A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

Ballard frames pornography not as a private moral failing but as a population-level symptom. In his characteristically evolutionary and media-saturated way of thinking, a “widespread taste” signals a collective shift in libido and attention that may accompany social stress, environmental degradation, or a perceived narrowing of the future. The line treats sexual imagery as a kind of cultural seismograph: when a society becomes fixated on explicit stimulation, it may be compensating for diminished vitality elsewhere or rehearsing anxieties about reproduction, survival, and continuity. The provocation is typical of Ballard’s work, which often reads mass media and desire as indicators of deeper, sometimes catastrophic, historical pressures.