How Many Marriages does Ashley Madison Save? What is evil? And would you even know it if you saw it? I’ll give the answer in a moment. I was intrigued by the article in Bloomberg’s Businessweek on the 21st of February: Cheating Inc.: At Ashley Madison's website for "dating," infidelity is alive, well, and profitable. Those of us in the infidelity field have long been aware of AshleyMadison.com and their promotion of infidelity in marriage. Their motto is “Life is short - Have an affair” and their profits support their claim. Last year alone their gross revenue was $60,000,000 and they reported a net profit of $20,000,000. Given those numbers it’s hard to argue their success. The article was triggered by Fox Network’s refusal to air an AshleyMadison.com advertisement during the Super Bowl. “But why?” questions the creator of Ashley Madison, Noel Biderman? During the most-watched Super Bowl in history, Fox broadcast an ad for GoDaddy.com, in which racecar driver Danika Patrick wears a skintight body suit and later a movie trailer featuring Adam Sandler and a barely-dressed woman. So what’s the big deal? Why not show Ashley Madison’s ad? I’ve been hesitant to write about AshleyMadison.com simply because I didn’t want the knowledge of their existence to be a temptation. A past client who utilized their services confirmed that concern just yesterday. “I never would have fallen into my affair if it hadn’t been for a news report on CNN about Ashley Madison. I cringe each time I hear the name is mentioned. For me the discreetness provided a path I would have never traveled”, said Maureen, a mother of two, “Had it not been for the promised privacy I don’t think I would have ever been bold enough to put myself out there”. “In fact I felt sick the week after Labor Day when I heard Ashley Madison had a record day due to kids going back to school and parents having more free time”. According to Biderman in the Bloomberg article; “his business isn’t hurting anyone.” “If you eradicate Ashley Madison, you’re not going to eradicate infidelity. That’s what allows me to sleep at night,” he says. “If you think that all affairs happen on Ashley Madison, you’re very naive. The majority happen in the workplace. People are thrust together, that’s where they happen.” In that context, Biderman likes to argue, “affairs can be much more damaging, by causing meltdowns at work, becoming public, and blowing up marriages. Ashley Madison and its clandestine, more transactional approach, he says, is actually a marriage saver, a public service of a kind.” “Do you think if you stop allowing divorce attorneys to advertise, we would stop people from getting divorced?” he says.” Maureen would beg to differ; “For me the pain of that year far out weighed the benefit. It almost destroyed my marriage and my life.” She continued, “At the time I thought if no one gets hurt then there’s no harm, but that’s just not the case”. “It’s hard for me to imagine it’s helping any marriages after the harm my involvement brought to mine.” But my reason for writing about this has little to do with Ashley Madison and more about something much broader but just as insidious. Why would Fox News refuse to air Ashley Madison’s ad yet at the same time air commercials that in some respects were just as risquÈ as the one proposed by Ashley Madison? Can you see a bigger issue here? In traditional theological teaching, there are three sources of evil. They are the world, the flesh, and the devil - and I’d suggest that evil has to be dealt with in that order. According to Richard Rohr “The flesh may be the most apparent when it comes to individual failure and it may be the source of our greatest wounding, but up to now there has been little recognition of the underlying forces or structures that ultimately lead to the behavior. If you don’t start at the most hidden, the most disguised, the most denied level of evil, then you can’t get to the root.” In fact, rather than recognizing each of the three sources, the vast majority of focus seems to have been aimed almost exclusively at the flesh. From an early age, we warned about the evils of the flesh. Sermons are preached about it, people are shamed about it. Examples are given of both those who overcame their flesh and those who fell. The virtue of right living is extolled and the shame of failure exposed. But unless we examine the problem from a broader perspective we’ll miss what is really going on. Day in and day out I work with those who have “failed”. Failed marriages and fallen individuals flow though my office like a never-ending stream. But is flesh the only problem? Is it simply that we’re weak and prone to stray or might there be an even deeper problem we fail to consider? “The world” represents what we call the system or the establishment. It influences the way cultures, groups, institutions and nations organize themselves in order to survive. There’s nothing wrong or unusual about that reality, but we must be aware that systems naturally move toward self-perpetuation and survival. To survive, systems have to create their own reality and truth which often has little to do with larger truth. And once you become a part of that system, it’s reality and justifications for existence become your own. As a result, it’s ten times more difficult to expose the evil of a system compared to the individual because there’s no one bad person. It’s all of us and for that reason it seems more acceptable. A great example are the many scandals that have happened in churches and government. Leaders, who should know right from wrong, commit terrible wrongs. However, once you are a part of the system there are things you can’t see, you can’t say – you just don’t perceive them as a problem because somehow in the context and logic of that system it all makes sense. They only present a problem for you when you step outside that system or someone critiques the system in a way that gets you to open your eyes and see the situation from a different perspective. Our way of life so dominates our thinking that we often can’t see the larger picture. Unless the illusion can be exposed at the level of “the world,” most people - even good intentioned people - will be fooled. Our own self-interest and reputation or image will influence what we call morality. Inside the system conformity appears as virtue and critical analysis as rebellion. “Anything “organized” usually operates at it’s own level of ego and is incapable of self-criticism. Systems tend to protect not only themselves, but also business as usual. Why? Because they are the status quo, you can’t criticize yourself because you are the system. You cannot critique what you are benefiting from” says Richard Rohr. Which brings me to my point. Choices made by Fox News during the Super Bowl are a great example of how we as a country fail to see the deeper realities. At one level, we shun the anti-marriage messages of Ashley Madison, yet at another level promote programs such as “Desperate Housewives” or “Sex In The City” which frequently convey the exact same message. You can’t reward and promote it at one level and condemn it at another. How is it that we so easily condemn individuals who cheat but spend our nights glued to programs promoting the very things we claim to abhor? Are we capable of removing ourselves enough from the system in which we live and take a critical look at what we support and believe? For instance; our culture seems to be far more tolerant of divorce than we are of exploring the possibilities of restoring a marriage after infidelity. From almost any perspective, that reality is insane. How is it that divorce, which destroys the continuity of family, lowers our standard of living, impacts the future well-being of our children, can be a better alternative than exploring the benefits of reconciliation? If at one level we get upset at companies like Ashley Madison that prey on human frailty, can we also be equally upset about the system that exploits those same frailties for profit in movies and television? What do you think? Sections: Recovery LibraryRL_Category: Handling DiscoveryWhy They Did ItRL_Media Type: Text
