Douglas Davis: Untrue Compared to What?

Douglas Davis is the author of The Five Myths of Television Power (or,Why the Medium Is Not the Message) (Simon & Schuster). He has created The World's First Collaborative Sentence on the World Wide Web, which will soon be matched by TheWorld's First Collaborative Body.

Tracy Quan: How do you define infidelity?

Douglas Davis: The question is really: who are we betraying? There is a stern, angry, Old Testament god who condemns sex outside of marriage (as well as marital sex for pleasure only), and requires our total allegiance. This was the god of Saint Augustine, who swung the Roman Empire behind an idea which was not, in fact, shared by many of the Early Christian divines or radical Gnostic Christians. Today, this patriarchal God speaks to us through fundamentalist preachers and politicians. Lately we also hear him speaking to us -- ironically -- through the hardcore feminists. Then, there is the Goddess of Love who is celebrated throughout our visual culture. Almost every effort to sell something on TV invokes the image of the Goddess of Love. Very few people can say no to her without pain. What we call infidelity is often actual fealty to another god, to the Goddess of Love, who has also been called Venus.

Assuming that there are at least two gods -- one a god, and one a goddess -- infidelity to one is fidelity to another. So, if a married man meets a woman who is married, and they fall rapturously in love, are passionately attracted to each other, to deny that passion in the name of the Old Testament God would be unfaithful to the Goddess of Love. Many Gnostic Christians interpreted the story of Adam and Eve from the standpoint of Eve and the snake -- not from the standpoint of the false "God" (I actually think he was Satan in drag) who ordered them out of Paradise. Eve was our real hero because she introduced Adam to the beauty of the body -- and the universe. The pagan or radical Christian view of life is about devotion to the cause of procreation and sexual enjoyment, among other things. Once you look at Adam and Eve as the Gnostics did, you see it in sacred terms, and this vision is absent from our technocratic view of sex.

TQ: What's the technocratic view of adultery? Is God a technocrat?

DD: It's technocratic to look at a sexual act without taking into account the splendid diversity of human life. Your typical bureaucratic mind sits somewhere, has a lot of cases to deal with, and doesn't think about the quality of each individual act. The technocratic approach turns each adulterous act into a number. "So-and-so committed infidelity three items last week," he or she might say, without asking what it was like, or what drew those people together. The wondrous act of athletically screwing somebody or making gentle, stroking love is considered evil if one or both parties happens to be married -- or if both are simply enjoying sex rather than procreating. What a technocratic view of life, love -- and art! Nothing is less technocratic than the act of making love. It is never impersonal, always highly specific. Anyone who has ever done it knows this to be true.

TQ: Who are the biggest offenders -- as technocrats go?

DD: The Media -- sniffing around Washington looking for evidence, destroying careers and ideas on the basis of one "unfaithful" moment. Our political leaders who tout a morality that nobody lives by; fundamentalist preachers; hardcore feminists who insist that men prey on women in all heterosexual relationships; and family court judges.

TQ: How are divorce judges at fault?

DD: In most of the United States, proof of adultery will not alone decide a divorce case. But it is still a powerful political argument for your side, if you can prove that your spouse has been enjoying him or herself with other partners while you were married. It's an argument that can sway a judge or get sympathy when you're disputing custody of the children or possession of a house. So, even though the laws have changed, even though the mere fact of adultery won't decide your case, men and women are still spying on each other. I find that sad -- and ridiculous.