Just Thomism

Porn and alienation

Porn is a fantasy that seeks to be acted out. It is also a fantasy that is unattainable. By definition, it must lead to despair.

But assume for a moment that it is possible to attain the fantasy, and that we would want it if we attained it. Assume that women became hyper-sexualized automatons, who spoke only as a bridge between liaisons. Assume that twenty minute coitus was normative, and not tedious. Assume that you could actually be attracted to a woman who would copulate with any sentient being in the room. Assume that you wouldn’t leave a porn encounter with a vendetta against reason, and take every possible drug to avoid living with yourself. Assume That the scene would abruptly change after climax, and you wouldn’t have to be faced with that horrid “what now”? Assume that onanism was everything you always wanted. Assume that Women would not hate or resent you for subjecting them to every manner of contortionist novelty. Assume that you would never conceive a child.

Are you living fantasy yet? No. Something remains. Even in this state, what are you? A performer You are doing what you have seen: you are acting This is your show. You are not in love, but on stage. The self who copulates is someone you observe and ogle, rating his performance, admiring his power, fearing his failure. The woman is not your lover, but your audience, and your porn persona is alone on stage. Your true self watches from the balcony; a petty critic, alienated and alone.
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That there is some object in the mind is obvious. Either the object informs our minds, or our minds inform the object. Either our minds are matter to the object, or the outside world is matter to our minds. Now in art, our mind informs something external, which stands to our mind as matter- the question is whether all our knowledge is this way- if all knowledge is a making- or if knowledge as distinguished from art is possible.

It is also obvious that we are some natural thing, or at least that every other person we see is.

If we are informed by the object, we are allowed to stand as matter to the object, and can take the object as the measure of ourselves. The nature we ourselves have is also ennobled, and in a certain sense becomes the measure of our thoughts also. This leads to what is classically called “natural law” where the nature of man, considered as object, informs the man himself as to the nature of good and evil.

If we inform the object, then nature must stand as matter to our thought, and we become the measure of all things. And so the nature we ourselves have becomes matter to our own thought, and to the thought of others. This leads to the rule of minds over nature, even if the mind ruling is other than ourselves, and we are the nature ruled. The inevitable consequence is slavery and murder of one kind or another.

So again, in the end, there are only two philosophies. We all will take one, and only one can be taken.
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The very idea of becoming leads to the inference of privation: if X comes to be, there was non-X before. These two things are called contraries. What is comes from what is not.

at the same time, nothing can come from it opposite: what is there in “the non- white” as such that can give birth to white?

Since both these statements are true, we need some third thing, which is capable of containing both contraries. It can lack This reality, but it cannot lack reality altogether. It must have contraries in some way, yet it must not be wholly non-existent.

There are two ways of looking at contraries: either we see them as ordered to the “is” or the “is not”. If we see all ordered to the “is” we see generation as desired, and corruption and death as perhaps necessary, yet unintended by nature. If we see all ordered to the “is not” we see death as the intended order, and life as perhaps necessary, yet unintended by nature. There is no third option, for there can be only one account of nature’s desire per se . we must choose. There are only two philosophies.
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