I know it when I see it: life in the pornosphere
A superstimulus or superreleaser is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency...
Wikipedia entry
People say that I have a dirty mind and I guess they must be right. You see, I've been thinking a lot about pornography lately. Not just the plastic-wrapped, behind-the-counter skin mags, but all kinds of smut. Conventional porn, alternative porn, health and fitness porn, food porn, marketing porn–I've been meditating on all of it. And now, after an intensive period of dedicated study, I've come to the realization that porn may have a downside.
Now please be advised that I have nothing against sex. Nor do I have anything against robust, wild sex or even public sex. And as for sex with animals, well, that's what it's all about, right? Animals have been having wild sex in public for something like 500 million years, ever since the Cambrian explosion. And as for us, sex with human animals is profoundly natural and normal; people really ought to be doing more of it.
So what's the problem? Well, the popular definition of pornography focuses on sexual imagery, “dirty” pictures of naked people doing “nasty” things related to copulation. But I take a broader view. The way I see it, pornography is anything that takes us directly from impulse to gratification. The thing about porno is that it doesn't mess around; it gets right to the point. It's blatant, abrupt and completely unambiguous. There's no subtlety, no nuance, no romance, no seduction, no warmup, no anticipation, no nurturing of the appetite. It drops you directly into a fantasy realm and pumps you to exhaustion.
supernormal stimulation
Not only does porno deliver, it delivers sensations, ideas and imagery that are richer and more robust than would actually occur in real life. Good porno is above and beyond the norm. It's reality plus. Comedian Richard Jeni reminds us of this fact when he describes pornographic movies as “things that will never happen to you in your lifetime.” For many people, sex porn is sort of like regular sex, only a whole lot better. The people are more attractive, more energetic and more open-minded, not to mention more endurant and more orgasmic than you or I will ever be. (Think about it: when was the last time you had wild group sex in the photocopy room of your office?)
This is precisely the point that Deidre Barrett drives home (so to speak) in her recent book Waistland: The (R)Evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis. For Barrett, the crucial factor in our health and fitness predicament is disruption of normal behavior by “supernormal stimuli.” This term is borrowed from the study of animal behavior (ethology) and refers to artificial objects that appeal to our instincts more than the natural foods or activities for which those instincts originally evolved. Barrett believes that because of this supernormal stimuli, we eat far more than we would otherwise eat and, to make it even worse, we eat the wrong kinds of stuff.
This whole study of hyper-stimulation started with ethologist Niko Tinbergen, winner of the 1973 Nobel prize in biology for his research on the instinctive behavior in animals. Tinbergen devised a series of dummy objects, specifically designed to surpass the power of a natural stimulus. For example, he found that many bird species preferred plaster eggs that were larger than their own and that were decorated with exaggerated colors or markings. Some species will even ignore their own eggs in favor of over-sized fakes. Songbirds will abandon their own pale blue eggs to mount a huge day-glow dummy egg. When a greylag goose is given the choice between its own egg and a volleyball, it chooses the volleyball.
effects of supernormal stimulation
So what happens when you put an animal into a world of supernormal stimuli – a pornosphere if you will? Obviously, you're going to wind up with a seriously distracted animal, one that behaves in ways that are contrary to that animal's natural history. As Barrett puts it, supernormal stimuli “hijack our natural instincts.” Supernormal stimuli generate excitement, distraction and disordered attention. Not only that, they also lead to diminished interest in normal stimuli. After all, once you've eaten a sugary, salty, artificially-flavored food product, who wants to go back to eating boring, natural, unadulterated food? Once you've sat on a volleyball, who wants to sit on a regular egg? Once you've had a near-sex experience with porn star, who wants to go back to sleeping with regular people?
