Decline and Fall

The Best Piece on Hugh Hefner I’ve Read

Posted on by Amir

I’m not a fan of Ross Douthat, but this time he hit one out of the park.

Hugh Hefner was the most pitiable and pathetic excuse of a human being.

I do not envy him now, and–in all honesty–never envied his life in the slightest. Yes, he had a plethora of ladies and enjoyed an amount of sex that most men and women–in their most hedonistic moments–can’t even fathom. At the same time, reading the accounts of his life, what we get is a personal hell of emptiness that his over-the-top hedonism never satisfied. Let that be a lesson for your life.

He was not a mass murderer like a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao or a Pol Pot, but his work has fomented trends that push societies toward demographic collapse. The world looks at promiscuity as a simple pleasure at best, and a “victimless crime” at worst. But private sin, especially on a mass scale, can have far-reaching consequences. And make no mistake: Hefner was not a force for that which is good.

The Sexual Revolution that he championed has laid waste to many lives, and has led to the decline of the nuclear family. For all the glamorous promotion of the “free love” culture, the other side was rife with disease, depression, and nihilistic oblivion far worse than the paradigms that, whatever their faults, made for a stable society.

As a result of the work of Hefner and his ilk, marriage has been in serious decline worldwide, and this is not boding well for the coming generations.

Even then, I do not celebrate Hefner’s passing. Quite frankly, it is tragic that he squandered every chance that he had for 91 years to repent. Unless he had a change of heart on his deathbed–and I doubt he did–then the Biblical assessment of his future does not look encouraging.

As for us, the reality of his death should call us all to attention, as that will be us one day. And while many in the world will celebrate his life, the only thing that will matter–in the final analysis–is God’s assessment of his life.

That, also, is true of the rest of us.

Class dismissed.

Regnerus: Easy Sex = Deterioration of Marriage

Posted on by Amir

Here is the story.

That proposition is not a new one; as the saying goes, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

But to call sex “easy” doesn’t do the dymamic justice. This isn’t even about dating sites, which exist for every relationship goal from marriage (e-Harmony) to affairs (Ashley Madison). Those, actually, are behind the times.

Oh noes…smartphones have rendered dating sites moot.

If a man doesn’t care about anything morally, all he needs to do is get on Tinder and, in almost any city, will be able to find willing partners for quick “hookups”.

And while pornography is nothing new, the quality and availability of it is. Up until the early 1990s, if you wanted it, you had to either go to a store to buy it or have cable television and subscribe to it.

The World Wide Web has rendered that moot: high-definition porn, for any type of fetish, is available for free and is but a couple mouseclicks away. For many years, the porn industry was the key driver for the technology development on the Web.

Even worse, the industry now is developing “sex robots” that serve as robo-companions.

(Those have been under development for years–and I have long expressed skepticism about the degree to which they will catch on–but, sadly, the market for those is expanding on the margins. For now, they are for rich perverts, but over time they will be more widely available to perverts of lesser means.)

Against this backdrop, Aldous Huxley might have been an optimist.