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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:59AM
Actually I'd put myself at N-G on the old D&D alignment chart. But I am becoming convinced that the universe doesn't give a crap what I think or what I'd prefer and it would be better to work instead on figuring out how the universe actually works. Specifically how humans are wired. Still hoping L-E isn't required but if L-N would preserve the human race that is what we have to do, even if it sucks.
If anonymousconservative is right, and after reading his book it is the leading theory for me, we are wired to adapt to a resource glut by going r selected to maximize the spread of our genes. In a state of nature that is a winning move, but civilization produces a shitload of resources and by the time the population boom can't be sustained it leads to awful crashes.
Look at you, spouting boilerplate Marxism and haven't even READ Marx. Marx is wrong about his conclusions and many of his causes, but he does observe his times pretty well. And he notes that exactly the conditions you describe cause a population boom in the underclass / "surplus population." Impoverished but not starving. I don't have my copy of Capital handy or I'd give you a better cite, but look toward the end of Volume I when he is going into overkill description of the horrid conditions as the economy in England was in massive upheaval.
That couldn't work unless you got every country to do it at once and it would still almost certainly fail. Not claiming to have THE answer, just pointing out the direction the evidence is tending toward. If the key is to stay on that golden median between r and K then K has to be encouraged and r discouraged since intertia is going to be pushing toward r. There are two pressure points, reproduction itself and the social fabric that pushes individuals who are more shaped by environmental factors to tend to swing K.
The first is simple for a civilization that internalizes the science involved. Teach it in the schools so everyone understands the reason why things MUST be, then ruthlessly control breeding. Only K selected types who reproduce in K selected ways allowed to reproduce with a very limited number of random exceptions to keep the r gene pool conserved since they have some useful traits. But zero incidents of Laqueefia and her eight future welfare clients.
That leaves the harder problem. Social customs that maintain a K selected outlook are needed but many of them are warlike enough to be incompatible with the high tech we now have. Spartans with fusion bombs and attack helicopters probably won't lead to a stable world. That circles around to the BIG problem we are running into in the first place. Before now civilizations rose and fell, the wars, plagues and famines were tragic for the individuals who had to live through them but history rolled on. The collapse that we are just tipping into now is unavoidable at this point, assuming we survive it we must ensure we don't repeat this cycle because by the next one we almost certainly will NOT survive.
So any thoughts welcome, even outlandish ones. This sort of discussion is why keeping the censors at bay is so vital.