More people are watching porn than ever before. A recent poll showed that 79% of people are consuming porn nowadays. It was in the
30% range in 1983. The studies also show people are having less sex. They are masturbating more.
We are a lazy species. We will do the thing that costs us the least. Contact and direct interaction are expensive. They require real-time emotional engagement. They require processing of non-verbal nuance. They require empathy and awareness. This is one reason texting and email are so popular. It’s a lower emotional cost to text and email that it is to talk to someone.
I’ll spend 30 minutes writing an email instead of picking up the phone and have a 3 minute conversation. It costs more in time and energy. But it’s less contact and interaction. Ultimately, it’s cheaper.
Having sex requires an emotional investment that watching porn and masturbating does not.
Our brains have been found to be shrinking in size. Maybe this is why our brains are getting smaller. Less emotional work, means less processing needed. Our bodies are a use it or lose it instrument. Less work means less capacity. Less capacity means less capability.
Sex is what we do to survive as a species. It requires leadership. One person initiates. The other responds. The initiator takes a risk. Their advance might be rejected. It’s easier to watch professionals go to work than for us to take the chance of having to engage and face the risk of rejection.
Leadership is a contact sport. Whether you’re the leader in your home, your office or your football team (not the fantasy one, the one where people might run into each other) you have to get a little messy. You need to interact.
Are you spending more low-cost time living through technology than you are living through humanity? Do you send the email, even though it takes longer to write than the phone call you’d have? Do you choose one dimensional interaction (FB, Twttr, Txtg), lobbing “comments” and “likes” instead of an interactive human experience?
Technology makes many interactions cheaper. But in life, you often get what you pay for. And in the long run, cheaper usually costs more.
Stop playing with yourself. Start playing with others. It’s worth more.
Reach out and touch someone.
Related articles
- Don’t Send That Email. Pick up the Phone! (blogs.hbr.org)
- The Business Case for Reading Novels (blogs.hbr.org)
- Secret social skills successful people know (penelopetrunk.com)
