Blindspot!
From Issue: 640 [Read full issue]
Fried Frogs
Addiction of all kinds - whether it's to drugs, gossiping, shopping, overeating, or gambling - have common characteristics.
Addiction:
- Creates short-term pleasure
- Becomes the primary focus of your life
- Temporarily eliminates pain
- Gives an artificial sense of self-worth, power, control, security, and intimacy
- Worsens the problems and feelings you are trying to escape from
One of the more subtle but dangerous addictions is pornography, and it's available everywhere. Now, you can argue all you want about what pornography is and isn't, but I think that deep in your heart you know. Pornography may taste sweet for the moment, but it will gradually dull your finer sensitivities, like that inner voice called your conscience, until it's smothered.
You may be thinking, "Take it is easy, Sean. A little skin isn't going to hurt me." The problem is that pornography, like any other addiction, sneaks up on you. If you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But if you put it in lukewarm water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog will get cooked before it has the sense to jump out. It's the same with pornography. What you look at today may have shocked you a year ago. But because the heat was ever so slowly turned up, you didn't even notice that your conscience was being fried.
Compiled From:
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens" - Sean Covey, pp. 238, 239