State of CI: Woo guys I'm in Baltimore at orientation! This post is posting itself! Creeeeepy.
I've talked on here before (June 9: "God & Guns & Gays, oh my") about ideologies people think are conflicting that have really nothing to do with each other, but what about the ones that truly do? This essay really doesn't have a thesis like my others, but instead is a discussion of some things lately that have made me struggle, torn between two strongly-held convictions. Here, some examples and explanations of why I feel the way I do, and an invitation to all of you to weigh in.
Here is a New York Times article on "thinspiration" materials online - videos and other web content encouraging anorexic behaviors, referred to by supporters as "pro-ana lifestyles". The article mentions that France is considering criminalizing the creation and posting of these materials.
This article discusses new laws that would criminalize "cyber-bullying" like the kind that led thirteen year old Megan Meiers to take her own life.
I'm a writer, and I love words more than anything. I value freedom and I'm familiar enough with history to know that then the government starts trying to prevent certain types of expression or speech, that it's a very very bad sign. So I feel like I should be ardently against these laws, which essentially limit free speech. Should we be held responsible for another person's actions if they could be linked to things we say? What about the claim that the man who shot John Lennon linked his crime to The Catcher In The Rye? Does CSI teach criminals to evade investigators the same way thinspiration teaches girls to be self-destructive? If a man is standing on a rooftop because his girlfriend dumped him and someone else yells "jump, loser!", are the yeller or the girlfriend criminally responsible for his death if he does jump?
But it's not that simple. I've been in situations dealing with someone who is dangerously self-destructive, and I know how terrifyingly, desperately helpless it is. From that perspective, anyone who can get to them before you has the power, and they either become the villain (as in the creators of the videos) or the hero (for example, those executing something like a 5150, which for the record I'm less conflicted about - they suck). When someone you love is in danger, it's easy to agree with the suppression of certain liberties. This is how oppressive governments rise to power so easily - instilling in the population fear of an enemy that's worse than the government. Giving up freedom for security is very often an easy choice.
I've also been the victim of bullying, and it feels beautifully just to see that other people want to make sure that bullies pay for the damage they do. What those people did is so obviously and clearly wrong that it's easy to make the leap to believing that it should be legally punishable, without really considering the sociopolitical ramifications.
As a self-defined smartsy intellectual radical, I feel like a total sell-out by feeling so ambivalent about these laws. From a purely intellectual standpoint, I'm opposed to them all, but emotionally, I don't know. Criminalizing thinspiration and cyberbullying will offer peace of mind and some sort of protection for certain people and/or those who love them; and no amount of ethos and logos can overshadow the pathos of that argument, especially for me.
Then there are these ads, which make my head spin - I despise guns, but I'm also a tiny female terrified of getting pushed around (or worse). I'm getting whiplash from the viewpoints in direct opposition to my own appealing to emotions very familiar to me.
So what do you all think? Should I have exploded by now as a result of these internal contradictions? How big of a role should emotionally charged fear play in these decisions as opposed to rational thought? How fair is it to appeal to emotion when trying to gain support for legislation? How legal should it be to encourage someone else to engage in dangerous activities? Should everything that is wrong be illegal? Where is the line between freedom of expression and criminality? How slippery is this slope and does that matter?
(One of you should recognize the majority of this discussion. And because I promised, this post now contains the words "cute" and "smart".)
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3 comments:
This is what I did my extended essay on, basically. I argued that, at no cost, should liberty be sacrificed for the sake of security and that when liberty is sacrificed, so then is security. The arguement there was that the second loss of security is the security that the government will not control our lives and begin to oppress or abuse us. The first, of course, is the security that the government will protect us from something worse. It is difficult, I think, to assess the question reasonably, having grown up where we did, in the American West. We are taught to value individuality and personal freedoms, and more influentially, that the loss of these is the equivalent to losing anything good or valuable in life, that a life controlled by an authority is a life not worth living. So many of the questions on, say, liberty vs. security, hinge on the value and importance of liberty. Some would argue, of course, that if you can be home with your family, love them, and live marginally from day-to-day, then the personal freedoms are unnecessary. (But then, of course, that government control, is a slippery slope). And if they are universally correct, then it would be necessary that the government protect us from cyberbullies and our neighbor's poison-ivy plant that we probably shouldn't have touched anyway. Then, of course, there's the whole issue of personal responsibility, but I'm done rambling for now. My point is: I HAVE NO IDEA EITHER.
i'm basing this as a continuation from the1calledblunt's comment.
it looks to me like you're stuck in the tug-of-war between libertarianism and socialism, thought at its minute-ist (it is now a word, thank you) degree.
i can't really decide for myself, but what i can say is that it's good that you're actually using your precious grey (and white! thanks biology) matter to think through these issues rather than automatically siding with one and condemning the other. that it's not all a dichotomous issue.
i realize this is not relevant, but i tend to do that in most comments.
much love.
This may not be anything new, but I'll say it anyway:
I think that when we take a Christian perspective on this we realize that what God wants us to do in any one situation under any certain circumstances isn't anything that can be dictated by a law or hardfast rule. But looking at the state of humanity, we're not really up for anarchy.
The question (one question) is this: what is more important - liberty or security? It's very, very difficult to remove our American (or anti-American) biases, but I do think that there's something in the fact that the philosophes in Europe came to a certain conclusion, and that, as people, we really like to have our freedoms. But also, I can't help but wonder: there's not much point in having freedom if we do not have safety, true? If we are not alive, we will not care much if we have the right to free speech. So if survival is contingent upon safety before it is contingent upon freedom (because this point can also be argued, that in order to survive we also need our freedoms, for the sake of happiness and well-being and such, which are great factors in survival), then shouldn't safety be favored? But it can be argued that a lack of safety doesn't, actually, rob freedoms of their value, or us of our ability to appreciate their value - quite the opposite, perhaps, if freedoms allow us to fight for our securities. And then there's the mite the1calledblunt posed - some consider a life without liberties not worth living.
To me, this ties into the free will argument. Being a Christian, we have free will. But also kind of don't, if you look at it a certain way. Or at least we choose to live our lives specifically the way God wants us to. (I think we've discussed this both in TOK and over a blog post before so I won't go into it.) What is the human value for freedom and for security when there is a life after death? When the control of God in our lives becomes more and more our only salvation? Etc.
And then, of course, come all the problems with the slippery slope and the fact that we suck both at giving people freedom and at giving people security.
In other words, I don't know.
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