Censorship

Let us start at the most fundamental level.

What we call "reality" is defined through culture. Culture provides the tools, like language, math, and belief systems, and we provide the mind to process it all. So, essentially, everything we know about our reality is determined through information that is collected, processed, stored, and recalled by the cognitive abilities of the human brain.

Got that? If you don't, go back and re-read it. This is fundamental to understanding why censorship exists at all.

You see, for as long as humans have been on Earth, individuals from every society have undertaken strategies to control the gateways of information as leverage to influence power. Because our reality is determined through our access to information, those who control that information gain more power over those who don't. Call it manipulative, evil, or just the trend in human social behavior, whatever, this is the same truth now, yesterday, and tomorrow as it was at the very beginning of human social development.

The definition of "culture" is greatly debated among anthropologists, but ultimately, culture is everything that is learned, believed, or passed down through tradition; it is knowledge, or more specifically, a virtual universe of information. This information is transmitted through communication, observation, and imitation, among many other means. This information is regulated in many ways: through observation and perception, through memory, through technological conduits like the media and the internet, and most important of all, the physiological barriers of human cognition (i.e. "human error").

So, information has 1) a means of transmission and 2) gateways of influence where data is filtered, copied, or extrapolated.

In both areas, information is inevitably distorted to some degree. This fact makes it easier for power-obsessed individuals to gain control of information pathways and gateways and influence the way the people of a society understand REALITY.

This is censorship. Censorship is not about protecting anyone. That is the lie. Censorship is about controlling information, and in doing so, controlling the way individuals think.

So when you hear someone talking about banning a certain plant, or banning Facebook or Myspace, or banning Gay Marriage, remind yourself that it is not security but power that drives censorship.

Knowledge is good. Fascism is not.