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Posts Tagged ‘Moral Climate’

In the News (#1424)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Artificial intelligence is not that intelligent.  –  Ella Dawson

Dirty Amateurs

Why are amateurs so damned averse to using condoms?

…Calmara claims to use AI to screen photos uploaded by users for STIs.  They want you to open their website, take a picture of your partner’s genitals before having sex, and upload it to their database so that a…[computer] can review it and scan for 10+ “conditions” including herpes, syphilis, and HPV.  Buried in the Q&A section…Calmara makes it clear-ish that they cannot actually diagnose anyone with any STI, the AI only “works” for penises, and you should really just go to a doctor for an accurate STI test.  But you wouldn’t glean any of that from their cocky Instagram or glossy imagery.  “No cap, just facts,” the copy reads beneath an illustration of a dancing robot.  “Up to 90% accuracy, our AI is grounded in real science.”  Uh… sure…the service is so misguided that it’s easy to dismiss it as satire.  But…Calmara is…not satire, and available to download right now…their…own fine print says, “These offerings should not be used as substitutes for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or management of any disease or condition.”  So what is this service for?  Literally why does it exist when it cannot provide the service it advertises?…

Moral Climate

Never make the mistake of thinking the current zeal for library censorship is limited to either the US or the so-called “right wing”:

Cathy Simpson, the CEO of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library, [h]as [been] fired…[because the board dislikes a group she quoted in] an op-ed column published by The Lake Report.  The Feb. 22 opinion piece, “Censorship and what we are allowed to read”…drew strong criticism from a few…over its promotion of some of the principles espoused by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)…[regarding] “hidden library censorship,” which she said takes two forms — “the vigorous defence of books promoting diversity of identity, but little to no defence of books promoting diversity of viewpoint, and the purchase of books promoting ‘progressive’ ideas over ‘traditional’ ideas”…[library board chair Daryl Novak tacitly admitted that Simpson was fired purely due to the] content related to FAIR, [because] “the balance of (Simpson’s) article, you can’t really criticize”…

Censorship Ascendant

Censors are now pretending ideas they don’t like constitute a “crime”:

Police Scotland…will in[timid]ate actors and comedians if a…[wannabe censor points at them and croaks the magic words] “threatening and abusive” [because] under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) [Law, the taboo magic] can be communicated “through public performance of a play”…the Assistant Chief Constable responsible for overseeing the implementation of the controversial legislation has [washed his hands of it] after just a year in the post…Police Scotland has [threaten]ed that it will investigate every [incident, no matter how trivial, reported as a “]hate crime[“]…despite the force adopting a “proportionate response” approach to [actual] crimes…there [h]as [been] an outcry from artists…[pointing out] that in the past shows ha[ve] been picketed by organisations trying to get them shut down and warn[ing] that “putting theatre in its own category makes it a target”…

I Can’t Breathe (#1329)

It’s about time cops stopped being allowed to cover up their murders so easily:

The Colorado Senate [has] pass[ed] legislation that would bar the term “excited delirium” from use by [cops and medical examiners.  If signed by]…Governor Jared Polis…it would bar the term [or any of its synonyms] from being used in [cop] training or incident reports, or from being listed as a cause of death on a death certificate…Prominent medical organizations have urged [cops and medical] professionals to not use the [pseudoscientific] term…[whose sole purpose is] to justify injury or death to individuals [attacked and restrained by] police…

Thought Control (#1345)

Some censors are so mentally ill they feel threatened by the sexuality of trees:

The Floyd County (Va.) Public Schools have suspended a…community reading of Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree following complaints that the middle-grade novel depicts a monoecious red oak, a tree with reproductive parts that can pollinate and flower simultaneously.  In the book, originally published in 2017, the tree claims an identity that is “both” female and male and responds to diverse pronouns:  “Call me she.  Call me he.  Anything will work”…[wannabe censor] Jodi Farmer…took to Facebook to [warn] Floyd County residents about the [terrifying] reference to…[vegetable biology], calling the book “indoctrination at its finest”…

Apparently, Farmer imagines these scary, scary words will bewitch her children into transkingdomism.

