Porn is Soul Death
But you say it makes you “happy” —I do not think that word means what you think it means
Words often change meanings. “Awful” was once a synonym for “awesome” but is now its antonym. That’s a wild ride, man!
The unpredictability of what linguists call “semantic shift” has not been kind to the word “happiness” either. Unlike “awful,” however, our current misunderstanding of “happiness” has political and cultural ramifications. If our right to the “pursuit of Happiness” undergirds our American self-conception, we should damn well know what “Happiness” means.
In those bygone days in the before time, the long long ago, many were debating pornography’s place in our culture. In our present quarantine, many more are finding predictable ways to fill the time. Quarantining, evidently, leads to much porn watching.
But let’s set the record straight: Porn is soul death. The attempts to normalize it are rooted in the belief that you should indulge whatever makes you “happy,” as long as you don’t hurt anyone. After all, aren’t we entitled to the “pursuit of Happiness”?
To those who think that the “pursuit of Happiness” justifies consuming porn and entitles them to a legal market of smut, I repeat the timeless words of Inigo Montoya: “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
The confusion over our degraded modern definition of “happiness” and the definition at the bedrock of our national consciousness should be clarified in this time of self isolation.
What Happiness Really Means
Let’s briefly contrast the definitions.
The word “Happiness” for the Founding Fathers meant achieving the fullness of our humanity, a flourishing life attained through virtue. Happiness was inextricably tied with morality, was its natural consequence, in fact. Since we are political animals, a flourishing life is lived necessarily in a polis, a political body. The right to the “pursuit of Happiness” meant the right to live for the true good of ourselves and our neighbors in self-governance. (I will henceforth always capitalize this definition of Happiness to distinguish it from degraded happiness.)
But happiness for your casual porn enthusiast (certainly not you!) means a temporary and individual physical pleasure. (I will henceforth leave this understanding of happiness lowercase.)
The contrast is severe. Like “awful” performing a 180, happiness is actually at odds with Happiness. Pursuing individual pleasures over civic responsibilities, and temporary sensations over virtue endangers our ability to flourish in a political community.
For the Founders, there was no meaningful distinction between our private choices and the health of the nation. In fact, the latter depended on the former. The idea that you should be able to do something “if it makes you happy, as long as you don’t hurt anyone” is, in reality, total nonsense. The private moral choices concerning our individual bodies determines the health of our public, political body.
The Founders Fought for Natural Law
In his inaugural address, George Washington asserted, “the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” Notice that Washington sees the foundation of our nation as resting on principles of morality, not on an individual’s depraved notion of what makes one happy. Our national character is but the sum total of our individual choices, public and private. If we have a populace enslaved to lustful passions, our nation will be enslaved to lustful passion. It’s simple arithmetic.
Washington continues by warning the newly formed nation that “the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.”
I’ve spent most of my adult life in education and among the enlightened elites, so I know how they (not you!) will make a caricature of the unenlightened “superstitious” words of our first president: God will smite us if we’re naughty, eh Georgie boy? Will fire and brimstone rain from heaven if I see me some boobies tonight? Should I watch for that bolt of lightning when I open Pornhub?
This mockery betrays deep ignorance. The “smiles of Heaven” are not the arbitrary favors of a capricious god. Nor are Heaven’s “eternal rules of order and right” a laundry list of arbitrary “religious” rules one must follow to not be smited. Heaven’s “eternal rules of order and right” are the Natural Law, accessible through the right exercise of reason.
We cannot know how to live unless we know the nature of reality. And reality includes us, so in order to know how to live, we need to know our own natures. For example, we know that humans are more than mere animals: With our intellect and will, we are self-directing creatures. Killing an innocent person puts an end to their self-directedness. It is wrong for it violates their nature, created by God.
A “bad” action is one that goes against our nature, degrading our humanity, rendering us more akin to animals. A “good” action is one that accords with our nature, elevating us above the animals to the heights of humanity.
When Washington speaks of Heaven’s “eternal rules of order and right,” he refers to the same metaphysical order that Jefferson spoke of when he wrote that the Creator endowed us “with certain unalienable rights,” one of which was the “pursuit of Happiness.” The rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence are claims about human nature. The Declaration argues that because humans are created equal, they are therefore not tools to be used for some other person’s private ends, which is the essence of despotism. Self-governance, then, is the only political mode that fully comports to humans’ equal natures.
