BAD MEMES: Contradiction and Censorship

YakWax@aol.com
Thu, 17 Jul 1997 13:14:12 -0400 (EDT)


Forgive me for being controversial, but:

Johnny, a stereotypical seven-year-old American boy, is talking to his mother
in the kitchen, while she bakes an apple pie.

"Mommy, what was the cold war?" Asks Johnny.
"A war against Russia" His mother replies.
"Why do we hate Russians?"
"Well they're our friends now, but they were our enemies"
"So it's alright to kill your enemies, but wrong to kill your friends?"
"Don't be silly Johnny, It's wrong to kill anyone"
"But don't we kill people in wars?"
"Yes, but that happens in other countries"
"So it's alright to kill people in other countries if they do bad things?"
"That's right dear, now why don't you go and finish building your model of
Hiroshima"

So Johnny returns to melting action figures in his sandpit.

Johnny has learnt some valuable lessons that will stay with him for the rest
of his life - territorialism, xenophobia and the need for excessive force.
These lessons came in especially handy when Johnny joined a local white
supremacy group at the age of nineteen.

--Contradiction & Censorship

It's these kinds of contradictions, inconsistencies in people's beliefs that
lead to the bad memes responsible for a declining society. Whereas some
people blame the lack of censorship for the rise in behaviour deemed
anti-social, I believe (probably along with many list members) that it is
censorship that is the very cause of many of the problems in society.
Censorship causes contradictions in beliefs, these contradictions weaken the
mental immune system and live it wide open to bad, sometimes disastrous,
ideas.

The three main victims of censorship in popular media are violence, sex, and
swearing. There are many other forms of censorship, but these three are the
cause of much controversy.

Sex & Nudity - Censored because seeing to much sex and nudity will apparently
turn our children into sex crazed maniacs. The censors have lots of evidence
of the effects of sex and nudity on Children, sex crimes are increasing
yearly and so is the amount of sex on television. No, actually that's wrong,
sex crimes increase as censorship increases. It doesn't take much to
understand this, just some simple psychology:

Sex is dirty, disgusting and sinful, so we're lead to believe. Then, of
course, we find it to be pleasurable (to put it mildly). It doesn't take a
wild stretch of the imagination to think. "If sex is dirty, disgusting and
sinful, but gives me pleasure, maybe other dirty, disgusting, sinful things
we give me pleasure too" and just like that a serial killer is born (or a
rapist, or fetishist, etc).

Nudity, of course, is also disgusting and so you should cover up. While
you're at it, why not become so embarrassed by your own body that you're
afraid to go to the doctors to get much needed treatment. I don't think I
even need to touch on the psychology of being embarrassed by your body (or
for that matter bodily functions - ever wondered why we have the most
primitive ass-wiping system possible, research into toilets just isn't the
done thing).

Swearing - Fuck, now I'm not quite sure why swearing is censored. If anyone
knows why we see fit to 'protect' children from words, I'd appreciate it if
they would enlighten me. I'm not sure of the psychological effects of
certain words being deemed 'dirty', but I do know that some people on the
internet get off on swearing at each other, so the damage is there.

Violence - If you watch too much violence, you'll turn into a violent person.
I have to admit that after watching the latest Steven Segal action movie I
get the urge to run him over with my car, but I don't think it's for the
right reasons. This, of course, is also wrong. We are all already violent
and denial isn't going to change that, it's built into our genes, if it
wasn't we would have died off long ago. It's important to learn when
violence is necessary and when it is not. It's also important to take a
stance on violence, don't make contradictions like those of little Johnny's
mother (and the moral of this story is…)

The source of most censorship is probably related to the Christian religion,
but I haven't got room to talk about the problems caused by the Christian
meme, so I'll save it for another post.

I'd like to hear people's ideas on how we can solve the problems of
censorship and any other bad memes we should be fighting against.

--Wax