The Next Target (#1371)

Rather than actually filing a lawsuit against Mastercard for its discriminatory policies against sex workers (which would cost them actual money), ACLU prefers to Tweet, to dilly-dally with complaints to the FTC (a bureau of a government which actively persecutes sex workers and encourages corporations to do the same), and now to file a petition which I can’t imagine will prove to be any more effective than its other slacktivist efforts.  Given the wording of the petition and the website page it’s included in, this seems more like an exercise in virtue-signaling than an actual effort to right an injustice, but I reckon it can’t actually hurt you to sign it.

The Puritan Recrudescence (#1417)

Tennessee’s float in the current “monkey see, monkey do” parade will cost it millions every year:

A Tennessee bill would make it a felony for an adult content website to allow access to a minor without age verification…[bill sponsor] Becky Massey…[burbled a lot of nonsense about magic sex-ray emitting pictures, but didn’t publicize that her exercise in morality theater] will cost the state more than $4 million in the first year and then $2 million each year after that…

 

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Banned Books Week 2023

Posted in Current Events, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

I’m honestly unsure where this [new wave of censorship] will end; we’re well into uncharted territory my librarian self would’ve found unbelievable.  –  “The Book Burners”

It may be difficult for my younger readers to believe that when I was a librarian, “Banned Books Week” was little more than an academic exercise.  The first few years of my blog demonstrate just how negligible a threat so-called “book banning” actually was.  In 2010, I didn’t even remember to write about the observance; in 2011 I simply noted a number of frequently-challenged books (because the number was small enough to do that), and in 2012 and 2013 I used the occasion to attack the concept of censorship from a philosophical perspective.  2014’s “Censor Chic” was the first harbinger of things to come, as I discussed the new indirect form of censorship: authoritarians both in and out of government getting risk-averse corporations to do their dirty work for them by issuing threats to either smear those companies’ reputations or attack them with increased government meddling.  The latter tactic has grown from the relatively-veiled threats issued by the Obama administration’s “Operation Choke Point” to the Biden administration’s jawboning so egregiously even federal judges couldn’t be persuaded to give it a pass.  And in the past two years, pro-censorship politicians have crafted terrible laws to empower isolated cranks to censor any books their “thought leaders” tell them are “bad”:

…School book challenges reached historic highs in America in 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association.  And just a handful of people are driving those records.  A Washington Post analysis of thousands of challenges nationwide found that 60 percent of all challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from 11 adults, each of whom objected to dozens — sometimes close to 100 — of books in their districts….

2015’s “Moral Climate” pointed out that most censorship nowadays is neither top-down nor obvious nor based in pearl-clutching about “obscenity” (though in the past two years that has again become a popular excuse among censor-morons who label themselves “conservative”); rather, it is disguised lateral censorship by censor-morons who label themselves “progressive”:

…What if you read different words in your books and never even knew the original language was changed?  That’s where publishers’ growing penchant for revisionism and censorship of written works comes in — often through the use of so-called “sensitivity readers” — to eliminate “problematic” content…From Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to R.L. Stine and Agatha Christie, this trend of editing and rewriting authors’ books…without their consent…should alarm us all…the publishers who commission it foster a chilling effect on free speech, a sanitization of art, and a corrosion of our larger cultural discourse…

Of course, some “progressive” censorship is just as blatant and top-down as that of “conservatives”:

Peel District School Board…students, parents and community members…are concerned about a [bizarre] approach to a new equity-based book weeding process implemented by the board last spring in response to a provincial directive from the Minister of Education.  They say the new process, intended to ensure library books are inclusive, appears to have led some schools to remove thousands of books solely because they were published in 2008 or earlier…neither Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce’s office, nor the Education Ministry, would comment on PDSB’s implementation of Lecce’s directive…But in a [later] statement…the education minister said he has written to the board to immediately end this practice…

