In the previous article A Christian Virtue Approach to Compulsive Pornography Use in this series, I laid the conceptual foundations for an approach to compulsive pornography use (CPU) rooted in the virtue ethics tradition of Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and others, which I called the Christian Virtue approach. In that article, I endeavored to show how this approach can help us to make sense of human behavior, and in particular, CPU.
Recall that the Christian Virtue approach to understanding human behavior asserts that we can understand any behavior by (1) understanding who persons are as purposeful and rational moral agents, capable of choice, and relationally and morally enmeshed with others, and (2) understanding a person’s vision of what a good life is, along with the habits, virtues, vices, and narratives that point them toward that vision. Understanding we are children of God is the foundational answer.
The focus of this article is to further explore what is meant by CPU being a complex vicious habit in this way. Accordingly, the rest of this article will further develop the idea that CPU is maintained in many ways by (1) a misunderstanding of the nature of selfhood as bequeathed to us by contemporary Western culture, (2) misguided visions as to what daily life ought to be about or aimed towards, and (3) the kinds of daily vices and activities that develop to help reinforce and aim persons towards a lifestyle in which CPU is both common and difficult to overcome.
(Mis)Understanding of The Self
The answer to the crucial question of what it means to be a self has serious implications for how persons and cultures construct their visions of what a good life is. The Christian Virtue approach to CPU asserts that understanding we are children of God is the foundational answer to the question of what it means to be a self and is the essential answer for properly organizing a person’s life and aspirations.
However, this question is one not completely answered by each individual person but is answered and given to persons in large part by the various cultural beliefs and practices persons engage in simply by being a part of a particular culture (via what James K.A. Smith called secular liturgies, or praxis, to use Aristotle’s term). With regards to CPU, this approach asserts that an incorrect answer to that question has been given by our culture at large, promoting a misunderstanding of selfhood that fosters the wrong priorities and visions for how persons ought to live their lives.
So, how has our culture come to (mis)understand selfhood such that it fosters fertile soil for lives in which pornography use is so commonplace and difficult to escape? As I attempt to answer this question by briefly describing three assumptions of personhood given to us by Western culture at large, I would invite readers to consider the ways in which these assumptions have come to inform the way they think about themselves, how much time they spend contemplating on topics related to them, and how in so doing, such assumptions have come to inform much of their daily, thoughts, feelings, habitual goals, activities, social interactions, and priorities.
A self can best be defined as being an isolated, autonomous individual
Many scholars and historians (see e.g., Taylor, Goodman, or MacIntyre) have shown that as a result of many of the Enlightenment philosophies, our contemporary sense of self is grounded in the foundational assumption that to be a person is to be an individual self, separated from other individuals both in the essentials of our identity (e.g., descriptors of who we are and what we are about) and moral obligations. Whereas anciently, identity was tied up with one’s socio-cultural heritage and one’s moral obligations to others in a community, the contemporary sense of self places the site of identity and moral obligations upon the individual over and against the socio-cultural aspects of human life. In other words, the individual is primary, while social ties and obligations are secondary. Thus, individuals are presumed to be isolated (i.e., atomized) from social ties because such ties are not fundamental to who they are and what individuals should focus on in life. Social ties are an optional activity one can choose to participate in, among many other optional activities individuals can choose in life. I get to decide who I am, what I should want, and where I should prioritize my time. My personal desires and welfare take precedence over all else. Morality and the world are my own, and thus, I get to operate autonomously from any other moral obligations that others or the world wish to impose on me. The self is thus presumed to be highly individualized in all aspects of human action.
Our “true” selves are found inside ourselves
Because the self is presumed to be isolated, autonomous, and individualized, it follows that its true nature and characteristics cannot be known by referencing anything outside the individual. That is, the socio-cultural milieu has little to do with who a person really is and what their life ought to be about. Accordingly, our culture tends to assume that we each have an authentic self inside each of us, apart from the socio-cultural aspect of human action, that must be discovered and be freely expressed (see e.g., Wilkens & Sanford or Trueman on expressive individualism). This idea means that our thoughts, emotions, intentions, and all aspects of our identity are embedded in us and are often presumed to be the causal force behind our actions. The self is thus presumed to be primarily psychological in nature. An awfully big burden to carry.
An example of this understanding of selfhood can be seen in patients who struggle with CPU. They often talk about how their urges to watch porn “build up” and must be released somehow or how they have sexual needs in them which need to be satisfied in some way. Note how, in each case, there is a presumption of an inner world of emotion and desires that are at least partially sexual in nature and which represent what persons really want or need to fully function psychologically. Those emotions and desires are also presumed to be seemingly out of the control of the person.
