The Other Keynes Diary
January 29, 2008 8:08 AM Subscribe
John Maynard Keynes kept two sex diaries. The second one is a bit mysterious. (via marginal revolution)
Oh great neo-Platonic sex. Two diaries full of how sex should be, all things being equal.
posted by geoff. at 8:16 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 8:16 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
"That's a lot of sex diaries. For an economist."
What's that, one?
posted by stenseng at 8:20 AM on January 29, 2008
What's that, one?
posted by stenseng at 8:20 AM on January 29, 2008
This story was already pretty great, but "Child/Adult/Woman" just blew my mind (so to speak). Doesn't really hold up, though. Would a scientific, detail-oriented man, even in the 20s, have categorized "adult" differently than "woman"?
posted by DU at 8:21 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by DU at 8:21 AM on January 29, 2008
Keynes tried to seduce Wittgenstein.
I was just a kid!
posted by wittgenstein at 8:22 AM on January 29, 2008 [8 favorites]
I was just a kid!
posted by wittgenstein at 8:22 AM on January 29, 2008 [8 favorites]
Fascinating post. Now, who's up for a Friedman sex diary?
posted by boubelium at 8:22 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by boubelium at 8:22 AM on January 29, 2008
The World is Flat-Chested
posted by DU at 8:29 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
posted by DU at 8:29 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
Friedman eh? Kinky.
posted by longbaugh at 8:29 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
posted by longbaugh at 8:29 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
INVISIBLE HANDJOB!1!
Yes I know, different economist.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:46 AM on January 29, 2008 [10 favorites]
Yes I know, different economist.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:46 AM on January 29, 2008 [10 favorites]
For each of these headings, he records the number of times each activity occurred, and also when. For example, between May and August, 1911, he performed (if that's the right word) C sixteen times, A four times, and W five times.
I'm sure we can come up with various possible combinations to cover standard guy-on-guy activities. And if he got all three, he'd crow about it in his diary.
posted by pracowity at 8:52 AM on January 29, 2008
I'm sure we can come up with various possible combinations to cover standard guy-on-guy activities. And if he got all three, he'd crow about it in his diary.
posted by pracowity at 8:52 AM on January 29, 2008
Fascinating post. Now, who's up for a Friedman sex diary?
I thought that's what Free To Choose was about.
posted by horsemuth at 8:56 AM on January 29, 2008
I thought that's what Free To Choose was about.
posted by horsemuth at 8:56 AM on January 29, 2008
People like sex. Even ostensibly boring, dry, pompous people like sex.
Ever seen Kinsey?
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:59 AM on January 29, 2008
Ever seen Kinsey?
posted by chuckdarwin at 8:59 AM on January 29, 2008
I am prepared to pay Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell any sum they name NOT to disclose anything about their sexual activity.
Oh, dear God, what if they have... VIDEOS!!!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:13 AM on January 29, 2008
Oh, dear God, what if they have... VIDEOS!!!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:13 AM on January 29, 2008
Double entry book-keeping!
posted by Abiezer at 9:18 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
posted by Abiezer at 9:18 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
Keynes, along with many other members of the Bloomsbury group, was a homosexual. Virginia Woolf affectionately called the group "The society of buggers." Keynes' biographer, Robert Skidelsky, described the situation as a "sexual merry-go-round" as members commonly floated from one sexual partner to another. As Richard Deacon concluded, "Keynes himself was the chief protagonist of the homosexual cult, obsessed with the subject to an abnormal degree for one with a good intellect and wide interests."
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:20 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:20 AM on January 29, 2008
Adds a whole new meaning to "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics.
posted by briank at 9:45 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by briank at 9:45 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
I'd pay big money to see Keynes rutting Wittgenstein. Reminds me of this.
posted by greytape at 9:48 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by greytape at 9:48 AM on January 29, 2008
That's nothing. Wait 'til you see Hayek's sex Kinetoscope. It's teh hawt.
posted by oncogenesis at 9:49 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by oncogenesis at 9:49 AM on January 29, 2008
Has anyone found a copy of the actual diary text?
I'm embarassed to admit I didn't even know Keynes was bent.
posted by Nelson at 9:55 AM on January 29, 2008
I'm embarassed to admit I didn't even know Keynes was bent.
posted by Nelson at 9:55 AM on January 29, 2008
I'm embarassed to admit I didn't even know Keynes was bent.
In the long run, we're all bent.
posted by me & my monkey at 10:09 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
In the long run, we're all bent.
posted by me & my monkey at 10:09 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
briank, if I'm remembering my Principles of Macro correctly, those aren't really the kind of economic systems Keynes supported.
