Perversion and censorship in literature

[HumbleTangerine]

I'm for censorship in many instances.

Not because the subject of any given book is bad, but because the average human being (this is to say the majority) are immature and unable to approach most subjects with their rational mind.

Humans have been, and are, and for all I can tell ever more shall remain an animal capable of reasoning, and not a reasoning animal.

Educated individuals should have greater allowances and privileges to 'delicate data' - those who refuse to educate themselves or allow their emotions to run over their reasoning when it comes to such data should be banned from that material.

How would this be implemented practically though? Should we create an institution accountable to the government that controls the most explicit and potentially destructive pieces of literature? An institution responsible for their distribution?

How would they decide whether a person is educated enough to be granted rights to consume the material in question?

I personally don't believe in censorship in the first place (with very rare exceptions) but principles aside, the solution of selective privilege seems like it'd need unhealthy amounts of control and bureaucracy to function efficiently.

[cftxp]

I think it's clear that calls for censorship are usually called for mostly by either the government or right-wing groups (which usually are the cause for why the government adopts such policies). However, society does include for double-standards with regard to censorship. When the government does it, it's unjust and unfair and is often called censorship at the least and likely to be universally acknowledged as such. When individuals or other groups do it, at times (most likely the in-group) views it as a cure to moral decay and may even garner popular support and in that case, government is encouraged to adopt such policies. This is the reason for the rise of anti-gay sentiment in many parts of the world including: Russia, Nigeria, and Uganda, but the same sort of sentiment was also evident as the cause of the Iranian Revolution (I mention this without the desire to trigger a debate about the detrimental role of American foreign policy), after which women were relegated to an inferior role in society rather follow through with the many advances in women's rights all but gone in the nation as we see it today.

Another example would also be Nazi Germany. For many individuals engaged in such groups, nationalism (an ideology embraced by many in the right-wing) is the zeal behind things like racism, homophobia, sexism, and other forms of censorship that the government (or the autocrats within) end up supporting. Due to a strong belief in nationalism, groups of people see their society and way of life at risk by the social change that will naturally occur in a nation. For the spread of such beliefs in Nazi Germany, economic collapse after the First World War and the relatively high income of the Jews encouraged many in the German locale to make a bourgeoisie vs. proletariat sort of connection where nationalists considered themselves the working class while the Jews were the wealthy elites. Combined with the range of xenophobic policies that grew out of Nazism, the world saw one of the largest mass-murders in the history of the world that included the Jews, as well as Gypsies, Slavic peoples, homosexuals, and others which the German public thought were also a threat to their way of life.

My point is basically that censorship arises out of fear of the unknown, and this xenophobic way of thinking that results in calls for the censorship of free speech at the least to mass-murders of people who happen to just be different from event the social norm. In their view, the change that occurs with factors like the increasing openness of society in terms of sex, the acceptance of homosexuals in society, or the new cultural customs that foreigners may bring with them from their homelands is in fact, a perversion that they believe should be stopped.

Basically when individuals or groups burn books, it's usually a symbolic gesture for the ideologies that I've mentioned in the above, a signal that such new ideas are unwelcome - at least by them.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Lets see, if they are attending uniersity/college and actually working toward some degree which demonstrates that they actually have an interest in learning stuff instead of relying on the old myths and legends, then yes they have full and free access to that data.

Mind, those who demand censorship of any material for all usually don't have two brain cells to rub together or that much in the way of a formal education. So give them what they want, full and complete censorship for THEM.

[HumbleTangerine]

Lets see, if they are attending uniersity/college and actually working toward some degree which demonstrates that they actually have an interest in learning stuff instead of relying on the old myths and legends, then yes they have full and free access to that data.

Mind, those who demand censorship of any material for all usually don't have two brain cells to rub together or that much in the way of a formal education. So give them what they want, full and complete censorship for THEM.

But that doesn't seem very fair. My grandmother never pursued any formal education beyond primary school, yet has spent most of her life fueling her interest and passion for literature. To deny her access to a certain source of literature in her absence of formal education would be awful. It implies that adequate wisdom and reasoning can only exist in those who have pursued higher levels of formal education, which really isn't correct at all.