We belong to ourselves
The first two assumptions lead to the third contemporary assumption about selfhood. I will quote from theologian Alan Noble on this who stated that our contemporary sense of self is “grounded in a particular understanding of what it means to be human: we are each our own, we belong to ourselves. From the early political liberalism of the seventeenth century, with its language of individual liberties and rights, over time westerners began to think of themselves as naturally sovereign.” This may sound to our contemporary ears to be a good thing to assume. It invites personal responsibility and protection of individual dignity and choice. And to an extent, that is true.
However, coupled with the first two assumptions, our culture has seemingly taken these to an extreme, leading to the existential burden of pure self-responsibility for everything. As Alan Noble also states, “To be your own and belong to yourself means that the most fundamental truth about existence is that you are responsible for your existence and everything it entails.” In short, our culture presumes we are completely and utterly responsible for deciding what life should be about (i.e., its meaning and purpose and our personal identity and place therein), for making the world conform to those personal ideas and values, and for helping and healing ourselves when the difficulties of life arise or when the world does not so easily conform to our personally made meanings and identities.
This understanding of what it means to be a self is an awfully big burden to carry, and, as will now be discussed, unfortunately leads to a cultural vision that reinforces and fosters this sense of self and its existential load.
Misguided Vision of the Good Life
According to our culture, if we are autonomous individuals belonging to ourselves, how ought we to live our lives? What is the contemporary vision of a flourishing and fulfilling lifestyle? I have found that one of the best ways to answer these questions, at least for patients in therapy, is to appeal to broader cultural priorities and beliefs by describing cultural mores that most people quickly recognize as structuring contemporary day-to-day existence. With my patients, we discuss almost a dozen aspects of the contemporary vision of the good life, but here, I will reduce the list to just two that I think capture the heart of the contemporary vision. As with the previous section, I invite readers to consider how these cultural priorities play out in their daily behaviors, thought patterns, feelings, and priorities.
A culture of technology-assisted individual fulfillment and affirmation
Our contemporary cultural vision is one focused on each individual enjoying life to its fullest in the ways each has chosen and prefers. We tend to think of the successful person as the person who has chosen a career they personally like, gets to enjoy their favorite activities, has little economic burden, is happy more often than not, and eventually gets to retire early. Accordingly, our culture tends to prize rest, relaxation, and entertainment above all else as a reward for hard work and a sign that one has done well in the world. As such, many of us have come to believe that we (1) have a right to fulfilling entertainment and (2) must feel good first in order to do good (e.g., be satisfied, calm, anxiety-free, worry-free, etc.) because free access to entertainment and pleasurable feelings are taken as an indicator that we are on the right track in life, so to speak. Work-as-necessity, anxiety, worry, personal emotional pain, and the like are all taken as signs that we must be doing something wrong. If we have done right and worked hard, we ought to be enjoying the finer activities, entertainment, and emotional experiences in life.
Pornography is one of the most pleasurable forms of entertainment, and for many, it is a way to relax from stress or to deal with life’s many problems, which stress is seen as a problem to be dealt with and solved in order to proceed with a fulfilling life. Want to feel good? Want to feel relaxed? Want to fill your time with very enjoyable entertainment? Need something to help you feel good enough to carry the burdens of life (i.e., the burden of belonging to yourself)? Pornography fits the bill and fulfills the requirements of this vision of life quite well.
A hyper-technological culture
The wonders of modern technology are truly awe-inspiring and have done much good in the world. That being said, many of us have come to believe in the aspect of the contemporary vision that assumes that technology, particularly electronic devices, is a must-have and is the catch-all tool for solving life’s problems to be used to maximize the efficiency of even the smallest tasks and to maximize the amount of enjoyment and entertainment we can get out of life. Technology is there to fill time when sitting still. It is there to satiate any curiosity (see below). It is there to comfort us during difficult times. For so many of my patients, their phones, laptops, tablets, and other devices are so ingrained into their vision of good daily living that they struggle to even make it through one day without using them (aside from the technological necessities of their chosen profession). Commonly, they rely on it so much they cannot even go to the bathroom without taking their phones with them.
Through technology, particularly the internet, every desire, whim, aspect of identity, or bored moment of life can be satiated, affirmed, or filled. And, given the free availability of porn, there is unlimited access to one of the most pleasurable forms of entertainment to calm anxiety, help forget pain, fill time, cope with stress, or anything else. Spend enough time on technology, and you will encounter pornography, whether wanted or not, whether you are trying to escape its grasp or not. In short, technology is seen as the penultimate tool for living our lives how we want to and dealing with the burdens, aims, and responsibilities of self-belonging. Pornography (or other addictive content like social media) is freely there to help, lurking around every corner.
