PORNOGRAPHY

I am currently reading a book called "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge. This book talks about the recent discoveries regarding the brain and how it functions. In the old days, the assumption was that the brain did not change after it childhood. Any brain damage was permanent. Recent discoveries shows that, on the contrary, the brain can and does re-organize itself. The book describes the experiences of various people who suffered personal tragedies - such as brain damage - and how they have been able to overcome their tragedies by exploiting the brain's ability to re-organize itself. One of the most interesting chapters concerns the damage of watching pornography on the Internet. To understand the paragraph below (which I took from the book), you simply need to know that "neuroplasticity" refers to the brain's ability to re-organize itself.

"During the 1990s, when the Internet was growing quickly and pornography was exploding, I treated a number of men who had acquired a taste of a kind of pornography that troubled and disgusted them. These were normal men that simply started watching pornography on the Internet. They soon became addicted. This addiction not only meant that they were spending more time watching pornography on the internet - 5 hours a day was normal - but the sites they watched became more and more obscene. They started with 'normal pornography' and then progressed to 'abnormal pornography'. An addict experiences desires because his plastic brain has become sensitive to the experience. Putting it another way, the brain re-organized itself first around pornography and then when that was not enough, it reorganized itself around abnormal pornography" (pp. 102 to 110 - I edited the quote to make it shorter and easier to understand).

The moral of the story - don't watch pornography on-line. Apart from the Islamic consideration, if you do watch pornography, you run the risk of becoming addicted and the brain re-organizing itself in such a way that you cannot have a normal relationship anymore.

Purposes of this blog

I have been reviewing the statistics on people accessing my blog. They fall into two groups: my students and 'visitors'. So far, I have had visitors from the USA, India, Singapore, Indonesia, UK, South Korea, France, Latvia, Russia, the Palestinian territories, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia! Welcome to all.

This blog is primarily a resource for my students. Although I will give them hand outs in class, I encourage them to view the following postings:
- Class project: Tips on accessing Islamic websites (12/06/2010)
- Why do we fail to develop ourselves? (7/2/2011)
- Self efficacy (15/1/2011)

I rarely do religious / spiritual postings. The two postings which are the exception are one regarding Palestine (13/10/2010) and one picture from Bandar Aceh in which the whole town is destroyed except the Mosque.

I have linked a couple of management videos (virtual tour of DELL factory and a few videos concerning Deming). I believe these videos help students but they tend to slow down the blog so I don't do that anymore. Generally, if you go to YOU TUBE, you can download anything. Every topic that is taught in class can be found on YOU TUBE. In particular, if you type 'Harvard Business videos', you can find a lot of excellent business / management videos.

A secondary purpose of this blog is to benefit everybody - whether Muslims or non-Muslims - across the world. I believe that too many talk about the facts that Muslims need to be good people. Not enough people explain HOW someone becomes a better person. That's is the thing that interests me. What are the practical steps we need to take into becoming better people.