Everyday Systems: Podcast : Episode 94

G-Ray Vision

Last episode, when I revisited Weekend Luddite, my system for managing technological distraction, I listed seven, positive whitelisted activities and four negative criteria for things I really don’t want to be doing. There were a couple of items on neither of those lists that a lot of people have trouble with and you may be wondering why I left them out: video games and porn.

Video games I just don’t have much interest in. I did, when I was a kid (like all kids), but I realized quickly that I had no special talent for them and it isn’t fun to spend so many hours sucking at something (especially compared with my little brother). I guess I didn’t have a whole lot of growth mindset in this regard. When I got older, my disinclination was reinforced by the realization that I don’t even have time to do the things I want to or am supposed to be doing. Playing video games for hours on end felt like machine gunning time. I felt like a war criminal against productivity when I caught myself trying to figure out what to put in Link’s backpack. Not fun at all, when you look at it that way. And so it rarely happens anymore. Maybe you get a lot out of playing video games and it’s different for you, maybe it’s a real temptation you need to regulate – if so, by all means explicitly address it in your version of Weekend Luddite.

And of course as I talked about recently in the Wisdom of Games episode, my whole life is a sort of game, what with the lifelog and personal punch cards and Spider Hunter. I prefer to think of it more like a fancy euro style tabletop game than a video game. But it definitely satisfies whatever lingering video gaming urges might still be lurking within me. I don’t have to play sims. I live sims. It’s like a reverse simulation hypothesis.

Porn is different. I am susceptible to it. At least I was. I no longer have a problem with it. And that’s thanks to a system I came up with circa 2008, so 17ish years ago. You can find a very brief description of this system linked to from the everyday systems “labs” page, and I’ve heard from some of the more intrepid of you who’ve discovered it, but I’ve never podcasted about this system before. One, for the obvious reason that it’s a delicate subject, I don’t want to offend anyone’s chaste ears, really I don’t, and two, it’s a subject that invites posturing, whatever your take on it, and if you’re someone struggling with how to deal with it, that last thing you need is to be postured at. I’ve tried a few times to put together notes for an episode, and each time I’ve backed off in disgust, not so much at the subject matter, but at catching myself posturing. I hope this time is different.

I’m going to start by restating the system more or less exactly as I first described it, then I’ll give a little exegesis, to try to account for why this system actually works, because it seems like it shouldn’t actually be possible. I’ll also explain why I think porn a problem worth systematically tackling, because it has come to my attention that opinions diverge about that. There’s a very funny image (don’t worry, rated G) that I can’t believe I found to go along with the system that you should make sure to look at the show notes to see.

Here goes, presenting, on the Everyday Systems podcast, a world premiere, in its unexpurgated entirety: G-Ray Vision:

So he was strong. So he was fast. So he could fly. The power of Superman's that made the biggest impression on me as a boy had little to do with fighting crime or saving the world - it was his ability to see through Lois Lane's clothes.

These days I'm less envious of the Man of Steel. I realize what an enormous distraction his X-ray vision must have been: With pornography now ubiquitous on the Internet, it sometimes feels like it would take super powers not to see naked flesh all over the place. And so that's just what I imagine I have: G-Ray (as in G-rated) vision.

*Whatever your feelings about the morality of pornography, it's terribly time consuming. If you're going to put restrictions on how often you check your stocks or the Daily Planet news feed, this is much lower hanging fruit.

Essentially, all G-Ray Vision boils down to is "don't look at porn." But that sounds so repressed and puritanical. Re-casting this restriction as a mock super power makes it positive and fun - and, in my experience, astonishingly easy.

That’s it. That’s how I described the system on the site. And I’m going to stick with that as the core system definition. Lack of explicit detail is essential to G-Ray Vision. What follows now is just commentary.

The first thing that strikes me about practicing this system for over 17 years now is how easy and effective it’s been. I'm a little astonished it worked at all. Some of my systems have a jokey aspect, but this one, I think, really did start out as a joke – a funny image rather than one I imagined would be at all effective.

I wouldn’t have called myself an addict, pre-G-Ray Vision, but my interest in porn did not feel casual. It felt at least as compelling as my interest in, say, snacking had been before the No S Diet. It did not feel like something that could be defeated by mere humor.

But it was. Almost 100%. Almost immediately. For many years now actually 100%. Not a single lapse. There’s no other Everyday System where I have come close to that level of compliance. It’s been way easier than avoiding snacks. Probably middle age has dulled my appetites to some degree and made it easier. Probably being a father has strengthened my incentives to get this under control. But I know from all the parental porn stashes my friends and I uncovered when we were kids that these factors are not always sufficient in themselves. I think G-Ray Vision has to get much of the credit.