By 2017, my “Banned Books Week” essays had pivoted to dealing with the new reality of “adults…not merely accepting, but demanding they be shielded from ideas they find uncomfortable for one reason or another“, and in 2018 top-down censorship enforced by violence returned with a vengeance, starting with the internet.  In 2019 I summarized developments as follows:

…in this century, the sick need to control others’ thoughts grew as the internet made it easier for those thoughts to be shared, and early last year top-down government censorship returned with a vengeance thanks to the Great Unwashed eagerly swallowing racist claims about “human trafficking” and magically baneful effects of anything to do with sex.  The US enacted FOSTA, leading to a wave of internet censorship; the UK is trying to build a massive firewall comparable to China’s; the EU has enacted law after law allowing greedy corporations and finger-pointing Prunellas alike power over others’ web-browsing; and every two-bit dictatorship has recognized that all it needs to do to justify thought control is parrot Western “hate speech” idiocy…

The pandemic gave governments a new excuse, “misinformation” (a euphemism for “disagreeing with the government”), and that year I wrote, “We are watching the advent of a new dark age, and in such times no light is entirely safe from being snuffed out by zealots, speech-cops and bureaucrats whose ideal model for human society is the anthill.”  I was, as usual, not wrong; the following year saw the arrival of a wave of censorship even the mainstream media couldn’t ignore, excuse, or hand-wave away.  My primary tag for filing items about written-word censorship is “Thought Control”; only 7 items appeared there in 2012-2020; then there were 9 in ’21 alone; 27 in ’22; and 14 so far in ’23.  And that does not include the explosion of attempts to shut down large portions of the internet because politicians, useful idiots, and other censor-morons don’t like what other people say or watch.  As I said at the top, I have no idea where this will end, but in the meantime all ethical people need to resist the book-burners and website-wreckers, loudly and defiantly, in the hopes that at least some of our fellow-humans will come back to their senses before it’s too late.

 

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The Revenge of Throwback Thursday

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »

We are living in the past of Fahrenheit 451, the early stages of a culture which values feelings above thought, the history of a world in which the solution to any troubling idea is to eradicate it.
–  “Moral Climate”

Long, bright, warm days take a toll on my highly-strung nervous system and tend to make me tense and anxious, but when the external sky and landscape match the gloomy October Country inside my skull and my soul, I feel at home and at peace.  –  “Diary #326”

Though lily-livered fools have been demanding they be “protected” from ideas they don’t like for several years now, it’s terrifying how quickly this terrible idea has moved from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream, and how eagerly jackbooted thugs have seized upon it as yet another way to control the thoughts of the entire population via threats of violence.  –  “Suppression”

Collectivism, the foul authoritarian belief that individuals do not own their own bodies and lack the right to manage their own lives, is the single greatest threat to human growth and happiness in the modern age. – “Collectivism vs. Cannabis”

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In the News (#1224)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 30, 2022| 1 Comment »

Let’s not abandon th[e term “cancel culture”]…in a vain attempt to please the people most responsible for perpetuating the problem.
–  Komi T. German & Greg Lukianoff

Bad Girls

Cops really don’t care if they ruin people’s lives with wild accusations:

The NYPD wrongly used a [picture] of a Queens woman on a “wanted” poster for a thie[f posing as an escort]…and now the innocent woman is suing for $30 million.  Eva Lopez…first found out she was a wanted woman…[from] a friend…[and] shrugged it off until her boss convinced her it might be real…the wanted poster had already been taken down from the department’s Facebook page…but the damage was done…The poster…[referred to] an Aug. 3 theft from an East Village apartment, where a [careless] man had booked an escort online, only to [discover she was actually a thief who stole his]…$13,000 Rolex and [his roommate’s]…credit card…“On Facebook, the [wanted poster] got shared over…20,000 times.  Then on Instagram…” Lopez insisted she’s never been in trouble with the law, never worked as an escort, and doesn’t know the victims…“The NYPD should commit to more thorough investigations before haphazardly accusing…innocent people of…brazen crimes,” said her lawyer Mark Shirian…

Moral Climate

It’s always good to hear from people whose minds aren’t warped by adherence to the moronic “wing” fantasy:

“Cancel culture”…is a…real thing…no matter how many ways its meaning has been wrongly distorted…Ridiculous non-examples of cancel culture…provide all the ammunition needed for media and academic elites to blithely wave away the phrase as nothing more than a misleading term for a fake problem.  But just because the term has been grossly overused doesn’t mean we should give up on its popularly understood definition…the measurable uptick, since around 2014, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is—or would be—protected by First Amendment standards…We say “would be” because the First Amendment does not apply to private companies.  So, while the NFL was free to punish Colin Kaepernick, and The View was free to suspend Whoopi Goldberg, these are still examples of cancel culture under our definition, because the subjects of each controversy engaged in expression that “would be” protected, were the First Amendment standard to apply…despite the denialism surrounding its very existence, we will demonstrate through empirical data and polling that cancel culture is not only a real problem, it is one that continues to expand in scope and size…

Stalkers in Blue (#1088)

If they really want schools to be “safe”, they need to stop paying sexually-aggressive thugs to lurk in them:

Broward County Public Schools violated [Florida] law when [bureaucrats] failed to properly…notify the Florida Department of Education Office of Safe Schools of a [lurking pig]’s dismissal for [perving on a 15-year-old within]…72 hours after [his] firing…Steven J. Daniello…[was] a [typical and representative cop paid by the state to stalk, harass, and spy on students] at Westchester Elementary School in Coral Springs…Broward County…did not notify the state…until March 28, 2021, 56 days after the legally required notification period…Daniello…was sentenced to 14-and-a-half months in state prison…four years of probation…[and eternal condemnation to the “]sex offender[” registry]…

The Last Shall Be First (#1115)

A politician with even a vestigial sense of morality is a rare thing indeed:

Two Republican governors have vetoed bills in Utah and Indiana that seek to ban trans teens from competing in school sports on girls’ teams…Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb vetoed…HEA 1041, which not only would have banned trans females from competing on girls teams, but also required schools…and athletic organizations to [invite malcontents]…to complain, and e[nable them]…to sue in civil court for alleged violations. The law included no similar ban on trans males…In Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox’s veto of H.B. 11…was…[due to] a…[last-minute] amendment that changed the bill…[from a compromise in]to a full ban on trans girls competing with other girls….[and] struck down p[rovisions]…that provided indemnity to schools and athletic organizations from costs of lawsuits…Both vetoes seem likely to be overridden…

You Were Warned (#1210)

Savannah Sly and Tarah Wheeler, writing for the Brookings Institute:

In its current form, the…EARN IT Act…would strip technology companies of protection from liability for child sexual abuse material…uploaded onto their platforms by users.  The…[false] premise…[is] that technology companies aren’t doing enough to combat the presence of such material and need to face the prospect of greater legal penalties to do so…One of EARN IT’s key provisions…exposes technology companies to liability if [a prosecutor claims] their encryption features…enable the spread of CSAM—a move that may lead many companies to conclude that offering encryption to users simply isn’t worth it and doing away with secure messaging tools entirely…EARN IT…does nothing to prevent child abuse from happening in the first place…and…may [even] prevent young people from accessing online information about sex…that could help keep them safe…EARN IT will [also] never be able to eradicate…young people taking and sharing intimate photos and videos of themselves, and preventing such material from circulating online would be better done through education…

Thought Control (#1210)

There’s at least one principled librarian in Texas:

On March 9, Suzette Baker was fired as head librarian at the Kingsland Branch Library in Llano County [Texas]…“for creating a disturbance, insubordination, violation of policies and failure to follow instructions.”  Baker [explained] she…did not comply…[with a mob who demanded] censorship…[of] books that they [falsely labeled] “inappropriate” or “pornographic”…