Viscous Individual Habits That Reinforce CPU
To understand how CPU becomes so inviting and difficult to overcome, it is not enough to simply state that persons have, at least in part, come to misunderstand who they are and have adopted parts of a vision of a good life in which CPU would flourish. As stated previously, the Christian Virtue lens asserts that all aims that structure persons’ visions of a good life (i.e., those goals and activities that structure their daily existence) are reinforced by certain character attributes or habits that enable them to accomplish those aims—their vision—and that such habits can become deeply engrained such that they truly are “second nature” to a person (i.e., they become taken-for-granted ways of living in the world because of their seemingly ordinary everydayness). As a morally diminishing aim, this approach presumes CPU would be reinforced by vicious habits.
At this point, I have already invited readers to consider their daily personal habits (i.e., priorities and vices) that might be associated with the (mis)understanding of personhood and misguided vision of contemporary Western culture. To foster further self-awareness, I would like to add two more common, everyday living kinds of vices that I have seen that enable persons to engage in CPU almost without thinking, which subsequently are often not considered by them when trying to understand how to overcome their struggle.
Curiosity
As a result of the hyper-technological culture, many of us have developed a habit of unfettered curiosity that is dangerous. “Curiosity killed the cat” is how the old saying goes. However, we no longer think about a desire for knowledge in that way. We tend to habitually seek answers to every question whenever it pops into our heads. Regardless of the source or whether the question actually matters in any real way, we need the question answered. Think about how often you pull out your phone simply to make sure you know the name of an actor in the movie you are watching (a common practice of therapy patients). Pornography both stimulates and offers ways of satiating curiosity in a never-ending cycle. If you can think it and wonder if it exists, there is likely some kind of pornography about it. Or even more innocently, if you want to know what sex looks like or are curious about the anatomy of the opposite sex (another commonality in therapy stories), pornography offers an answer. Or again, if you simply need to fill time, an aspect of unbridled curiosity, technology and pornography are there.
Isolation
This habit is easier to explain than that of curiosity. In order to reduce shame, most who struggle with pornography develop many small habits that make it easy for them to be alone with their viewing. However, such habits of isolation are not only out of the shame persons feel from viewing pornography. Our culture encourages us to take time to ourselves, to be alone, and to isolate ourselves from others as a solution to all kinds of problems in life. Exacerbating the problem is that technology allows us to do many things alone, and often bedrooms are filled with personal electronic devices, which bedrooms tend to be where persons go to be alone and shut out from the world. “Treat yourself” and “You need time to yourself” also encourage isolation and are both common mantras of a culture that sees the individual, isolated self as the best self and the source of healing and relief.
Given the (mis)understanding of selfhood asserted by our culture, the misguided vision of what life is about that such an understanding engenders, and the common vices of daily contemporary life, it comes as no surprise that CPU fits right in and is so difficult to escape. As I like to put it with patients, it can be compellingly vicious simply because of the way we live our contemporary lives.
The wonders of modern technology are truly awe-inspiring.
That being said, given the fact that so many of us do not think twice about cultural practices that get us caught up in the contemporary understanding of the self, with its accompanying vision of a fulfilling life and many subtle vices, it stands to reason that many of the ways we live our day to day lives that invite compulsive (or to use the more common term, addictive) habits such as CPU are overlooked because they are simply taken-for-granted. That is, they are overlooked because they are presumed to be necessities for how we should structure our daily lives. As such, pornography may even be replaced by a different addiction (e.g., social media, YouTube videos, online gaming, online shopping, etc.), though for whatever reason, we tend to ignore such addictions even if they can be just as destructive to home and family (e.g., the spouse who spends hours online shopping or posting memes to the ignoring of children and other responsibilities).
In sum, this article in the series has focused on expanding the claim that CPU is a complex, vicious habit rooted in an understanding of selfhood and a particular vision of the good life to support the idea that CPU simply fits right into and is supported by the everydayness of our contemporary daily lives. However, this article was focused on those general aspects of selfhood and cultural practice that give shape and context to those who struggle with CPU with two specified vicious habits being given. The next article will focus on principles for healing. It will subsequently expand the ideas here and provide more specific examples of individual vicious purposes and habits that structure CPU that need to be addressed for healing to happen.
