3 ms·

Pornography is one of the most powerful forms of control, because you cooperate in your own enslavement. Because of the deranging and darkening effect it has on

Pornography is one of the most powerful forms of control, because you cooperate in your own enslavement. Because of the deranging and darkening effect it has on the mind, you become increasingly less aware of what's actually happening to you, less conscious of the self-destruction you are employing against yourself. And because it functions this way, it has also been instrumentalized. Sexual "liberation" is political control. Wilhelm Reich essentially wrote the playbook here, though we see plenty of precursors, and in the Enlightenment tradition, Marquis de Sade stands out (though he did not have access to mass media like we do). As Chesterton observed, such "freedom" is the most transparent of all bribes that slavery can make to rob us of our freedom. Pleasure is far more effective than pain because it conceals the coercive nature of the act. Marcuse saw such things as a conservative force masquerading as "liberation", one intended as a distraction (like bread and circuses) and a way of sapping the attention and energies (and I would add intelligence) of those who partake that could otherwise be used toward criticism. The deranging effect is the worst effect of all, as such, but also because its effects can far outlast the period of consumption. That people can use VPNs is not a substantive argument against bans or restrictions on pornography.

npteljes 3y ago
What you see wrt/ porn and liberation, including sexual liberation, is a step forward, not the end result. So it's not going to be perfect, it's going to have people abuse it and others through it, but the solution is not to go back, but to incorporate what we learned from it, and move forward. Respectfully, Wilhelm Reich is a pseudoscientist, I can't really take his thought on the matter seriously, especially on matters which evolved quite significantly since his observations. People really do control other people through not just coercion. We can see a modern way of doing this in governments and corporations, currently being called Public Relations. Consider that control cannot be exercised completely arbitrarily. Most of the time, people who want to control have to use what they have available, so that other people don't resist as much. This means that whatever is there, it will be used for control, but it doesn't mean that the thing exists for the main purpose of control. This is circling back to liberation of all sorts - these don't happen because they want to control us, liberation is happening as a large-scale social change and people who want to control co-opt it for their own purposes. Since it's happening either way, it's an opportunity for them to further their own goals as well.

npteljes 3y ago

What you see wrt/ porn and liberation, including sexual liberation, is a step forward, not the end result. So it's not going to be perfect, it's going to have people abuse it and others through it, but the solution is not to go back, but to incorporate what we learned from it, and move forward. Respectfully, Wilhelm Reich is a pseudoscientist, I can't really take his thought on the matter seriously, especially on matters which evolved quite significantly since his observations. People really do control other people through not just coercion. We can see a modern way of doing this in governments and corporations, currently being called Public Relations. Consider that control cannot be exercised completely arbitrarily. Most of the time, people who want to control have to use what they have available, so that other people don't resist as much. This means that whatever is there, it will be used for control, but it doesn't mean that the thing exists for the main purpose of control. This is circling back to liberation of all sorts - these don't happen because they want to control us, liberation is happening as a large-scale social change and people who want to control co-opt it for their own purposes. Since it's happening either way, it's an opportunity for them to further their own goals as well.