Disaster (#1220)

Of course, the mainstream media will never acknowledge their part in creating this disaster:

Three years ago this month, Congress passed a law that got people killed…In the immediate wake of SESTA/FOSTA’s passage, sex workers…were cut off from online platforms and tools they used to make a living and keep themselves safe…Sex workers and advocates reported an increase in attacks, arrests, self-harm, and suicide…Now…[politicians] are once again obsessed with the idea of [undermining or eliminat]ing Section 230…It’s [typical] for [politicians] to legislate with the goal of scoring political points while ignoring the collateral damage to marginalized people’s safety and rights…[but] if Congress actually wants to…avoid repeating [intentional legal atrocities] that have gotten people killed…it’s essential that they learn from SESTA/FOSTA’s catastrophic failure…the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act…would task the Department of Health and Human Services with conducting a study on the public health impact that SESTA/FOSTA had on sex worker safety.  And it would require the Justice Department to study whether the legislation actually accomplished its [pretended] goal of cracking down on human trafficking…

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The Convergence of Censors

Posted in Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2020| 9 Comments »

The censor-morons are loose, and they’re attacking the small targets so their totalitarian masters can expend their energy on big ones like the internet.  –  “The Return of the Censor”

Censorship, once condemned by all ethical people, has now become almost universally popular.  From the most totalitarian of governments down to the youngest of adults, it seems everybody without a functional moral compass (which is to say, the great majority) wants to impose their ideas of “right” thinking and “correct” speech on everyone else.  China, of course, is leading the way, with a new Maoist-type campaign to purge schools and libraries of books deemed insufficiently pure, but the West isn’t far behind.  In the UK, cops are knocking on doors to intimidate people who made statements online that the cops didn’t like, and early this month a woman in Melbourne was actually arrested for posting on Facebook about a protest against totalitarian “lockdown” orders imposed by the Victorian government.  In the US, the pandemic is only one of many popular excuses for censorship; others include “hate speech”, criticizing the police, and (for social media platforms) either engaging in censorship on their own or not censoring often enough for the tastes of censors.  I know that last is confusing, so let me state it a different way:  Some politicians and other control freaks want to censor Facebook, Twitter, et al for engaging in censorship themselves, while others want to censor the same entities for not censoring enough.  Yes, it’s complete lunacy, and it isn’t limited to the internet; culture warriors in academia, Hollywood, and even corporate America are firing,expelling, or otherwise ostracizing people for engaging in wrongthink, or even for failing to chant approved party slogans with sufficient enthusiasm.

When I was a librarian, Banned Books Week was little more than an academic exercise; censorship was an intermittent and generally impotent threat proceeding from small numbers of narrow-minded busybodies, which was easily defeated by librarians and other guardians of our shared cultural heritage.  But that was a generation ago, and would-be censors have become numerous, aggressive, well-organized and (most concerningly) popular.  Few of those under 30 even understand what free speech is or why it’s important, and the majority or those over that age imagine all sorts of exceptions that they believe should be reasons to violently suppress speech, ranging from “it hurt my feelings”, to “it was said or written by a dead person who did things considered normal then, but which are now mortal sins”, to “it contains ‘bad’ words”, to the ever-popular “But SEX!”  As I wrote last year, the censor-morons (a term coined by D.H. Lawrence, one of many writers now considered “problematic”) are loose; furthermore, they are multiplying like bacteria and have already infested all the centers of power.  For now, the courts are mostly still defending the rights of those with enough money, resources, and patience to fight “cancellation” through official channels.  But if you will take the time to read all of my essays for this occasion starting in 2012, and working your way up a year at a time to the present, I think you’ll see a very frightening trend.  We are watching the advent of a new dark age, and in such times no light is entirely safe from being snuffed out by zealots, speech-cops and bureaucrats whose ideal model for human society is the anthill.

