See if this scenario sounds familiar: a man is horny. Instead of thinking about what he wants, and doing what is necessary to make himself deserving of it, he turns to porn – where he can get a very similar psychological effect but without the effort. What is the result of this? Not only is he still unqualified to deserve what he wants, but even moreso – because now he is even less motivated to get it (there’s a similar substitute), as well as, should the women he wants find out what he’s doing, they will be even less likely to agree to him because he clearly doesn’t care enough to have them instead of settling for a cheap substitute.

Or how about this scenario? A man or woman wants money to provide a living for him or herself. Instead of thinking about what either can actually offer other people that will genuinely make their lives better, both realize that there are many people who would be willing to pay for recordings, which are produced by the man, and feature the woman doing certain things on camera. In other words, providing the cheap substitute for the man in the first scenario. She does this. What is the result? She gets the money she wants, now she finds that the “life” she intended to finance with it seems dull and meaningless. She is riddled with guilt – not for betraying others or some artificial moral injunctions, but for betraying herself. She finds that no matter how much money she earns, nor how many things she buys, the happiness she intended to acquire just never comes. She remains dependent upon it’s cheap substitute: the lifestyle surrounding the way she chose to get money that she never actually earned nor deserved, but simply conned out of others by catering to their weaknesses.

Of course “the enemy is ourselves.” It’s a mentality. The short-term thinking AIM is exhibiting is not a departure from the “proper” behavior those in the pornography industry should follow, but simply the essence of the mentality all those who are involved in it – to any degree and in any fashion – carried to it’s full and logical conclusion.

The author of this blog is simply angry that his carefully-constructed balancing act between the excuse that it’s a legitimate business trading value for value and the ever-profitable attack upon all of the personal virtues that make legitimate business possible (most relevant here: continuity between one’s desires and one’s actions) is coming crashing down into real world consequences.