Porno Made Easy

Pornography is easy, it requires no creativity at all, and it consumes forty seven times it's own weight in excess imagination. You might say that has to be the worst bastardization of the old commercial ever set down, but no, it really isn't, it's actually pretty close to literal true.

It's my philosophy to seek three angles of approach to understanding any given subject of the human condition. I've found three is a good number to illuminate most things, not so overdrawn as to be burdensome, not so limited as to leave large regions of shadow. The three I use are a thing's function in a life, it's meaning and it's value to the life. Pornography is actually an ideal example of what happens when there is serious conflict to be found within and between those parameters.

Considering the subject the way I do (upside down-inside out as that might be) I'd have to say the meaning of pornography is mankind's resentment of the compulsions sex and sexuality place upon life. Sex is the expression of the third primal instinct, procreation, arguably the most powerful and pervasive force impacting the human condition, in some cases even beyond personal survival. There is no compulsion that does not generate a resentment, no genuine need that does not generate fear and insecurity. Consider if you will the way humanity deals with things, unavoidable things, it is both resentful and fearful of. It will depersonalize them, mock and belittle them, formalize them into tightly ritualized structures prescribing and proscribing that subject's access to any random moment of thought. Do these conditionals sound familiar?

Pornography certainly depersonalizes sex and sexuality, presenting a cast of helpless cardboard cut-out characters being jerked through the motions of sex like poorly handled marionettes. Pornography certainly does belittle sex as a thing totally trivial, after all, according to the world of porn it doesn't matter who you do or what you do as long as you do what you have to do. Did you notice the classic intelemo (intellectual-emotional) genetic marker of porn, how that sly "do what you have to do" slid in there, that ambiguous permission for any degree of physical perversion needed to back mask and overwrite some pending or powerful emotional need?

Pornography is also host and home to the wonderful world of fetish, yet another contradiction where everything presented is designed to make a sexual encounter difficult if not impossible. There is found the convolutions of bondage (deprivation of personal freedom in a sexual setting, the facade of impotence and omnipotence) to the most unrelated things imaginable, the more inhibiting the thing is to genuine human contact the more highly prized: leather, latex, from deformed footwear to gas masks the list goes on and on and on. Pornography teaches these inversions of functional sex, these deformations of even potential sex, as a control mechanism the audience may adopt as prerequisites to any sexual thought or activity, allowing said audience to effectively limit the impact of overdriven libido on their life. Seriously, how can anyone get horny without the aid of 150 meters of virgin white 18mm brushed nylon rope? No rope? No problem, let's have dinner instead. Those who practice such things will swear they are non-sexual, and that is almost true. They are not sexual, they are negative-sexual in the same sense as a negative number, and yet just as much a part of the overall equation of dysfunction that is pornography.

If (that most monstrous of two letter words!) the meaning of pornography is accepted as resentment and fear of the power sex and sexuality wield within a life then the conflict created by the obvious function of pornography is not so hard to understand, for the function of pornography is in almost direct opposition to the meaning. The function of pornography is to present stimulus' that jump the audience directly into a state of glassy eyed blank minded rigid hard sloshing wet I'll do anything for relief from this painfully intense physical arousal except, of course, experience the realms of the erotic where this intensity facilitates an intimacy of the heart. It is that intimacy, the naked soul understanding shared by genuine lovers that is so very feared by those who imbibe pornography on a regular basis. The function of pornography resides very much in a frame of mind quite hostile to actually making love, the function of pornography is "let's get this over with in a hurry (and minimize the risk of revelation)." There is a song*, old now, by the great musician and social commentator David Bowie where the chorus contains a very apt description for the function of pornography: "...and I've been putting out fire... with gasoline." Yes, it is possible to put out a flame with gasoline, but baby, you better be able to dump a lot of gasoline in a god-awful big hurry if you plan to have it work.

Given such a conflict between the meaning and the function of pornography what could possibly define the value of pornography that has allowed it to persist as it has across such a wide span of time? Regardless of any claims to the contrary nothing, not one thing, will long exist if that thing does not have some value to the majority of society. Every social institution must justify the energy spent to define and maintain it, and pornography has been around a long, long time.

What value has allowed it to endure as it has, matched against the condemnations from the one side (the attempts of religion to enslave sexuality to their cause), and the competition presented by the individuals who understand the superior satisfaction to be had from the erotic arts*? *(where the sexual is set in service of the emotional, for reasons obvious in this context equally attacked by religion as being pornographic) A thing's value is always the most subjective variable to be assigned, the hardest to deduce by observation and yet a correct assessment so very critical to bringing full any understanding. In the case of pornography I am compelled, albeit with reservations and sadness, to say the prime value of pornography is a service it performs for that category of thought known as "religion," and through religion into society as a whole.

Those continuously involved with pornography are easily seen as conflicted and crippled individuals, the degree of their affliction roughly equal to the degree their involvement with the emotionally sterile influence of pornography. It is not so hard to see them retreating from the more difficult, although more life supporting, relationships defined by intelemo facets of life into simplistic relationships of the physical designed to disrupt thought with raw lust overdriven. It is a fact that for many reasons (beyond the scope of this little essay to list, but available to research) pornography does not and will not support a normal maturation curve across the full span of a life. Well before the average lifespan has run much over half its' course the sterility and isolation of what pornography creates from the instinct to procreation will install a hunger in the vast majority of individuals, those it doesn't break down into the various sociopathic behaviors so often claimed for it. As the fascination of pornography fades it will be replaced by either the hunger for a relationship founded in things beyond the physical, at which point religion (and society) harvest their most loyal followers, for there are none so devout as the reformed; or in a much lesser number the fascination will yield to a hunger for revenge upon those who inflicted the pain of such loneliness, at which point society, operating with the help of religion's justifications and manipulations, may recruit such individuals as warriors of one form or another for service where the ability to isolate the self from the consequences of human empathy is a critical skill, an isolation integral to the most basic premise of consuming pornography. Pornography has for a value it's ability to provide religion with the security of members who truly do need religion for their survival, and secondarily to help mentally condition warriors to fight in societies dirtiest and most abysmal conflicts.

You might at this point be thinking "all well and good, but the value described is a value accrued to elements of the collective entities, religions or other formal elements of society rather than a value imparted to the individual associated. The meaning and the function reference the individual, but the value references the collective." If such is your thought at this point I salute your perception, for that is exactly the consequence of such engineered conflicts as are found in the various aspects of pornography: the individual carries and suffers the consequences of the conflicts while the collectives which sponsor the conflicts ultimately reap the benefits.