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Humanity’s Forgotten Reflection
By S. A. Ward
Chapter Nine – Masks of Censorship
A prohibition on speech is a dangerous direction. We can look to the outcomes from the prohibition on alcohol and the War on Drugs. These policies were and are completely counterproductive to their intentions, often worsening the given circumstance. The creeping implantation of censorship over the past several years is concerning. These small little social changes is where it all begins, which eventually could lead to George Orwell’s 1984 or oppressive authoritarian Communist China. Facebook makes a significant effort at controlling, censoring, and manipulating the flow of information. Many United States citizens get their “news” through Facebook memes or reading the headline of some poorly credible news outlet and don’t bother to read its content. We must also make note of YouTube University and TikTok, which often led individuals down a mendacious rabbit hole. We will not be able to stop mendacious information through censorship. Its result amounts to forfeiting freedom and as the years go by there will be another and another that our government nibbles away at. We should strive towards allowing the fear mongers to spew their bullshit while we give the literary and critical thinking tools to see through it all. Big Tech companies are a monolithic threat towards freedom of speech. They have found a loophole that completely negates freedom of speech in the digital world, which is where a hefty chunk of our social interactions take place.
They are manipulating the circulation of information that many are exposed to and show blatant bias towards an agenda. They have far too much power and are manipulating the very foundation of thought. Completely doing away outlets for ideological expression and especially creating massive echo chambers, where specific realms of thought are isolated to a certain degree is dangerous. This isolation doesn’t assist in educating folks about the flaws of their beliefs. If the opposition cannot directly express their beliefs, then that will be counterproductive to progress from drifting away from those flawed ideologies. It creates a barrier for understanding one another rooted by resentment. We must seek to have people with opposing beliefs amongst our friends list for social media or other forum-based platforms and not feed into the growing divide that will only obstruct ideological progress. Not allowing these individuals to express these beliefs will only cause them to fester and totally silencing a particular group causes them to mutate to be more radical. If a group can’t express their flawed beliefs to their opposition, then this prevents outside groups from being able to address it before it gets out of hand. Silencing or censoring an entire group totally obstructs educating them and only worsens the matter due to isolation of perspective. These silenced individuals will come together and form echo chambers, which often lead to ideological mutation that goes unnoticed, because it is under the radar from common dialogue due to the suppression brought about by their ideological or political opposition. Big tech censorship has been old news but has gone gravely unnoticed until recent years. Two factors being the censorship getting any more out of hand and the potential fallout which has often come about through history from silencing a group.
There have been many instances where it led to a civil war. As already stated, isolating flawed ideologies like that only makes them more malicious and more difficult to educate individuals, comprehending their point of view, and ultimately creates a barrier for understanding one another. Isolation of perspective is a major factor of Stockholm Syndrome, which Stockholm Syndrome will be covered more in depth within the Times of desperation chapter, so for now we will refrain from diving further into it. These social implementations will only worsen the rot and not actually address what needs to be done to mend it, ultimately inflating the divide. A George Lucas, Star Wars quote comes to mind, “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” We should be happy for having the right and freedom to make obscene remarks to those in power, because those days might be numbered and there is even an abundance of countries in today’s world that don’t have such a luxury and many others in history whose voice didn’t matter whatsoever. Political dissent was or is snipped by those in power and they just simply kill off who are against them. Shadow banning should be outlawed. It suffocates the reach an individual or group has on a social platform. It constricts potential ideological influence, masquerading as it is for the platform’s wellbeing when it’s actually just a discrete form of censorship that hinders an ideological voice and discussion. The gradual implementation of soft language needs to be done away with. It is trivial, derived from dogmatic and cultural connotations that have been attached to words for emotional targeted responses. It is a discrete form of censorship. Cuss words for example are perceived as bad, which is subjective and culturally calibrated. It is another way to constrain and manipulate a population’s thought patterns. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” – George Orwell’s book, 1984. In short, those who control language can control thought itself. Euphemisms are used to detract and basically coat a situation in sugar, especially ones that involve an abject circumstance. A few examples, the destroyed infrastructure and killed civilians in a war is known as collateral damage. Referring to those who died, instead of saying they died, they passed away. Old people transitioned into being referred to as senior citizens. In WW1, PTSD was called shellshock, in WW2, it became battle fatigue, then in the Korean War it became operational exhaustion, and came along Vietnam where it became referred to as Post Traumatic stress disorder. Euphemisms completely shift the magnitude of reality, so we coddle ourselves like that is going to make it go away, which is just a way to cope with it and not actually address the issue.
