McSex

Living in a porn-saturated culture naturally produces a larger proportion of addicts. It also, perhaps, produces quite the opposite - a general populace for whom porn is simply no big deal. Sexuality becomes akin to a desire for an afternoon snack or the need to sleep 6-8 hours in a night. Hence the following point:

Therefore, I don’t accept “the thesis of an increasingly pornographic logic of social relations and poltical conditions.” To the contrary: there is nothing exceptional, central, or privileged about pornography and the “pornographic” today. Pornography simply conforms to the same protocols and political conditions, the same commodity logic, as do all other forms of production, circulation, and consumption. Porn today isn’t the least bit different from cars, or mobile phones, or running shoes. It embodies a logic of indifferent equivalence, even as it holds out the thrilling promise of transgression and transcendence — a promise that, of course, it never actually fulfills. [from The Pinocchio Theory]

Getting online Porn is the equivalent today of getting a value meal at the drive through. Then comes along we Christians. We project the immorality of our culture through the megaphones and denounce and decry the degradation and depravity. But would we have just as much luck proposing the immorality of a trip through one's local McDonald's?

What is the latest count on the amount of customers served at McDonald's? And is this any longer a staple of its success? McDonald's used to use it's volume of customers served as a marketing tool. The number of customers served displayed prominently somewhere below the glowing golden arches. Anymore may regard the billions of people served as a badge of shame. And the folks at McDonald's marketing know it too. What's one of the first things you will see these days on the McDonald's website? A link to the page on corporate responsibility.

I have no moral objection to the McDonald's corporation, it's food, it's folks or it's fun. (Remember that old jingle, "Food, folks and fun. You know the one, its McDonald's. For food, folks and fun.") Heck, I worked at McDonald's for a whole year in high school. But while I don't renounce the corporation I do know that food was not meant to be McFood. You don't have to have a job at McD's to realize that the "fast food" at McDonald's is more "fast" and less "food." A steady diet will lead to an early grave, and there's a reason for it.

So, that brings us to McSex. Fast food, cyber-sex. Quick and easy. Get it on the go. These days you can even find it advertised for about the price of a value meal, and there's a meal-deal for every taste and appetite. This brings us back to the moral question. Whether we produce it or serve it or consume it we are now all a part of a McSex Machine, which either produces addiction or boredom. In this scenario mystery and beauty are gone. We know we ought to eat less junk food, but to break out of a fast food diet is greater than a diet, it is a complete counter-cultural change of lifestyle. This kind of a break is too either too radical, too inconvenient, or just too different. And even if we break out for a while we'll be back. Back to the same routine. Back to the familiar old drive through window.