I’ll give the obligatory disclaimer that with all of our different personalities, these types of addictions and/or mental states can surface in many different ways for many different reasons. But speaking from my own personal experience (I grew up before porn was so readily available), I have had some form of social anxiety my whole life. And I do agree that those with social anxiety tend to be loners, and they find ways around social satisfaction. Fantasizing about doing things that other people have no problem doing was an easy way for me to enjoy my own form of satisfaction without interaction. So porn was the obvious choice for me. And with that said, I venture to guess that people predisposed to social anxiety disorder are probably easier prey for the temptations that porn offers. And yes, at the same time, submersing yourself into porn can fuel your social anxiety even more. I’m a firm believer that there are always things at the root of the problem which must be handled before an addiction can effectively be dealt with. Therapy, for example, is what is usually needed to fight the underlying demons before dealing with the rest of our problems.
Yes, I'd agree. For SK, subjectivity was a reality that he wanted to rehabilitate in opposition to the Hegelianism that wanted to submerge it in objective spirit, which sees it as a moment in its march towards its own self-realization in history. The self-alienation of the individual subject is a necessary step in the coming-to-itself of objective spirit. I think you're right in seeing the relevance of SK's protest to our own age. But I fear that not only "spirit" but also "subjectivity" in the Kierkegaardian sense would be dismissed as archaic today. In You are Not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier applies the Kierkegaardian critique to the culture of the internet, which creates the phenomenon of the "hive mind."
And also an element of the an-archic [Levinas is good here]... from the social perspective. But consider also that it was always the function of art/ culture/ literature to educate a few from the mass [education... to lead out]. In this context, the phenomenon of the mass mind and egalitarianism is problematic... or the desire to appease it. Notice also how the drive toward mass literacy is now devolving into something like mass a-literacy - people can read but choose not to. Proper reading [not just the mechanics] is like a ritual, it is an inner extended activity, it engages our own 'duration' [thinking Bergson... and Kant], and connects somehow with the anxiety at the core. In contrast, notice the dislocated and fragmented experience of most 'on-liners'. They skip from one de-contextualized line to another. Caught in the whirlwind, there is no 'unity of apperception'.... or com-prehension. Perhaps then anxiety is about disconnection from realities - disconnection of ourselves from Others, of our ego from our Self, of our Self from Culture/ History, of our self from God. The title of a book comes to mind, 'The Age of Anxiety', which would suggest that this is a 'collective' problem, a cultural one... and yet, no doubt, we live in an age of denial. It would also explain why the internet is so addictive to the mass mind... it is fake connection.
I've drastically cut down the time I spend on FB, social media sites, etc. Instead, I'm trying to reach out and interact more face to face. It can be exhausting for me, but I think it's worth the effort.
Good for you. I have made some recent breakthroughs in the regard also. Previously, I was fine with engaging in one on one conversation/ dialogue with a like-minded person in a coffee shop [usually intellectual conversation]. I was in my element, and could shine brightly, but once in a group setting I found myself imploding to the point of dreading it, and so avoiding group meetings altogether [to discuss literature etc... a truly social... and vulnerable... space]. But just recently, I actually found myself looking forward to just such a group meeting... and instead of imploding I found myself confidently holding my 'subjective' ground, and extending it persuasively to the group.
I've wanted to ask you about the place the body has in your argument that addiction or the addictive mindset stems from the failure to unify the rational ego and the alter ego. I'm sympathetic with a tripartite view of man, who faces the ongoing struggle of living as a psycho-spiritual being within a body, in such a way that the body is not incidental to what he is, but integral. Porn has the power to divide soul and body, it seems to me.
This is a tricky one. We can obviously make distinctions between the body and the mind, and then again within the mind itself... ego, soul, self-consciousness, spirit, consciousness, subjectivity, subconscious, unconscious etc [objectivity/ ideology tends to ignore all of this]. I see these things as important distinctions in ordering our experience but not solid knowable abstractions. They are reasonable notions which we believe... believing it sensible to do so. In doing so, our experience becomes coherent [whole]. Suffice to say here, I think that our core self is a subjectivity defined best as spirit. It is qualified as free, rational, creative and sensible of emotions [e-motion]. The significant point here us that it is itself irreducible to any ideological category, and itself the condition for such ideologies to sprout in the first place [in technical philosophical terms, I'd take recourse to someone like Kant here]. The crucial element, from my perspective, is the need to re-create a unity, or an order [the rational part is boss!], between the disparate parts within us. It's my contention that a large part of why they are so disordered and fragmented in the first place is due to ideology [individualism/ individuation]. Ideology is really the base-line, the default position, from which most people in the modern world begin with. It is the primary addiction, and addictions, such as PMO, are possibly just the most visible aspect of it.... like the tip of the iceberg, where addiction, as a condition, runs through to the most destructive degree.
