This was a good piece, have read both Perry's book (and thought it very insightful and had also seen some of the Australians - who should know better - take below the belt shots at it) and Scruton's book about Sexual Desire but hadn't connected the two until now. That being said, I wouldn't blame alcohol or porn or anything else limbic capitalism has to often. In my opinion the modern teleology around sex and a pervasive view that it is an individual pursuit not a communal or social one is the root of the problem. If sexual morality was pro-social - not just the shallow consent based concept where if the person says its ok then go for it no matter how unhealthy the desire being acted out is - then much of the effects found in consumption of porn, alcohol etc and sex would be solved.
"... passed around like a spittoon"? I don't know about the places you frequent but I don't know anyone that's ever handled a spittoon, let alone passed it around.
I recently watched a documentary on the porno industry. In it they spoke with a Madam who helps procure women for the industry. The Madam spoke at length about how relatively well the women are treated but when asked if she would permit her daughter to enter the industry her response was an immediate and emphatic "No". Why? Because after a short period of time their heads get screwed and they can no longer respond to others in a "normal" manner.
A century ago in Sydney, Australia, the working man would finish his working day with several hours with his mates at the local pub. (Bear in mind what conditions people lived under during those times.) Local temperance groups decided it would be better if these men spent this time with their families and so they successfully campaigned for pubs to close at 6pm. The result became known as the "6 o'clock swill". Men would drink as much as they could in the little time available and go home "drunk as skunks".
Since you ask in the last chapter about alcohol - I think that unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle here. Alcohol is too deeply woven into out society for restriction to be feasible at this point. However, already we are seeing the young turn their backs on drink - something like a quarter of millennial & gen Z (at least in Britain where I live) are teetotal these days. Much of this will be down to environmental factors - watering holes are getting more expensive while the material prosperity of the young stagnates; the figures are also skewed by increasing numbers of youths who have migrated from Pakistan or other Muslim countries, who don't drink for obvious reasons. But I suspect some of it is down to a rise in virtuousness, much as is also behind the rise in veganism among the same age cohort.
I wouldn't restrict alcohol sales if for no other reason than politics is the art of the possible. It has often been said that if alcohol were a new drug being discovered today, it would not be made legal, and I am inclined to agree. But I certainly would spend money on PSAs and other information campaigns to raise awareness of how dangerous alcohol can be; perhaps take the approach of the anti-smoking lobby, which has been very effective at making smoking "uncool" and hence largely defeat the menace of tobacco without at any point banning it, which would have had brought its own problems such as the harms associated with forcing addicts to go cold turkey.
This was a good piece, have read both Perry's book (and thought it very insightful and had also seen some of the Australians - who should know better - take below the belt shots at it) and Scruton's book about Sexual Desire but hadn't connected the two until now. That being said, I wouldn't blame alcohol or porn or anything else limbic capitalism has to often. In my opinion the modern teleology around sex and a pervasive view that it is an individual pursuit not a communal or social one is the root of the problem. If sexual morality was pro-social - not just the shallow consent based concept where if the person says its ok then go for it no matter how unhealthy the desire being acted out is - then much of the effects found in consumption of porn, alcohol etc and sex would be solved.
"... passed around like a spittoon"? I don't know about the places you frequent but I don't know anyone that's ever handled a spittoon, let alone passed it around.
I recently watched a documentary on the porno industry. In it they spoke with a Madam who helps procure women for the industry. The Madam spoke at length about how relatively well the women are treated but when asked if she would permit her daughter to enter the industry her response was an immediate and emphatic "No". Why? Because after a short period of time their heads get screwed and they can no longer respond to others in a "normal" manner.
A century ago in Sydney, Australia, the working man would finish his working day with several hours with his mates at the local pub. (Bear in mind what conditions people lived under during those times.) Local temperance groups decided it would be better if these men spent this time with their families and so they successfully campaigned for pubs to close at 6pm. The result became known as the "6 o'clock swill". Men would drink as much as they could in the little time available and go home "drunk as skunks".
Since you ask in the last chapter about alcohol - I think that unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle here. Alcohol is too deeply woven into out society for restriction to be feasible at this point. However, already we are seeing the young turn their backs on drink - something like a quarter of millennial & gen Z (at least in Britain where I live) are teetotal these days. Much of this will be down to environmental factors - watering holes are getting more expensive while the material prosperity of the young stagnates; the figures are also skewed by increasing numbers of youths who have migrated from Pakistan or other Muslim countries, who don't drink for obvious reasons. But I suspect some of it is down to a rise in virtuousness, much as is also behind the rise in veganism among the same age cohort.
I wouldn't restrict alcohol sales if for no other reason than politics is the art of the possible. It has often been said that if alcohol were a new drug being discovered today, it would not be made legal, and I am inclined to agree. But I certainly would spend money on PSAs and other information campaigns to raise awareness of how dangerous alcohol can be; perhaps take the approach of the anti-smoking lobby, which has been very effective at making smoking "uncool" and hence largely defeat the menace of tobacco without at any point banning it, which would have had brought its own problems such as the harms associated with forcing addicts to go cold turkey.