Words that have become or became no longer socially acceptable to say are in the end a tactic of censorship. PC and cancel culture have made it to where saying certain words can have drastic social consequences if said. Certain ethnic groups are the only ones socially permitted to use select words. Such as black people and nigger or nigga. An individual’s ethnicity is something unwillingly imposed upon them from birth and that they have no control over. For example, if an individual classified as white said nigger on the internet or in person, they’d become dehumanized and a social pariah due to cancel culture, which has no problem devouring anyone, destroying their life, and social image. It is also vital to take into consideration that this word, which can only be used by them, is an opportunity for them to use the racial card. It is about power, if someone not socially permitted to use this word uses it then the individual using the racial card has the upper hand in social matters, it’s a power card of their culture. This can also be seen as a culturally divisive tactic to prevent certain ethnic groups from being able to relate or connect on a personal level with one another. It creates a societal barrier of understanding and often leads to dehumanizing other racial groups. Their systemic racial oppression is not being downplayed or overlooked here and doesn’t condone the horrendous atrocities the black community are or were subjected to but is just an objective fact of how the words nigga or nigger are utilized in societal matters. Hate speech is another tactic of censorship used by PC culture that is tyranny masquerading as altruism. It is where it all starts, with one word, then two, then three, then sixty-five, then entire ideologies and spheres of thought. One word is all they need, it’s their foot in the door and this door allows them to classify other words or phrases as hate speech, which is just a mask of censorship. Language isn’t fundamental, we dictate words with arbitrarily assigned meanings. We aren’t born knowing a particular language. It takes a long time to learn and be fluent. We don’t just wake up one day and know a foreign language, because it doesn’t work that way. Language is basically a cultural code to convey information. There are many that don’t want to come to the world-shattering conclusion that their way of thinking or beliefs are fundamentally flawed. No one wants to be wrong so they stick with the comfortable tribal mentality & identity politics where peeps need to belong to some sort of group or a particular political party depending on their race, background, or where they can find acceptance. Quite often people get ostracized all together over their political association instead of engaging in polite verbal combat. I think the constant exposure to a vast amount of information has posed negative effects on people. A lot of folks search for information that reinforces their current belief system (confirmation bias) and this exposure amplifies the magnitude of most issues today significantly. This cannot be emphasized enough; political correctness is a rot festering upon our civilization. It is censorship and tyranny masquerading as altruism. The whole notion of identity politics or cultural appropriation is just nonsensical. This is not saying we should do away with culture, it is a beautiful aspect of humanity, but to shame people for showing interest in it and capturing the aesthetic of these cultures is just ludicrous. The whole notion of cultural appropriation seems to be another divisive tool used by the left to deter individuals from delving into other cultures. When it comes down to it, culture is just societal character armor and is calibrated by likened ideals from that culture’s past, to which there are subcultures as well. It becomes the major defining factor of a population and is forced upon its people from past generations. It is like a societal mold and the mere mention of a country immediately brings to mind a highly specific mold of individuals. This mold makes it much easier to narrow down a population’s societal behavioral patterns and allows for governments or a state to more easily control their specified population. For example, same sex marriage pushed by those in power under the guise of religious righteousness is one way they attempt to control a populations behavior. It narrows the population’s interest to one or two.
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