You may wish to investigate Catholic Theology of the Body. It speaks of sexual desire as something good if properly ordered, of course. Puritanism seems very repressive.
Yes, this was suggested to me by others. I sought to develop an account of it for myself a few years ago, and at the time thought about adapting and preparing it for use in communities that have inherited a strong Puritanical suspicion towards sexual desire (of which my parents were a part). In the Catholic theology of the body, the body is seen as the real symbol of the inner intentions of the person, so that the body can be said through its actions to "speak" or "mean." To me this is interesting as applied to PMO. What meaningful "speech" is the body communicating through this activity? In keeping with the metaphor, one can say that it is babbling incoherent nonsense at best.
Christopher West's writings on TOB have been very useful in making sense of even my own desires. I've been reading his email newsletter. Today's email referred to one of his previous posts entitled '88. Depth of Erotic Desire, Not Death of Erotic Desire'.
Social Anxiety Disorder does not exist. It's only an etiquette that reasons the ways you act. You have no disorder my friend, you just never really spoke to women or had any contact in the last years because of porn. If you stop PMO your anxiety towards women and society will fade out. You will find out that the society contains mostly brainwashed conformed people, that are in no way better than you. I at least developed some sort of disgust for this perverted wicked sick world we are living in.
Yes, you have to be careful with identifying with a diagnosis. Language, and what comes with it, self-perception and self-understanding, are powerful forces [ideo-logical forces]. If we are not careful, we can let them define us to the point that we ossify into that view of ourselves. At the end of the day, all self-perceptions are limited and really the language of ego. The reality is we are a lot more permeable, fluid, and transformative than we think we are.
I wanted to have another go at this. Obviously I reject materialism: that the mind is reducible to the body, and the body is somehow running the whole show. As for a mind/ body dualism, that postulates two realities side by side, that one is out also... as overly abstract [ideology/ ego]. Idealism? Of all the modern philosophies the more attractive.... but denies the physical.. once again the result of abstraction. But in terms of thinking about the body's relation to the mind, I'd have to go back to more classical and common sense thinking about that. If I had to choose a philosopher, in order to make it more intelligible, I'd choose Aristotle.. primarily for his idea of a metaphysical biology and his organic approach. Man is a whole organism [definitely not a machine] develops and unfolds toward an end [the mind is the intelligible form of the body]. Aristotle is good on the virtues. As for psychology, Plato is hard to beat, especially when it comes to desire, and developing an ordered soul. Plato's analogy of the Charioteer is hard to beat, and focuses on the out of control passions within the psyche... as opposed the 'body' being somehow in revolt against the mind. I think there is obviously elements of truth to the addiction discourse about dopamine, but these explanations are really just describing the physical effect of something that is caused at a deeper level.. in the core of the self. I'd say PMO actually divides the soul against itself. The ego/ Cogito often imagines itself as separate from the body, and fighting a war against it, but the reality, in my opinion, is quite different. Ego is complicit is this whole problem [hence the problem of those relying on 'willpower']; where the ego imagines the passions as external to itself, in actuality, the passions are within us. The ego tries to repress them, but they build up and break out. So the soul is divided against itself. Any 're-unification' involves both a transformation of the passion AND the ego. This is what most people reject because the ego will fight tooth and nail to defend itself [that is its nature]. What happens in Recovery is the change in a balance of power... where power slowly but surely tips into the rational self until the rational self is once again in control of passion. Most just want to get rid of a small part of themselves - their addiction; but to do that may also require them to also get rid of the whole parcel of their ego. As they say, be careful what you wish for.
Thanks for this. I've become more skeptical about these diagnostic labels lately. Often they seem to me to be merely arbitrary constructs imposed on phenomena that admit of alternative descriptions. It is a function of a confused and sick world.
