New law of attraction

Or is it but an old law put in new force? The same sex attraction was always there. Men liked men, women like women, not as friends but in a funny kind of way. Li Yinhe claims that historical records show almost all emperors of the Western Han Dynasty had lovers of their same sex. In ancient Greece and Rome, adolescent males often pair-bonded, engaging in frequent homosexual relations, and exhibiting great love for each other, until the time came to become fathers and husbands. Even today for example, homosexual acts as late as age 17 are considered innocent in Cameroon.

We have had sissy men in the past and we have them now. Likewise, tomboys who were masculine girls have been found at all times. He-woman, she-man, flipsides of each gender, but from time to time it has been branded as a shame. More than anything, that shame has been done away with in some countries by the sanction of law. It's now perfectly legal in those countries for man to fall for man, woman to fall for woman. Attraction, in all its permutation and combination, is no longer considered the hallowed preserve between a man and a woman. Exception no longer proves the rule. It's the rule today.

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So in the West, men and women can get married to their own kinds. Perversion until some years ago, it's now just a matter of choice. But there is more to this knee-jerk liberalism, this freedom of choice, this right to be the way one wants. It is finally the recognition of hormones, that the book of biology is as good as its contents.

The new reality has changed the law of attraction. Like-minded people have always associated with each other, fallen in love, made friendship and kept in touch as normal, healthy progression of life. What we have now is an additional feature. Like-bodied people can feel attracted as well, something which doesn't make sense to us, something which disgusts many, flabbergasting others.

Variety is the spice of life, and attraction varies from life to life. What it takes to tick between two people, may not click between others. Jean Paul Sartre was a philandering man, although he possessed no physical beauty. Nearly all of his girlfriends were initially repulsed by his ugliness, but then all of them eventually succumbed to his blandishments, seduced by his quicksilver intellect, ardent language and increasing fame.

Good looks, riches, shapely bodies, comely manners, character, intellect, gifts of talents, the recipe for attraction is as diverse as any two individuals. Like they say different folks, different strokes. While good looks and money are common denominators, women are more attracted by successful men, and men are more attracted by beautiful women. There are those who are attracted by intellect. Lots of people fall for smooth talkers. Sometimes kindness can play cupid between two people. Then it also can be common ideology, profession, struggle, or enemy, which draw people to each other.

In 1810, there was a bisarre case of attraction that mesmerized London and Paris, radiating into the rest of Europe. Citizens came to gawk at Saartjie “Sara” Baartman, a young southern African tribeswoman exhibited in a cage. What attracted the crowd was not only the naked body of the 20-year-old woman. According to John Short, a professor at New York's Cooper Union College, it was the large derriere and distended labia of the woman, which was the main attraction of that sordid display. The European minds were so intrigued by this African woman that after her death Baartman's sexual organs were preserved and displayed in a Paris museum until 1985. In 2002, the French government returned her remains to South Africa, with apologies.

Lisa Jones has raised an intriguing possibility in her book Bulletproof Diva that Baartman's notoriety was partially responsible for the rise in popularity in Europe of the corset that gave white women her high busts, rounder hips and exaggerated proportions of their own. People often go to ludicrous extent to become attractive. They wear gawky dress, speak in affected accent, develop mannerisms, and adopt bizarre lifestyle, all to impress others to get attention. Many people undergo facelift, others go through callisthenics, diet control, and austere beautification so that they can get some attention.

The physical beauty is, therefore, a predominant driver of attraction, whereas money, power, intellect can gain control from time to time. But then, like other things in life, rules of attraction changes from one stage to another. Children are attracted by gaudy things, adolescents by grotesque ones, youths by glamour and middle aged people by grandeur. When people grow old, when their own bodies lose charm, when they get clumsy and confused, they look for grace.

If relationships are music then attraction is its notes. Every person is an instrument that plays this music in unison with one or more instruments leading to resonance, consonance or dissonance. Society is an orchestra, which must harmonise these instruments to create redolent music. Attraction builds relationships, relationships build societies and societies build history.

History changes when relationship changes because the law of attraction changes. Ideologies have evolved in the tension of these changes, in the struggle of relationships amongst class, caste, gender, profession, religion, race, and nationality. In the medieval Russia peasants were chattels and landlords exchanged them for cattle. In the Indian society women were once expected to die in the pyre of her dead husband. In the United States slave owners ran their business on the principle of cattle breeding. They impregnated black women on their plantations to breed more slaves to fetch manifolds their investment.

Percy Bysshe Shelley explained that love was that powerful attraction towards all that we conceived, or feared, or hoped beyond ourselves. If you extrapolate these words, then hatred is but repulsion to all that we conceived, or feared, or hoped beyond ourselves. Relationships come either in love or hatred. Strangers don't have to worry about these things.

Birds of a feather will always find one another. Romantics, idealists, zealots, the world is full of many vibrations. It is the change in vibration that changes the equation, which changes professions, possessions, power and position. If the brainy was respectable once, the brawny is respectable today. If the virtuous was respectable once, the vicious is respectable today. If the intelligent was respectable once, the clever is respectable today.

All of these are the outcome of one thing, and one thing only. The law of attraction is changing. If you have watched the flies being drawn into the fire, that explains the new law of attraction. It draws all alike in mind or body -- homosexual, heterosexual, theist, atheist, devout, debauched, enlightened and benighted. Flimsy people are plunging into passionate intensity. The magnets don't pull them anymore. Let me tell you why. There is no steel in them.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.