Censorship is a huge problem right now. It has the potential to break down society, destroy creativity, and crush people's confidence. There's a major problem I see with the type of censorship going on in America today. It used to be that censorship protected us from obscene material. It was reserved for nudity, cursing, and obvious things that shouldn't be portrayed in public.
I believe that censorship has become more about shutting down opposing beliefs and opinions rather than protecting us.
What I mean by this is that censorship is being used to combat differing opinions automatically. We censor the media, our own beliefs, and society as whole so quickly because everything today is considered offensive. It's not that people are saying offensive things more often, but rather that people can't stand to listen to other beliefs anymore. We get so upset as a society when someone disagrees with us that it's seen as "offensive" to challenge an opinion.
Society is at fault here. As a country, we have allowed people to shut down other people's voices and prevent them from combating the popular opinion. Challenging popular opinion seems like a crime against society. In reality, it should be seen as a chance for friendly debate and the creation of new ideas and compromises.
So what does this new view of censorship do to our society? It creates a silence across the nation. A silence that affects every individual. We don't feel like we can say our thoughts or that it even matters if we do. We keep things to ourselves and let things that bother us build up and overtake us. Those who try to speak out get shut down, and therefore become examples for the rest of us. If no one can ever make a difference, eventually people will quit trying.
Why is this dangerous, you might ask?
The biggest reason is that popular opinion changes over time. It's not a stable set of values or attitudes that we can always rely on. When we allow society to censor itself, we don't pay attention to the changing needs of its members. Popular opinion might stick around for a long time before society as a whole accepts a new idea.
The prime example of this is slavery. Slavery was obviously wrong, and we had many voices trying to change it, but when Dred Scott appealed to the Supreme Court in 1857, they stuck to the popular opinion at the time, which was that African American's were not citizens and never would be.
Society ended up going to civil war over this and a lot of chaos followed that court decision. Sticking to popular opinion is not always the most effective way to handle an issue. Censorship of differing opinions allows society to blindly follow the current popular opinion until it's overtaken by a new one.
So the problem with censorship today is the way we use it. We are using it to get our way, rather than protecting us from harm. If someone disagrees with you, they aren't being offensive towards you. They are being honest and trying to have a debate with you. We need to learn how to talk about our issues with one another and quit pretending that censorship is necessary for all disagreements. It's better to talk about issues in the open and respect each other's opinions rather than shutting down one side completely.
