Prohibition, Censorships, Forbidden Knowledge

Prohibition.
It doesn't work.
The United States proved that in the twenties with alcohol.
We are proving it now with every other newer addition to the category of substances which people seem to derive pleasure from.

If people enjoy it, ban it. The slightest proof that something has some negative side, leads to a wholesale ban, in defiance of reason, in defiance of allowing a balanced judgement to be made, a weighing up of the pros and the cons, an admission that on the whole, society seems to benefit, rather than suffer, from a particular artificial stimulant being on peoples freely chosen list of lifestyle choices.

Instead, what we have, is the law being brought into disrepute. Opinion on drug legalisation, is largely a matter of experience. And the more people experience, the more the law as a whole gets dragged down. Because there are so many other laws that SEEM sillier, but are in fact more important. Such as speeding laws. But having badly thought out laws on matters such as cannabis, encourages people to look at laws in terms of 'minor' or 'major'.

Prohibition needs a solid reason.
And this brings me to something in fact, more complicated.
What knowledge do we make freely available, and how do we regulate it?

Can we truly be democratic about censorship?

This is in fact, a difficult point, perhaps one of the more significant moral questions human culture faces. Where do you draw lines, and do you put the same line everywhere for everybody?

I'll admit, I really do not know the answers here, but I'd like to raise the questions.

I can remember when we did Brighton Rock at A-level, noticing the differences between two different editions of the text. One had been slightly edited, just ever so slightly. It was just one nuance that had been removed, by the publishers.

One three occasions in the book, references to nameless figures being Jewish is removed. The references are all three of them negative references, and I guess the publishers wanted to avoid the anti-semitic implications of those particular sections, but in doing so, they removed the actual artistic point, which of course, wasn't an anti-semitic point.

The novel is essentially about Damnation. The main character believes he is destined for Hell. He believes himself to be irredeemable. In a twisted, almost puritanical way, he embraces evil. He is a kind of proto-Damian, and religious references abound. In the three instances mentioned, the reader is deliberately reminded (in the original), of events from the New Testament. This is lost, by the replacement of 'Jewesses' by 'Bitches' and 'Jews', by 'Men'. The bowdlerised passages are devoid of significance as a result.

Again, I understand the reason it has been done. But I do not agree that it was the right decision. In the same way, I did not agree with much of the criticism levelled at Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ. What happens next, censorship of the New Testament itself? The story there is what it is, historians may rightly suggest, that the story as told was biased and the basis for medieval anti-semitism. I agree. But the story is, what the story is, and in Brighton Rock, as in the Passion of Christ, we are preventing the artistic interpretation of religious themes, by censoring those interpretations.

I think this leads nicely into one the most damaging things censorship is doing today, and again, perhaps with the best will in the world.
The fact is, anti-semitism was a very nasty form of discrimination, and we have within living memory, seen it's worst manifestation.

But Holocaust Denial laws?

I'd like to hear the justification.

Because personally, my view is this. The truth is provable. Sensible people make sensible judgements. These Holocaust Deniers, if you read what they write, it all LOOKS very plausible. Some of it is well written. And what is our response?
It should be, to tear their research to shreds in the academic arena, not lock them up. All that leaves is a well written treatise, unanswered. The problem is, you and I are sensible enough to realise that the evidence shows that a lot more than 30,000 people died in the concentration camps. Personally, I don't think all 6 Million were done by the Nazis. I think it's a strange coincidence the death toll is so much higher where Russian troops arrived first, but certainly millions died and the gas ovens and Zyklon B were used on people.
But the law is to prevent more suggestible people being hoodwinked. In fact, it recruits them to the neo-nazis, because the neo-nazis say; they have no answer to us, they can only lock us up.



And in fact, a part of even ME thinks, we'll never really get to the truth about any of this, whilst we don't permit free speech and academic debate. There are areas of Second world War history, where I DO think, the atrocities weren't all where they are said to be.

And where do you draw the line? Is to be illegal to say black people weren't slaves? Or that Christians weren't fed to lions? Or that jihads and crusades never happened?

Are we to burn heretics like our ancestors did?