For Barrett, supernormal stimuli can also lead to addiction. “Heroin and high-fructose corn syrup are reinforcing because they're intensified versions of natural endorphins and natural glucose levels respectively.” Ultimately, supernormal stimuli leads us towards aberrant, unnatural behaviors. Sometimes these behaviors are spectacularly perverse, but they may also be subtle variations on normal lifestyle. But over time, slight preferences for the supernormal, exercised over years and decades, can add up to some serious health consequences. Just ask a Type 2 diabetic.
fast food smut
At this point, we have to remember the human baseline for sensory stimulation is our Paleolithic grassland experience. A simple thought experiment illustrates this point. You're living in a wild environment that consists of land, weather, plants and animals: normal, natural stimuli. Let's say that you're in a semi-wooded mosaic habitat with broad expanses of open ground and clumps of trees. Colors are generally muted earth tones, shapes are soft, sounds are subtle, and with the exception of occasional predator attacks, events move slowly. The environment will speak to you, but you have to listen carefully.
In contrast, today's fast-food porno screams at us with the promise of instant gratification, often in the form of super-refined salt and sugar, all promoted with highly saturated colors and imagery. In this process, there's no romantic nurturing of the appetite, no laborious hunting or gathering, no careful preparation, no fretting over ingredients. Just a direct path from impulse to gratification. No anticipation, no process, just an instant product that tastes better than anything you'd ever find on the grassland. No wonder we're so distracted.
In fact, today's nutritional stimulation is thousands of times more powerful than what would have occurred on the grassland. Not only are our “foods” artificially enhanced for maximum flavor, they are all around us; no walking or searching required. And not only that, our media reminds us constantly that such flavor sensations are just a click away. A hunter-gatherer might walk half a day to get a few sweet berries off a bush, but the modern urbanite can secure an enormous bag of even sweeter treats, just by pushing a few buttons or pointing his car in the right direction. Thus, an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Ultimately, supernormal stimuli makes us sick.
the golden age of porn
And it's not just food porn. Once we start to think in terms of supernormal stimuli, we begin to see it everywhere. For example, the fitness industry is thick with porn. Not only does it overlap strongly with standard-issue sex porn, it also deceives us with a promise of instant fitness. In fact, every promise of “get fit quick” or "get rich quick" is porn, pure and simple. The ubiquitous “before and after” photo spread is just as pornographic as the photo-manipulated picture of McFood on the passing 18-wheeler, just as pornographic as the stripped-down, lubed-up bodies behind the counter at the Mini-Mart. Anyone who promises instant results is by definition a pornographer.
In the wide world of sports, the highlight clip is also porn. No need to watch through a tedious stretch of first quarter maneuvering, dull jump shots, 3 yard runs or base hits. Now we can cut right to the meat of the action. Being a fan no longer means being a student of the game. Instead, we flit from one titillation to the next, remote control in hand, looking for the most spectacular, arousing, athletic-erotic moments. By comparison, watching an entire game seems torturously dull. We want a sporting climax and we want it now.
Pornographic images even distort our relationship with the natural world at large. One environmental writer has referred to the glossy telephoto images of wild animals as “eco porn.” His point is that these images, appealing as they might be, completely misrepresent the reality of the natural world. Flip though a popular nature magazine and you'll come to expect that lions, tigers and bears are standing shoulder to shoulder in every forest, swamp and alpine meadow. In fact, sightings of these creatures are rare and require lots of patience. People who are raised on eco porn are often frustrated when they visit wild areas; they expect to see large animals everywhere, hunting and humping in every direction. Disappointed, they return to their living rooms where they can see some “real” action on TV. In contrast, nature is just too dull to bother with.
the use and abuse of porn
Moralists like to make blanket condemnations of skin porn and they'd probably make similar condemnations of all supernormal stimuli. They might even suggest that we practice a kind of sensory chastity, limiting our exposure to all-natural sensations: the primal colors, sounds, textures and odors that our bodies have been exposed to for millions of years.
The moralists might make a good case, but the fact remains that supernormal sensations can have legitimate, healthy uses, especially when they stimulate our creativity. Bright colors and novel sounds can spark new art forms and valuable expressions. Modern art and electronic music are supernormal, but they have also given us some invaluable contributions.