Your observation that "the ego/ cogito often imagines itself as separate from the body, and fighting a war against it, but the reality, in my opinion, is quite different" is important, from my perspective. I think there is some justification in the criticism that Greek philosophy has handed down to the West an understanding of man that tends towards dualism, though this is less applicable perhaps to Aristotle, as your post thoughtfully conveys. Nevertheless, both Plato and Aristotle arguably have contributed to an understanding of man that tends to be intellectualistic in its orientation, with a corresponding neglect of the body. By this observation I do not mean to demote the rational ego, which must serve as the ordering principle of the life of man. I prefer however to conceive it in the first place as the logos, which transcends the individual ego, but in which the ego participates, with the result that the ego is integrated into an objective or universal order. This prevents the ego from turning in on itself, which corrupts it, and leads to disharmony and division. This is the enduring insight of Stoicism, which of course extends into the Christian tradition through reflection on the logos that became incarnate. Note, however, the term "incarnate," which of course points to the body. More recent philosophy--I have in mind here Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, for example--has sought to accord to the body a deeper significance in our understanding of what it means to be human. This turn in philosophy shows that phenomenologically it is probably more accurate to say that "I am bodily" than "I have a body." This line of thinking lies behind my observation that PMO divides the soul against the body. PMO, performed often before a computer screen, represents the abortive attempt on the part of the agent to interact with pixelated images in preference to an embodied human being. In essence, the former is disembodied sexual expression. Over time the agent as a result can and most likely will become profoundly alienated from his own body.
Great post! I think we are on the same page. I think what I am doing is essentially a 'phenomenology of self'. In delving into the nature of addiction, it has lead further afield into thinking that the defining characteristic of contemporary age is one of addiction. It is the default position, so to speak. I wrote this earlier today: Phenomenology of the Self: a Brief Overview Western philosophy started as not only a rational dialogue with others but as a conversation within ourselves [and so we speak of ‘we’]. It originated not only in the attempt to reconcile or restore to unity a perceived dichotomy between ourselves and the world, but also, to get to the core of the matter, as an attempt to reunify our very selves. With this in mind, we could speak of a technology of the self - the positive movement of philosophy; and a phenomenology of the self - the critical and reflective movement of that positive movement itself. In the phenomenology you have a potential for a return to the primary pre-philosophical self. And so the adventure of philosophy starts out from a gate, and travels through the centuries to arrive at a turning point. Like Janus, the double-faced god of old, it recognizes two ways [backwards or forwards] depending on which way one looks. Philosophy first strikes out positively and technically. More than a body of knowledge, it is primarily the desire for a body of knowledge, and this desire comes to embody itself in the ego [the constructive and inventive moment]. In embodying itself in rationalist discourse, the self becomes the ego/ Cogito, and in doing so finds itself immersed in the discourse of ideology. In a co-emergence, the two share a symbiosis. This is what we mean, when we say, from the phenomenological perspective, that language speaks us. But, more strictly, we should say that ideology speaks the ego. The ego, should it, in turn examine itself, discovers the foundations of its existence [the dis-covered moment, the critical moment]. This criticism, this consciousness of self-consciousness, this self-analysis, involves a retracing of our steps, and a return to our gate as our point of departure. In doing so, it writes a phenomenology of itself, it underwrites itself, or rather, un-writes itself. In doing so, in a return to the point of origin, or to the original clearing, a more phenomenal self [as opposed to the technical self of rationalist discourse] is enabled to think other modalities of thought. The phenomenal self is once again opened up to the vistas of artistic, cultural and religious thought, or another, becoming. In speaking of moments, we are also speaking of momentum and movement, and taking etymology as our guide here. There is dynamic of movement and flux to phenomenological thought; thought is always considered a creative [or a destructive] process. It’s ‘anti-thesis’, or rather it’s opposite will, it’s opposite desire, is stasis, a frame of mind which seeks the static and the immovable, the reality behind the appearances, Being or the Same, Identity or the One.
I like to think that there are 'tendencies' with Greco-Roman thought that were brought to the fore and exaggerated in modern philosophy. Historically, I think Greco-Roman thought in general had a very important role in education, history, and Western civilization. I almost see it in Providential terms, where the Greeks developed the way to think, and the Romans built the roads, whereby the revelation was communicated to the world. This sounds Kantian. Bravo! He is a great critical thinker. I see him as the Sextus Empiricus of the modern world. I understand Kant as trying to hold the old and new together, with a foot in either worlds. Unfortunately, the balance proved to be too fine-tuned for most, and we had the collapse into the opposing camps of idealism and realism shortly after. Merleau-Ponty is interesting, and I like the term 'phenomenology'. This term has a long history, found in Hegel, and Kierkegaard's 'subjectivity' is significant here. Levinas is well worth a read, and has a good response to the later more material readings of existentialism. I see Kierkegaard and Levinas writing in Kantian spaces. Some of the more material of the 'existentialists', in their rightfully renewed emphasis on immanence were in danger of losing the transcendence to which you referred above. And this is no dualism. In the post-Kantian tradition, transcendence is to be found in immanence, in subjectivity, in the very core of our self [not in ego/ pure reason]. It all goes full circle.