Sometimes, one can read something in literature, which can shock. I'll let you into a little secret; I'm a Conan the Barbarian fan. I like the Conan stories. The thing is- and sometimes it shows- the author was a white Texan living with his mother in the nineteen thirties. Consider the following paragraph;

'You said I was a barbarian,' he said harshly, 'and that is true, Crom be thanked. If you had men of the outlands guarding you instead of soft gutted civilised weaklings, you would not be the slave of a black pig tonight. I am Conan, a Cimmerian, and I live by the sword's edge. But I am not such a dog as to leave a white woman in the clutches of a black man; and though your kind call me a robber, I never forced a woman against her consent. Customs vary in various countries, but if a man is strong enough, he can enforce a few of his native customs anywhere. And no man ever called me a weakling!
'If you were old and ugly as the devil's pet vulture, I'd take you away from Bajujh, simply because of the colour of your hide. But you are young and beautiful, and I have looked at black sluts until I am sick at the guts. I'll play this game your way simply because some of your instincts correspond to some of mine.'

What nasty, sexist, racist, sentiments. When I first read that paragraph, I put the book down in disgust.
But in half an hour I picked it up again. Yes, they aren't nice sentiments. But I realised, I had to accept this in this sense, the story was partly a historical document. In much the same way, the mindless slaughter of the infidel in Chanson Roland, shouldn't be seen as justifying the mindless slaughter of Muslims today in Iraq. The author of Chanson Roland didn't know any better, and nor did Robert Howard. I can overlook such a nasty paragraph, indeed, I just don't read that story full stop, because as long as black people don't come into his stories, they're very good.

But it's a hard one. Because some morons would read that paragraph and LIKE Conan the Racist, Male Chauvinist pig.

And this brings me to the real border, as far as I am concerned.
Because there are books and films I have come across, where I am left pondering.
Yes, I think, it's good for these issues to be addressed.
But not by everybody.

Some knowledge, some thoughts, are too dangerous for everyone to handle.

I can think of two books, both of which I have read, and both of which have been made in to films. In both cases, the films caused outcry, but in neither case, do they really unnerve as the books do.

The books in question are Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita, and Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

Strange books. Unnerving books. DARK books.
They are books written in the first person, by characters that are, put bluntly, warped beyond redemption, that are, by any reasonable person's definition evil.

The problem with the books, is that they are written in first person, from the perspective of in the first case, a child molester, in the second, a serial killer.
And because they are written in the first person, the novel is written as they see it, from the point of view of EVIL PEOPLE WHO DO NOT QUITE SEE THAT WHAT THEY DO IS WRONG. Never, in either book is there an apology, an admission of evil. In the first case, the character keeps justifying himself and his fixations, the second is written in such a way as to trivialise the nature of what is done. It is 70 pages before he starts talking about slicing up people with chain saws. In fact, MOST of the novel deals with the false, soulless, amoral corporatism of his work on the stock exchange, the frantic social life, whole chapters on music albums, it is essentially a novel about how the mind of a psychopath thinks, but unnerving, because of it's grounding in a world so many of us move in.

Neither of them make pleasant reading. They do, however make riveting reading, though one does end up wondering about the authors. Do they write from experience, is this their way of releasing their own desires, in a non threatening way? Does it matter? Perhaps there is something brave about them, undertaking such a thought experiment and putting their names to it.

But still, at the end of it, I find myself thinking this.
Dangerous books.

Because whilst exploring these themes has a certain value in aiding our comprehension of evil, that comprehension is only a positive, if we have no tendencies towards that evil. In the wrong hands, such texts are dangerous. As a society we don't want potential child molesters and serial killers becoming encouraged to actualise their tendencies, by reading texts like this.

See what I mean about being on the line? I'd hesitate to ban works like these, because whilst I can't say I ENJOYED reading them, I DO feel, they added in a way to my understanding, they allowed me to pick up on certain things in how other people act. That of course, is one of the key virtues of art.
What I DO believe, is that perhaps access to some knowledge and concepts needs restricting.



And of course, it goes beyond that. Even Nietzche, I think, though I hold him to be one of the greatest of philosophers, should ONLY be read, if you actually have a mind capable of understanding his points, and more importantly ACTUALLY HAVE A FAIRLY RIGIDLY INGRAINED SYSTEM OF ETHICS ALREADY, so you can comprehend where it is, Nietzche asks you to move it to.

Maybe the problem has always been, it's the thought and the speech we've tried to stop.
Maybe really, what we need to control, is who hears it.
But how do you decide that?



I really don't know the answers to this one. I'd be interested to hear what people think.