I would use coercion as a metric. In the cases I mentioned, the media did not censor themselves voluntarily, they were coerced. When coercion is involved, it's fair to label the situation censorship.
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Iceland Decriminalises Blasphemy - hooray!
- Thread starter icehorse
- Start date
I would use coercion as a metric. In the cases I mentioned, the media did not censor themselves voluntarily, they were coerced. When coercion is involved, it's fair to label the situation censorship.
Unless you're a determinist and believe they have no true choice.
I can see a Christian believing they have no choice. In fact that was Calvinism.
And we can change skin color, Michael Jackson, and gender, Bruce Jenner... so those are choices.
Ok so actually they were mocked.
I think you're spilling hairs here, no?
I do think it is a thin line. I just maybe a matter of opinion when it gets crossed. Can you mock religious folks with a malicious intent? Yes, I think you can.
While we don't need to respect religious beliefs, mocking can be cruel.
This is not an easy question... If an otherwise reasonable person insists that his life is based on the premise that "Elvis lives!", society will naturally marginalize this person. In such a case, a little tough love up front might actually be less cruel than being PC would be.
If blasphemy becomes a law of the land, we're doomed. So folks who support the idea are supporting something very dangerous. What's the most humane way to extinguish the idea AND not be cruel to the holders of such a bad idea?
Ah.
That's a fair enough metric, revealing the line to be greyer than I had thought. It's the difference between a TV or Youtube studio simply adding a beep over a taboo word because "kids are watching", and adding the same beep because stockholders would pull funding otherwise. Obviously that's a less severe situation, but I'm an artist and content creator, so the intricacies of how censorship is defined are important to me.
Thanks for bringing that up.
For some context, part of my caution with the term's usage is because a few months ago, my friends and I were playing Cards Against Humanity at a game store, and as we were just playing amongst ourselves for that session, we were removing some of the cards that were personal triggers for us. Some other people around us insisted that we were "censoring the deck", even after explaining that what we were doing is not censorship at all. It's also that, as a member of the gaming and geek communities, censorship has been a hot topic as of late, but it keeps getting applied to situations that it shouldn't, such as when stores refuse to sell certain products, or when feminist critics (but oddly enough, no other type of critic) urges artists to stop using certain tropes.
Also, real quick on this.
While religion is an idea and absolutely free to be mocked, it's not always a choice. ...at least, if we're able to agree that the line between "choice" and "not-a-choice" isn't binary, and that simply "choosing" to not follow a religion anymore isn't always as simple as choosing what clothes to wear every morning.
Consider the famous addict's mantra, "I can quit whenever I want!" I've only ever heard this phrase used in parody, and so have always known that it signifies dependence, and is a self-deception. The addict cannot quit whenever they want; they've lost the bulk of their own agency on the matter. As someone who has compulsive behaviors, as well as very strong anxieties, some of which border on phobias, over certain everyday things(including, of all bloody things, talking on the phone), I relate to this very strongly.
That's a rather sobering example that I think would apply to people who follow certain religions because of an abusive upbringing, or having fallen in with a very dangerous cult.
A less sobering example might be something I heard in a documentary once. A swordsmith was interviewed for the documentary "Secrets of the Viking Sword" about his craft. He said of why he does it, his words, "It's not that I can't do anything else, it's that I can't do anything else." I can relate to this sentiment as well; even though I grew up in an areligious household, with the only tangentially religious stuff around being some vague notion of "Heaven" as the place in the sky where people go after they die, a vague notion of angels which is what these dead people became, and a vague notion of "God", whose name was a bad word (not really, I completely misunderstood something my dad had said), but who was kind of the angels' "king".
Now, I didn't really focus on this "God", but did focus a lot on these angels, almost as if they were Gods themselves. Even though I was raised in an areligious household in hyper-monotheist America (with several churches in my hometown including a Catholic one that used to chime the hour more regularly), I was exhibiting what I recognize in hindsight to be polytheistic-like behavior(specifically of the ancestral-reverence form). Because of this, polytheism of some sort is actually more important to my identity than race, nationality, or gender, none of which I particularly care about. Sure, I could "choose" to not be polytheist anymore, but it would involve quite the psychological ordeal that would leave me too scarred to be worth it.
dust1n
Zindīq
And what human hasn't found themselves in this situation before? It happens.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Yeah. We are free to do this within reason. It can't be an attempt to initiate a violent response and it can't be harassment. But everyone is free from governmental intervention when expressing their opinion. I don't think that should change.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Further, mocking a system of beliefs is very different than mocking an individual.
If that is what you are mocking. Another thin line.
I suppose I'm not really against the mocking, I just wonder where the line is sometimes. We can say it is ok to a point but who gets to say what that point is. The person mocking or the person being mocked.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
"Mocking" has always been and will always be a part of life in human societies. There is no avoiding it. Violence is on such a different level of "wrongness" (even though we most likely agree that morality is subjective, I think we can all agree that violence is worse than mere words). Thus, it is the responsibility of every human being to control themselves and only use words to battle words. When someone uses violence and uses religious beliefs as an excuse, saying "mocking my beliefs is the same as hurting me physically" is nothing but a liar. They are not the same, and they will never be the same. We all have the responsibility to be reasonable. Muhammad, Jesus, God, Buddha, etc. don't need violent defense. The very idea that this would be true is utterly ludicrous. If they are what they claimed to be, they would, in fact, be the least of anyone's concern, as they could, presumably, watch their own back. No glory in trying to protect the indestructible, right?
This is a valid point. Painful, but valid. This is why Richard Dawkins has been saying that indoctrinating a child into a religion is such a bad idea. He says that there is no such thing as a "Christian child" or a "Muslim child", only children of Religion X parents.
So you made a conscious choice to pursue your religious path. Welcome to one of the benefits of a secular society, in many parts of the world you would not have been allowed such a choice.
Believe me, I know. While I've always had, and likely always will have, polytheistic-like behavior and thinking, I do have at least some personal agency over how that manifests. But that's the thing: the agency is personal. No government forces me to do this, or bans me from certain activities for it.
It's why I'm as much of a proponent of separation of church and state as any other secularist. I also have no intention of raising my children in the beliefs aspect of my religion, only the ritual and story aspects. Whether they believe it or not is up to them, and whether they continue with the rituals or engagement in the stories is, as well.
Depends on the individual. Some people identify with their beliefs so strongly that to mock their ideas is no different from mocking them personally. I know, because, I'm like that myself (though am in the process of separating them).
Nice distinction (beliefs / stories).
There are beliefs I hold firmly, and if those beliefs are mocked. it can be painful. But it would be quite arrogant (and dangerous), for me to make it against the law for you to criticize my beliefs.
Yes.
As someone who feels emotional pain almost more potently than physical pain, certain thoughts of having the law recognize mental and physical pain equally have crossed my mind. That is, since it's illegal to cause physical pain maliciously to other people, why shouldn't it also be illegal to maliciously cause the potentially equally damaging emotional equivalents? Because such laws are based on something significantly more subjective. While emotional pain can lead to physical damage from secondary effects such as stress-induced problems or depression leading to self-harm or suicide, it doesn't inherently cause any physical damage, and is significantly more subjective than physical pain. Such a law would be so easily exploitable that enforcing it effectively and fairly would be impossible.
Besides, there's other methods for dealing with emotional pain.