Why Most Men Aren’t Man Enough to Handle Web Porn

By ALAIN DE BOTTON

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

All parties, on left and right, believe in freedom. The question is whether there are ways of having too much freedom, or of using it in the very wrong way, so that it starts to hurt other things we care about, like prosperity, safety and happiness.

The issue comes to a head with internet pornography. The standard view is that people should be left to look at porn as much as they like, just as they should be left to buy guns, eat unhealthy foods, divorce and remarry eight times and make nothing of their talents: it’s a free country, after all.

But what is freedom? If you listen to the theologian and philosopher St Augustine, real freedom doesn’t mean the right to do anything whatsoever. It means being given access to everything that is necessary for a flourishing life – and, it follows, being protected from many of the things that ruin life.

How Do I Escape the Trap of Pornography in My Life?

These five steps will help you break free.
by Dave Boehi and Mike Pickle

Pornography has become one of the most destructive forces in our culture today. Never has it been so widespread … and never has it been so easy to find.

What we would call "hard-core pornography"—the more explicit images, videos, or descriptions of erotic behavior—has grown rapidly during the last two decades. In the past, pornography was available only at stores or through the mail. But the pornography industry is often the first to take advantage of new media technology—and now with cable television, DVDs, cell phones, iPods, and especially the Internet, it is easier than ever to find, and harder than ever to resist.

Internet pornography has earned itself a reputation for being the crack cocaine of sexual addiction. "It works so quickly and it's so instantly intense," says Dr. Robert Weiss of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles. "We're seeing a whole population of clients who have never had a history with the problem, but for the first time, they're beginning one particular activity and getting hooked."1