Covert War - decade seven

My grandfather was born out on the mid-western plains.  He grew up on a farm and married a local girl.  They farmed for a living, and their friends were mostly members of a small church community.  His children were born in the 1920s and were raised through the Great Depression years and the aftermath.  Tough years, tough people; they were farmers, so they didn't starve.

By the time their grandkids showed up, Grandpa and Grandma had sold the farm and moved to the city for a normal middle-class life; regular job, regular home.

As one of the grandkids, I had them to myself for a week or two in the summer, sometimes.  They were really picky about tv shows we'd watch, and I remember wanting them to take me to see 'Exodus' at the movie theater, but they were uneasy about it.  They eventually did, but we had to show up just for the movie and not any previews of anything else.  Why would they do that?

It took a few decades before I connected the dots.  Our culture was changing, and they noticed but I didn't.  They had conscience problems with the entertainment industry and the way relationships were portrayed between men and women.  They had problems with glamorizing and sensualizing women.  They didn't want to think that way, and they didn't want me to, either.

We didn't talk about it.  Folks didn't talk about that sort of thing with any clarity back then.  It wasn't until the 1980s that we began to study healthy sexual behavior and its compulsive variants.

"The modern western society in which we live is slowly but surely conditioning women and men – children or adults – to a world where whatever we desire must be available for immediate acquisition. ...  In this context, one that would rather ignore the feelings of frustration associated with abstinence, sexual behavior has also known an evolution in which the laws of supply and demand have come to reign, along with the rules of free competition, giving to ‘sex’ objects the same status as any other product. In just a few decades, access to pornography has not only been developed but also became banal. We are far from the censure of the early 20th century when kissing scenes were simply cut from cinematographic reels. Consumer studies show that on Google, the world’s number one search motor, the terms ‘sex’, ‘love’, ‘porn’ arrive at the fore of all requests by both type and nature. Sexuality has become recreational, and even imperative. In effect, it was as if the slogan of the new societal Super-ego had become: ‘Unfettered and unlimited pleasure is a must.’"  ~ from the archives of the US National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health - Sexual addiction: insights from psychoanalysis and functional neuroimaging.

Culture change was underway in 1930s Hollywood, but aggressive warfare began in 1948.  If you're brave enough, trace the Kinsey Report (Human Sexuality, 1948-53) through Hugh Hefner (who declared he would be Kinsey's pamphleteer and then launched Playboy magazine) and note the removal of relational elements from physical intimacy.  As they've presented it, there is no relationship factor beyond the physical contact event.  No magnificent love, no covenant, nothing.  The decline has been precipitous.  Does that make a difference?  

Newsweek; admitting the obvious in 2011

THE TIME SPENT ON PORNHUB IN 2016 EQUALED 5,245 CENTURIES!

Every year, PornHub (the largest porn website in the world) publishes insightful statistics. In 2016, they racked up 23 billion visits to their site and collectively, 4.6 billion hours.  Porn is just one indicator.  

The war is on, much ground has been lost, and as yet, there is little public awareness of what happened.  For those who care about their own mind and the minds of their children, just standing on the sideline is no longer an option.

Churches are beginning to respond thoughtfully and effectively.  National programs with a history of success are being integrated into church education for men and women.  Talk to a trustworthy elder, get informed, be open and proactive.  The alternative is just being swept along by the changing culture along with our children.
__________________________________ 


For a more specific narrative, see Playboy, Polanski, and Sex Trafficking, Dr. Judith Reisman, former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Justice, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention study of child sexual abuse and crimes suborned by "soft" pornography, and author.

For the relevant science, see Understanding Sexual Addiction, and note the referenced source material.