavior of the hippies is the behavior of high school students: oral sex, multiple sequential partners and relaxed acceptance of other people's sexuality.

What has changed is significant and I support it: the use of male condoms for intercourse.  For the hippies, avoiding pregnancy was a paramount concern and female barriers were sufficient.  After the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases (especially AIDs) male condoms became vital (both meanings of 'vital').

I also suspect that multiple unprotected male partners for a woman can mean a higher chance of sterility... as centuries of prostitutes told each other.  Prostitutes have long claimed that one male's ejaculate fights another's. This seems to be biologically true.