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On censorship (redux)

05.17.2022 by Tank Green //

I was thinking last night: when did censorship become a ‘good thing’? (I am obviously not talking about a ‘good thing’ from my perspective.) I am trying to remember: was it because of Trump?

So much of this time calls me to remember before. Before, when we used to explore difference. When it was okay for one of these things to not be like the others. When we all wanted to be free and to discover the limits of ourselves and the world; because that’s what art means, and all of us were, one way or another, artists. We all wanted to set ourselves free, to liberate ourselves through a newness and an embracing of the unknown.

In those days, we would celebrate the artists who had gone before us, those who had paved the way for a bigger world, a world a little bit freer from the conservatism of the past, freer from the oppressive conformity of middle class values. In those days, we would read Henry Miller or DH Lawrence or Hubert Selby Jr and marvel at the bigotry which censored them. We would try to understand why such explorations of humanity could be censored, puzzled, finding instead a liberation of self and grateful for that. In those days, those who had censored the likes of Aldous Huxley or James Baldwin or Simone de Beauvoir sat in the same dustbin of history as the Nazis who burned books. Censorship was a bad thing, something not to be encouraged. It was an injustice, a moral wrong, something to be resisted. It was to be derided because ‘we’ were open-minded and tolerant of difference and dissent.

Wasn’t it? Or was that just me?

[Read more…]

Categories // Thoughts Tags // censorship, literature

On post-covid redefinitions of truth

05.08.2022 by Tank Green //

I was thinking recently, how lucky I am that the only time I encounter covid related nonsense is online, for instance if I make an increasingly infrequent visit to a ‘news’ website. Whilst covid is very much real for those who remain vulnerable to it (since the drugs don’t actually work), for the rest of us in London at least, real world covid has long gone. Except, it hasn’t.

I am increasingly noticing an enhanced layer of censorship and surveillance in everyday life which was not there pre-covid. Worse, these organisations are attempting to redefine reality by insisting that the censorship and surveillance is something other than what it is. They try to couch it in terms of being good for me, of protecting me from some form of risk or harm. That might work on an idiot, but not me. My superpower is to see through to the truth of things.

[Read more…]

Categories // COVID-19, Thoughts Tags // censorship, surveillance

On scientism

11.10.2021 by Tank Green //

Recently I was disturbed to hear the following from a friend: ‘but they are scientists, they wouldn’t lie to us!’ Something about that statement rolled about my brain for days. I finally settled on the naivete of it: how someone could think that a scientist was somehow different from other human beings. As if scientists were above normal human impulses, free from the taint of greed, ambition, and power. Anyone who’s spent more than 5 minutes in academia knows how laughable such an idea is.

Science is a method performed by human beings. What is investigated and researched is decided upon by human beings. The direction any one field of science goes in is decided by human beings. What is excluded from scientific investigation is decided by human beings, as is what is included. All of that is to say, scientific fields are constructed and produced by human beings doing scientific research. As such, despite what politicians would have you believe, there is no The Science to follow. Science is not some sui generis category which exists freeform, pure, and above us. Science is constructed and produced by scientists doing research informed by their competing interests and beliefs.

[Read more…]

Categories // COVID-19, Thoughts Tags // censorship

On censorship

11.06.2021 by Tank Green //

Screenshot from my instagram account showing the hashtag for my cat has been censored

If this isn’t peak COVID madness, I don’t know what is. Instagram has censored the hashtag relating to pictures of one of my cats, Captain Woodpile, for breaking COVID-19 community guidelines (Sweet Liam remains COVID-secure at the time of writing). You could not make this level of madness up. It is glorious. I thank you for reporting me, whoever you were, for highlighting the extreme level of bonkers the world has come to.

It is even more hilarious as I have a very, very small following on Instagram as I only allow people I actually know to follow me. So it’s not like I’m poisoning the minds of the masses with my shocking photos of Captain Woodpile doing cat-related things. The person/people who reported me could have just unfollowed me (and some have, so perhaps it was their final fuck you).

Of course, I doubt it was Captain Woodpile that they were actually reporting (although who knows at this juncture, such is the madness), but more likely me and my re-posting of these blog entries onto my IG feed. So, let’s do a recap of my position in respect of COVID-19.

[Read more…]

Categories // COVID-19, Thoughts Tags // censorship

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