THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

Why a “Sexless Tribe” Is Emerging

What happens when sexual desire races without safeguards?

Long before abstinence became a movement, chastity often arose naturally from lived conditions. In traditional cultures such as the Hunza of the Himalayan region, sexual restraint was not preached—it was imposed by reality. Food scarcity, seasonal fasting, physical labor, shared living, and separate sleeping arrangements set a natural rhythm. Desire was shaped by circumstance, not indulged on demand.

In such settings, sex was rare, intentional, and tied to fertility rather than appetite. The body learned patience. The mind learned containment. Relationships were ordered around survival, cooperation, and lineage—not constant stimulation.

Modern abundance reversed that order. Endless food, artificial light, private space, and relentless media arousal removed every natural governor. What ancient cultures learned through necessity, modern people must now must relearn through choice.

What today’s abstinent or chastity movements are intuitively rediscovering is simple:

When desire is no longer endlessly fed, it quiets down.
When it quiets down, it clarifies the purpose and meanng of life.
And when it does that, meaningful relationships develop and deepen.

This is not emotional regression. It is a recovery from sexual hysteria.

That same restraint once shaped modern culture as well. In the great epic films of the 1950s—Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Quo Vadis—sexual detail was almost entirely absent. Romance existed, but it was implied, restrained, subordinate to sacrifice, honor, and destiny. The camera lingered on faces, not bodies; on moral struggle, not physical release.

Those films trusted the audience’s imagination and respected moral boundaries.

By contrast, contemporary media floods the senses ad nauseum. Sexual imagery is no longer suggestion but saturation—explicit, repetitive, ever detached from commitment or consequence. I fast-forward such scenes, considering them wasted footage that contributes nothing of value. What once belonged to carnal intimacy has become background noise. When everything is shown, nothing is suspended. Mystery collapses.

Desire flashes hot—then burns out.

Young people are not rebelling against strong morality guardrails on a treacherous mountain pass. They are reeling from overexposure, sickened from too much velocity, chasing curves without those guardrails.

What looks like prudishness or withdrawal is often self-defense. Earlier generations were formed by restraint without choosing it; this generation is choosing restraint precisely because discipline has vanished and is essential for safe passage in life’s rugged terrain.

For decades, the Catholic Church understood this dynamic. It maintained a formal film-rating system, warning the faithful about content that degraded human dignity or inflamed disordered desire. It wasn’t prudishness; it was pastoral realism.

Images shape morality long before words harness the will.

That system disappeared during the cultural upheaval surrounding Vatican II—just as the birth-control pill severed sex from consequence and responsibility. What followed was not liberation, but deregulation. Moral guardrails were removed at the exact moment technological power exploded. Now the hotrod cliff runs are dangerously exposed. Modern culture didn’t just remove restraint—it removed the guardrails.

Sexual desire is now driven like a sports car on a mountain road: faster curves, sharper turns, no warning signs, no barriers. Acceleration is praised. Braking is mocked. Anyone who slows down and stops is told they’re ‘chicken,’ repressed, frigid, gender dysphoric, or retarded.

But speed doesn’t eliminate danger—it magnifies it. And when every curve is chased at full throttle, crashes are no longer shocking. They become routine.

What looks like withdrawal in young people today isn’t fear of the road. It’s instinct. They’ve seen the moral wreckage. They know that without those guardrails, slowing down isn’t cowardice—it’s survival.

Once sex was medicalized, commercialized, and insulated from intended procreation, restraint lost its footing. Cinema followed. Then television. Then advertising. Then the internet. What had been guarded as intimate became spectacle. What had been whispered was shouted.

The result was not sexual freedom, but saturation and deep disgust.

Today’s young people are rejecting a sexual life without meaning. They are growing up in a world where sexual desire is relentlessly provoked but is never satisfied, in lewd movies, in scant fashion shows, in luring car ads, where boundaries were removed before wisdom could replace them.

I was revising a manuscript about my monastic vocation—specifically a discussion with the abbot about chaste celibacy and restraint among religious—when I took a short digital break. What suddenly flashed onto the screen was about: The Sexless Tribe, a growing online community of disgusted young people choosing abstinence in a hyper-sexualized world.

https://www.instagram.com/thesexlesstribe/

The timing felt uncanny and serendipitous.

What once required a cloister now seems to be emerging spontaneously—in dorm rooms, bedrooms, and cellphones switched off at night. Not from fear. Not from repression. But from media fatigue. When everything is sexualized, intimacy loses significance. And then, when sexual desire is constantly provoked, it stops feeling like humanity at all but bestiality.

This isn’t a return to doctrinal moralism. It looks like self-preservation.

By stepping back, many young people are reclaiming attention, trust, and meaning—the conditions real intimacy needs to survive. What ancient cultures learned through sheer necessity, this generation is rediscovering through intelligent choice.

It’s a culture circling back to ancient wisdom after the high cost of excess.

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