Reject Vice

Just Say No - No porn, no pot, no gambling, no video games, no tattoos, no profanity

In his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe wrote, “If you want to live in New York, you’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate.”

Today you also need to insulate yourself if you don’t want to end up devoured by social pathologies like fentanyl or gambling addiction — or even just ending up as an under-achiever.

Much of the focus of the discussion of the Negative World focuses on sexuality and the church. But it’s much bigger than that. The emergence of a post-Christian order has also led to the metastasizing of vice in our society.

Today, many practices that used to be the province of shady characters like the mob are now fully socially legitimized big business, like bookmaking (phone betting), drugs (legal pot), and loan sharking (payday lending).

While some people can take advantage of these recreationally with no problem, many others are vulnerable to falling prey to addiction or exploitation by their purveyors.

Once, our society saw it as its responsibility to protect people from these harms through outright bans or restrictions like usury laws. Those day are long gone. In fact, our governments are now in on the action.

How should we protect ourselves from this?

Creating an Alternative Moral Ecology That Rejects Vice

A country’s wealth is ultimately in its people. A wise country builds up its people, its human capital. Ours is degrading it. There’s no better sign of that than our declining life expectancy.

You have to insulate yourself from those forces. You have to be staying healthy and actively working to develop your potentialities so that you can be a force for good in the world.

Swimming upstream against the culture is easiest when you are part of an alternative moral ecology, part of a community that lives by a different set of rules, that holds itself to a higher standard, that expects more, and elevates your aim.

A community with this moral ecology would be valuable to anyone. A logical place to create one would be the church. But I think it would be very difficult for evangelical churches to create this culture when it comes to vice. They struggle with anything they can’t describe as objectively sinful or linked to some Biblical proof text. Porn is obviously wrong. But is it a sin to buy a lottery ticket or get a tattoo? I’d say no.

Perhaps it’s not a surprise that anti-vice movements are emerging from secular society. Abstaining from alcohol is now a trendy movement. Any hip restaurant worth its salt now has an extensive - and expensive - mocktail list. It’s the online right that has made a huge push against men watching porn - often getting attacked by the media in the process.

I’m a critic of Mark Driscoll, but one of his best lines was, “Some things aren’t sinful, they’re just dumb.”*

Or, as someone more respectable put it, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. We should avoid unprofitable activities. Vice falls into that category.

Churches should figure out how to get in the game here. But whether it’s a church, a band of brothers, or an online tribe, finding a community with a moral ecology that rejects vice is one way to insulate yourself from trouble.

What rejecting vice means to me is: no porn, no pot, no gambling, no video games, no tattoos, no profanity.

The point here is not to condemn other people for their choices - it’s a free country after all - or to argue that all of these things are objectively morally wrong. It is to say that’s not who we are and not how we choose to live. We are setting a different standard for ourselves.

No Porn

Watching porn is wrong - but it’s also pathetic.

A majority of prime age men are watching porn, usually a lot of it. It’s super easy to do - and super-addictive. It’s difficult to give it up once you’ve gotten hooked. And it seems to cause a lot of problems. There are now men in their 20s with erectile dysfunction.

I was not Christian for my early adult life and happily watched lots of porn. Today, not only do I not watch it, I don’t want to watch it. It’s not a temptation for me.

A key shift came when I was reconstructing my idea of what it meant to be a man. Like many, I went through a phase of naively trying to become an “alpha male.”

Whatever the flaws of that, one benefit was that as soon as I started thinking of myself as aspirationally high value, I no longer had any desire for things like porn.

One of the mindset shifts to escape porn is to recognize that it’s beneath you. That may not be the fix for you. But there are lots of anti-porn programs out there. Find the one that works for you.

It’s not always easy to break the porn habit, but it can be done. Don’t give up until you give it up.

No Pot

I personally know people who are top performers and also smoke pot. But there’s a reason that our stereotype of a pothead is a slacker.

Today’s pot isn’t like when I was in college. It’s much, much more powerful. It can cause psychosis, especially in young people. It can be contaminated with funguses and other dangerous substances. To say nothing of being laced with fentanyl that might kill you.

It’s hard to see what the upside from smoking pot is compared with the downsides. And if that’s true of pot, how much more so other drugs?

Yes, Silicon Valley bros love to talk about the productivity gains of microdosing psychedelics, now also being legalized. But are you really taking those magic mushrooms as a performance hack?

