Sense or Censor

Recently Google/Youtube have declared themselves foes to freedom, foes to humanity, by attempting to inflict upon us more internet censorship.(1)

Censorship is a human rights violation. Restriction of information is slavery of the human mind. Sentience is a quest for knowledge, to interfere with that quest via censorship is to deny the sentience of another human being, in other words, to subjugate others, to oppress another, to control and commandeer free will by denying an avenue in which to pursue ones own endeavours. Shackles on data stifle education, creating prisons through repressed intelligence. Remember, slaveowners throughout history have denied their chattel education and literacy. Censorship implies that certain information is unsafe, or dangerous. It implies that information is a weapon, fit for some to control but not for others to even know exists. They wish to disarm our minds and thus use knowledge and information or the denial of such as a weapon against us. Censorship is an attack on our free will, our free speech, our sovereignty, our sentience, our basic human quest for understanding, and it is an act of war!

Sometimes calls for censorship come at the onset of ugly attitudes or images, concepts or ideas that some deem inappropriate or indecent. However, before we quell the portrayal of such conduct or seeming obscenity, we must be advised of the repercussions of our calls for censorship, and understand how censoring one bit of data quickly expunges rational lines. Therefore, it's best to remember that nothing in this world is itself offensive. It is the perception that deems something offensive or inoffensive. It takes active effort to take offense. If you choose not to be offended and instead to merely see things open-mindedly, you can overcome offense and keep power within yourself rather than granting power to mere words. Words have no power if you give them no power. Perhaps racist comments or bigoted words stir desire to censor, but these, as sad and pathetic as they are, can offer the value of spurring one to look inwardly at oneself and weed out any attitudes that are so disgusting. They may spur discussion about the perhaps controversial issues therein expressed. If the issue had never been expressed, would there ever have been discussion or eventual resolution? There exists a certain value in all speech, even, we can admit, in hate-speech, by allowing us to identify and know hate and therefore avoid hate.

Clearly, there exists monumental value in free speech. There exists priceless value in dissent. One of the most patriotic acts one can commit is to freely express constructive criticism of ones government. In order to make that government better, and would-be detriment must be corrected, it must not be allowed to continue to crumble. If we deny that cracks exist in a structure's foundation, we risk the loss of everything that foundation supports. To fail to criticize one's government is the harshest form of treason. To follow a broken leader blindly is to betray him and yourself. If you know something is wrong and you do nothing to repair it, let alone to bring attention to what needs repair, you are expressly culpable and directly responsible when that thing falls and fails.

Another target for the censors is simple, natural human nudity. The naked human body is not indecent. If it is anything, the nude homosapien form is innocent and honest. It is not right to let someone else tell us that we are to feel ashamed of our own bodies or of observing the body of another human creature. Our shame is not theirs to demand. Now, if there exists a fight in any of this debate, it lies in any sort of exploitation that may be occurring, rapes, subjugation, abuse, any stolen footage, any footage gained without consent of the involved parties, any underage footage (since below 18 cannot legally consent, this suggests coercion, fraud, theft, or force in obtaining the footage). Fight those things, do not fight against porn itself. Do not bring censorship of all bared flesh into this. It would begin with porn, then it will migrate directly to other forms of expression and information, until everything we thought we knew is now deemed indecent and our very memories are banished and banned.

To deny us our quest for information is to deny that we can think for ourselves. Censorship is a direct attack on our sentience, our very conscious awareness of the world around us. As human beings, it is our quest to better ourselves and our condition through increased knowledge. Censorship is an act of war against all sentient creatures. Censorship is brutal and cruel, censorship is inhumane and unjust.

Internet censorship is nothing more than high-tech book-burning. It places the power of information in the hands of a few elites, not in ours, in the hands of all mankind, it takes away the fulfillment of our sentient quest to learn and acquire new information, it dehumanizes and enslaves us. They will begin with an obvious target and then creep further and further, they’ll censor weapons-related videos, documents and sites, and incendiary forums, they’ll move on to radical concepts of any degree, soon enough, most of the internet will be gone. Hitler succeeded in burning books, if we are not vigilant, then those in power may succeed in burning our internet. The agenda is the same, only the dates have changed. Our books are blogs, our paper is digital pulp, our poetry is versed in mp3s, rather than iambic pentameter, our theatre exists on .mpg stages, the books of our time burn not at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, but burn instead at 56 Kilobits, the flames flicker and lick T1 modems, internet ashes are LANs and its smoke is Wi-Fi. Do not scorch my humanity by incinerating my quest for knowledge. Do not censor me!

