No, I'm Not Thinking about Porn

You'll be enthralled to learn that I got enough sleep last night. Didn't sleep well, but it was enough. Made up for the night before ... or should I say morning -- anyways, Wednesday I was running on about two hours sleep. Full of energy too. That was more emotional than physical, though -- just the pleasure of hearing from my boy.

One of my favorite lines from Hamlet is, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Not objectively true, of course, but it has a psychological verity that is undeniable. Then again, it is only true objectively, and not true in any human sense -- we all have opinions about good and bad. It's a comfort, though, that line, because it softens the harsh edges of reality. Have you suffered? It only seems bad. So might we fool ourselves into a kind of contentment. This is the sort of thing I spend my idle moments thinking about.

I've been thinking about pornography. Hmm ... let me rephrase that. I've been considering the nature of that artform. As you will recall, I recently uncovered and shared with the reading public the fact that pornography is being disseminated ... er, broadcast via the www. I am utterly disgusted and not at all surprised to find that the MSM has taken not the slightest notice of this major story. Typical. No doubt it's just a further manifestation of the leftist media bias that doesn't exist but thinking makes it so.

One of the things my son and I spoke about was religion and culture. He's in a distant and alien land, where the country people, it is reported ... oh, how shall I say ... "wipe" seems too graphic, literal, and vulgar ... they attempt to cleanse after a fashion their backsides as it were, after relieving themselves, with the actual flesh of their left hands. Then they cleanse that appendage with some dust. An alien land indeed.

But that unhygenic practice aside, I reminded him that the difference between Arab culture now and our own culture of something over a hundred years ago had very much in common. Women had a status before the law as something not far above chattel. Slavery as an institution. Sabbath laws -- stores must be closed on Sunday. Far more mild, we were, but even so. My point was that they're just humans, stuck in a backwards culture. Yes, that does, or can, make them bad, in the sense of irrational or worse. (Even a moderate Moslem can believe, at one and the same time, that 9/11 was both a Mosad conspiracy, and a great triumph for Islam.) If we can't say that is bad, then we cannot say the KKK is bad, or the Westboro "Church" is bad, or any of the intolerant (in the meaningful rather than PC sense) bigotries of fringe groups is bad. Indeed, Islamic culture as it presents itself must always be considered a fringe group. Either that, or the dominant and universal group. There is no real coexistence.

People are the victims of their culture. Or the beneficiaries.

And here we are, with more freedom than is good for us. In the long run, I mean. Pornography pretty much sums it up. As my son said, we think about death because God made us to know, at the deepest level, that we were meant to live eternally. And we think about sex because it is the mother of all instincts. These are the two great driving forces behind just about every religion. My son pointed out the part in the Koran where Mohammad changes his mind (read, the Word of Allah) because he wanted some chick from a certain city. John Smith and all those Mormon wives -- when you get to be the god of your planet, you get to father all its souls. Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh up in Oregon with his Orange People and his 93 Rolls Royces -- it turned out to all be about sex, and I'm sure more than a paltry 72, um, paramours. That's just sex. I won't get into death. But if we think too much about death or too much about sex, what does this mean? We are out of concord, out of harmony. Something's unhealthy.

One interpretation of paganism, and modern occultism, is that gods and idols represent instincts and various attributes of intelligence. What then is pornography? It's not the external image -- it's what we do with it in our minds. What is worship,after all? The taking into ourselves of the nature of that external thing. We are free to think, and think about, whatever we like, no matter how unPC. Whether porn or jihad, in the nutshell universe between our ears we set up our idols and abase ourselves. (Yeah, I said "abase." I can't think of the word I really mean, but this will do. Deal with it. You're so picky.) Is there harm in this?

If you adhere to the concept of dignity, and extend that virtue to others, then porn, and jihad, become troublesome. Masturbation is more than just a release of tension. Bowel movements, however wiped, do not necessarily occupy the mind. Masturbation, even more than sex itself, does. Well, a case can be made for the expedience of masturbation. Not all of us have a mate, and pressures do build. But the daily biological rhythms of excretion reflect health. Whereas pornography, it seems to me, is about the equivalent of using laxatives because you like using the toilet. And as for jihad, well, it certainly does belong in this paragraph. People are objects to be manipulated and/or killed. What a religion.

That's not really what I was thinking about pornography. But it will do. It is what I think about Islamism.

So I've been thinking about being gay. Hmm ... let me rephrase that.



J