Freakonomics meets Hope-onomics (from David)

David sent me this blog post. It is dated September 23, 2009.

David writes:

As I have a lot of time to read these days, I've been receiving books from friends and family. Some are the standard escapist fare like Stephen King and James Patterson, while others provide some thought-provoking fodder like "God is in the Small Stuff". Another one in this vein is "Freakonomics" by Levitt & Dunber. Their book takes every day issues and filters them through the lens of an economist. As simple as whether there is cheating in Japanese Sumo wrestling and as controversial as whether or not legalized abortion caused a massive drop in U.S. crime in the 90's. While I'm about as far away from an economist as one could get, it got me thinking about putting numbers to the child pornography issue and the potential impact our initiative might have. I am using very unscientific numbers, but I think I'm being extremely conservative since we do know for sure that at least 20,000 child pornography images are uploaded to the Internet everyday. So if we start with a conservative number that only 10,000 people in the U.S. are each actively looking at only 100 child pornography images per year. This means child pornography victims are being re-victimized 1 million times each year. Again, conservative, in my opinion. If we can impact just 1 percent of the 10,000 people(100), that means we can reduce the re-victimization by 10,000 images per year. At 10 percent impact, that number jumps to 100,000 fewer incidents. While just a drop in the bucket, if we can get the ball rolling, and get into the public consciousness, we CAN make a difference. It all adds up.

Truth + Accountability - Shame = Hope.

How do we do this?
1. Be personally responsible and accountable around pornography and sexuality (Bottom line - No Porn).
2. Hold others accountable.
3. Be honest with kids(age-appropriate) that all pornography is harmful.
4. Seek out help if you or a family member is struggling with pornography (including child pornography).

Pornography addiction is progressive and will lead to more destructive behavior if untreated. Including escalating to child pornography, infidelity, flashing, casual/indescriminate sex and to divorce, jail, death. Don't wait. No better time than now.

God Bless,
David