I’m quite not sure how to account for it. Maybe it’s that with this problem in particular, you can’t go at it with whips-and-chains self-discipline. You have to have a light touch or your repressed appetites will jiu-jitsu your efforts into the opposite. Maybe it’s also that this problem is even more susceptible than most to the power of habit, good and bad, and when you get something going, in either direction, it carries itself along on full automatic. I really don’t know. My point is, whatever the underlying mechanism, if you too are struggling with this, and feeling hopeless, don’t be discouraged. I can’t promise, but based on my surprising experience, it might be easier than you think.

The other odd thing that strikes me, sticking with the no snacking analogy, is that unlike the No S Diet and most of my other systems, G-Ray Vision is a kind of total abstinence. It’s not moderate in that sense. It’s a clean break. It’s cold turkey on naked flesh. With the No S Diet, I can still snack on S-days. With Glass ceiling, I can have some number of drinks some days. But there are no S-days or other exceptions with G-Ray Vision. For the No S Diet, I feel like the exceptions are critical. For G-Ray Vision, I feel like the absence of exceptions is. Maybe porn is like doritos – you can’t have just one. So the solution is not to have even one. Again, I’m not quite sure how to account for it. But it strikes me as significant.

Finally, I’m surprised at how untroubled I’ve been, practicing this. I haven’t turned into some monster of repressed desire. If anything, the opposite has occurred.

I read a story recently about a woman who had been feeding racoons on her deck and all of a sudden it went from three racoons (kinda charming) to literally hundreds (terrifying!). When she called the police to report the situation they asked her, “ma’am, have you tried not feeding the racoons?” She gave it a shot, and lo and behold, they wandered back into the woods. End of problem.

According to Freud, or at least, pop-Freud, when I stopped feeding my metaphorical porn racoons, they should have grown 10 feet tall, and started breathing fire. But instead they’ve just gotten bored and wandered away.

The responses I’ve gotten to G-Ray Vision over the years have been interesting. I’ve heard from some people who are not at all susceptible to this sort of thing and are a little shocked and revolted that I ever was. I’ve also heard from “porn positive” people who are very susceptible but don’t think of it as a problem – and, who knows, maybe it isn’t for them.

My goal with G-Ray Vision is not to convince anyone that they shouldn’t feel what they feel. My hope is that it might help people who do feel, as I do, both susceptible and troubled by it. People who don’t feel like it’s actually fine, at least their relationship to it.

Because I’ve also heard from people like this. And people who are not only embarrassed about their relationship to porn, but embarrassed about being embarrassed.

Because that’s how it is today. Either you’re not supposed to feel any susceptibility to sexual images at all, or you do, and it’s entirely unproblematic: you’re “sex positive.” It’s very uncool to feel both drawn to sexual imagery and troubled by it. But I think that reflects an attitude that’s naive, at best. Sex is probably the most fraught and “problematic” impulse we have, and I think we’re kidding ourselves if we deny that. There’s not the good part in one corner and the bad part in another and they have nothing to do with each other. They are uncomfortably mixed. So for starters, for what it’s worth, I suggest that it’s OK to be embarrassed. And offer you some friendly company in your embarrassment.

Look at art and literature. What’s the plot of every opera? Sexual love gone murderously wrong. Consider the Trojan war, the single most important and emblematic event in all of literature, the most important thing that never happened, the seminal event from which all Western art springs. What started it? “The face that launched a thousand ships.” And let me tell you, it wasn’t just her face. If anything is intrinsically “problematic,” it is sex.

Look, I’m not saying we should go back to the blind guy with hairy palms days of sexual repression. Just that there is something inherently difficult about sexual desire, that it’s not a solved problem, maybe not a solvable problem. It’s not simply something that can be therapized away. It’s OK to not feel OK about it.

We always overlearn the last lesson. After WWI, we, “The West,” overlearned that you shouldn’t casually rush into wars because of baroque alliances. That led us to having to overlearn that appeasement doesn’t work either in WWII. Which led us to having to overlearn that containment also has its limits in Vietnam. Which led us to overlearn that limited goals can be too limited in Iraq War 1, and then, well I’m sure we’ll overlearn something from the unqualified disasters of Iraq War 2 and Afghanistan.

For sex too, we need a better synthesis, one that accepts the last lesson, but not in an unqualified way.

But let’s beware of mission creep. Sex isn’t porn. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today. Let’s refocus. Now that I’ve carved out some space for acceptable discomfort around the larger issue, what are the problems one might have specifically with porn?

One, well, there’s how it’s made. I’m willing to admit that there may be such a thing as humanely produced, free-range porn, but I’m guessing most consumers don’t bother checking the labels carefully. There’s some pretty horrible, abusive stuff that happens that one may not wish to be a part of. You know this. I don’t really have to remind you of this. I’m just listing it here for completeness. You also know that much of what is out there, if not actually abusive, is the sense that it isn’t consensual or mutually enjoyed, is simulating something non-consensual or inflicted. And you may not wish to feed and nourish and grow whatever flicker of cruel pleasure you get out of that lest it spill over and poison your real word relations.

