Porn Isn't The Bad Guy

I hope the post is now more comfortable for you to peruse? Thanks for your comments and I now know how to use Spoilers so thank you, I appreciate it.

 

haha yes me too!

if you ever want to discuss other big questions & hot topics hit me up

 

agreed! it is our duty to never stop questioning. otherwise we become complacent and lazy and accept whatever it is we are told to believe as truth.

 

This is an interesting point in this discussion. An image of a fully clothed woman - it is difficult to make any argument that it by itself is evil. In this case however, the evil lies in the intention with which a person views it.

Even an act which is generally considered moral - say - giving to a charity - can be immoral if it is done with selfish purposes (i.e. the money was donated purely to advance one's personal agenda). Often the immorality lies in the intentions of the person doing the thing.

I wouldn't say that all porn is always evil. For example - I wouldn't say that a married couple exchanging nude pictures or filming themselves is wrong - as long as all boundaries are respected.

But I would say that the whole high-speed internet porn monster is evil from top to bottom. Besides the obvious evil of exploiting actors/actresses and viewers' inherent physiological and mental weaknesses, no one, from the people making it to the people watching it, have anything remotely resembling an honorable or respectable intention.

I come from a Christian perspective - but I think even from a secular perspective we can come to the reasonable conclusion that the twisted and pernicious internet porn creature is evil.

 

This is the difficulty. Let's say I have never viewed porn ever and in fact that it has no hold upon me at all and let's say I have simply MO'd to attractive female celebrities in alluring clothing. Let's say that after a while I begin to exhibit all of the symptoms that I did while I was PMO-ing - seeking out different types of women to jack off to, looking at women who normally wouldn't do it for me and ejaculating to them and utilising the death grip to reach orgasm because I've got nothing left inside me but the addiction driving me forward.

I then discover that this is eating into my own life - my work life is suffering, my relationships begin to fail, I realise I can no longer get it up for real-world people and I crave the secret hidden world I have created. Does this make the alluring clothed celebrity habit I've got going evil? I don't believe it does. My intent isn't evil, I'm simply acting out within a habit which has got out of control. I don't have any evil intent towards the people I'm masturbating over, I just want to get off. The celebrity isn't being directly exploited although an argument could be made that on some level I am exploiting her appearance on some level for my own self-gratification. She is going about her life unaware that I am beating my meat to her.

Porn, on the other hand, contains within it so much abuse and exploitation of others and yes I would argue that it does have evil elements within it, however, is the passive act of playing with myself to a woman/porn in and of itself, evil? I can see an argument for the evil of pornography and I can't disagree that much of what is within porn is evil. Evil manipulative people actively exploiting and abusing others while creating more extreme genres, people being forced to do things which will end up destroying them, being threatened and coerced. Not to mention, the darker side of the web where all kinds of evil does go on and that's undeniable. I am not suggesting for one moment that there aren't people out there who do have an evil intent when seeking out erotic material, however, I still don't feel that watching porn per se (and I'm speaking about softcore porn and mildly erotic material) is evil in and of itself. The fact that so many of us have lives which have been negatively impacted by porn doesn't make it evil either. I know people who are recovering alcoholics and they have told me that drink got them right from the off and they were never able to control it while thousands upon thousands of others were the exact opposite. These people genuinely believe that drink is also evil.

If I cite the argument that people get terribly harmed in the making of porn and this somehow makes it more evil then I'm sure an argument could be made that within the production of alcohol people are also being harmed terribly and that lives are being destroyed on a daily basis within that. I'm still not entirely convinced that porn (within normal ranges) is evil in and of itself however you are right, there is something within high-speed internet porn, which appears to be different. That may very well be because internet porn has been the undoing of me and I can no longer think reasonably about it or it may be that more and more disturbing genres are appearing on 'regular' sites and the exploitation is there for all to see and no attempt has been made to cover it up. That porn is by and large viewed even by those who don't view it and don't like it, as a necessary 'evil' (for want of better words) out there in the world. I can remember speaking with a prominent Christian in my area who's a bigwig at the local church and he told me that he himself has 'utilised' porn in the past and that although he has repented he couldn't rule out doing so again in the future. I asked him if this was the behaviour of someone who professed a Christian faith and his reply was "I'm only human." Internet pornography by the very fact that it's so widely and freely available has become almost like a cultural norm and something we mustn't fret too much about. Perhaps that's where the evil lies? This is indeed an interesting topic.

 

Personally i've had to change my lifestyle too, before I quit I went out drinking, used coke, had a very unsatisfying and stressful office job and was essentially a lazy ass slob with zero motivation. Now i've been clean from porn since Dec 2014 and clean from drugs and alcohol for 2.5 years, I cycle everywhere, and do a physical manual labour job, I do creative hobbies and make things I can be proud of which give me a sense of achievement and i've lost nearly 2 stone in weight. Lifestyle change is very important. To quote from the book of Alcoholics Anonymous book 'Knowledge avails us nothing' you must put into practice what you know. However I will add, I have spent a lot of time talking to both drug addicts and porn addicts and although 'wanting to quit' is a good starting point, the practicality of it is difficult for the heavily afflicted user since their addiction has become the most important coping strategy for them and to lose it is a difficult prospect to bear, I know many who don't quit because they can't face the fact that quitting means no more for life, not even just one which is why taking it a day at a time and thinking about short term achievable goals helps. I had to reach rock bottom before I really got help, it's called an 'internal snap' some people have the snap earlier than others.

