Among the masterful strokes of Ian Boyne's Sunday Gleaner contributions there is seldom any easily-found flaw in logic and to my way of thinking, his recent contribution 'The problem with sex' (July 19) is certainly no exception. His readings are most often timely, interesting and stimulating - typically making far more significant a contribution to our print-media experience than most.

Yet after reading and being well entertained by this article, I couldn't help but wonder why he had not seen and presented a route necessary to get beyond the problem he described so well. Perhaps it is all too easy for most journalists to get lost in the details.

Lack of appreciation

Boyne mentions philosophy and society's general lack of appreciation of its perspectives and I applaud him for this obvious yet unpopular stance. At the same time he seems to fall short of being able to use the power of that so-often shunned area of intellectual endeavour to break the chains that his shortcoming in perspective gives his argument, the generalisations he uses to illustrate his points.

One problem is that the American ethos is not so easily standardised and compartmentalised as he would lead us to believe, and the reason is that its diversity lends itself more to media sensationalism than it does wise conclusion. We do not all, for example, care whether or not politicians are indiscreet, only some of us do. So why is it such so-called 'scandals' appear so often and prominently in the news, bringing characters into disrepute? Could it be simply because it has its own significant market share in the vast American market, its own large-enough facet of the ethos?

Another problem is that he generalises that Jamaicans have far more tolerance for such sexual behaviours. Yet I suspect that such tolerance is far less than he implies and perhaps there is an undertone of religiously-inspired, conservative morality there that he has missed, one waiting for a future time, in similar fashion, to grasp its own market-media share against the backdrop of so many other, more serious and pressing problems as face Jamaicans today.

Might I suggest we all consider a morality based on an avoidance of conflict that comes with experience, wisdom and maturity and not one arising from the shallowness and insubstantiality of religious or current societal mores, but from simple practicality in the anticipation of problems?

For example, it is as impractical in that it is also at least potentially problematic for a politician to have an affair when so many journalists are running about examining one's private doings as it is for the ordinary man to do so with a neighbours' wife or fellow man's underage daughter. Likewise, it is both ridiculous, and in that same sense inappropriate, for a confessed homosexual to profess such predisposition in a public setting, knowing that negative comments or worse might be the consequence of such a demonstration.

Such considerations are based upon the avoidance of potential conflict, an avoidance which comes not only from negative experience, but from the good advice and counsel of elders. Indeed, as far as cultural ethos is concerned, what is out of sight is, indeed, also out of mind.

I am, etc.,

ED MCCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia

Florida