It seems that what we're trying to accomplish with this feat of incredible strength is just a state of deprivation. Men aren't the same today because their fundamental drive to reproduce has been taken care of. I've recently started intermittent fasting (look it up) which is basically the same as nofap except in food form. It induces a state where every food looks delicious, however, after you eat a shitload, you don't want to look at food anymore. I've confirmed that the pornography industry is the main reason behind the decline of man. Men would not even become addicted to video games if they were not already addicted to video games. Because video games do nothing to enhance your status and therefore ability to copulate, your physiology will not allow you to perform that fruitless task. With that being said, if we continue to fap we will continue to one of two possible outcomes: either the human conscious evolves to the point where it garners its motivation from something other than the fundamental physiological desires of human consciousness outlined by Maslow. Or it continues to be motivated by sex which is suppressed by masturbation, leading us to become a schlepping race of underachieving bastards. I don't really know where I'm going with this but if you kind of understand the gist of what I'm trying to say let me know and maybe we can sort out the details.
Also, I've often thought that porn induces a sense of narcissism because its making you believe that hundreds to even thousands of women want to fuck you. Narcissism has been shown to be the highest its ever been in college students making me think its either the porn, or could also be because of the parental view that their children "can do anything they want." Let me know what you think on this topic as well.
Well, it would be very interesting to see if men really changed over the past and if men were more "manly" in the past then in the present. My guess would ehhh yeah maybe. I mean we can theorize on how men nowadays lost their "go get it-attitude" but we would really need a big big survey to find that out. My subjective guess would probably be yes, but I am also part of this community so my opinion is probably not very impartial. You bring up an interesting point about how video games don't add anything to our "desire to copulate" with women, but is copulating really the goal that everyone should strife for? Our only reason of existence? It's funny, because this evolutionary selection argument just gets picked up so damn often and everything that isn't deemed "sexy" by a society seems to be condedmned. In my opinion "sexy" equals mostly "cool" and if we now imagine a cool guy, who will we imagine? Probably a football player, who dates a lot of girls, has a lot of sex and lives his life with full passion. But now I simply must ask the question, doesn't coolness vary from society to society? For our western part of the world, it may indeed be correct that it is still "cool" and "sexy" to be a footballplayer and a sportsman in general, but if we look in the east,(I am thinking of South Korea here), we see how taste and the contributing factors to "coolness" change and with that also the sexiness of a person. In South Korea there are the best Starcraft 2 players in the world. Period. E-Sports are in fact so popular in the East that they get similar, if not even great attention there, than regular sports. And I bet those pro gamers also got dem fangirls and groupies, because their status is so damn high. So I reject your notion that doing "fruitless tasks" like video games, in your opinion, have always the same direct influence on the "sexiness" of a person. I claim it is culturally relevant, but it seems quite fancy to claim absolute truths on this forum. But I think I do agree with you that many young men lost their "go-get-it-attitude" through desensibilisation of dopamin receptors, but this really has to be scrutinised by a generation wide survey.
I am not really sure if porn induced a sense of narcissism, it rather induced into me a sense of jealousy towards the men who get to do the action and also it induced a low self-confidence, because I was way too afraid to even think of talking to women like that. But i definetly agree with you that narcissism has something to do with how parents raised their children with this "you can do anything" attitude. Allain de Botton, a swiss philosopher, makes the interesting point that by constantly building up our expectancies into our future, we crumble into a status of anxiety if we are faced with reality, where jobs aren't easy to get and girls are hard to approach. He also asked jokingly:"Have you ever wondered why the motivational books in the store stand right next to the Self-Help books" or something like that. But I think thats exactely the point, because I think not only our parents are raising unrealistic expectations in us, no, but also society itself, is inducing this same thought of a meritocraty and the "american-dream" in us, while at the same time it being clear, that we live in a society with limited chances and capitalists, who govern us through the mechanisms of "the market"(which has a terribly neoliberal neutral notion to it, its a beast, not a puppy)
I think that tschoo brings up a good point when she/he says that copulation might not be our goal that we all strive for in life. from a purely biological standpoint that makes sense but as we all know their is a lot more to life than sex. i agree with tbtitans21 on the idea that porn has unmanified a lot of men, the whole idea of manliness is often boiled down into protect, provide and procreate, though i think that respect is also very important. for me partaking in PMO is very disrespectful to yourself, the people in the porn/sex industries and people in general, in particularly women because most porn is extremely harsh towards women and it imparts negative attitudes toward everything sacred and female into its viewers. so yes i think that porn has put a dent in the overall manliness of individuals all over the world. Having said that their is a history to porn that goes back thousands of years, because on one level every human being who has walked this earth has had at least a few good long fap sessions full of lustful fantasies (whether they admit it or not doesn't matter).
