The Art of Tricking the Brain
Currently, we’re winning. There are about seven billion of us who roam this lonely rock. We’ve inhabited every continent, crossed every ocean, and developed the most intricate methods to extract natural resources from what we call home. None of this would have been possible without two of our most important instinctual features: the desire to survive and desire to reproduce. Reproduction is crucial for the advancement of any species and its civilization, and in 2013, humans are winning.
Humans thrive due to a craving for instant and intrinsic rewards, and sex is one of our primary goals. The human race hasn’t reached this point by accident. We’re smart, and we know it too. Unfortunately, we may have discovered our capacity a little too late.
The human brain doesn’t say, “Human, you must find a member of the opposite sex in order to reproduce and therefore advance your species.” Instead, our brains skip the true reason and entice us by associating sex with a feeling of extreme pleasure. Unfortunately, we cheat our brain’s mechanism. Why spend years finding a mate when masturbating alone provides the same if not greater pleasure? We outsmarted the system we’ve instinctually relied on to continue ourselves. Today, we have not only eliminated the need for a companion, but have also created a superior method for acquiring pleasure than regular sex: high-speed Internet pornography.
Early origins of today’s porn stemmed from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy in the early 1950s. Hefner’s Playboy magazines featured seductively posed women in the nude, essentially setting a precedent for the modern day porn industry. Playboy originated not only as a much milder version of today’s pornography, but was also much less accessible due to print and age restrictions. Today’s porn is far from Playboy. Anyone with a modern computer and high-speed Internet connection can access more potential mates than his/her ancestors could in their lifetimes. Internet porn is free, available for viewing 24 hours per day, and provides an insatiable taste for the user because of the near unlimited content uploaded on porn sites everyday.
Young adult males who are members of Generation Y are particularly affected by the increasing dominance of Internet porn. One defining trait of Generation Y is computer availability. The constant presence of the personal computer throughout childhood in the home has conditioned this generation to view it as natural and a primary source of knowledge. When a male 10 to 14 years old is finally curious about his sexuality, turning to the computer for answers proves to be a natural instinct. Many young male members of Generation Y started masturbating from a young age with the aide of internet porn and have continued on into their early to late 20s.
Watching Internet porn is the most popular activity on the Internet solely due to the Coolidge Effect. The Coolidge Effect was derived from a study comparing mating patterns between rats and the time taken to reach ejaculation.
When a rat continued to have sex with the same mate, the study found the time till ejaculation rose significantly over time.
When a rat mated with multiple partners, the time till ejaculation remained fairly constant, proving an important truth about Internet porn; Internet porn is not a repetitive task. It provides for virtually unlimited partners, transforming the user’s tastes to lead to more shocking content, even leading the user to viewing content not pertaining to his sexual orientation. The use of Internet porn is not constant, but rather an evolving process leading the user to progressively view harder content.
The social implication of porn contributes to the defining factor of Generation Y; we have made it our subconscious mission to not only replace real interactions with screens, but also designate it as socially acceptable behavior. For example, if a group of four or five members of Generation Y are socializing together and two or three of them are dominating the conversation, it is not only not rude, but completely socially acceptable for that fourth or fifth person take out his smart phone and start texting or flipping through the Facebook newsfeed. Instead of trying to chime into the conversation at hand, many members of Generation Y default to the easier method of accumulating social relevance. The rise of Internet porn has created similar social implications. In an ideal world (from an evolutionary perspective), masturbation would not exist. There is no point and does not contribute to the advancement of humans. Why release seed somewhere it will not be fertilized? Masturbating with Internet porn doesn’t require pursuit of the opposite sex or determination; it is always there waiting, and will always be there. It is an incredible fallback that young males rely heavily on instead of going for the actual girl. Frequent Internet porn use has caused social anxiety and inability to act accordingly to our goal of reproduction.
By age 18, the number of male members of Generation Y who have masturbated approaches 99 percent. Many masturbate on a daily or multi-daily basis solely with the aide of Internet porn. Gary Wilson argues in his TEDx talk The Great Porn Experiment that due to the almost complete submission to masturbation and Internet porn across males in Generation Y, the effects of Internet porn cannot be tested because essentially everyone uses it. Simply, a porn-free control group does not exist. This argument is somewhat flawed due to the lack of frequency tested in the study, but one analogy rings true: if all male members of Generation Y smoked a pack of cigarettes per day starting at age 12, a diagnosis in lung cancer would be considered normal. One solution to the ubiquitous use of Internet porn across male Generation Y members is a temporary abstinence from all forms of porn and masturbation.
Notably, on a section of Reddit.com solely dedicated to the abstinence of porn and masturbation, users consistently post the symptoms of withdrawal, such as insomnia, lack of focus, and depression. The goal is to go masturbation and porn free for 90 days and report before and after results. After the initially negative symptoms listed above, users report boosted self-esteem, confidence, sex drive, and ability to appreciate members of the opposite sex not only as a sex object. In fact, one study entitled A Research on the Relationship between Ejaculation and Serum Testosterone Level in Men even reported a near 50% surge in testosterone serum levels after the seventh day without ejaculation. The percent increase in testosterone serum levels after a week without ejaculation varies when comparing sex to masturbating with Internet porn. Over time, males in Generation Y raised on today’s material progressively require more shocking and graphic content to achieve the same initial effect. Actual sex require more than one person, involving both parties to consent to whatever sexual activity the other side desires. Because someone masturbating alone only requires the consent of himself, the propensity to move on to harder content is much higher.
Authority figures, especially many religious establishments, have always promoted a complete abstinence from both masturbation and premarital sex. Skeptical males of Generation Y may question quitting masturbation considering authority figures have preached abstinence for years. One may say, “Why should we believe you this time?”
The difference is the source of reason. This movement to quit Internet porn started as a peer-oriented movement. In this case, Big Brother is not the man behind the curtain. The test subjects are. Abstaining from the combination of Internet porn and masturbation is a peer inspired issue that young males have adopted voluntarily and consistently reported positive effects. Solely quitting porn and masturbation, however, is not the solution. It is merely a stepping-stone in achieving the final objective.
The goal of abstinence from porn and masturbation is to rewire the brain’s reward circuitry and favor real human interactions instead of pixels on a screen. The goal is to stop the behavior of retreating to the computer instead of taking a chance and asking her out. The goal is to remove unhealthy and artificially behavior from our systems and reactivate what human’s intrinsically were meant to do: reproduce.
Bibliography (MLA Style):
Fiorino, Dennis F., Ariane Coury, and Anthony G. Phillips. “The Journal of Neuroscience.” Dynamic Changes in Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine Efflux During the Coolidge Effect in Male Rats. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.
The Great Porn Experiment: Gary Wilson at TEDxGlasgow. Perf. Gary Wilson. YouTube. TEDxGlasgow, 16 May 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2013.
Jiang, Ming, Xin Jiang, Qiang Zou, and Jin-wen Shen. A Research on the Relationship between Ejaculation and Serum Testosterone Level in Me. Journal of Zhejiang Univ. Science, Mar. 2003. Web. 22 Jan. 2013. <zju.edu.cn>.
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