Fortunately, that doesn't make your obscene puns any less funny!
posted by Bizurke at 10:11 AM on January 29, 2008
Fortunately, that doesn't make your obscene puns any less funny!
posted by Bizurke at 10:11 AM on January 29, 2008
Adds a whole new meaning to "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics.
Not to mention homo economicus.
posted by jonp72 at 10:14 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
Not to mention homo economicus.
posted by jonp72 at 10:14 AM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
I guess since I'm definitionally selfish, devoid of "purposiveness," and obsessed with present gratification, I can just stop worrying about the future, my retirement, the state of the economy, etc. Awesome!
posted by blucevalo at 10:27 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by blucevalo at 10:27 AM on January 29, 2008
Economist sex puns have completely made my day.
invisible handjob. heh.
posted by GuyZero at 10:31 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
invisible handjob. heh.
posted by GuyZero at 10:31 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
I suppose he's familiar with the trickle-down effect. It wasn't always about price and wage rigidity, if you know what I mean. He was trying to control deflation of his assets.
You could probably plug in any economics term, and if you just phrase it right and italicize, it sounds like an innuendo. Puns aside, though, poking into someone's personal life just because they're famous isn't cool. Who cares what Keynes' sex life was like -- that's his business and none of ours.
posted by spiderskull at 10:45 AM on January 29, 2008
You could probably plug in any economics term, and if you just phrase it right and italicize, it sounds like an innuendo. Puns aside, though, poking into someone's personal life just because they're famous isn't cool. Who cares what Keynes' sex life was like -- that's his business and none of ours.
posted by spiderskull at 10:45 AM on January 29, 2008
Evan Zimroth [from link]: Whenever I have had the chance—as with the church historian—I have asked people to free associate to Keynes' code. When presented with "A" they invariable said "ass", which is almost undoubtedly right...
Really? John Maynard Keynes had sex with donkeys regularly?
posted by koeselitz at 10:48 AM on January 29, 2008
Really? John Maynard Keynes had sex with donkeys regularly?
posted by koeselitz at 10:48 AM on January 29, 2008
Which brings me to one of my favorite limericks:
There once was a comely lass
Who had the most stupendous ass
It was not round and pink
As you probably think
But was gray, and had ears, and ate grass.
posted by koeselitz at 10:55 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
There once was a comely lass
Who had the most stupendous ass
It was not round and pink
As you probably think
But was gray, and had ears, and ate grass.
posted by koeselitz at 10:55 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
This is wonderful. Thanks!
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:57 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:57 AM on January 29, 2008
Now, who's up for a Friedman sex diary
I hesitate to admit that over the summer, I hosted a debate at the Cambridge Union Society entitled "This House Would Have Milton Friedman's Babies".
From the second link:
Last week at a drinks event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall...eminent professor... the usual dust-up... Champagne in hand... I jumped in headlong and called him an anti-Semite... You Americans always... John Maynard Keynes... sex diaries... A little more champagne... ... ... ...
The Oxford and Cambridge Club: almost £400 a year. Metafilter: $5 lifetime fee. The conversation is exactly the same, but there are probably fewer nazis on Metafilter, and we still occasionally get Champagne. But I think the Club does have one thing over Mefi: they opened access to women three years before metafilter did.
posted by honest knave at 11:04 AM on January 29, 2008
I hesitate to admit that over the summer, I hosted a debate at the Cambridge Union Society entitled "This House Would Have Milton Friedman's Babies".
From the second link:
Last week at a drinks event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall...eminent professor... the usual dust-up... Champagne in hand... I jumped in headlong and called him an anti-Semite... You Americans always... John Maynard Keynes... sex diaries... A little more champagne... ... ... ...
The Oxford and Cambridge Club: almost £400 a year. Metafilter: $5 lifetime fee. The conversation is exactly the same, but there are probably fewer nazis on Metafilter, and we still occasionally get Champagne. But I think the Club does have one thing over Mefi: they opened access to women three years before metafilter did.
posted by honest knave at 11:04 AM on January 29, 2008
A, C, W -- so coy, that Keynes. As I recall Jenna Jameson's economics diaries, they left ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the imagination.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:11 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:11 AM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
I think we have plenty of nazis.
just sayin'
posted by craven_morhead at 11:24 AM on January 29, 2008
just sayin'
posted by craven_morhead at 11:24 AM on January 29, 2008
Maybe he had it backwards?
posted by NationalKato at 11:30 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by NationalKato at 11:30 AM on January 29, 2008
Who cares what Keynes' sex life was like -- that's his business and none of ours.
