Posted on 09/01/2011 9:36:55 AM PDT by markomalley
I heard Benedict Garrett on the Today programme this morning: he’s the former teacher who doubled as a naked butler and porn star under the unlikely name of Johnny Anglais, and has since been told he can continue teaching (although not at the same time as his “adult” work). He seemed a nice chap, very well spoken, and freely said himself that last year he would have agreed that the combination of the two jobs was inappropriate. Since then, however, he has apparently received so many messages of support from fellow-teachers and members of the public that he had revised this opinion. To which I can only say to his “supporters”: more fool you.
I don’t much care what Mr Garrett gets up to in his free time, within limits, and prancing around in a fireman’s uniform or a bow-tie serving canapés at squawking hen parties sounds harmless enough, if a bit silly. But if I had ever found out, years ago, that one of my teachers was up to that sort of caper, I would have been too helpless with crazy laughter ever to learn anything useful from them again: I don’t expect pupils today are much different.
What worries me rather more is that Mr Garrett also stars in porn films, yet was head of personal, social and health education at Beal High School in Ilford. When he heard that pupils had seen him in a trailer for a porn film, he said of his work that: “It’s completely natural. Get over it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Porn to a Normal Red-Blooded American Male is the same as Cocaine or Meth. It gets into the SAME areas of the Male Brain and causes the same end. It is DEATH for ALL Normal heterosexual relationships. I know I have been BATTLING it(porn) for years.
Sex is a natural act - between a man and a woman who are married. Sex for money, videotaped and distributed via the internet is NOT a natural act.
The whole premise of this guy is flawed. It’s “natural” for dictators to do what they do. “Natural” for rivals to kill each other. “Natural” to lie, steal, cheat, and kill when somebody stands in your way. “Natural” to riot when you’re mad.
If something being “natural” means it is good, then there would be no need for laws, since people left to their own devices would naturally do the good thing.
You think like the Founding Fathers. As Madison said, if men were angels there would be no need for a government. Within a constitutional framework of course.
My sister-in-law just lost her marriage to porn. Her husband seemed incapable of telling the truth about anything.
The same thing was true of a pastor my husband used to work with, who was found to be viewing porn on the church’s computer. He was forced to resign because of several affairs but even months after he supposedly came clean with his wife she didn’t know he had had multiple affairs. She found out at a meeting she called for leaders in the church. He was seemingly incapable of telling the truth - not just about the porn stuff but about even simple things like who he had visited and what they had talked about.
I don’t know exactly what the power is, but porn does mess with a person in deep ways, and not the same as other addictions.
Another way to look at it, perhaps, is that your sister-in-law didn't lose her marriage to "porn," but lost her marriage because the person she chose to marry was a liar.
The checks and balances, separation of powers, and Constitution are all measures that were set into our foundation because the Founders realized that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Those guys lived within reality, recognizing both the sanctity of human life and the fallenness of mankind. Because they dealt with reality, the form of government they instituted was able to last. It assumed that leaders would be corrupt if they were allowed to be, so the critical factor is the ability of the people to keep the leaders from being corrupt.
But they also recognized that if the society ever lost that (Judeo-Christian) understanding of reality, this self-governing form of government would also perish. Where the people lose either the understanding of the sanctity of human life OR the fallenness of human nature, the needed vigilance would be lost and the whole system would fall to corruption.
And that’s where we’re at today. The same people who believe it is fine to butcher a half-born child (since we’re all just animals anyway) would have us believe that those same human animals can create a Utopia here on earth. It makes no sense and it’s been shown all through history that it doesn’t work.
This is why the whole post-modern worldview (we all make our own reality; what’s true for me may not be true for you; all cultures/lifestyles/choices are equally valid/good) is unsustainable. It’s anarchy, and even those who will never understand WHY it is anarchy should be able to see that anarchy is what we’re getting. The communists in academia will probably never grasp reality.
Well-stated and so true.
A person can try to figure out which came first, the lying or the porn, but it seems to be a pattern that the 2 go hand-in-hand.
How so?
This is why I am not a libertarian. They confuse liberty with license.
Not all liars are porn users, but the porn users I know about (which, granted, is not a scientific measure) are habitual liars. It would be interesting to see a scientific study on the subject. Maybe I only know about them because their lies have gotten them into trouble.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that people who are addicted to porn often have their life divided into two personalities - the wholesome, responsible public personna and the secret bad boy personna. I think the one is the cover for the other, or the attempt to have a clean self to justify the dirty self. Which could explain why there’s such a high correlation of pastors/priests who are involved with porn.
I say these things based on statistics I’ve seen but also by observing and talking to different people who didn’t understand their own behavior and by my father-in-law’s observations as a chaplain in a maximum-security prison.
It would be fascinating to see some open-minded research on the subject.
But I wonder about the whole correlation/causality angle. In other words, does something like porn cause an otherwise normal, healthy human being to become a habitual liar, a split personality, etc., etc., or is porn another means through which someone exhibits certain undesirable character traits such as lying habitually, split personality, etc.
