Censorship

Censorship

The Columbia Encyclopedia defines censorship as the "official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order". It is necessarily broad definition. 'Any type of expression' in fact, covers just about everything from clothing to print to movements and even to simply being. George Bernard Shaw described assassination as an "extreme form of censorship". It is now omnipresent in society and has been as long as society has existed. If one were to consider the course of an idea (and it is essentially ideas that are being censored) as its natural evolution, censorship takes this evolutionary course and disrupts and changes it, often until it is no longer the same substance as before.

Why do states (in truth any group of people) feel the need to censor? Moreover, can it be done effectively in the first place? It is human nature to prevent propagation and evolution of stories or is it human nature gone awry? What is our attachment to the status quo and what does privilege have to with this attachment? How do those without privilege subvert the systems of censorship in either information (media, literature, etc.) or other cultural memes?

Although it is not a popular notion, censorship in the eastern liberal democracies is alive and well. As American children, we learn the evils of McCarthyism and the Red Scare and similar instances as simply shadows of past evils- long banished to history. While we learn the facts of the period, the truth/ compelling force behind these periods of extreme censorship is never examined closely enough. The truth is that in out pseudo-western politically correct haze, the fear and prejudice that underlies all attempts at censor...

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...s gene line, those elements of society and culture that have been deemed undesirable are prevented from being heard and thus spread.

The subject of censorship is expansive and therefore cannot be dealt with definitively in this space. It is, however, a subject that should be considered by everyone more in-depth. While the mechanisms within our society and indeed our world seek to silence the stories of which do not do them glory, one must strive to resist the "breeding" of ideas. Our stories are far from being absurd and worthless show poodles. They must not be weakened because of a lack of expression and audience or from a lack of original inspiration. In the face of a potentially shrinking 'gene pool' of ideas, even the fresh consideration of the devices of censorship is a subversive act which will be, in the end, the possible salvation of everyone's stories.