Pornography, narcissism and society

Like it or not, pornography is part of human society. As long as there has been a demand for it, it has existed in human society. The "morality" of this is always up for question, and is an ongoing argument.
An article about the recent surge in sexual violence in India talked about the role that pornography has in seeming to encourage sexual violence against women. In the case of India, its highly patriarchal, male-dominated society is far more conservative in behaviour and perspective than in the West; in some ways, shockingly so. Indian society - and other highly-traditional societies like it - seem to give free rein to male urges and behaviour. In a culture where arranged (as well as underage) marriage is the norm, and where many women are expected to follow a man's wishes almost without question, we see the attributes of a highly-narcissistic male-led society. On the one hand, sex before marriage is illegal in their traditional culture and interaction between genders can be highly-ritualized; on the other, women are expected to give in to men's personal whim. The result is what the psychologist Oliver James once called "Gender Rancour", leading to a male frustration at the contradictory messages - of both omnipotence and impotence - from their culture.
Then comes the question of pornography. In a culture where men are, in many cases, treated as a "superior being" to woman, the injection of modern pornography is, as the writer in the article says, a recipe for disaster. However, the issue is not necessarily with the pornography in itself, but with the already inherent malignant male narcissism in society.

Is pornography "immoral" and therefore a malign influence on society? To some extent, it could be argued so, but if the logical conclusion of this thinking is to criminalize the depiction of "immoral" acts, then where is the line drawn? The judgement then becomes a highly-subjective (and prejudicial) act. If sexual imagery is banned, then why not all violent imagery?
The argument was once put that violent films generated violent behaviour in children (which was one reason for film classification). But it is a question of degree. The problem is that a logical argument could be made that films and books that enact criminal behaviour encourage that same behaviour, and therefore should be banned. The obvious difficulty with that is it would result in a large portion of all film, TV and literature being banned. Likewise, when "prohibition" of alcohol was put into force in the USA, it was quickly shown to be as ineffective as it was nonsensical.

The author of the article mentioned above seems to suggest that banning pornography in India could be a possible solution. But as seen from the highly-narcissistic male-dominated society that India already is, the accessing of pornography by men in India seems far more to be a result of the problem, not the cause. Indian men seem to react in such an anti-social way towards women because of the ingrained culture of impunity; accessing pornography is more likely to make them violent towards women because their impulse control is already very low, thanks to the male narcissism ingrained in their culture. The real solution is to re-educate male society so that it is less narcissistic and anti-social towards women, but that would require decades of work. And few people in authority are going to suggest that their own culture is really to blame; much easier to blame pornography.

That same culture of male narcissism exists in parts of the West, although to a lower degree. It is true that Western culture is more "sexualised" than it was in the past, and this is something which this author wrote about several years ago. But the real question is about instilling behavioral controls. Going back to the example of violent films, there have been cases of mass murderers who have been said to have been "inspired" by watching ultra-violent films. As a result, there are always periodic "moral panics" about banning them, or other "extreme content". The British government has already cynically caved-in to such "moral panics" in the past, for the sake of a few electoral votes. Besides, they might well rationalise, who would argue the case in favour of them in court?

But the purpose of these films, and others like it, is to titillate, and to make a "moral" judgement over this is to miss the point. All forms of art are subjective, and some are bound to be "offensive" - with some being intentionally "offensive" for the purpose of titillation. The real issue, as said earlier is about behavioural controls. Any rational person should be able to look at a sexual or violent image without instantly wanting to imitate it. The problem is that if society itself makes people (or men in particular) more narcissistic, then those behavioural controls become less effective.
As we have seen, many highly-traditional cultures - such as in the example of India, above - create a society that instills malignant male narcissism. This is where behavioural controls among men are lower than in an "average" society. Likewise, there is good evidence that modern societies with high levels of both  consumption and inequality (e.g. Russia, South Africa and in the "Anglosphere", in particular the USA, UK and Australia) also generate high levels of narcissistic behaviour. The correlation with this behaviour, violence towards women and pornography use is therefore not surprising.

While there may be calls to ban pornography in India in the light of the issues raised above, in traditional Islamic cultures, there seems to have long been an assumption that men are, by their nature, poorer at controlling their behavioural impulses than women. Going back to the issue of "Gender Rancour" talked about by Oliver James, it could be argued that the traditional form of highly-controlled gender separation seen in strict Islamic societies creates the same form of malignant male narcissism seemingly prevalent in India. On the one hand, men have more greater legal rights than women, but on the other, the many social boundaries that physically separate men from women are bound to create a form of sexual tension; the result is a vicious circle, where women feel obliged to cover their bodies from brooding male gaze, making male resentment even worse.
Given the sensitivity of the issue, there is alas little real data on hand to research this; the closest we have in the West is the (highly-sensitive) issue of the various "sex ring" scandals that have appeared in the UK, which implicate the highly-traditional (and often self-segregated) cultures of South Asian community. Unfortunately, the "malignant male narcissism" mentioned before is all too evident in the behaviour of the (usually Muslim) men involved in these cases. Given their limited ability to interact with women from their own community, it seems they have turned to more easily available (and persuadable) women from the "white working class", who they have then effectively used as sex slaves: acts of pathological narcissism.