 

I was fortunate too in that I had hit rock bottom before joining this site so I knew that going back to it would simply be more of the same. You know that saying about the definition of insanity? That was me, day in and day out, however, I was just beaten, all done in when I signed up here. I think rock bottom is a good thing in many ways. Sure, I was in a very bad state emotionally and mentally, however, I also knew that my life could now only head in one direction provided I put in the work - up.

 

I'm one more voice to say that I agree with what has been said in this post. And that's probably the realization of this very fact that has helped me the most during the past year, towards a life I kept away from myself all those decades. Many people who have gone past that point can relate and understand this, and it's very well expressed too.

But there are a lot of people out here in the community that still need the first approach of demonizing P to get them started on their path. Addiction works best when guilt is involved - it's one of the shortest way to get the gears kicking. It's incredibly difficult to start this journey blaming ourselves, because we're putting more wood on the fire that we want to extinguish. By considering the P/Alcohol/Substance/People/Behavior 'evil' in essence, then we can make a strong statement about it and make the initial break from the vicious cycles. Thinking we're righteous and what we need to destroy isn't, gives a tremendous amount of courage and strength, necessary in this case (just look at every 'holy' warrior in history), so we can get away from it, take some distance, and then only can we start considering it for what it is - entertainment that has the unique ability to push one of the strongest buttons our biological bodies happen to have. No one forces us to use, but our social environment, mental health state, personality, general attitude towards life, friends, etc can have an extremely intense influence in getting P into our lives. The ones who continue using (like me, like all of us) make a choice for which they're the only ones to blame indeed, but is it really a choice when ou don't know what deal you're actually making? Remember hearing people say that masturbating will make you blind (or deaf depending on the continent you live on)? Well it's exactly that - putting an evil that doesn't exist to keep people away from the dangers the new users won't begin to fathom by themselves!

The realization you describe, while entirley true, is a luxury the first-timers can't afford, nor are willing to consider. Soon enough they WILL NEED to understand it though, otherwise they would be living on blind faith (but then again how many million do, hello religion) that there is an 'evil' outside of themselves and that they've been prey to that. We're a community that help people (and ourselves) go from a previous life driven and overwhelmed by P towards a new better life where there's no room for it. So let's continue help them do that and let's be clear about what's what.

To all of you who are just starting your journey, who still have to consider P as pure wrong or dark or demonic or a scheme to control people or whatever other name you need to call it for now, I advise to keep what the OP said at the back of your minds, for when you'll be strong enough to make it yours. And you will, maybe sooner than you think

 

Personally, I like how this forum shows me that anyone can overcome this addiction, that different approaches can lead to the same goal.

This is what I've been doing for years now. I quit looking at "real" porn over a decade ago (with an occasional binge) and started looking at non-nude stuff, because it appeased my conscience. It's hard to make an argument that a girl in her underwear is really being exploited in some permanently damaging way. Now, I'm married and was doing this behind my wife's back - so really - my conscience was only partially appeased.

However, I would argue that, even if you take marital deception out of the equation, that the intention behind this is morally suspect. The situation you describe where a life is falling apart due to a masturbation habit - I think the evidence for the harmfulness of such a habit lies in the results. In my opinion, morality is not merely the absence of harming others, but also in living a fruitful life.

I say keep both possibilities in your mind. I still think something said five pages ago in this thread summed it up in the simplest way:

There is no loss in strength in identifying something as evil, according to whatever moral scheme you ascribe to. Someone with a 200 + day streak like yourself proves that it isn't necessary. What this discussion comes down to is an argument over morality, not necessarily an argument over how to approach quitting PMO forever. Whether or not anybody labels porn as evil or not - it is still our responsibility to do our utmost to control our selves.

Christians call it "putting on the new self" - and even though we believe in the work of the Holy Spirit and grace and the inherent weakness of humanity - it is still something we are commanded to do. Any Christian who uses their faith as an excuse for failure is, in my humble opinion, misled.

 

Agreed.

Also, totally agree.

What it comes down to really (whether we agree on P being evil or not) is that sitting around with our hands down our pants, trancing out and wasting our seed/life force over fantasy is a colossal waste of human potential not to mention, energy levels and productivity. It's not helping us to develop one iota.

 

I wasn't born wanting pornography. I had no desire for pornography until I was exposed to it. I take personal responsibility for making it a habit and fooling myself into believing it was harmless. Porn like drugs are totally unnecessary and we would get along just the same with out them. It's not like a bunch of men called a town meeting like, we need something to jerk to so someone came up with porn to meet the demand. This stuff is insidious because it exploits and perverts a normal need for sex.