Much nutritious food for thought here in this piece. He sees in the truth about pornography (although there is considerable overlap, I differentiate erotica from pornography) some greater truths about the oncoming failure of humans. It's the playing out of the human drama in very self-centered ways which began some 10,000 years ago and currently reflected in, and supported by, the economic system of capitalism. This way of living is fundamentally in conflict with the social nature of humans that has sustained the species for 95-98% of its existence.
In lectures I used to give on the subject, I would sometimes suggest that "pornography is what the end of the world looks like," not to suggest that pornography was going to lead to the destruction of the world, of course. Rather, I was suggesting that contemporary pornography deadens consumers' capacity for empathy for and solidarity with others--the things that make decent human society possible. When these aspects of our humanity are overwhelmed by a self-centered, emotionally detached pleasure-seeking, social justice is impossible to imagine. Equally impossible to imagine is ecological sustainability; if that same self-centered, emotionally detached pleasure-seeking leads to support for an unsustainable extractivist economy, our collective ability to emphasize with other living things or act in solidarity with life atrophies.
If these capacities are lost, human societies will become increasingly inhuman, and the planet will not indefinitely sustain those societies.