First of all I didn't say that video games decrease a man's desire to copulate, I said a man's "ability" to copulate. Also, copulating is very realistically our only reason for existence. You can say that its to make the world a better place or something but that would just be ignorant. Men deprived of sex do things that will enhance their status (could just be ability to socialize, not necessarily become a pro football player) because that is what women want. You seemed to ignore my part on Maslow as well: "the human conscious evolves to the point where it garners its motivation from something other than the fundamental physiological desires of human consciousness outlined by Maslow." I think that this is not a realistic outlook though. I wasn't trying to say video games are a fruitless task in and of themselves, I was saying that (yes this is a cultural bias) they don't directly help with getting with a girl. At least in America, they do nothing to enhance your status, (unless you are the very best, unlikely) so when it comes to getting with girls, they will not be impressed by that stuff. Yes, they may be impressed if you are the very best, but they have no ability to decipher whether you just pwned a noob or got pwned by one. In sports it is easy to tell for a woman and therefore easy for her to tell who the valuable person is in that setting. I love video games (too much to be honest), but I was just observing the fact that when I am deprived of sex in general, I see no use in playing video games because of its lack of status building effect. As for the part on if copulating is what people should strive for, I just have to say that Napolean Hill explained man's desire to impress women in "Think and Grow Rich." Sex is the biggest natural motivating influence that man has, so naturally man will increase his status to try to accomplish that desire. The problem with the porn industry and sex in general is that it removes this fundamental driving force. I also agree that sex is not the thing we should necessarily strive for, but men on here are simply stopping porn use so they can get with women. They might, rarely, do this experiment to become a better person, but if you think about it, you are proving my point by saying that the only way people can improve themselves is if they abstain from porn and sex. That means that sex IS the motivating factor to become a better person, otherwise all these people could would become better people without quitting porn. The reason men change their lives after quitting porn and masturbation is because of their fundamental desire to increase their status in the community. Its hypocritical of you to be critical of the fact that mans main desire is to spread his genes. If you could become self actualized while masturbating every day and watching porn every day then do it.
1) Please define "ability to copulate" further. It's unclear to me what you mean with that. If you mean the act itself then the "ability to copulate" just seems to boil down to my ability to move my hips and I think even the very hardcore gamer is able to do so. Yeah, biologically you may be right that sex and procreation is the only sense of our existence, but aren't we much more than mere animals? I claim that with the arising of consciousness within humans we became something more, something self-aware, something that can feel and reason, something that can act on its desires or not. Even though I dislike the Christian thought that a human is something completly different than an animal, I do give more props to humans in general, as the self-aware being he/she is. Isn't there so much more to being human than fullfilling our "basic needs"? I mean you could argue that behind the drive some brilliant people like Einstein had is something than the desire to increase the status he has, at least unconciously, but saying that he consciously followed his intellectual goals only to gain status so he can bone girls, seems ridiculous to me. Yes, I think there is something beyond our "basic needs" that motivates us and I 100 % agree with your statement "the human conscious evolves to the point where it garners its motivation from something other than the fundamental physiological desires of human consciousness outlined by Maslow." 2) Yeah and this is what I am trying to say, in relativity our european/american/western cultures value the "traditional sports" more than the newer "e-sports" and you are completly right in saying that it probably won't help you "getting your game on". The problem that I have here going on, that you are implying that our "traditional sports" got more value to them, because they are easier to observe and therefore it is easier to figure out whos da boss and who to mate with, but I clearly reject this notion, because "traditional sports" are not harder to figure out than say "e-sports" or for the heck of it magic the gathering tournaments. This really seems relative to the culture you live and what culture thinks what things are "cool" and "sexy". I mean you could argue here, that "traditional sports" got the advantage, because they give you a fit and lean body and make you therefore more desirable for women, I guess in that point I would agree, but this seems to have nothing to do with the observability of the kind of sports. So I guess you will attract more females if you do a sport that gives you a nice body AND makes you the desirable alpha of a certain kind of cultural setting, but this doesn't diminish the fact that one can still be the desirable alpha in a cultural setting that sees, for example of pro gamers, the practice they do as admirable. So, if your passion is for example gaming, and you are in the right cultural settings, I do not see why this should lower your chances with women much more, than say, if you do "traditional sports". Too bad most of us don't live in this cultural setting, lol. 3) Yes absolutely, I agree with you. I also think, that by concentrating the sex drive on women, who are not really present, you will loose the "manliness" that was in the past ought to motivate you to go after women. It "removes this fundamental driving force" as you said. With increasing your status to achieve what you want might be true, but I'm not so sure about that one, because this "drive" can also lead to agression in my opinion, especially if men have no outlet for their manliness. So, I'm so ladida content with that point of view, because have this drive could maybe not automatically lead to a higher status. Here I have an interesting study on that topic that I think is related http://www.sociology.org/content/vol7.2/01_krienert.html Well, then I am one of those rare persons, because I am not only doing it to get sex (I mean I do so for sure partly), but also to be in control of every aspect in my life, especially the "basic needs" like food and sex. Again, I agree with you that the sex drive is one of the fundamental motivational factors in life, but I disagree the omnipotence and the absolute necessity for abstinention that you describe to it, simply because I think people can also be motivated by other things, like mere curiousity. So, of course all people on here could also change their lives by other means and motivations, like chasing a dream, but they have chosen to improve their "sex drive", which is quite an excellent way to do so, but no necessity. What the fuck is it with absolute truths on here. I never doubted that men want to spread their genes and I am not hypocritical about it, I just don't give it that much props as you seem to do. Didn't you also become so self-actualized, while wathching porn every day, that porn might no be so good for you? Isn't that the evidence for the possibility of self actualization also with porn? I hope that didn't sound too pro-porn of me, which I am ofc not, either I would not be part of this forum.
I agree. Even though porn is a billion dollar industry, I'm curious to know how much it actually affects our economy in lost productivity. It is well known that marital discord and a stressful divorce lowers worker productivity.
A 2006 study of 9000 employees revealed that 20% of men and 12% of women had used their workplace computers for sexual purposes and that porn sites were the “4th most visited category” of sites while at work, which would clearly harm productivity. Eberstadt notes a 2007 study which found that of the 30% of employers who had fired an employee for internet misuse, 84% of the reason was pornography-related. Further, a 2002 study [Kalman] of the American Academy of Matrimonial lawyers found that, of the 350 participants, 62% said that the internet had been a “significant factor” in their divorce work that year. But research is still in the early stages
