In dysfunctional modern culture, porn defines ‘normal’ for millions

I’m on the losing side of a bitter culture war. The hip postmodern folks won. The people they called prudes and squares — people like me — were the ones who lost.

The cool people don’t believe life has meaning or purpose. They don’t believe we came from anywhere or that we’re going anyplace. They say a person’s only real goals are pleasure and self-gratification.

If it feels good, do it. That’s their motto.

Of all the damaging effects of their sloppy thinking and slipshod ideas, it seems as though the worst have come from the mad rush to disconnect sex from love — and from the eagerness to unleash porn on immature and lustful people.

It’s not popular to talk about voluntary limits. Most people don’t want to see what these ideas are doing to those around them. They just want to laugh at the prudes who are dumb enough to disapprove. They don’t want to see the collateral damage of what they’re doing.

But if you look at the filth and degradation that are inside the minds of many millions of people today — and if you can see the damage they’re doing to themselves — you’ll see that this massive culture change has done serious damage that can never be undone.

The culture as a whole is doomed, but you can still decide whether this will affect you — or your children.

I recently reread Neil Postman’s 1982 book, “The Disappearance of Childhood,” and it resonated with me in a way that it didn’t when I first read it years ago. Postman makes a strong academic argument that technology affected human society in ways that created what we now called childhood a few hundred years ago — and that subsequent technological changes are forcing the collapse of childhood.

Those who like simplistic explanations either wouldn’t understand his argument or would find it inconvenient to something they already believe, but I believe he’s laid out a convincing framework for the ways in which our use of technology affects our ideas — and the changes in the ideas of a culture change the ways in which we behave.

Postman shows that there was no such protected period of childhood in the ancient past and he shows why it’s entirely expected that it would disappear because of what we believe today. He wasn’t some right-wing moralist. In fact, the late Professor Postman was a politically liberal Democrat who had very different ideas about government and religion than I do. But the point is that he explained very rationally why the lines between childhood and adulthood must continue to come down because of postmodern ideas — and there’s no question things have continued in that direction since 1982.

Children have been sexualized more and more. They’re brainwashed with leftist ideology about sex and gender from a young age. And many people consider it a good thing that they’re no longer innocent about most of the things which used to be hidden from them until they were older.

One of the saddest effects of porn that I see is what it does in terms of how people see their own bodies. Women are obsessed with their faulty bodies. Some people might vaguely say that “media” teach them these wrong standards, but that’s putting the blame in the wrong place. It’s porn that’s teaching them what’s wrong with them.

Women think their breasts are too small. Or that they’re freaks because one breast is slightly differently sized or shaped than their other one. Or that their labia doesn’t look like the “perfect ones” they see in porn. They think they’re too fat if they have normal stomachs, because the anorexic women of porn who their boyfriends obsess over have no fat on them.

Men worry that their penis is too small. Or not big enough around. Or something. They want to reject the women who might actually love them because they’re not enough like the porn stars they drool over. They want to try “exotic” things they see in porn — not because they would have ever considered it otherwise, but because porn shows it as normal.

They watch so much porn that they need more and more extreme porn to get aroused. They watch porn together, because real life with a normal person isn’t exciting enough. They want to try more and more exotic things — new partners, threesomes, orgies, “hotwifing,” wife-swapping, cuckolding and a thousand other dysfunctional things.

Why do they want these things? Because they have disconnected sex from emotional intimacy and they have turned sex into an Olympic sport in which only the technical merits matter.

If it feels good, do it. And if it’s no longer arousing, find something even more “exotic” or even more perverted.

But ideas about porn and sex and intimacy are connected to far more than you think.

If a man has filled his head with so many images of porn, he wants his wife to become a sex symbol to other men. He often no longer even looks on her as someone he loves, but as someone whose sexual desirability gives him status with others.

You can’t even talk about modesty in this culture without being accused of trying to shame a woman about her body. If you make the case that a woman shouldn’t dress like a streetwalker and that a man shouldn’t leer at her like a wolf, you’ll get two very different responses.

If you suggest that it’s not a healthy thing for a woman to sexualize herself to the world, you’ll be told that you’re “blaming the victim” of a potential sex crime. You’ll be told you’re trying to shame her and control her.

On the other hand, if you make the suggestion that a man shouldn’t treat women as sexual prey, you’ll get two responses. From the cultural left, you’ll hear howls that this behavior is the result of “toxic masculinity.” From the cultural right, you’ll often hear justifications that “this is just the way boys are.” It’s just their “game.”

If you suggest that a romantic relationship between a man and a woman should be based on something other than sexual attraction — and sexual pleasure — you’ll typically find that people might say they agree, but they act entirely differently. As a result, we’re a culture that has lost what the concept of intimacy is really about, because most people just think intimacy is a euphemism for sex.

You know that nice uncle or big brother you love, but who you know sees women as objects of sexual pursuit? It’s because of the ascendency of this idea that unrestrained sexual pleasure is a good thing — and that self-restraint is for prudes. It’s not about “toxic masculinity” or any kind of masculinity. It’s about the idea that life has no meaning and that pursuing pleasure is the only reasonable goal today.

It’s not just about sex or porn, though. It’s the acceptance of the entire package of corrupt ideas which society teaches today. And it starts with the notion that life has no meaning or purpose.

To be a healthy and sane person today means being at war with modern culture. Giving in to this culture — absorbing its ideas and living its values — is a clear path to nihilism and cultural decay. If you doubt me, look around you. It’s everywhere.

If you don’t want this nihilism and decay for yourself — if you don’t want it to destroy your soul and destroy the hearts of your children — you have to reject the values that this culture insists you accept. You have to start with a new set of values and then build on those to find things that work for you.

I could tell you about my values — spiritual, emotional, intellectual — but you will have to find your own.

It’s a package deal. And because almost everyone today is silently and unconsciously accepting the values we’re given, we’re allowing our children to go down a path that’s getting worse — and then they wonder why the world’s a mess. They wonder why their own lives are miserable, too.

It’s about everything you believe. Everything you do. Everything you consume. It’s about your education, your media consumption, your music, movies, friends, everything.

If you like where this dysfunctional culture is taking you — and where it’s going to take your children — continue doing what you’re doing. You’re bumper to bumper on a freeway to emotional and cultural hell.

But if you want something different — for yourself and for your children — you have to disconnect from what you’ve been taught is normal. You have to re-evaluate the ideas you’ve blindly accepted. You have to be willing to walk away from a world that’s about to fall off a cliff.

To be a healthy and sane person, you must reject what this dysfunctional culture is teaching you. It’s a difficult and conscious choice. But the only alternative is continuing down a path to a place of terrible pain.

It’s not too late to change, but it’s an individual choice. You’ll have to walk away from the popular crowd. For what it’s worth, I think it’s the only chance we have to build a new “counterculture” that can eventually become a light of hope for a world that’s rushing headlong into dangerous darkness.