“Thank you” immorality
Plato once declared that the just man was the happier man, and spent the remainder of his book The Republic attempting to prove it. But we do not live in Plato’s republic. We live in a fallen world where it could easily be stated that it is the immoral man who is the happier manwhether or not it is right that he is.
Photo by: Nathan Tedrow
The fact is that our society as a whole benefits greatly from all sorts of immorality. For instance, Dr. David J. Hanson states that according to The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation “underage drinkers consume alcoholic beverages valued at $18.1 billion per year. This represents an economic benefit of $18.1 billion in federal, state and local taxes, profits, wages and salaries, and income to those involved in farming, transportation, advertising, packaging, construction, and many other goods and services.” The illegal, and possibly immoral, activity of minors drinking alcohol infuses a massive amount of money into the economy, benefiting the whole of society.
Similarly, what many people would classify as the vice of gambling supports whole cities, such as Las Vegas that in the year 2000 had a population of over 400,000 people. Gambling provides employment, entertainment, greater tourism, and tax revenue. Furthermore, many organizations use lotteries, raffles, or other forms of gambling to raise money for charities.
Another industry that has, and continues, to provide massive improvements to our way of life is pornography. Gail Dines, professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College spoke at the Feminist Antipornography Conference and said ”we often think of pornography as benefiting from technological advancement. It is actually the other way around. Technological advancement grows because of the pornography industry. Let me just give you an example of what pornography pioneered on the internet. They pioneered streaming audio and visual, flash and chat, the click-through ad banner, the pop-up window, and high speed internet connections, as well as security improvements for a new form of a la cart pay services.”
Dines also claims that at the beginning of the 20th century, cameras were first used by pornographers, and things like the VHS and the VCR, were primarily used for pornography. In fact she says that “for every one regular tape bought, four were pornography.” Furthermore, she says, pornographers are heavily investing in new technology for better screens on cell phones because of the massive European market for pornography that can be downloaded to phones.
A substantial amount of the technological advancements that we currently use we owe to the pornography industry even if we don’t directly support it. When we stream our favourite TV shows and movies on our computers in the comfort of our dorm rooms, we should say thank you to immorality. When we are cursing Trinity Western University’s crappy high speed, we still owe that high speed to pornography. When we buy textbooks online because Amazon is cheaper, it is all thanks to the nature of our fallen culture.
Ulysses Ronquillo, a self-declared defunct big law associate, blogs: “If Professor Dines is correct, pornography will lead us further into the stars and to discovering intelligent life on other planets, the greatest discovery mankind will have ever known, just for the purpose of having a new market to sell porn to and new festishes to develop locally.”
While this may be an exaggeration, the point is well made. Whether or not we approve of the manner in which we have aquired these luxuries, the fact remains that we owe a great number of our modern comforts and conveniences to practices considered immoral. Just think what today’s vices will give us tomorrow.
I’m unsure if you were trying to say that acts of immorality are justified because of the advantages of their by products?
Without bringing up that technological advantages would still exist (not as quickly and perhaps in different forms) wouldn’t it be so much better for mankind to reject immorality along with the advances that came with?
Not sure if it was your intent, but your article made it sound as if we should be thankful for immorality. We can live without technology (much of the time, more God honoring than with it) but how are we to live to our full potential when trapped by immorality?
How can there even be a question about how we should feel towards immorality? Is it not clear by how God feels about immorality and sin? Sodom and Gomorrah were leveled for their immorality.