If You Meet A Censor, Ask Why They Haven't Become Moral Degenerates Themselves
from the simple-questions dept
Last year, we wrote about one of China's chief censors, the creator of the Great Firewall of China, who did an interview where he talked about how important censorship was to protect people -- while also noting that he, himself, had five VPN accounts to get around the Great Firewall... for research purpose only (he promised). I'm reminded of this while reading an interview with a Kuwaiti censor who seems quite proud of her role in keeping horrible content from being consumed by people in Kuwait -- while also talking about how much she gets to learn in reading all this content.I found out about this interview from Adam Thierer, who has a simple question he thinks every censor should be asked:
But here’s where the reporter missed a golden opportunity to ask Dalal the one question that you must always ask a censor if you get to meet one: If the content you are censoring is so destructive to the human soul or psyche, how then is it that you are such a well-adjusted person? And Dalal certainly seems like a well-adjusted person. Although the reporter doesn’t tell us much about her personal life or circumstances, Dalal volunteers this much about herself and her fellow censors: “Many people consider the censor to be a fanatic and uneducated person, but this isn’t true. We are the most literate people as we have read much, almost every day. We receive a lot of information from different fields. We read books for children, religious books, political, philosophical, scientific ones and many others.” Well of course you do... because you are lucky enough to have access to all that content! But you are also taking steps to make sure the rest of your society doesn’t consume it on the theory that it would harm them or harm public morals in some fashion. But, again, how is it that you have not been utterly corrupted by it all, Ms. Dalal? After all, you get to consume all that impure, sacrilegious, and salacious stuff! Shouldn’t you be some kind of monster by now?Thierer goes on to posit that the "Third-Person Effect Hypothesis" explains the issue. It says that "people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others," while assuming, however, that they are somewhat immune to those effects. It's an interesting post, and that question should be used whenever anyone has the pleasure of meeting (or better yet, interviewing) an official government censor.
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Filed Under: censorship, china, great firewall, kuwait, vpn
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The coreect answer is...
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Re: The coreect answer is...
Well, we can all stop on this thread, The eejit has it covered with truthful brevity and style.
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You should add "what the rest are allowed to do" to that.
One answer is Congressman
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perhaps it should read 'how come you are not consumed by all that impure, sacrilegious, and salacious stuff?' and still remain unharmed? why not others?
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Which pretty much describes most governments from the dark ages. Declare that your the only one true followers of the lord, and use that as your justification to inflict lots of harm on other kingdoms as you burn their property and slaughter all who refuse to convert. Because the 10 commandments don't apply to you when you're fighting someone you've declared evil, even when fighting others of the same religion as you!
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It's all about attitude!
[/sarcasm]
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Re: It's all about attitude!
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Can't, never, could do nothing and don't rule the world
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Call it what it is:
Oppression keeps people stupid and in the dark so that they can be led by the propaganda of the oppressors. It has worked spectacularly well for all religions and for oppressive regimes, including western ones.
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They have a staff discount.
(The call them 'magic underwear'.)
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Explaination
Bob Dobbs said it best: "the reason I don't practice what I preach is that I'm not the sort of person I'm preaching to."
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Censors are watched more carefully
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The point I'm making is that I think this article is wrong - they are more prone to becoming "moral degenerates", and their bosses know it. Supposedly, Dalal, has been able to not be corrupted with all those concepts of free speech, etc that he's exposed to. But I bet that other censors have not been able to successfully avoid being tainted by western thoughts.
The fact that there exists people who can read Thoreau without being moved to sympathize with his ideas of civil disobedience, doesn't mean that a tyrannical government would be wise to let all their subjects read it.
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What about parental filters?
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Re: What about parental filters?
This +1
And it is something that can be applied to any government as well. It seems as if some governments deem most of their people beyond education efforts.
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But not before she's, like, a hundred. :p
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Some Of Us Are Immune To The Third-Person Effect
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