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Pornography: Formula for Despair
CERC ^ | Donald DeMarco

Posted on 06/17/2002 8:25:38 PM PDT by JMJ333

There is a body of water in Eastern Canada that has the improbable name of "Lake Despair". This sinister appellation is an accident of language. The French originally called it Lac d'espoir (Lake of Hope). English-speaking settlers in the region, accustomed to hearing only their own language, misperceived its name. And so it became known, culturally and cartographically, as Lake Despair. This type of metamorphosis occurs just as easily on a moral plane.

Pornography takes human sexuality, with its hope of love, fidelity, family, and fulfillment, and turns it into an empty and lifeless husk. It does this as a predator destroys its prey, by eviscerating sexuality of all its inherent grace. This transmogrification, which some mistake as emancipation, takes place through processes that are neither liberating or enriching, but Depersonalizing, Enslaving, Self-destructive, Preposterous, Alienating, Isolating, Reductionistic. The process can be subtle enough that, for some, it goes unnoticed. But ultimately, the difference between the reality of human sexuality and its residue in pornography is all the difference in the world. It is the difference between what "gift" means in English and what "Gift" (poison) means in German. Indeed, it is the difference between hope and despair, heaven and hell.

DEPERSONALIZING

Pornography displaces love with lust. The fundamental reason that lust is listed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins is precisely that it gives pleasure primacy over the person. Lust prefers the experience of pleasure to the good of the person. Rather than loving the other, lust prefers to appropriate the other for the self. Such an inversion of proper values is at once unjust to the other who is regarded primarily as an instrument of pleasure, and destructive of the self inasmuch as it undermines his own nature as a loving being.

In his "Theology of the Body," John Paul II states that lust "'depersonalizes' man making him an object 'for the other'. Instead of being 'together with the other' - a subject in unity, in fact, in the sacramental unity 'of the body' - man becomes an object for man: the female for the male and vice versa." With lust, the subjectivity of the person gives way to the objectivity of the body.

In his book, The Case Against Pornography, David Holbrook argues that pornography is connected with the same processes of objectivization that is essential to the Galilean-Newtonian-Cartesian tradition that lowers nature and man "to the status of dead objects". Psychiatrist Leslie Farber and others have described the depersonalizing effects of pornography most vividly by stating that it transfers the fig leaf to the face. Pornography is not interested in the face, through which personality shines, but the objectivized and devitalized body. Pornography represses personality and exalts the depersonalized, despiritualized body.

ENSLAVING

The process by which one objectivizes the other, results in an objectivization of the self. This is the basis of slavery. "The enslaving of the other," writes Christian existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev, "is also the enslaving of the self." Viewing the other as a depersonalized, despiritualized object is incompatible with communion.

But only through inter-personal communion is one liberated form the world that is enclosed in the material. "By objectivization," Berdyaev goes on to say, "the subject enslaves itself and creates the realm of determinism."

Pornography enslaves by imprisoning people in the material. It also enslaves because it erodes personal freedom. "There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us," wrote C. S. Lewis. "Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance."

A third way in which pornography enslaves is through chemical addiction. When the pornography addict indulges in his habit, the adrenal gland secretes the chemical epinephrine into the blood stream. According to David Caton, author of Pornogrpahy: The Addiction, epinephrine goes to the brain and assists in locking in the pornographic images. These locked-in images can result in severely changed behavior, including an obsession with pornography that has much in common with chemical addiction.

SELF-DESTRUCTIVE

The depersonalizing and enslaving effects of pornography are inevitably self-destructive. The high rate of suicides among pornography actresses is a graphic indication of this.

The notion of "stripping," especially when applied to the pornographic film, goes far beyond the act of disrobing. It represents the stripping away of inner qualities as well: character, moral values, shame, fundamental decency, restraint. The logical end-point of such pornographic stripping is the complete dissolution of the self. In this regard, pornography leads to sado-masochism and death, as illustrated in the infamous "snuff" films.

Canadian Business magazine reports that "Hard-core Capitalists" stand to make so much money in peddling illegal porn that they are undeterred by the criminal sanctions against it. One producer, that fittingly calls itself Dead Parrot Productions, caters to the appetite for sado-masochism and self-destruction.

PREPOSTEROUS

Preposterous, as its etymology indicates (prae + posterius) means putting before, that which should come after. Trying to remove your socks before you have taken your shoes off, rather than after, is clearly preposterous. Pornography is preposterous because it puts sex before personhood, lust before love, pleasure before conscience.

When Adam awakened from a deep sleep and looked upon a woman for the first time, he joyously exclaimed: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gn. 2:23). "He rightly understood that his partner was first and foremost a human being, like himself, and secondarily sexual. He did not exclaim: "This at last is the opposite sex, a convenient instrument for my sexual gratification." The human relationship comes first; the sexual relationship must be grounded in personal love.