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The Censor-Moron

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , on September 26, 2016| 8 Comments »

Our civilisation cannot afford to let the censor-moron loose. The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness.  –  D.H. Lawrence

defend-the-1st-amendmentEvery year, the last week of September is designated as “Banned Books Week“; the name seems to imply the kind of top-down state censorship which was at one time very common even in the US, and is still common in many countries we generally think of as advanced ones with Western values.  But this kind of censorship is very rare now in the United States, and has been for decades; the majority of “challenges” now (despite the celebration’s name, it’s pretty rare that books are actually removed from public collections) originate not with state officials or other “authorities”, but with individuals seeking to “protect the children” from thoughts their parents don’t want them to have.  Nor are those thoughts only sexual ones any more, though obviously those are still the most common reason; nowadays, demands that books be burned controlled are just as likely to come from soi-disant “progressives” as from cultural conservatives, and the reasons may include “racism”, “sexism”, “religious viewpoint”, “violence” and so on.

In a way, the name “Banned Books Week” is far too narrow to encompass everything we should be talking about, and a week is far too limited a time to be talking about it.  As I wrote above, “banned” implies a top-down regime, while in reality the majority of censorship now is the result of morons trying to self-lobotomize our entire culture; the word also implies a governmental action, when in reality the rise of social media and mega-media corporations has resulted in a de facto delegation of the censorship authority to them.  And if you’re tempted to suggest that this isn’t as bad, I suggest you ask yourself how much distribution your book will get if Amazon & Wal-mart refuse to stock it and Google monkeys with your search results to make it difficult to find.  Furthermore, “books”, as much as I love them, are now only a tiny fraction of the ways information can be shared; people who would balk at the idea of censoring actual paper books suddenly feel very differently when the conversation turns to magazines, or movies, or pictures, or music, or video games, or public lectures, or articles, or blogs, or other social media postings, or (most especially) advertising.  The same “right-thinking” folks who would march in protest if a school library declined to stock And Tango Makes Three grow strangely silent when Twitter bans a member’s account for “hate speech”, and may even be willing to march in support of censoring escort ads on Backpage.  As I wrote last year,

We are living in the past of Fahrenheit 451, the early stages of a culture which values feelings above thought, the history of a world in which the solution to any troubling idea is to eradicate it.  Right now it’s going on in the universities, where sheltered young people who have been coddled by overprotective parents for two decades are declaring themselves to be “triggered” or “offended” or even “violated” by ideas – whether spoken or in print – that they haven’t encountered before, or that contradict their opinions, or that they find unpleasant, or that bear some superficial resemblance to any of the preceding.  Just as their parents “protected” them from these unpleasant thoughts by banning them from their homes with internet filters or “parental controls”, so they feel entitled to “protect” themselves – and every other person within their sphere of influence – from those bad, icky ideas by banning them…

The censor-morons are loose, and they’re coming after everyone who dares to disagree with them.  And the only way to stop them is to oppose every attempt to limit the free expression of ideas, even if you disagree with them or find them offensive.  Correction: especially if you find them offensive.  Because as always, tyranny starts with those nobody really wants to defend.think-for-yourself

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Moral Climate

Posted in Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , on September 28, 2015| 22 Comments »

You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred.  Ask yourself, What do we want in this country above all?  People want to be happy, isn’t that right?…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo.  Burn it.  White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Burn it.  Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs?  The cigarette people are weeping?  Burn the book.  Serenity, Montag.  Peace, Montag.  Take your fight outside.  Better yet, to the incinerator.  –  Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

books cause thoughtThough Ray Bradbury was much more a fantasist than a writer of science fiction, in many ways his predictions about the society of the future have proven far more prescient than those of his contemporaries whose writings are more grounded in hard science.  One striking example is his depiction of future homes and cities as being constantly inundated by music, synthetic voices and fast-changing video images from huge screens and loud speakers in every conceivable location; the TV screens which start playing commercials when one passes them in a store are straight out of Bradbury, as are the video players we carry in our pockets and the earbuds and bluetooth sets in our ears.  Most science fiction writers depicted future people as being better-informed and more scientifically literate; Bradbury realized they would, if anything, be less so.  And while typical 20th-century literary dystopias featured top-down censorship by totalitarian governments who wanted to wanted to keep their citizens in the dark for political reasons, Bradbury alone understood that the censorship of the future would be lateral, grass-roots efforts pushed by ignorant citizens who wanted to remain ignorant and unchallenged by ideas which unsettled them.

