Missing Opportunities

I'm kind of at a loss today for a theme, but I've got a few nuggets that seem to be related.

Nugget 1: Here's a fabulous article on the effects of porn. Here's a tidbit.

Porn is a sexual stimulus, but it is not sex. Notoriously, heroin addicts eventually lose interest in sex: this is because their brains are rewired so that their sex reward system is reprogrammed to seek out heroin rather than sex. In the same way, as we consume more and more porn, which we must since it is addictive and we need more to get the same kick, our brain is rewired so that what triggers the reward system that is supposed to be linked to sex is no longer linked to sex—to a human in the flesh, to touching, to kissing, to caressing—but to porn.

Read the whole thing. It's horrifying.

Nugget 2: Here's the about page for FOCUS, a Catholic student evangelization organization. Here's a tidbit.

This is a generation in crisis — of identity, of purpose and of belief. Faced with so many distractions, acts of violence, empty pleasures and a loss of faith in God, they are losing hope. For the sake of so many souls, the joyful message of Jesus Christ’s life and salvation needs to be shared, now more than ever.

Recognizing the significant impact the college years have on a young person’s future, Curtis Martin founded the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, starting with just two missionaries at Benedictine College in 1998.

Later that same year, Curtis was blessed with the opportunity to meet Pope St. John Paul II and to share his vision for FOCUS: a chance for every student to know and feel known, loved and cared for by Jesus Christ. His Holiness listened carefully, and in response he simply told Curtis, “Be soldiers.”

Nugget 3: Looking at their representation in San Diego, there's no chapter at USD, our local Catholic college. From my experience, USD's faith retention rates are abysmal. Apparently, it hasn't dawned on the diocese to start a FOCUS team there even though they run the place and losing those Catholics directly affects the diocese.

I also wonder how much porn education goes on at USD.

Nugget 4: From the porn article above, Japanese women are pretty ticked off about Japanese men bailing out of manhood. I would bet American women are, too. There's another reason to educate kids about porn. Or maybe just have fewer drag queens show up at our libraries and schools.

In Japan, this new generation of sexless men—and the Japanese sex recession is caused by men’s lack of interest, to the vocal dismay of young Japanese women, if media reports are to be trusted—are known as soushoku danshi, literally “grass-eating men”—in a word, herbivores. The epithet was originally coined by a frustrated female columnist but, incredibly, the herbivores aren’t offended and most of them are happy to identify as such.

Given Japan’s population decline, the herbivores, who have become a massive subculture, are a subject of national debate in Japan, Slate’s Alexandra Harney reports. And what seems to define the herbivores is not just that they have no interest in sex, it’s that they don’t seem to be interested in much of anything at all.