Problem #2: Maybe VR plus AI will mitigate the direct harm in porn production, no humans harmed or even involved – but only by doubling down on another unattractive quality of porn: its fakeness, its not the real thingness. To use a No S Diet analogy, consuming porn is like gorging on saccharin or ultraprocessed snacks instead of enjoying real food at a meal. It isn’t satisfying in itself, and distorts your appetite for the real thing. It’s Turkish delight in Narnia.

The parallels with diet are actually pretty striking all around: here we have this commodity that used to be rare, now available in superabundance, but in a form that is not very nourishing. And despite all this continuous, ubiquitous titillation, people are apparently having less real sex now than back in the “Leave it to Beaver” days.

Instead of enjoying a meal with another human being, we permasnack alone. Porn is so full of artificial, over the top flavors and additives that real sex just doesn’t taste good anymore. We ruin our appetite. Generally speaking, porn isn’t an aid to intimacy, it displaces it.

I sometimes think that Hester Prynn and Arthur Dimsdale must have had hotter sex by the edge of hellfire than the most uninhibited contortionists on pornhub, because the stakes were so high, and every little thing meant so much.

Problem #3: Intimacy. Intimacy is by its nature private, a secret between two people. So it’s OK not to want to shout about it from the rooftops. Or stare at it happening from another rooftop. Look, I know there are people who are into exhibitionism and if that’s your thing, whatever. I’m just saying it feels unsurprising and understandable to be troubled by intimacy that isn’t actually intimate, to feel like something important is being lost, to not want to be part of that.

Problem #4: We worry a lot these days about what we put into our bodies, our stomachs, “eat clean” and all that. We worry less about what we put into our heads. I think we have this idea of the mind as a computer, that images and ideas are just neutral information that go into our heads and are neutrally and impartially examined and don’t affect us. But I think food is a better analogy than data. Ideas and images change us. We digest them and they become a part of us. “You are what you eat” and you are what you put into your head too. So we might want to think a little more carefully about what we put into our heads.

There is a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, one of many that resonated with me (a lot of great anki fodder in that book). This is the father speaking to his son in a post apocalyptic world:

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, dont you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.

Obviously this applies to more than just porn. But I remember some things in that department from when I was way too young that I wish I could unsee. And I sometimes wonder what kind of distortion they may have made on the template of my desires.

I grew up in New York City spanning the Taxi Driver era and the Wolf of Wall Street era. It wasn’t exactly an innocent age. But Times Square circa 1980 is nothing compared to what every kid is carrying around in their pocket today. And honestly, there’s not much we as parents can do, except around the edges. They’re gonna be wandering around postapocalyptic digital Times Square and worse, if not on their own device, then on a friend’s. Yes, be slow to give them devices, set the parental settings, keep the phones out of the bedrooms, talk to them. But before anything we need to be a good example. Not just put on a show, but really be. If we can’t figure this out ourselves, how can we even begin to help them to? We need to prove to ourselves first that it’s possible.

Well, that’s G-Ray Vision. I’ve probably alienated at least ⅔ of you, in equal and opposite ways, but I hope you’ll forgive me for the sake of those who might be struggling with this and get something out of it.

If you’re interested in expanding your sympathies and understanding of this subject, or if you’re wrestling with a version of it that feels beyond any mock super power, I highly recommend Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation, which I’ve mentioned before. It’s a book about addiction, and one of her case studies is a man who has a life-ruining obsession with porn. He’s an engineer, and he literally builds himself an electrical stimulation masturbation machine. It’s like something out of Kafka. And he keeps destroying and rebuilding this machine in his struggles against his addiction. At first, I was like, wow, this guy is messed up, he seems like an alien. But then I came not just to sympathize with the immense suffering this struggle and its consequences were having for him and his family, but to admire him for the resourcefulness and determination with which he fought against it. He did not want this addiction. But as Schopenhauer said, “Der Mensch kann tun, was er will, er kann aber nicht wollen, was er will.” It really takes a kind of miracle to escape one's own desires. What this guy was doing was VC Cat big time.

If you don’t get how porn can grab people and ruin their lives and how hard the fight against it can be, you should read this book. If you know all too well the effects of porn and think you might need more than a mock super power to fight it, you should definitely read this book to learn about next-level approaches. There’s lots of other great stuff about addictions of all kinds in there too. If you’re struggling with any kind of addiction or borderline addiction or want to understand others who do it’s worth picking up. It’s a wise and compassionate book and unlike me Dr. Lemke has actual expertise in what she is talking about.

Before I sign off, I just want to reiterate that I don’t want to make anyone feel bad. If you feel no compunctions about porn I’m not trying to generate any in you. I’m just trying to help people like me who do. And if you do have compunctions but your situation in life right now is that saccharine is your only available food, I’m the last person in the world with any right or desire to wag a finger at you. But I can’t think I’m completely unique in my predicament, and I hope there’s someone out there who gets something out of these musings without too much collateral offense.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.

By Reinhard Engels