Society in Decay
People will naturally gravitate to the sensational. Why is it
that we find the
bizarre interesting and alluring? No one can deny the gawking phenomenon during
a traffic accident. Even though we know what we may see something horrible, we
have to look anyway. We may cringe, or shudder, or even vomit with revulsion, but we
will look again. The morbid and grotesque seem to attract our attention.
Imagery of death is very compelling and
As with narcotics, disturbing images lose their potency with time and with each event. We become jaded and after we have seen something enough times and it will cease to elicit the same response that it did initially. Then, again as with narcotics, we require a more disgusting image to evoke a response. No matter who you are everyone is susceptible to this phenomenon. Soldiers in war, detectives, coroners, morticians, prostitutes, pornographic actors, celebrities, and those who are repeatedly violated mentally and physically, experience this effect in the extreme. They become numb to the stimuli and the exposures. But everyday people are susceptible as well and may not even realize it. An inner-city youth is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Where is the outrage? If people are acting lewd in public, no one calls them on it. They stare and then look away. The next time you see it, it will offend you less. Toleration is today's mantra to live by. Television programming tries to out-do itself with sensationalism. It will not make the television screen if it does not elicit a guttural or psychological response. Beheadings by terrorists and suicide bombings certainly make the broadcasts. CNN coverage of Gulf War was hard to top and their ratings sky-rocketed. We are to blame because we allow it and by our responses we encourage it. Freedom of press and expression has allowed what was once obscene or profane or vulgar or disturbing to flourish within our society. Driven by money, perverse desires, and a self-fueling depravity our society continues to decay at an exponential rate.
Modern technology has the capability to blur reality and fantasy. Artificial reality (virtual reality) eliminates taboos, because no one is really hurt. Now it is possible to produce imagery with virtual people, animals, children, or virtually anything that will push the boundaries of morality and be able to circumvent obscenity laws. Already animated virtual child pornography has been ruled to be outside of existing anti-child pornography laws, because no real children are involved. With today's computer graphics technology, some of these "animations" are indistinguishable from reality. There will soon be a Virtual Sex explosion on the Internet. Men and women, boys and girls, will engage in virtual sex using computer-generated models, on the internet, from a first-person perspective, in real time while while talking to each other using Voice over Internet Protocol. They will become virtual porn-stars, with no limits to the perversion that they can partake in. And as the stimulus fades the perversion will grow. The experience will be so realistic, and enticing that real dating and meaningful relationships will all but disappear. It will be all about the pleasure and the excitement, with no responsibility or commitment or accountability. Men and women will change the way they interact in the real world. Just as no real porn-star could ever lead a normal life or behave as if uncorrupted. The technology already exists and the demand will be great.
Given this new artificial reality, deviance will be free to explore any abomination the mind can fathom. And when you have seen virtual abominations enough times, your disgust for similar real abominations will diminish. The downward spiral of depravity will continue deeper and deeper. As with Pandora's Box there is no undoing it. We have unleashed the dark side of Man's psyche, and given it free reign. What types of people will make up our society in the future? Will it have ever gone far enough that even the most liberal-minded person can't stand it? Can this not be the end-times? How much worse can it get?
© HRCC 2006