I have been thinking a lot about Porn lately. Not because it disgusts me but because someone I ‘look after’ has lost control of the reins of their ‘chariot’ and I am intrigued as to the origin. When thinking about addiction I think of Plato’s image of human nature: ‘First the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome’. ‘My’ person has lost control of their chariot and cannot reign in the temptations of ‘sight’
Porn is not Delphine Horville’s subject but exegesis of the Bible is. I am struck by a sub-heading:
DANGEROUS VISIONS, DANGEROUS LIAISONS.
Those patriarchs hunchback over the Torah showed insight as well as bigotry. I am struck not only by the link with my association to porn, but also the ways in which social media or visual culture instantly feeds, through vision, into consumer-addiction without restraint, without modesty.
From Genesis onwards, the Bible insists on the dangers posed by sight… Eve picks the fruit and then gives it to Adam. ‘Trouble starts because humanity saw and instantly wanted…’ Eve cannot resist temptation and with Porn desire, albeit contorted, becomes an addiction for instant gratification without delay, without latency. The gratification or greed of consumption fed through sight and which like a sieve is always running on empty.
Adam and Eve by Cranach the Elder