Legal efforts to ban pornography misguided
Pornography Validates Process Philosophy Part II
The pornographic industry (especially on the Internet) is a monumental paradigm of the fall-out from moral misunderstanding, perverted perspective, mercenary motivation, hypocritical rationalizing, a pseudo-censored multi-billion-dollar-per-year coddled industry tacitly operating as a secret symbol of modern culture’s “underground” perception of “civilization.” There are, of course, viable options for a healthy spiritual outcome.
This is a new era for process philosophy. That fact validates the philosophy.
Pornography today is a quintessential example of process philosophy and the constant motion that is reality.
(Motivations we ascribe to a photograph usually have more to do with the viewer than with the photograph. Pornographic photography is a prime example. See http//shuna.typepad.com/shunas _blog/2006/11/on_photography_. html)
The philosophy of process is a venture in metaphysics, and a general theory of reality. Process philosophy addresses itself, in its own characteristic way, to enabling us to characterize, describe, clarify and explain to, and for, ourselves the most general features of “that which is real.”
The guiding idea of its approach is that natural existence consists in and is best understood in terms of processes rather than things – of modes of change rather than fixed stabilities. In process theory change of every sort – physical, organic, psychological – is the pervasive and predominant feature of the real.
Process philosophy diametrically opposes the view of pre-Socratic times that denies processes (or downgrades them) in the order of being or of understanding, by subordinating them to substantial things.
Process philosophy pivots on the thesis that the process nature of existence is a fundamental fact with which any adequate metaphysic must come to terms. Three factors emerge: (1) A process is a complex – a unity of distinct stages or phases. A process is a matter of now this, now that. (2) That this complex has a certain temporal coherence and unity, and that processes therefore have a temporal dimension, and (3) Process has a structure, a generic format, so every process is equipped with shape or format. See The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Internet pornography has exposed, among other things, that our society, our government, religion, and the citizens involved (pro and con), now have a schizophrenic mode of dealing with pornography, and other serious concerns.
Because of the now pervasive anxiety and the historic concerns we face, schizophrenia by osmosis bathes our society. From a practical, medical/psychiatric, religious, spiritual, humanitarian, and metaphysical standpoint this is a dangerous societal disease spreading rapidly to every aspect of our society. The Internet is part of the cause. It could also be part of a cure.
Pornography is not the disease. Pornography will never destroy our society, but the pernicious viral form of “mock-morality” it has spawned, will – if not treated and cured.
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