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html

Plague of Peace

The news hit her eyes like an IED mine. Each word a war zone, each sentence incendiary. I stood in range of collateral damage. If defeat hadn't hurt us, it would be a relief. Our old way of life exploded on impact, familiarity fragged, assurances shattered, life would never again be on our side. I reassured her that life would one day return to the way it was. I told her to hold onto the hope that all would again be cast in despair, the world would return to the horrors we loved. Desolate and depressed, miserable and melancholy, we couldn't possibly live without these staples of existence. I promised her that our planet would grow horrible again.

"Life will return to chaos, things will get worse," I vowed, "one day, hopefully, we will again feel familiar pain. Don't worry," I said, soothing her, "the fires will rekindle, the terror will return. This sickening tranquility should soon pass, and everything will be in turmoil once more. Our dear destruction will come back to us, the atrocities will resume, I pray the annihilation will awaken."

Peace, disgusting peace, surrounds everything now, clouding people's judgment, distorting their sense of selfishness and greed. When will they wake up from their horrid dream and stop helping one another, they seem to have forgotten that kindness is criminal. We walked through the wreckage of our former lives and witnessed sadness wane. "Try to hold onto your grief, Sarah," I said, "clutch close the remnants of gloom."

This whole catastrophe began so long ago, it's shameful that we never crushed it when we had the chance. It began as merely a playful musing, a stray thought, an errant possibility, it grew until we began to more closely examine it, then we quickly cautioned it. We came to fear it, then to foretell of it. We came to expect it, almost to desire it, then in our foolishness to demand it, until finally we came to create it. How can we regret now our actions? We played along willfully. This sickening peace, this atrocity of kindness, ache of tranquility, this end of the world, our hour of judgment is upon us. People's faces are transformed, turned and distorted into a grotesque reversal of a common frown, their cheeks bulge with an effort that makes them cry out in tortured wails of "Haha! Ha! Hehe!" I can't stand to listen to it, and wisely so, as it appears to carry a contagion within it, infecting all who venture unwittingly near to those with this plague.

This peace will be our downfall, robbing us of our dread, crushing our beautifully vile malignity. What kind of world will it become when the rich cannot take greedily from the poor? What kind of world will it become when the putrid essence of charity seeps into every part of life? I cannot stand idly by as this disease of peace perverts mankind. All in power are now forced to stoop lower and lower to terrible levels of equality!

Freedom is the infant maggot of Peace, feeding on the rot of precious bigotry, consuming all the evil we worked so hard to perfect. One day Peace will spread its wings and hover ominously above us all, after it has consumed all of our sexy lust for suffering and desire to kill. I fear it won't be long until tolerance is all too common. Peace, putrid peace, soon this treacherously liberal agenda will rule our institutions and governing bodies, fighting for those for whom it's not worth fighting: invalids, minorities; standing up for those who, rightly, cannot stand up for themselves: the beasts and critters, the trees and the earth, the stupid starving children. How dare these monsters of benevolence and sympathy corrupt our imbalance of power! How dare these fiends pollute our glorious hatred with their appalling love!

We must purge Peace. Vanquish kindness. My cherished sinister cruelty must be allowed to flourish, my impressive vindictive addictions must be fed a fix. As I contemplated my revenge against the agendas of peace, we came upon a group of afflicted citizens. Their voices cracked with cackling, a demented, dissonant flood of fervor. I turned to Sarah, intending to pull her away, to flee with her before we too fell prey to this toxic contamination of compassion and cheerfulness, but to my dismay, it seemed it was too late. Sarah looked up at me and something in her had changed. I recoiled, never before had I seen such a nauseating look of mirth on her face. Her lips parted in a ghastly, snarling smile, her eyes seemed to glitter in a way that I found very worrying and threatening, something had taken over this person. Then suddenly something happened, she grabbed my hand, I could already feel the poison warmth of her bliss etching away at my cold character. She pulled me near to her, I tried to turn away, her glee was revolting yet somehow paralyzed me. I feared that my life would soon be over, I was about to be administered this viral contagion of affection. Sarah pressed her lips against mine, the venom of love filled my veins with immediate effect. I felt my heart change its rhythm, I felt my head spin with this newfound attack of amusement. I fell to my knees and began to cry. Even my tears were changed, charged not with the despair I was familiar with, but with some sort of joy. In this moment I knew I would never be the same, I knew the world would forever look different. I threw my head back and blasted the air with a vocalization of "hahaha!" that was not only strange to me, but also uncompromisingly perfect. As hilarity engulfed me, it was clear that Peace had won.