Monday, March 28, 2005

The censors are coming! The censors are coming!

I have a bit of a problem. As I have indicated many times – I am ME – I am outspoken – I have opinions – usually they go against the ‘main stream’ but never do I act like a sheep.

On this work I call my blog – I have banned some people from commenting because I felt that their comments were nasty, destructive and frankly - since this is MY blog – I really did not care too much about what they had to say. For that reason I have also stopped anonymous commenting as well

With the internet being a sort of global forum you would think that there would be pockets where on can speak one’s mind – even if that is going to piss other people off or ‘offend’ others. I find there are a lot of message boards out there where there exists ‘heated’ discussions about various things; even arguments; even ‘flame wars; these things exist – I don’t think anyone can argue that point. I was asked to join a group on Yahoo – now for the record I tend to shy away from groups on Yahoo, mainly because, well no offense it’s Yahoo (why do you think they call it Yahoo – sorry but it’s how I feel). So while there are plenty of great groups and plenty of intelligent people out there – let’s just say I don’t think a discussion group on Yahoo is going to be all that earth-shaking or a source for the higher ‘truth’ as it were. But I joined this group (it was the amateur philosopher group – and when I say amateur...) – at any rate – right off the bat I start getting spam from a member of the group – all kinds of crap – I complained right away – the moderator saw no ‘harm’ in it but I kept insisting that it wasn’t philosophy and that if it didn’t stop I’d report it – not because I was trying to be a bitch mind you but because I don’t join a group to get ‘chain e-mails’ from some nerd.

As the group grew I found that some people were trying to discuss religion – they were in essence banned from doing so – yes they were at times proselytizing – and perhaps it was wise of the moderator to ‘ban’ them from discussing such things – but I noticed as time went on that more and more we were discussing only ‘safe’ issues in other words, we had to completely steer clear of ALL discussion of Religion, Politics, God – it was OK to talk about deities but only the ‘idea’ of them. A lot fo what was put on the board was not philosophy at all – in fact someone brought up time-travel – can someone out there explain to me how time travel is philosophy – oh sure they discussed about ‘changing the world’ by traveling back in time – but I don’t see that as philosophy either unless you are asking someone about the moral indications involved in altering a known history.

So yours truly decided when the Terri Schiavo case began to heat up to ask people what they thought in essence I asked about life – what constitutes life, when should you be considered dead or a ‘vegetable’, do you want your family or your government making choices for you. Well let’s just say this caused all kinds of hullabaloo on this board. I was told that in the future ‘we’ were not allowed to discuss such ‘social issues’ (um excuse me isn’t the nature of the discussion of philosophy helping us to figure out the big questions and social issues???) – so at any rate I retorted back to the group that we were discussing deities etc and that I felt that religion and politics and discussion of God WAS fodder for philosophical debate. THAT religion and politics in essence ARE based on certain PHILOSOPHY – well my comments were stricken from the message board. And we were all admonished again….

So I decided to write to the moderator and ‘state my case’ I said I did not understand how it would hurt us to discuss such issues and what was wrong with a little bit of heated debate. I pointed out that surely when people like Socrates, Hegel, Gurdjieff and Nietzsche were discussing their takes on ‘philosophy’ that there must have been arguments. He wrote back to say that ‘arguing’ never solved anything and that the ‘purpose’ of the group was to discuss ‘truth, possibility and probability - (and while I agree with that, I do not agree that debating issues and being passionate does not hurt anything – I mean people ‘argue’ their philosophies all the time – it’s what makes us unique) – I also told him I felt we were ½ stepping and only discussing 'safe’ issues – I further went on to ask why he felt there was only one version of the ‘truth’ and why did that version have to be ‘his’ or an American version of the truth. He admonished me that discussing politics was only a matter of discussing opinion – I laughed and informed him that basically that’s all philosophy and the discussion of philosophy entailed anyway pure and simple – it’s all opinion and the truth has a tendency to always be coloured by our own prejudices and that America certainly has not cornered the market on truth and justice – far from it in my humble ‘opinion’. So basically I told him a respectfully disagreed with his commandment that we only discuss certain issues. I also noticed as part of his signature file he had the following quote:
“ ~God bless America and a free Iraq!~” - So I have to wonder how someone with a signature file that has that can be un-biased and fair as well as a ‘truth seeker’. He’s entitled to his personal signature quote – but in answering people on the group he might want to table his personal war mongering quotes.

Today I realized that I am now banned from this group...

Yeah OK. Trouble-maker I am – I will be the first to admit it. I’ll be happy to wear that moniker. I’ve actually no problem with that – LOL – nor do I care that I am no longer a part of such a group – censorship to me smacks of well censorship and when we begin to censor people, freedom is lost. (PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT referring to peoples’ personal blogs) – and please don’t get me wrong I know it’s hard to be a moderator, I know it’s a ‘job’ and I know sometimes you have to keep people from being idiots on group boards – but you know what, telling people they can’t have a healthy debate – even when they disagree (I mean as long as everyone realizes they can’t get nasty with each other what’s the problem?) – or ban an entire discussion because someone might be ‘offended’ just strikes me as bullshit and certainly not an open forum. So a word of advice – if you are into discussing the real ideals of ‘philosophy’ – you may want to stay away from the amateurs.

2 Comments:

Blogger Jeff Hess said...

Shalom Collette,

On the net I've come to treat every forum as a sanctuary. The moderators/ops get to decide what is permissable and what isn't. I wouldn't go into a Catholic Church and strike up a pro-choice discussion. So, if I find a group to be too narrow minded to allow an open discussion, I create my own group and invite anyone who is like minded to join me there.

The world is filled with too many sheep to waste time on them.

B'shalom,

Jeff

12:13 PM  
Blogger rmacapobre said...

in an open forum, i would like to think that any topic (includes religion, sexism, etc) is acceptable for academic purposes.

when it comes to opposition, its helpful to be calm. sometimes we get too emotional forgetting its really just a forum ..

9:56 PM  

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