ISIS calls on Muslims to draw swords because “the flocks of blind sheep fear losing their animalistic societies and carnal cultures that serve their lusts…” Some say climate change is the greatest threat to national security, but pornography actually poses a serious national security threat.
Pornography is harmful to the environment and a national security risk in four ways: it (1) is an intellectual-environmental hazard; (2) changes our view of sexuality and women; (3) causes selfish, self-absorbed, self-centered (S₃), and narcissistic people; and (4) discriminates against women.
Definitions are important, so the following are the definitions of environment and environmentalism. Oxford Dictionaries defines “environment” as: the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates. “Environmentalism” is defined by Merriam Webster as: a theory that views environment rather than heredity as the important factor in the development and especially the cultural and intellectual development of an individual or group.
Bernie Sanders said “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism…[C]ountries all over the world [are] going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops, and you’re going to see all kinds of international conflict.” So, an environmental wasteland of limited resources will trigger terrorism.
“Environment” is not restricted to the natural order, but includes the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual order. If carbon dioxide can cause a climate change in the natural order leading to a wasteland triggering terrorism, pornography can cause a climate change in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual order leading to corresponding wastelands, also triggering terrorism.
1. Pornography Is an Intellectual Hazard
A German study that investigated the neural correlates associated with frequent—not addictive—viewing of pornography found that watching porn may shrink certain areas of the brain. The study finds that men who watch porn have less gray matter volume, and the area of the brain associated with processing rewards is smaller. Porn affects the neural response in the reward network of the brain, gray matter regions, motivations, and memory receptors by saturating it with dopamine. Dopamine causes the feeling of pleasure.
The brain remembers this pleasure and wants to repeat it. This may lead to watching more pornography. Soon, the brain is accustomed to pleasure and pornography de-synthetizes the brain. It is no long aroused by the same pleasure. This leads some to hardcore porn to experience pleasure again. Additionally, since most porn is viewed on the Internet, Internet addiction “reduces impulse control, decision-making, and the ability to foresee consequences.”
Addiction to pleasure-seeking could lead to porn addition. Porn addiction may cause brain damage.
2. A Cultural Hazard: Porn Changes How We View Sex and Women
A recent study at the University of Amsterdam analyzed 400 of the most popular pornographic videos found on popular online porn sites since 2013. The study found that objectification was depicted more often for women through instrumentality; however, men were more often objectified through dehumanization. Also, men were shown more often as dominant and women submissive. Additionally, there was more gender inequality towards women in amateur porn than in professional porn.
Most women watch porn because their man wants them to, and men watch porn because it arouses them. Soon, men want to act out what is on screen: “[A] decrease in sexual satisfaction and a tendency to adopt pornographic scripts have been associated with frequent Internet pornography consumption.” This does two things: (1) men view women as sexual objects, reducing the relationship to purely a sexual one, and (2) women consciously or subconsciously view themselves as sexual objects, resulting in low self-esteem. Women view themselves as sexual objects because men view (expect) them to be sexual objects. It’s a cycle.
This cycle affects dating and marriage. Vanity Fair ran an article on how dating (hook-up) apps, like Tinder, permeate our culture. These apps are a result of the porn cycle. They continue the porn perception of a surplus of women to use for sex. When men reduce women to objects to be used as the men please, women’s value is reduced to just that: please men.
So, expectations in all areas of the relationship are that the woman pleases the man. The effect of this changed perspective on human sexuality and objectification of women is that over time the commitment of men to women in the relationship diminishes, leading to infidelity and cheating. “Marriages become unstable. Divorces increase. Men don’t have to commit, so they pursue short-term mating strategy…women are forced to go along with it in order to mate at all.”
3. Porn Leads to Narcissistic Men and Women
Pornography is the epitome of self-satisfaction. The content and the reason to watch it speaks for itself. The more addicted to pornography an individual becomes, the more self-absorbed he or she becomes. The more centered an individual becomes with satisfying personal needs, and the more he or she objectifies human beings, the less he or she is capable of empathy, respect, and charity. While centered on what pleases the self, the self does not care to treat humans with dignity since it puts the needs of the self above others.
4. Pornography Discriminates Against Women
For the following reasons, pornography discriminates against women: (1) reduces women to their sexual organs; (2) depicts women as tools of pleasure similar to objects purchased in stores; (3) some of its content is violent—hitting, spanking, spitting, grabbing, choking, and even raping women; (4) equates consent to use and mistreatment; (5) promotes, institutionalizes, and authorizes dominance and submission; (6) legitimizes and glamorizes humiliation and de-humanization—e.g., the act of ejaculating on a woman like she is worth nothing more than that; (6) falsifies facts that freedom is in being possessed; and (7) violates feministic principles of equality and respect.
“Men treat women as who they see women as being. Pornography constructs who that is.” Pornography creates a social construct that women are sexual possessions.
Some feminists (sex-positive feminists) argue that pornography is sexual expression and freedom. Sex-positive feminists participate in this discriminatory act by creating a mechanism by which men view women as something to possess. These feminists are either enslaved to their sexual passions or their consent to objectification is rooted in some psychological occurrence, like depression, a past triggering event, or is under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Arguably, their consent is under duress because it is in response to the violence of their passions or a psychological response to a past event; or under coercion because of their enslavement to the field of work (the inability to escape), or made while they are under the influence. So, although they argue it is freedom, their consent is not.
Altered societal views on sex and women, creating self-centered individuals, and discriminating against women are cultural, spiritual, and environmental hazards.
Plato said music and literature are education and a moral law. Media affects the environment because it forms minds, shows human behavior, teaches socially acceptable norms, and influences viewpoints. Pornography constructs a society of a false reality while at the same time changing the reality of how we view women, men, and sex. In turn this produces an environmental wasteland. Limited intellectual, cultural, and spiritual resources trigger terrorism since terrorists justify their actions, in part, for the West’s decay in these climates.