“Why?”, he asks
Why does hentai exist?
Why do lolis exist?
Why does incest exist?
Why are people masturbating to children?
Why are people consumed by the internet?
Why is zoophilia a thing?
Why do furries exist?
Why are people addicted to porn?
Why is everyone so neurotic and sick in the head?
Why?
Why?
Giants of psychology have pondered similar questions endlessly. Giants whose shoulders most of us understandingly yet undeservingly stand on. So allow me to draw from said giants oldest ideas to answer your morbid curiosity, which is in essence one single enigma about human nature. I do not feel competent enough to synthesize all of it into a single question, and yet, I believe to know the answer to it.
Part 1: Excessively Introverted Libido 🔄
The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object.
—Carl Jung
Freud described libido as one’s free, available sexual energy. Carl Jung believed that it equated to the totality of all psychic energy. Must we differentiate energies biologically or even cosmically? Is not all energy simply divine and indivisible? Due to the limited scope of this essay and my deficiency in grasping the topic, we shall understand libido as an individual’s level of energy, drive, will, life force. Synthetically: a person’s aliveness. You must also understand that before pop psychology twisted introversion into a mere personality trait of shyness, Jung defined introversion as the orientation towards internal, subjective psychic contents, in contrast to extroversion, in which the orientation is towards external objects to oneself. We could understand it as where we direct our libido: inwards or outwards. The amount of libido might be the same, yet it is shaped by our focus. We can focus our libido on athletic achievement, sexual partners, adventure, family, or friends, or perhaps we can focus it on meditation, daydreaming, art, deep thoughts, spirituality, or pleasuring ourselves.
Wilhelm Reich’s character analysis categorizes psychic neurosis and bodily holding patterns that form based on an individual’s early traumas. The earliest of traumas are feelings of rejection or insufficient nurture from the mother. He theorized it could be traced all the way back to the womb even, where the baby could feel her pregnant mother not wanting him or her. These pre-egoic traumas (meaning that they occurred before the ego was properly developed) result in an evacuation of the body into the thinking mind (“schizoid”) and an inability to achieve satisfaction through relationships (“oral”), culminating in introverted personalities and libidos. It is precisely these men and women who both created, advance, and become swallowed by the internet (and video games, which are increasingly online); the digital womb, and the digital society which satisfies all desires without the need for libido to become embodied and externalized. A healthy individual maintains a balance that need not be equally distributed between introversion and extroversion, but must not approach complete unbalance. Having a rich inner world is healthy, but it is disastrous when it consumes the entirety of your libido, leaving nothing to attach you to the outside world.
Fetishism has existed forever of course. When it is considered unsafe to express libido and it is forced inwards, the energy folds and distorts in itself, creating great tension. Fetishism is the cathartic outlet for warped, previously unexpressed energy. A pendulum can only go so far one way before it swings back, and the bigger the unbalance, the harder the turnaround. I believe the psyche has natural defense mechanisms against the vicious cycle of libido becoming increasingly introverted. Thus, in most normal scenarios such descent does not occur, making it unlikely to stay exclusively introverted indefinitely. However, digital content creates a crack in this defense mechanism. It is objectively something external to one’s psyche, and yet, due to advanced algorithms and carefully tinkered predatory designs, it is an almost perfect reflection of our inner desires. The physical locale being literally external bypasses any psychic defense, but subjectively, it is extremely close to our unconscious desires. It is just ever so slightly different from our inner content that it feels outside of us yet strangely perfect for us. Because it is us. We are staring into a mirror, even if it is a dark one. And thus we feed into it endlessly.
This is the cause behind such widespread warped fetishism and the extent of such isolating fantasies that can be fulfilled exclusively through the digital. Jung claimed that all (male?) masturbation is to one’s anima, so presumably, all masturbation to internet porn is to the digital anima, which does not respect the swing of the pendulum. Porn addiction adds to the twisting and compressing of introverted libido and yet it is not a truly cathartic, expressive experience. Infinite descent to the belly of the beast proceeds if one has no attachments to reality. Simply put, if an individual has no friends, lovers, family, goals, responsibilities, etc., there is nothing to pull them out. That is why someone consumed by the internet is said to have “no life.” We intuitively understand that all their libido has been consumed by the beasts of the machine. This is not a bug but a feature hidden from conscious awareness. A true secret conspiracy: they want to devour us and we want to be devoured to escape facing the pain within.