Dead people don't have 'business', they just have dead.
posted by dgaicun at 11:42 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
Dead people don't have 'business', they just have dead.
posted by dgaicun at 11:42 AM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
They also have Mormon people converting their souls. But yeah, that, and dead.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:49 AM on January 29, 2008
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:49 AM on January 29, 2008
Now, who's up for a Friedman sex diary?
Wouldn't Friedman want to keep a tight rein on the booty supply? And he'd be insisting on privatization, so it would all be sex with prostitutes.
I can't see his diary being anywhere near as interesting as Keynes, who was all about a mixed sexual economy and government intervention to ensure full sexual employment.
Hmm. I wonder if that means that they'd tax us, sexually, to ensure that the unattractive sexually unemployed would be getting some from those of us who are a bit hotter than they are? As a younger man, such a policy would have seemed reprehensible to me, but as an older, fatter man, I'm starting to see the merits of such an approach. From each according to his abilities...
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:07 PM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
Wouldn't Friedman want to keep a tight rein on the booty supply? And he'd be insisting on privatization, so it would all be sex with prostitutes.
I can't see his diary being anywhere near as interesting as Keynes, who was all about a mixed sexual economy and government intervention to ensure full sexual employment.
Hmm. I wonder if that means that they'd tax us, sexually, to ensure that the unattractive sexually unemployed would be getting some from those of us who are a bit hotter than they are? As a younger man, such a policy would have seemed reprehensible to me, but as an older, fatter man, I'm starting to see the merits of such an approach. From each according to his abilities...
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:07 PM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
Wouldn't Friedman want to keep a tight rein on the booty supply? And he'd be insisting on privatization, so it would all be sex with prostitutes.
Oh, you game theorists. Won't you go back to your indeciferable scribblings and tinofil hat theorizing?
posted by Pollomacho at 12:17 PM on January 29, 2008
Oh, you game theorists. Won't you go back to your indeciferable scribblings and tinofil hat theorizing?
posted by Pollomacho at 12:17 PM on January 29, 2008
MetaFilter: "A little more champagne and we were talking about cock-sucking."
posted by kirkaracha at 1:09 PM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:09 PM on January 29, 2008 [2 favorites]
That's priming the market!
posted by klangklangston at 1:30 PM on January 29, 2008
posted by klangklangston at 1:30 PM on January 29, 2008
Bah, free market economics! Marx was where it's at, especially in the unbowdlerised Complete Works, for example:
Do I obey sexual laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale? Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. (from Human Needs & the Division of Labour)
History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common sexual good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy. (from Letter to His Father)
There is in every social formation a particular branch of reproduction which determines the position and importance of all the others, and the relations obtaining in this branch accordingly determine the relations of all other branches as well. (from Preface to the Critique of Political Economy)
Sexuality is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces (from Das Kapital, Volume 1)
A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. (from Das Kapital, Volume 1)
Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great sexual revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the sexual position of the fair sex (plain ones included). (from Letter to Kugelmann)
Sexual freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. (one from Engels, there, from Anti-Duhring)
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:12 PM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
Do I obey sexual laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale? Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. (from Human Needs & the Division of Labour)
History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common sexual good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy. (from Letter to His Father)
There is in every social formation a particular branch of reproduction which determines the position and importance of all the others, and the relations obtaining in this branch accordingly determine the relations of all other branches as well. (from Preface to the Critique of Political Economy)
Sexuality is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces (from Das Kapital, Volume 1)
A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. (from Das Kapital, Volume 1)
Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great sexual revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the sexual position of the fair sex (plain ones included). (from Letter to Kugelmann)
Sexual freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. (one from Engels, there, from Anti-Duhring)
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:12 PM on January 29, 2008 [3 favorites]
"All that was solid shrinks into hair. All that was sacred is blue veined."
The Erotic Communist Manifesto.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:53 PM on January 29, 2008
The Erotic Communist Manifesto.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:53 PM on January 29, 2008
A scepter is haunting Europe—the scepter of my prodigious phallus.
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2008 [1 favorite]
I forgot Lenin:
The women were just lying in the streets, waiting for somebody to pick them up
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:46 PM on January 29, 2008
The women were just lying in the streets, waiting for somebody to pick them up
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:46 PM on January 29, 2008
I can't see his diary being anywhere near as interesting as Keynes, who was all about a mixed sexual economy and government intervention to ensure full sexual employment.
Think of Ricardo's diaries though, especially the chapters where he explains how a country finds out its comparative sexual advantage.
Enough puns, I'm going to study.
posted by ersatz at 9:55 AM on January 30, 2008
Think of Ricardo's diaries though, especially the chapters where he explains how a country finds out its comparative sexual advantage.
Enough puns, I'm going to study.
posted by ersatz at 9:55 AM on January 30, 2008
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