Perversion

 I read an interesting article about perversion today. What is perversion? The denial of some aspect of reality coupled with objectification, dehumanization and exploitation. The article interviews an author who wrote a book titled 'The Age of Perversion'. Needless to say, the author is a psychologist. While it is annoying that academics create a theory of everything out of their own area of interest, I have often wondered about what psychological forces motivate people to say or do abominable things like a police officer putting his knee on someone's neck and keeping it there even after the person has lost consciousness. The word I was thinking of was sado-masochism and I thought that the people engaging in it derive some libidinal pleasure from it. An activity doesn't have to be overtly sexual for someone to derive sexual pleasure from it. But, apparently, a better word for it is perversion. Perversion comes in all forms and sizes, and even watching porn involves perversion. Its not simply fantasy, it also involves dehumanization, objectification and sometimes exploitation. There are also forms of mass perversion, such as nationalism, casteism and racism. Of course, psychologists will attribute all failings in society to psychological tendencies of the human race, just as sociologists will focus on structural factors. There is always the danger of picking up an interesting concept and taking it too far. But, I found the concept of perversion interesting, nonetheless.