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