As a result of the Fall, Adam and Eve began to get things backwards. They experienced shame because they suddenly regarded each other first as sex objects and secondarily as persons. They then made aprons of fig leaves to cover themselves. Pornography and pornovision, by placing the part before the whole, sexuality before personality, is preposterous and therefore, in a sense, ludicrous.

ALIENATING

The porn world is not without rules. One cardinal rule is that its performers remain safely alienated from their clients. Because pornography is primarily centered on the despiritualized, depersonalized body, alienation is essential to it.

In the telephone sex industry, operators are instructed to advise customers who want to arrange a tryst that "company policy" forbids it. Also, because pornography in its various forms, relies heavily on illusion, it cannot abide the light of realism. The voyeur is obliged to remain an alienated spectator. The tenuous relationship between the voyeur and the exhibitionist evaporates once personality enters the picture. As C. S. Lewis pointed out in his Allegory of Love, lust seeks "for some purely sexual, hence purely imaginary conjunction of an impossible maleness with an impossible femaleness."

ISOLATING

Alienation between people leads to the isolation of the self. This isolation of the self from a significant other and from community must not be confused with the right to privacy. Privacy means two things. In the first sense, it is contrasted with what is public. Sexual intimacy between husband and wife is private in this sense. John Paul II has rightly criticized pornography and pornovision for violating this legitimate right to privacy of the body.

On the other hand, privacy can refer to self-isolation, of withdrawing from social encounters. Pornography violates legitimateprivacy and encourages the illegitimate privacy of isolation. It exposes a personal privacy that should be protected, while it promotes an isolated privacy that should be avoided. Consequently, it is highly injurious to marriage and the family, often leaving spouses, particularly husbands, isolated from the rest of their kin.

REDUCTIONISTIC

Pornography reduces the person to a thing. Perhaps a more revealing way of putting it is to say that pornography exchanges a name for a number. Hence its preoccupation with numbers: the size of the organs, the duration of intercourse, the number of partners, the frequency and intensity of orgasm. The so-called "vital statistics" do not denote life as such as much as a person reduced to a thing.

Mechanization, which invariably stamps things with sameness, has a strong affinity with pornography. They are both highly impersonal processes whose language is not of names, but of numbers. Pornography forces the impression upon the imagination that a human being is not an individualized person, but an amalgam of parts. One of the more pernicious consequences of the Freudean reduction of the person to conflicting parts is the willingness to ascribe rights to its most basic part, namely, the id. O. Hobart Mowrer has inveighed against Freudeanism for "championing the rights of the body in opposition to a society and moral order which were presumed to be unduly harsh and arbitrary."

Nonetheless, a human being is not a conflict of parts but a dynamic whole that has a communal nature and a personal destiny.

***************

The porn industry, with its words, images, voices, and videos, is, indeed, a formula for despair. From its very essence springs the need to create the illusion that the body is in fundamental conflict with the unified person. Its unremitting aim is to bring about a condition of utter shamelessness through the gradual annihilation of authentic personality.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: moralabsolutes; pornography; theologyofthebody
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To: JMJ333
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to further explain the connection between the devestating effects of porn...and that of bingo. Is that really your argument?"

The point is that it is the addiction that caused the problem in the marriage, not the subject of the addiction. It could have been an addiction to reading Time Magazine and it still likely would have caused the problems. Trying to blame something you don't like (pornography) for the weaknesses of others is what this is about.

I have friends that are addicted to golf to the point of I believe it is more important to them than their families. It appears so when they are not willing to give up a game in order to attend family events, parties, or such things.

It's the addictive behavior, not the game of golf that needs addressing. Same goes for porn.

81 posted on 06/17/2002 9:42:23 PM PDT by SW6906
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To: JMJ333
Porn is the celebration of hedonism and selfishness - in their purest, most distilled form. Much evil in this world springs from these sources.

If one is inclined to promote porn then I suggest that the dumpster would make a nice home.

Of course even as I watch this I look up and see Melonie Griffith doing Kiefer Sutherland in the back of a Chevy.

Kiefer, ya done Oddball proud - she's one nice ho'!!!

82 posted on 06/17/2002 9:42:58 PM PDT by The Duke
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To: Harrison Bergeron
What's the effective difference between somebody ruining their marriage because they can't stop looking at naked pictures and somebody ruining their marriage because they can't stop blowing the grocery budget on bingo cards?

Did you read the article? If you really don't see a difference between the effects of porn and people who play bingo...well...I am at a loss as to what to say...

83 posted on 06/17/2002 9:43:16 PM PDT by JMJ333
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To: SW6906
Where does bingo reduce the human being to an object? I'm sorry, but you'll have to go through the points made in the article [easy to find as they are capitalized] and explain the similarities because I find this line of argument ridiculous.
84 posted on 06/17/2002 9:45:18 PM PDT by JMJ333
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To: Harrison Bergeron
Keep up the fight, I gotta go to bed (without porn!).