We are living in the past of Fahrenheit 451, the early stages of a culture which values feelings above thought, the history of a world in which the solution to any troubling idea is to eradicate it.  Right now it’s going on in the universities, where sheltered young people who have been coddled by overprotective parents for two decades are declaring themselves to be “triggered” or “offended” or even “violated” by ideas – whether spoken or in print – that they haven’t encountered before, or that contradict their opinions, or that they find unpleasant, or that bear some superficial resemblance to any of the preceding.  Just as their parents “protected” them from these unpleasant thoughts by banning them from their homes with internet filters or “parental controls”, so they feel entitled to “protect” themselves – and every other person within their sphere of influence – from those bad, icky ideas by banning them.  And just as they may have been shamed as children for “bad” thoughts, so they seek to shame others who originate such thoughts; sometimes these censors go beyond mere shaming to the desire to punish the Bad People, and often that punishment can be career-destroying or even life-wrecking.

But it’s not completely limited to universities, nor to insular corners of social media; as I wrote in last year’s essay for Banned Books Week (which in case you hadn’t figured it out from the topic, starts today):

…the urge to censor actually is [not]…limited to those traditionally labeled “social conservatives”…nowadays, the most belligerent, aggressive and effective proponents of censorship are those who…describe their targets with words like “sexist”, “racist”, “homophobic”, “objectifying”, etc…promoters of this chic form of censorship very often don’t call for the direct government suppression of their targets; that would, after all, be censorship, and every thinking person knows censorship is bad.  So instead, they just “critique” the things they want banned and sling ad hominems like “misogynistic” at their targets’ creators, hoping to make them so radioactive in the public mind that risk-averse corporations will refuse to fund them…this isn’t technically censorship in the strictest traditional sense of the word, because it isn’t being forcibly executed by a political authority.  Neither is Operation Choke Point direct criminalization of the businesses it targets; that doesn’t change the fact that those businesses are as effectively suppressed as if they had been criminalized…while [such methods] lack the violence associated with actual criminalization of forbidden ideas, they are still very effective in creating an intellectual soil highly toxic to free expression…

It doesn’t matter whether the excuse is “sin” or “feelings”, or the injured party is conceived of as an individual or collective, or the suppression comes from above or below, or the method is violence or economics; the suppression of thought and speech is evil, tyrannical and socially self-lobotomizing.  As Ryan Holiday wrote in The Observer,

Your feelings are your problem, not mine—and vice versa.  Real empowerment and respect is to see our fellow citizens…as adults.  Human beings are not automatons—ruled by drives and triggers they cannot control.  On the contrary, we have the ability to decide not to be offended.  We have the ability to discern intent.  We have the ability to separate someone else’s actions or provocation or ignorance from our own.  This is the great evolution of consciousness—it’s what separates us from the animals…

Up until recently, Western society was built upon the premise that citizens were self-owning adults capable of self-determination and self-regulation, but as citizenship has been expanded over the last century and a half, the rights associated with it have been dramatically curtailed.  As detailed exhaustively in this blog, modern governments believe they own citizens’ bodies and can control what we do with them to a terrifying degree; now our fellow citizens are trying to control what we can do with our minds.  That is a two-pronged recipe for cultural suicide, and though it may be much too late to avert that, I consider it the duty of every freethinking, self-owning individual to do his or her best to at least go down fighting.Fahrenheit 451 woman

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