I'm not by any means equating porn to guns, but where I'm going here reminds me of the argument whereby guns are inanimate objects; whether they're used properly or improperly depends on the user. Likewise, porn is an inanimate object; how it's used really depends on the user.
Food for thought, at least. Thanks for your post.
Virtually every member of the military that I knew was a "porn user". There were exceptions, but the vast majority were "users". I trusted most of them with my life. I would in no way label them "habitual liars". Mileage may vary.
Yeah, correlation and causality are 2 different things, which is why it would be interesting to see some research on the subject.
What the first poster mentioned is another thing that interests me, and that is the role of the right-brain. It’s been a long time since I’ve read about it, but I know that there is a region of the brain that is involved in “spirituality”, which is also the part of the brain involved in both schizophrenia and mind-altering drugs. Sort of the euphoria part of the brain.
I know that when porn addiction is involved there is a need for more and more bizarre stimulation to get the same effect, which is why some people who use porn go on to SM, bestiality, rape, murder, etc. Their mind gets numb to the effects and they have to do more animalistic things to get the high/euphoria they want. So it really is like a drug - except that it requires another person or animal to be the apparatus for satisfaction (the objectification of another person). And I wonder if it involves the same part of the brain.
If so, then what happens in the brain for at least some people who use porn could be on the spiritual level, clinically speaking. Deeper to a person’s inner being than any other physical body function. Know what I mean? Your comparison to a gun is interesting too, because for some people there is a high from killing - in which case, the gun becomes the means to get the feeling of euphoria, which could also be centered in that same “spiritual” part of the brain.
IOW, I’m wondering if the feeling of euphoria can be an attempt to fill a spiritual void - a thrill to substitute for something spiritual. I’m wondering what the science would say about that, if anything. I wonder if it would say there is a different brain reaction for somebody who looks at porn casually versus somebody who is addicted to it.
As the first poster mentioned, I think porn does have an impact on male-female relationships because it changes the expectations and the mind of the person, where the pleasure itself can be the focus rather than the person. Where the person can become simply a means to an end. I think that’s why men are more drawn to porn than women are - because it caters to the more non-relational sex drive of a man, rather than the relational drive of a woman.
Of course porn’s not natural! Duh!! It’s not supposed to be! It’s fantasy, escapist, performance.
I've heard and/or read interviews with incarcerated pederasts, rapists, etc., where they readily admit that if released, they would continue to commit the crimes for which they were incarcerated. And while that sounds incredulous (e.g., you mean, you didn't learn your lesson), it's not really beyond the pale when you consider that those crimes make up their sex drive, which is one of the strongest human impulses of all. Imagine how difficult it would be for the rest of us if garden-variety heterosexuality were criminalized?
Add to that the brain chemistry stuff that you discuss in your post, and the picture becomes a bit more clear: the combination of the natures of addiction and sex drive . . . talk about crossing the streams of some powerful forces.
Purely from an anthropological standpoint, it's going to be interesting to see what impact readily-available pornography has on today's children when they become adults.
Clearly you’ve known more porn users than I do. lol. Which makes your observation more useful than mine since it’s a bigger sample. I don’t mean to malign the character of anybody who uses porn, and I do recognize that people are different. That’s why I wonder if there are scientific studies about the impact of porn.
I wonder if the lying comes from feeling a need to hide the behavior, whereas in the military where everybody knows and expects the behavior there’s no need to lie. It’s an interesting question.
This might be a bad thing to ask so ignore it if you prefer, but does the military do anything to prepare the soldier for the reality of actually having to kill an enemy? I mean, is there psychological preparation that involves the soldier being able to view the enemy as an object rather than a person? I think about that with my sons playing Black Ops, Modern Warfare, and other video games. It makes me wonder if it desensitizes them to the personhood of the people they’re shooting at.
The reason I ask about that is because one of the objections to porn is that it can lead to a guy viewing women as mere objects. Being able to similarly categorize enemies as objects rather than as human beings might be a necessary defense mechanism for dealing with combat. So objectifying people might actually be a critical skill for that setting. Whether that skill interferes with a different setting (such as marriage) might be another issue. Trusting somebody with your life in a combat setting is a little different than having to trust them with your feelings within marriage. =) I know a lot of military guys sacrifice their marriages, but there must be a hundred different things that factor into that as well.
I think about the rape that has been used as a punishment or weapon in tyrannical regimes or in war, and I always wonder what a wife must think her husband is doing to her when he does the same thing to her as he did to punish and belittle an enemy earlier that day or year. I can’t help but think it would have to diminish her somehow. Of course, that doesn’t apply to the US military because we don’t rape those we battle but the connection between combat and rape in history makes me wonder what happens to a guy during war.
And I am not an anti-war person, just so you know I’m not coming at this from any particular agenda.
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