I'm surprised I have not addressed this before, but I am not a big fan of censorship. The reason I am not a big fan of censorship is that I am not a fan of ignorance; also, willful ignorance is a huge pet peeve of mine. Throughout history the value of knowledge and insight has been shown time and again. Whether it is knowledge gained in school, practical knowledge gained in life, or professional expertise gained through years of hard work, knowledge has enriched human life. So much so that it is too broad a category to go into in depth in a limited forum like a blog. Censorship, on the other hand, is keeping people ignorant of certain knowledge. It can be as trite and pointless as editing out curse words from movies so that they can be shown on TV, to as pernicious as banning or burning books to ensure societal conformity. In the end, it is an attempt by the powers that be to influence the populace by denying them access particular pieces of knowledge.
Censorship has a long history in public discourse and political theory. Going as far back as Plato's Republic, it has been argued that governments should take active steps to limit their citizens' knowledge of certain things in order to promote a more harmonious existence. In the Republic this was left to the ruling oligarchy, which was populated by philosophers, who Plato believed were best capable of determining what was best for the populace. In the modern era governments across the world, and China in particular, are using internet firewalls, the ability to take down web sites and block IP addresses to limit their population's access to knowledge. Practically speaking, what this does is allow ruling regimes to limit access to news and political discourse that would threaten the current regime. In the US we mostly limit censorship to banning certain "curse" words and sexual content from public broadcast on network television. However, in Europe this has taken the form of banning certain far right political parties in Greece, or providing people easy access to civil law suits for public statements "defaming, slandering or libeling" other people in England.
So what arguments can be made in favor of censorship? The easiest are arguments promoting censorship of things like child pornography and snuff films. Both child pornography and snuff films are created by victimizing someone in a criminal way in order to produce the offensive material. Because it is created by harming others, the argument goes, the government should censor and destroy all such materials it comes across to prevent future victimizations. And it is true that child rape and murder, regardless of whether either is filmed or not, are terrible crimes against other human beings. And it is absolutely right for government to criminalize child rape and murder, just as it is right for government to criminalize most acts that harm other people. But does it necessarily follow that we should then ban the derivative works (i.e. the portrayal of such acts)?
To answer this, let's look at a harder ethical quandary. Is it right for a government to censor political speech in order to protect the ruling regime? China certainly believes that it is, and it is very active in monitoring and censoring public speech on the net and in print. The argument for such censorship is that disrupting the government creates political instability. Political instability leads to protests and frequently violent confrontations between pro and anti government forces. As we saw during the Arab spring, while it is possible to have non-violent regime change, it is much more frequent for these confrontations to become violent. Such violence is invariably harmful to the populace as a whole. Thus, censoring disruptive elements is in everyone's best interest. What are the counter arguments to this? That censoring political speech allows the powers that be to stay in power and prevents political change. In the extreme, such as in North Korea, Soviet Russia or East Germany, this lead to societal decay, a breakdown of basic social structures and the suffering of the populace.
The problem I have with both the easy arguments and the hard arguments is that, in the end, the appeal is to social stability and the health of the general populace. In order to get to the point where the censored material poses a threat to the populace, you invariably are relying on actions that are already criminal without having to rely on censorship (i.e. violent acts against fellow members of society). Take the censorship of political speech to promote social stability argument. The action that actually harms society is the violent confrontation between protestors and the government. Similarly, with snuff films, the action that is harming the populace is the murder of one of its members. You can criminalize the action without limiting the knowledge or portrayal of it in any way. In other words, the offense is the action, not its portrayal.
So why is this distinction between harmful criminal action and the censorship of its portrayal so important? Art and political discourse. When you censor the portrayal of things you object to, you prevent artistic and political discourse on the subject. It is this discourse through which we make progress as a society. In America, and in most democratic societies, political and artistic discourse serves to shape the public's opinion on important issues. We make progress as a society through such discussions. The USA would have had trouble emerging from its colonial past if the founding fathers were unable to get together and discuss politics. Moreover, the horrors of war in the ancient world would no longer be known if the societies of the time had prevented the portrayal of it in paintings and books. By censoring knowledge you are limiting this discourse and thus limiting the intellectual development of society.
To conclude, I don't like censorship because I believe it limits political and artistic discourse. And while the goal of protecting society from harm is laudable, I believe it is possible to accomplish this goal without harming positive discourse about it. This can be accomplished by criminalizing the harmful actions and rigorously enforcing those laws. You don't need to prevent the painter from painting Rape of the Sabine Women to enforce the belief that rape (or in this case, abduction and rape) is a horrible criminal action that harms society. In fact, through the artistic portrayal, the horror of this moment in History is portrayed for all to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment