Follow Your Bliss

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.  –  Joseph Campbell

The renowned expert on mythology, Joseph Campbell, often advised lecture attendees to “follow your bliss”, in other words to pursue the life-path that results in the greatest happiness and fulfillment.  Campbell argued that it’s impossible to know whether one is really doing the “right” or proper thing in a cosmic sense, but one does always know what makes him feel right.  I think that’s good advice for healthy, self-aware people, but perhaps not so much so for deeply disturbed or sexually unbalanced individuals.  But even they often seem to “follow their bliss” into careers which let them immerse themselves in their passions, and when those passions involve socially forbidden subjects reaction formation often takes a hand in their career choices.

Most of you probably recall that reaction formation is a psychological defense mechanism by which the human mind shields itself from uncomfortable feelings or desires by forming an obsession with the exact opposite of that thing; for example, a preacher who is obsessed by porn might frequently speak out against it from the pulpit, and a man who is obsessed with child porn in particular might champion legislation against it, or even seek a position investigating allegations of pedophilia:

A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile [sic] offences.  Christopher Jarvis…investigated historic claims of child abuse, interviewing the victims when they were adults.  He was responsible for child protection at 120 churches and parish community groups for nine years…and…had access to police and social services information about victims of child abuse.  As a result of the conviction and sentencing, the Roman Catholic Church has ordered a review of child protection across the South West of England.

…Jarvis…was arrested after uploading images of pre-pubescent boys on to the Ning social networking website…police officers who traced him to his home…found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick…The majority, 3,721, were at Level One…but there were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism…he had [also] viewed erotic content about a relationship between a nine-year-old boy and an adult man.

…Judge Paul Darlow dismissed attempts by the defence to have sentence deferred to examine whether Jarvis [who claims to have been abused as a child] would benefit more from psychiatric help than prison…”You, of all people, were more aware than others of the massive theft of innocence and long-term damage exacted on the children whose images you downloaded for your own sexual gratification…In the circumstances, your behaviour was more elective and cynical than might otherwise have been the case…It had a deep impact upon the church.  In the eyes of the public you had a respectable position in the church…”

A judge is not a psychologist, but it shouldn’t take more than a passing understanding of the subject to recognize that Jarvis did not download child porn in spite of his job as the judge seems to presume, but rather sought the position in the first place due to his fascination with the subject of pederasty.  Obviously there is no way to prove it, but I strongly suspect that the great majority of men who take jobs which require them to deal with child porn do so because they are aroused by it.  Similarly, if you’re a journalist who is turned on by fantasies of very young girls held in sexual slavery, you might (theoretically, of course) get a job at a major newspaper (such as, for example, The New York Times) writing column after column about young girls held in sexual slavery, expressing your great disgust and deep indignation for the awful monsters who enslave them yet describing their situations in lurid (some might even say loving) detail:

…Srey Pov’s family sold her to a brothel when she was 6 years old.  She was unaware of sex but soon found out:  A Western pedophile purchased her virginity, she said, and the brothel tied her naked and spread-eagled on a bed so that he could rape her…After that, the girl was in huge demand because she was so young.  Some 20 customers raped her nightly, she remembers.  And the brothel twice stitched her vagina closed so that she could be resold as a virgin.  This agonizingly painful practice is common in Asian brothels, where customers sometimes pay hundreds of dollars to rape a virgin…Repeatedly, she tried to escape the brothel but she said that each time she was caught and brutally punished with beatings and electric shocks.  The brothel, like many in Cambodia, also had a punishment cell to break the will of rebellious girls…each time she rebelled she was locked naked in the darkness in a barrel half-full of sewage, replete with vermin and scorpions that stung her regularly.  I asked how long she was punished this way…“The longest?” she remembered.  “It was a week”…

Yes, I’m talking about “Creepy” Kristof again.  I’ve mentioned him before, most recently in yesterday’s column, but I can never get over the fact that this man apparently has legions of credulous female readers swooning over his “courage” (because obviously it takes a real man to go along with a moral panic).  These silly women are apparently far too naive to pick up on the fact that all of Kristof’s columns on the subject (and there are many, going back at least six years) read as though they were typed one-handed.  Call me cynical if you like, and there’s absolutely no way that I can prove it, but I’ll bet I know what Old Nick is thinking about when he dates Mrs. Palm and her five daughters.  I’m certainly not the only one who thinks so; I’ve seen other whores allude to it in comments, and I imagine it must at least cross the mind of most of his male readers.  In fact, I’m amazed that Kristof has as many male readers as he does…but of course, denial is a powerful defense mechanism as well.

One Year Ago Today

“As Young As Possible” was my first column on the “studies” produced by the Schapiro Group, which are so laden with bias, spurious methodology and unsupported conclusions they aren’t even good enough to qualify as junk science.