Adherence to the Natural Law justified our independence from Britain’s despotism. The Founders intended that the self-governing polis they established upon Natural Law would continue to live in accordance with it. Abraham Lincoln knew this. In his debates with Stephen Douglas, he said, referring to his opponent: “He contends that whatever community wants slaves has a right to have them. So they have if it [slavery] is not a wrong. But if it is a wrong, he cannot say people have a right to do wrong.”
Repeat: If something is wrong, you have no right to do it!
Our Freedoms Are For Virtue
Our rights are not free passes for doing whatever we want. They are guardrails meant to protect the possibility of virtue for each one of us. As such, they imply a duty to live by virtue. Our rights, then, are a call to virtue, a summons to living according to nature. Answering this call is the essence of our Happiness, which is necessarily political. Neither virtue nor Happiness, in the end, can be totally private.
Washington insists our individual virtuousness (our “private morality”) is necessary for national vitality and Happiness. Private immorality (the porn viewer’s happiness) acts in ignorance of or in defiance of human nature. Violating the natural law is not a right bestowed by the Creator. Sorry.
With the definitions in place, I can now say the obvious: Porn is bad. It makes you less human. You have no right to make it or consume it. Doing so endangers the common good.
How so? Let’s begin by first using our reason to discover the nature of the family.
The Nature of the Family
[TW: Discussion of ideal family structure]
Reason reveals that the ideal family includes a father and a mother raising children under the same roof. As the union of the father and mother created the children, their unity should be fixed through marriage for the sake of their children. Why is this ideal?
Their children will be raised in security and Happiness, having a model for their own future families. Both mother and father will have the unparalleled joy of jointly raising children. The joy comes not just from watching babies grow into adults but also from growing in their own love and commitment to each other through child rearing.
Not only does this ideal arrangement provide the most security and Happiness for all involved, it is also repeatable through successive generations. Happy, healthy marriages lead to more of the same. This replication of Happiness is not guaranteed, of course, but a Happy family is far more likely to proceed from Happy origins than from an unhappy family. If societies are collections of families, the stability and longevity of any society depends on the multiplication of these ideal families. Society’s stability will last so long as these families last. Undermine them, and soon society will be undermined.
Porn Destroys Families
What does this have to do with porn? If we’re to understand the nature of reality and thereby know how we ought to live, we must understand the nature of sex as the means by which families come into being and propagate. Sex compels us outside of our narcissistic self-tendencies. We are driven to find meaning in another. Sex elevates man and woman to husband and wife and then to father and mother. Instead of compelling one to meaningful relationship with another (sexual union), porn diverts that natural drive back unto itself, forcing us in a loop of self-abuse and inward meaninglessness (masturbation). Porn isolates and sterilizes us. Instead of Happy families, porn begets hopelessness. It kills our soul.
Through reason, we know that porn is objectively bad. It divorces sex from its necessary and natural place in a well-ordered society, endangering the thriving and multiplying of ideal families. And we see the effects of this disorder all around us. Women are viewed as sex objects. Men are increasingly isolated, preferring the instant gratifications of porn to the rewarding difficulties of a real romantic relationship, of which sex is but one component.
Sex is now a matter of private voyeurism. Even when sex is pursued in reality it’s still a form of masturbation, merely a means to selfish gratification, not to uniting husband and wife. Our nation suffers from low marriage and fertility rates. We’re losing the foundation of any strong and vibrant nation in exchange for pathetic, lonely, self-induced orgasms.
Porn is not just soul death. It is culture death. Legalizing it, tolerating it, and consuming it guarantees a society no longer receives the blessings of “Heaven’s smiles.” Instead, we are cursed with decay and dysfunction. We have indeed disregarded the “eternal rules of right and order ordained by Heaven.”
John Adams warned that the U.S. Constitution was fit only for a “religious and moral people.” Without the private virtue of its citizens, human vice would tear through it like a “whale through a net.” The net is already shredded, perhaps irreparably.
As we are self-isolating, let us also work towards restoring the Republic.
Turn off the porn.