Don’t think your college degree will save you. The son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki just died of fentanyl at Berkeley. If it can happen to someone like that, it can happen to anybody.

Pot is also having social effects. The streets of our urban centers now regularly reek of pot, helping repel families who rightly don’t want their kids to inhale the stuff.

If you want to smoke pot, then smoke it. It’s a free country and you can do what you want. That’s the mainstream culture now.

But just as many advocate the virtues of pot and other drugs, I say it’s best avoided.

No Gambling

I’ve sometimes tossed money at the lotto when the jackpot gets up in the stratosphere. I’ve also had fun at the craps and blackjack tables on rare trips to a casino.

But a certain percentage of people are going to end up with a real problem - and there’s no way to know if you’re one of them until it’s too late.

We’ve gone a long way from quaint things like no clocks in the casino and free drinks. Today’s tech-enabled gambling is backed by multi-billion dollar companies using the same cutting edge, digitally deployed psychological manipulation techniques as the social media giants to keep you gambling even if you try to escape.

This is asymmetric warfare, and you aren’t going to win it. Just read this harrowing story of this woman who lost $400,000 on DraftKings, and what they did to keep her betting.

It’s one thing to take risks for the sake of mission, to start a business, etc. But phone gambling is more like playing Russian roulette.

No Video Games

Video games are more guilty pleasure than vice. But, again, there’s a reason our stereotype of the lost boy is someone who lives in mom’s basement, plays video games all day (when he’s not watching porn), and doesn’t have a job.

It’s one thing to play video games if you’re a kid - or with your kids. It’s probably healthier than watching today’s TV shows or scrolling your phone.

It also seems reasonable if a guy in his 20s still enjoys playing some video games to unwind. But there are men in their 40s who are still obsessed with them.

Economics researchers have found that an increase in time spent playing video games has driven a decline in the hours men work. Video games have become an incredible time sink and productivity destroyer.

Time spent on video games is time not spent at the gym, working on your side hustle, or learning a new skill.

Maybe that’s a great tradeoff for you. I want to enjoy some leisure time myself. But I don’t want to lose focus on productivity. And I want to continue maturing my tastes appropriately as I get older.

I would suggest it’s best to avoid video games after age 30 unless you are playing them with your kids.

No Tattoos

Is there anything intrinsically wrong with getting a tattoo? I don’t think so. And in some cases they are maybe even called for. If you are in the Marines and want to get the Corps emblem on your arm, I think that’s awesome.

But it’s no accident that tattoos have become common just as these other vices have soared.

Tattoos were traditionally associated with low status in America. Even today, when a third of Americans have tattoos, that’s 43% of low income adults but only 21% of higher income adults. In fact, having a tattoo is associated with a variety of negative life outcomes.

The tattoo trend is probably a part of the overall proletarianization of the middle class.

If you have or want tattoos, by all means get one. But as Kim Kardashian put it, why put a bumper sticker on a Bentley?

No Profanity

I sometimes see people get called out on X for profanity or crude language. Some Christians rush to defend this by pointing out harsh or explicit language used in the Bible.

Is this profitable? Is it helping your cause to give people an opening to attack you for something like this? Is it a productive use of your time to have to defend yourself against criticism over using this kind of language? I don’t think so.

I myself used to swear constantly, but as I got older, it dwindled away to nothing. I seldom feel any pull to use profanity today. It’s very possible to speak strongly without it.

Also, if you do swear like a sailor, are you really remembering to turn it off when there are kids around? From what I experience in the world with my son, the answer is too often No.

Using profanity is unnecessary and, again, likely just marks you as lower status in some way.

The Vice Free Life

Again, it’s a free country. So go do what you want or what you think is right for you.

But if people can publicly promote polyamory or whatnot, then I can promote abstaining from vice.

And let’s be honest, do you want to live in a neighborhood full of tatted up potheads who spend their days watching porn, playing video games, and betting on sportsball - and who drop f-bombs every other sentence while out and about?

Would America be a better or worse place if these vices didn’t exist?

Would your life be better or worse if you avoided them? That’s the question you need to answer for yourself.

If you decide it’s best to avoid vice, doing that is easiest if you are part of a moral ecology with that practice. I’d love it if that were the readers of this newsletter. But if not, it’s worth doing yourself anyway.

If you choose not to insulate yourself from the dysfunctional pressures of our society, don’t be surprised if you end up getting burned.

* Since we are called to be wise, folly is in fact arguably sinful. But the point still stands.