To sum up, there is not enough clear evidence to say that pornography it itself causes narcissistic (and anti-social) behaviour. The above evidence shows that it is the malignant male narcissism that already exists in society - which may come from different sources - that plays a more important role in the anti-social behaviour shown by these men towards women. If men who use pornography are more likely to carry out anti-social behaviour towards women, it is much more likely because they already lack the behavioural controls, due to their culture, or other social factors. Their use of (or addiction to) pornography is more a result of their existing narcissism, not a cause of it.

Government in the UK: of the media, for the media, by the media.

The role of the media in Britain has been discussed to death in recent times. The hacking scandal and the long list of celebrities and ordinary families that were the victim to the Murdoch (and other) press' casual attitude to ethics and the law has been the ironic focus of the media itself. Navel-gazing has become the British media's recent obsession.

But this also brings to the surface the role that the Murdoch press and the media in general have in the decision-making process at the governmental level. The UK is not alone in the world in having an influential media, and this is in so many ways a great service to democracy.

But there is also a darker side to this. I wrote a short while ago about "Demarchy", and in that article I talked about something called "Ochliocracy", more commonly called mob rule. Mob rule is also another way of talking about decision-making by interest groups; when governments make their decisions simply based on the reaction to pressures by groups of people with special interests.
In the modern world this includes lobbyists and corporate interests, but in ancient and mediaeval times this was any number of periodic bouts of public hysteria, often engineered by populist demagogues eager for power themselves; in the Roman Empire, this was often how Emperors rose and fell from power; in mediaeval Italy, this was how city-states like Florence changed government; in modern Italy, it was how populist demagogues like Silvio Berlusconi were able to stay in power for so long while allowing the country to fall into financial ruin.

This is how riots start; in a dysfunctional society, this is how government policy is made. The modern term that spin doctors call it is "policy-on-the-hoof", but for successive British governments over the last twenty years, it was one way of trying to maintain their popularity.
The most important way that people in modern society get information is through the media; in Britain, this means news media like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail"; the first is the most popular tabloid in the country, the second is the most popular "middlebrow" newpaper. As a result, much of the British public obtain their information from these newspapers. The newspapers would reply that no-one is forcing them to buy them, and that whatever viewpoints they share must therefore be reflected by their readers; this may be true.
But there is also another angle to this; by thinking about if the amount of column inches these newspapers spend on dicussing certain issues (such as violent crime, moral issues, celebrity intrigue, Europe, and so on) is a reflection of the relative concerns of their readers. By this measure, what comes first: the chicken or the egg? Do the media spend so many column inches on violent crime to reflect their readers' concerns, or are the readers so concerned about violent crime because they read about it so much in the media? Or is it a combination of both?

What has been proven by surveys is that compared to issues such as the economy and other immediate concerns, Europe is not a major issue for the average person on the street. They do not spend sleepless nights thinking about what bureaucrats in Brussels are doing.
It seems that the editors and journalists of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" do, though. Which brings us back to the point: where do people get their points of views from? If the media are there to reflect the public's concerns, why do some of them spend so many column inches talking about things that the average person has been proven not to be so concerned about?
"The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are the two most Euro-sceptic newspapers in the country; they are also the two most popular. Of course the editors of these newspapers are entitled to their opinion, but I seriously wonder if their readers would be quite so sceptical of the EU if the editors of those newspapers spent a little more time focusing on what people can do to improve the British economy and less time on how bad the EU is for Britain.
There is a famous quote from Hitler: "If you repeat the lie long enough, people will believe it as truth". The problem with some sections of the media is that their journalists spend too much time on opinionated (and factually inaccurate or misleading) comment, and not enough on furnishing their readers with the ammunition to allow them to think for themselves. But it would be naive to think that this would change: newspapers are a business, after all.

So this means that news coverage by the likes of "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" is fuelled by nothing more than profit. In theory (according to free-market proponents), this should mean that newspapers will be in a competition to tell the most factually-enlightening stories. Ha-ha, don't count on it. Newspapers are more often in a competition to sell stories that will either entertain or reinforce to people what they already think. In other words, market forces here act more as a dumbing-down mechanism rather than a way to encourage the spread of information. Who decides what "news" is? The newspapers, of course. In an open society, it is practically impossible to ignore what's happening in the world completely; in other other hand, media outlets are perfectly free to prioritise as they wish.
By "prioritising", newspapers like "The Sun" and "The Daily Mail" are deciding for their readers what is important and what is not, which brings us back to their reply that people are perfectly free to choose another newspaper if they don't like what they read.
But that's a simplistic argument. There are not an infinite number of newspapers, and it is true that most people in the UK, like everywhere else, buy it more for casual entertainment. There's nothing wrong with that, as much as those who would consider themselves "intellectual" might think so: it's human nature.

These newspapers know this, of course: that's how they remain so successful. But this media "prioritisation" also has an effect on government. The term "moral panic" is as old as the hills, and one about paedophiles was famously engineered by the tabloids ten years ago or so. The panic about Europe has been in the media for around twenty years, and has been consistently engineered by these same two newspapers. As a result, successive governments have been eager to pander and appease these sentiments.
We saw the partial result of that on Friday morning. Not wishing to seem "weak" on Europe, and eager for good headlines with the key newspapers, David Cameron pandered to the worst elements of the popular media. This is what happens when you allow the narrow interests of a few newspaper editors to dominate the affairs of government. This is the meaning of "Ochliocracy": the subversion of the democratic model through the media, moving from one moral panic to the next.
Alastair Campbell once described "The Daily Mail" as the worst aspects of British society masquerading as the best. In that sense, at least "The Sun" has the decency to be honest about its motives.