G'nite all.

85 posted on 06/17/2002 9:45:37 PM PDT by SW6906
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To: Prince Caspian
No more spinning, justifying, or self-deception. Just straight talk.

Actually Bundy was doing quite a bit of spinning and justifying (although he was trying to decieve others, not himself). He was trying to shuffle off his murderous misdeeds on porno rather than taking the blame for his own actions. I remember his lame excuse and thought him a slimey little weasel even at the very end.

86 posted on 06/17/2002 9:45:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: JMJ333
I see. You're basic argument is "It's malarkey." LOL

Metaphysical malarkey indeed, as illustrated by this--

 Depersonalizing, Enslaving, Self-destructive, Preposterous,
 Alienating, Isolating, Reductionistic. The process can be subtle
enough that, for some, it goes unnoticed.

Yup, really awful stuff.   Actually, incarnating as
a chocolate rabbit is a lot more interesting.

87 posted on 06/17/2002 9:46:20 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: mlmr
my waiting room and many other counselors are filled with marriages wrecked on the shoals of pornography. Our forbearers knew danger and the limits of humanity when they outlawed it.

I have know many who became addicted to it, to the detriment of their marriages and relationships.

88 posted on 06/17/2002 9:47:09 PM PDT by yendu bwam
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To: PJ-Comix
Bundy claimed full responsibility for his own acts during the interview. He blamed no one or nothing else. He described how pornography had played a role in the process.
89 posted on 06/17/2002 9:47:59 PM PDT by Prince Caspian
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To: ValerieUSA
Pornography is reductionist. It reduces the personality, the beauty, the love, the intimacy of humans into the lowest, smallest marketable package possible. Then very small people who will never grow up buy it. It is an addictive contaminent in the minds of children and adults, who will never find satisfaction even as they purchase more and more of it.

Excellent reply. Interesting how many of these so-called Conservatives are porndogs, isn't it?

90 posted on 06/17/2002 9:48:34 PM PDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp
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To: gcruse
It goes un-noticed by you doesn't it? And all the pro-porn libertines on this thread who'd rather stick their head in the sand and tout immature quips than realize destructive behavior when it is explained in depth. Not one of you guys has refuted even one point made in the article.
91 posted on 06/17/2002 9:48:48 PM PDT by JMJ333
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To: PJ-Comix
More serious than mere jaywalking but not nearly as dangerous as drunk driving.

It ruins a lot of lives. More than most people realize.

92 posted on 06/17/2002 9:48:48 PM PDT by yendu bwam
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To: JMJ333
"Did you read the article? "

Yes. Its disregard of bingo addiction (or, more seriously, the addictive personality in general) totally killed any credibility it might have otherwise had.

93 posted on 06/17/2002 9:50:25 PM PDT by Harrison Bergeron
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To: gcruse
In its attack on American culture and social institutions libertarianism works hand in hand with liberalism to undermine tradition and social stability. The Bill Of Rights makes no sense outside of American traditions and social structures, and the Founding Fathers knew it.

I doubt very seriously that social conservatives drove you to libertarianism. It is far more likely that your personal philosophy is steeped in relativism, and pure conservatism of the American stripe (with its emphases on truth as revealed through tradition and a body of law that buttresses social stability) is, in a very literal sense, anathema to your being.

94 posted on 06/17/2002 9:50:46 PM PDT by Chunga
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To: HassanBenSobar
human beings actually feeling LUST--what a terrible inhuman thing. So unnatural.

Lust is a natural and immensely strong animal desire. However, those that can rise above it lead freer and very frequently more happy lives. Many cannot see the wisdom of that. However, many can.

95 posted on 06/17/2002 9:51:06 PM PDT by yendu bwam
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To: yendu bwam
It ruins a lot of lives. More than most people realize.

Drunk driving ruins (and ends) a lot more lives.

96 posted on 06/17/2002 9:51:07 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: Harrison Bergeron
If you say so.
97 posted on 06/17/2002 9:51:43 PM PDT by JMJ333
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To: ValerieUSA
Pornography is reductionist. It reduces the personality, the beauty, the love, the intimacy of humans into the lowest, smallest marketable package possible. Then very small people who will never grow up buy it. It is an addictive contaminent in the minds of children and adults, who will never find satisfaction even as they purchase more and more of it.

Extremely well stated.

98 posted on 06/17/2002 9:52:24 PM PDT by yendu bwam
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99 posted on 06/17/2002 9:54:09 PM PDT by Askel5
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To: SW6906
"The point is that it is the addiction that caused the problem in the marriage, not the subject of the addiction. It could have been an addiction to reading Time Magazine..."

Or Freeping. I'm told there are FReepers who have been fired from their jobs for FReeping too much during working hours. Or maybe its because they were FReeping naked... nevermind.

100 posted on 06/17/2002 9:55:49 PM PDT by Harrison Bergeron
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