The last thing I want this to be
is some holier-than-thou-type-thing.
That would be hypocritical
because I'm in the same boat
as you, so to speak.
But there are some tendencies
in 21st century American society
that, when I think about them
in a serious way...scare the hell out of me:
The massive popularity of Ultimate Fighting.
Corporate media.
The ratio of US consumption to population
compared with the rest of the world.
The Tax Code.
The 14th Amendment applied to corporations.
And internet pornography.
I ran into a female friend
at a coffee shop today
and, for some reason,
we got talking about porn.
When I told her that
the US porn industry
makes way more money
than Hollywood,
her eyes got sad and
she asked me,
with intense sincerity:
"What's going to happen to us?"
"I don't know."
We both agreed
that, putting religion aside,
porn probably has some detrimental
psychological/relational effects.
We both agreed
that dating, in the 21st century,
is weird, and not in
a particularly funny way.
Weird as in we literally
don't know how a relationship
is supposed to function anymore.
Weird as in we are
lonely and afraid and legitimately confused.
We both agreed
that this loneliness and fear and confusion
might, at some deep-down level,
be related to porn.
Not exclusively porn,
but porn is probably
a much bigger part
of the relationship picture these days
than most people
are comfortable
talking about.