In the right circumstances, supernormal stimuli can provoke new ideas and innovation. Such stimuli might even spark neurological development, neurogenesis and synaptic connectivity. Not surprisingly, artists of all types are attracted to novel stimuli and make good use of it. The same is probably true for skin-porn itself, by the way. In the right hands and at the right moment, vivid sexual imagery might the ideal stimulus for creative sensual pleasure and adventurous lovemaking.
So, it seems that porn can have a range of effects. By itself and in small doses, porn is probably harmless. Soft food porn, soft fitness porn, soft skin porn: all of these forms might very well enrich our lives. A few titillations, a little extra excitement, some quick stimulation keeps life interesting and can even relieve the tedium that many of us are forced to endure each day.
But today, porn is everywhere and a lot of it is truly hard core, in-your-face, round-the-clock smut. Modern media has given us a pornosphere in which supernormal stimuli is impossible to ignore. And being ubiquitous, it now threatens to derail our collective attention, our happiness and our health. So forget calories, trans-fats and sedentary living for the moment. The thing that's really killing us is the 24-hour porno channel we call modern life.
the antidote
So clearly, we need some kind of antidote to the modern porn glut, some means of insulating our psyches from hypersensory stimulation. Herein lies the crux of the problem: the human brain is extremely vulnerable to the supernormal stimuli cooked up by today's pornographers. In fact, this is the core objective of all pornographers; to burrow directly into the deepest levels of the human brain and thereby manipulate emotional responses. Pornographers want our money, of course, first they want to control our brains.
The antidote for this pornographic marketing crusade lies in the prefrontal cortex, a brain structure that can regulate and dampen impulsive, emotional responses. The prefrontal cortex acts as a counterweight to the powerful, surging desires of the limbic system, the paleo-mammalian brain.
Unfortunately, the prefrontal cortex doesn't even mature until the mid-20's, which explains why young people are more vulnerable to all kinds of porn. And to make matters even worse, the prefrontal cortex is vulnerable to insults from stress. Glucocorticoids (stress hormones) not only damage neurons in the hippocampus (memory center), but they also degrade the capabilities of the prefrontal cortex. Thus, the more stressed you get, the more susceptible you become to impulse, the more vulnerable you become to porno. Thus, stress-reducing practices are essential. If you want to protect yourself from the excesses of porn, it makes sense to pamper yourself with relaxation and rejuvenation. Take care of your brain and you'll be in a better position to take care of your body.
porno-proofing
For my part, I've always been an advocate of natural living and trusted my body to make good choices instinctively; I like to let my tissue call the shots whenever possible. But now I am beginning to see the folly of my ways. In a porno-saturated environment, we can no longer trust our bodies to make wise choices. There are simply too many pathological forces out there, competing for our attention and distorting our behavior. Given free reign to act on impulse, our bodies will go for the porn every time. Without some countervailing force, we will become pornovores.
So, we need to guard our experience, intentionally and consciously. As Barrett puts it, we need to “ignore instinctual signals and listen to our intellect.” This, I am afraid to say, requires a measure of discipline and patience.
The good news is that there are many ways to develop prefrontal control. Almost any discipline should work, whether it be athletics, music, writing or building. All skill development requires prefrontal regulation and thus confers some immunity to porno. But of all the porno-proofing we can do, meditation seems to offer the greatest promise. After all, if you can sit still in one place for a half hour each day, watching your breath with focused attention, you have a much better chance of fending off the flood of pornographic sensation that comes your way. It's definitely worth a try.
While we're at it, we might try adjusting our values: Instead of falling victim to the pornographic speed machine, we might try slowing down. Honor desire, build hunger and take pleasure in process. Appreciate the romance, the seduction, the warm up, the pre-season. The slow road to gratification may feel alien and it's definitely counter-cultural, but it's the healthiest path for our bodies and our spirits. Slow Food, Slow Fitness, Slow Sex, Slow Success. Stretch out your experience and enjoy the process.
