The perils of pornography

A person whose idea of sex has been formed by pornography will see prostitution as its logical end because both activities enshrine a split in the human person between body and soul. It may be that the rise of pornography and of prostitution are causally connected.

We may ask what happens to normal sexual development when the mind is full of humping naked bodies. Early sexual experience is tentative, explorative. It beings with a kiss and as love and trust grows it proceeds along the road to full sexual expression. This is a journey whose excitement relies on naiveté. Perhaps this is one of the reasons sexual activity is deemed to be private in all cultures. Indeed, like the prohibition on incest, keeping sex private is a cultural universal. The public display of sexual activity, which is what pornography is, crosses well-established and ancient boundaries which have been formed for real reasons hidden in the psychology of each of us. When in the modern world we, in our quest for freedom, throw these boundaries down, we may wonder at the consequences.

To experience real sexual delight, one must be free of extraneous influences. Real sex focuses on the immediate; it is an involvement in the partner that builds on mutual pleasure. The advice of the sexologists may be well meant, but there is the danger they actually intrude into what naturally evolves between partners. The same may be said about the influence of pornography and here we are, back with the teenage boy sitting in his bedroom at his computer, watching hours of explicit downloads. How does this affect the naïve journey into a private, intimate relationship? Will he be satisfied with a chaste kiss good night that initiates the sexual journey and a lifelong focus on each other? Or will he be impatient to perform the acts he has seen on the net?

The libertarians would tell us life was not meant to be difficult, if there is an easy way to achieve what we think we need, then why not? When this attitude is carried into most life pursuits, we are never challenged and our souls remain shallow. We do not accept that patience is a virtue, that the satisfaction of desire by indirect means destroys that which is desired. We are averse to any idea of our desires being disciplined.

The truth is that life is difficult not only because we are frail creatures living in an uncaring universe, but because the development of our souls lies in the hands of others. The command to love our neighbour is not a moral imperative, but a promise it is through relation that our souls will find their true progression. But this is not the end of it because the neighbour can only be a mirror of us as another human being. There is no escape from creatureliness. That is why we need a transcendent other who confronts us and leads us to be ensouled. We thus face two levels of difficulty, that posed by the person next to us and that posed by the source of all truth: God. This latter is revealed in the Christian tradition as the God and Father of Jesus Christ and the God of Israel: the God enthroned in biblical narrative.

In the first half of last century, censorship understandably got a bad name because important literary works were kept from the public. But pornography is not important art, it does not reveal the human soul, it does not portray what is essentially human. Its prime function is to artificially lift mood via sexual arousal, therefore the traditional arguments about censorship do not apply. Pornography should be under censor, governments should move for its eradication. Unfortunately the growth of the Internet has made this impossible. So how do we help young males especially, who are naturally fascinated by all things sexual and will enter XXX into their browser? The answer to this is to equip them with an idea of sexual love substantial enough to inoculate them against the tawdry representations they are likely to see on websites.

The establishment of a “true world” in our minds is the only path moral education can really take. The use of externally applied constraint may be appropriate to the very young, but morality must eventually be incorporated into a coherent understanding of what is true. It is only then immorality can be resisted. The reason we avoid looking at pornography is the same reason we should avoid going to the casino, because we know they represent unreal worlds that are dangerous because they appeal to universal appetites.