Part 2: Swim 🏊♂️♒
Pseudo-academic analysis aside, I ask you to look within, “Little Man.” You ask “why” incessantly yet you never make an effort to answer it yourself. The Internet, the big sewer you dwell on, is nothing but the cesspool of everyone’s individual sewer. To understand the big sewer, you must understand your own waters. The shallows, the depths, the clean and the dirty. You obsess over others’ muck to distract yourself from your own; you want their neurosis explained so you can indirectly understand your own without actually facing yourself. If you at least tried to find an answer, you would be forced to reach for the depths of your soul to examine the same kind of excrement.
I am not telling you never to explore the sewers that is the Internet. It is genuinely interesting; what was supposed to be the ultimate library became an emanation of the collective unconscious. But in any case do it as a proactive archaeologist of digital waste, not as a garbage dweller. Clean yourself in the rivers of your soul — that sounds esoteric and yet the sewer analogy feels natural. We know these sewers better than we know ourselves! I point my finger at you the way you point it at p3doph!les, Chris Chan, or other abhorrent individuals when I also have miles to go, to swim. I ask you not to feel insulted or singled out. I am not picking on you or making an example of you as especially bad. I am simply warning you: do not waste your teenage years as I did.
You are still young, I am a bit older than you. At your age, I let the tides do with me as they may. Never did I swim towards the currents that would have taken me further where I wished to go. This is because I was asleep, unwilling to ever wake up and face the ocean. There is absolutely nothing wrong with drifting along, but only if you would swim if you wish. Otherwise, you are not floating elegantly and peacefully, but rather with your head barely above water, doing minimal movement not to drown, completely at the mercy of the waves. You live your life distracted and “entertained” by the turds that float around you. You point at the turds, examine the turds, and discuss the turds when the only reason you are surrounded by so much excrement is that the waters you have ended up in are that of a sewer. You cannot even remember what clean water smells like and you are slowly turning into a turd yourself. Before it’s too late, whatever stroke or style, swim towards life.
This makes a lot of sense to me. It fits with what I observe. Three points.
1. The culture that you describe I call The Spectacle of the Real - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real. There is a sequence of immersion to this culture on a personal level. The Simulation has a Seduction function that separates our desires from the real world. We could say that the real world is the embodied world. When learn who we are by embracing this world. It tests us and creates a kind of self-awareness that is liberating, even it hard. The seduction to follow our desires for pleasure, fulfillment, justice, or any other desire ultimate can not bring fulfillment. The result is a religious-like false consciousness that is needed to protect us from the reality that our desires do not lead to fulfillment, just greater hunger. With this false consciousness, the creators of the simulation have us under their control. This is how I came to understand pornography. It is a simulation of desires for intimacy, yet without the relational components. Sexual pornography is powerful because of what you describe. However, I would say that we live in a pornographic culture that includes politics, sports, entertainment, and globalization. They each are articulations that we are simply sexual beings, political beings or any other. It is not a synthetic view, but a fractured one. And because it is disembodied, the trauma and the lack of genuine fulfillment means that we don't live the lives that is our potential to have.
2. I saw this culture emerging decades ago as I began to study organizational leadership. The CEO biographies of leadership greatness I knew were marketing lies. The reality as I came to see it was that "all leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters." Organizations function as a grand simulation where people are disconnected from the real impact of their contributions. As a result, there is a kind of emptiness that results. People need to find tangible response to their efforts to make a difference.
3. As I have been working through these thoughts over the years, I realized that life / reality is an embodied experience. Trauma, therefore, is real, not some imaginary emotional defense mechanism. We feel it in our bodies, and our bodies function as a memory bank for those moments of trauma that affect us so significantly. Our whole life experience is embodied. But it is not enough to recognize this embodied truth. Because we don't exist as atomistic embodied beings, but rather as relational embodied ones. Our understanding of relationships is very undeveloped. And yet, for both the introvert and the extrovert, we need relationships as a reference point for understanding ourselves. We can't defeat the Spectacle of the Real by fighting it. That draws us further into the simulation. Instead, we need to create physical places where community can be nurtured. Thank you for your depth of perception about this very important aspects of being a human in our time.