Not as a sociologist, not as a psychologist, and certainly not as a moralist, but essentially as a religionist, I try to understand what was really at stake there. And I suggest that the model of the Trickster provides us with an original and useful light in that respect. But it suggests that they have become less and less able to mobilize, to summon up people, letting a large number of our contemporaries in a kind of mythical chaos and moral vacuum. And, in that situation, things happened as if sexuality had been invested with a new religious significance, as if it had been conferred a new sacred role. That is, no self achievement, no happiness, no deep communication with others, and even no mystical communion with the Other, capital O. Inversely, the liberation of sex, in opposition to all the moral straightjackets that had controlled it and repressed it for centuries, was deeply believed to be the bearer of all hopes, individual and collective, personal and political.
Sex is the question.
And, of course, as for the Trickster's mishaps and adventures, all sorts of results and consequences came out of that. Some of them quite annoying, like the Trickster's blunders and bad tricks. And here, for instance, one could think of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases as well as the remarkable confusion of Western civilization concerning sexuality. Let us think, for one thing, of the tremendous questioning which the sexual revolution has brought forth after centuries of Christian sexual ascetism and contempt of the flesh. This can be seen as having opened the way to a healthy reappraisal of the place, role and significance of sexuality in our culture as well as in the thought and spirituality of Christianity.