A Lethal Approbation

We earthlings evolved to survive hard times, lean times, years of drought, seasons of famine, persecutions of boils, depredations of locusts, inundations of frogs. And survive we did. We waddled right out of our salad days into a mire of trans fat, vascular calcification, and a big problem: surviving times of plenty. You see, we did not evolve to say no.

Yet there is hope. We excel at doing what we were not put on this earth to do, like flying. We head straight where we have no business being, like the moon. We focus on the forbidden. Toy with taboos. Trespass borders. Ransack mysteries. Defy limits. But exercise restraint? Show cautionary discretion? Have the prudence for once not to damn the torpedoes? Can we do that? It remains to be seen.

Our fatal stumbling block is that deep down inside we equate more with success. Our DNA tells us that. Although we have come to a point where we have an inkling that more is not only unnecessary, but greedy, unfair, immoral, lethal. We have been psycho-prepped long enough to suspect that it is an anachronistic feint to slay Laius. Again and again and again. And although we keeping trying, we know will never eradicate the barbarism we disdain, the superstition we scorn, the weakness we fear because they are pitted safely beyond reach deep down in our souls. But how our beings ache to lunge once more.

So what do censors have to do with any of this? Everything. All remarks about freedom aside, we work far better when someone sets the hurdles for us, and it is those stately functionaries who have done so, training our boundless ambition on increments we can manage. Here, SuperWit, jump over this. SuperWit jumps, sidelines censor, flexes, prowls for more. Next censor, next hurdle, same goad: Here, SuperWit, jump over this. SuperWit jumps, experiencing a release of tension that dismisses momentarily the cares of the whole universe. You see the advantage in this: a way forward limited to short sallies, gains we can countenance, territory we take in before we trample, the scope of our damage conscientiously circumscribed.

Still, those hurdles represent boundaries crossed, taboos absorbed and laughable to us afterwards: dirty words, Elvis’s mysterious pelvic undulations (TV watchers saw him from the waist up, forced to imagine the rest, which I don’t think anyone spent much time doing). Let us not make light of these milestones. They mark our progress from some stage of innocence to our current plight as jaded sensibilities. In that process, they became part of our culture and mentality and certainly nothing that would be censored today.

The laws of censorship reflect this concomitant process of our desensitization. Charged today with determining if something is obscene—one ground on which something is judged meat for censorship—courts are to consider contemporary community standards. That means taking in what Beyoncé unfailingly serves up to audiences every time she crashes onto the stage; just as elephants have only two gaits, that girl bumps and she grinds. Or Madonna, a staged whore seasoned at delivering borderline repugnancies with panache and strutting away the richer for it.

As masterful fate twists, so our organ for obscene consumption distends, and it is the censors who have accelerated the process: A ban rivets our attention like nothing else and as soon as it is lifted, yea, oft before, out we race to embrace the reprehensible damaging corrupting filthy indecent unspeakable whatever-it-is. Which, sadly, signals to industry in unmistakable semaphore where the next most lucrative market lies. Dutifully they retool to give us more of just exactly that until sales go down, indicating it doesn’t shock us anymore, we’ve outgrown it, absorbed it, distended sufficiently to be ready for the next outrage. And so we progress.

The judges who decide cases of censorship are not false to us. Discerning, focused, well-educated, and intelligent, they devote their attention to the disgusting object in question for the duration of the case. (We can only hope no corruptive seepage passes into their sterling characters from the protracted examination awarded the disgusting object, but judgeship is a treacherous occupation.)

Surely, these experts in justice aren’t going to raise a national stink about reading James Joyce’s Ulysses based on the dirty words that might be in it? You better believe it. The imagination flares. Contains narrations of acts too seductive not to impede everyday business, does it? Talk of unavoidable, ineluctable, erotic encounters that leave us no recourse but to yield yield yield? Eloquent descriptions of genitalia pressed between the pages? No. They did not ban the book. But the fact that they considered banning it was sufficient. Out we issued with uncommon alacrity to get ourselves a copy as soon as it was too late, that is to say, only after the courts pronounced the book too obscure to be pornographic, which meant, in their judgment, it could not be obscene. Which indeed proved to be the case. We read with eyes peeled until we realized that, not only had we lost the thread, we had never really picked it up. We had no idea what might have been considered obscene about it. We had no idea whatsoever what it was about; the guy’s name wasn’t even Ulysses. But there had been a fuss, that much we knew, and we had been part of it; yes, part of Joyce’s flotsam and jetsam; held aloft in great suspense on a fresh current of the new modern; elements in an atmosphere that absorbed the work of yet another genius; and it was exhilarating to be a part of it all. Which only prepared the menu for something more piquant: Elvis’s pelvis, which we also survived and absorbed, which prepared us for new challenges: Madonna, Beyoncé, and (gulp) Justin Bieber.

Perhaps the censors have wearied. The hurdles aren’t coming so often, or at all, it seems. Maybe there are fewer things to forbid because, basically—that is to say, we can only assume—we’ve seen it all? For example, look what’s happened. Justin Bieber. A guy who dances with his pants down. Why doesn’t somebody (please) ban that? Because no one will, he’s drag racing in Florida and will soon, if he hasn’t already, have himself lowered into shark-infested waters in a shark-proof cage to lure fans into watching that. Who can blame him? The competition to best, after all, is the bump-and-grind lady. They’re all only racing in the direction of the screams, which will lure them to their deaths if the censors do not finally show mercy. The censors could at least have pity on the weary, mysteriously captive audiences.

Yeah. Dirty books, skin flicks, sleazy performers. Vile things to expose to a salacious, omnivorous public. The public knows it. The public shoots it up. They’re allowed to. Just the thing to keep attention away from the wizard’s curtain behind which are objects of grave public danger.

Turn your attention, if you would, to Julian Assange, the man who wanted to make state policy completely transparent, whether it’s his state or not. (Assange, an Australian, was intent on making U.S. policy transparent to all; assiduous boy.) Deep waters stirred when he released U.S. diplomatic cables, a sliver of which (the estimate is 6%) was listed as “Secret.” Surface waters fizzed as well. The little fishes knew what this one was about; no searching through hundreds of pages of text to find the dirty words. But this one smarted. The minnows sensed danger. Ultra-savvy Assange had no shark-proof cage and got swallowed up very, very adroitly. Hamstrung by rape charges. Promptly. Holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London ever since. A stellar presence blotted out.

If no wiser about the morality and skeptical of the efficacy of censorship, we were at least made aware that the agents of censorship had ascended to loftier chambers. Just beyond view. Somewhere in the choir loft. Behind the organ. Perhaps in the belfry. And we wading the half-shadows below had snuffed danger. We pondered the issues. Should national secrets be censored, published, or treated—as previously and most effective of all—as if they didn’t exist? What kind of national secrets? That’s a hitch—we’re already asking for more than we’re cleared to know. Let us turn to renegade Edward Snowden, who curiously gained right of asylum in archenemy land and, most uncharitably, for many long, tense months, nowhere else. Snowden revealed that the top secret was We the People; the data being gathered was all about us.

At this point, we in the shadows must consider what we already know about our nature: as noted above, we go where no earthling has gone before, that is to say, where we have no business being, that is to say, we snoop—or enough of us snoop for us not to be able to say we don’t. Consider another point: Would anyone who snoops stop the moment he felt he found out something maybe he shouldn’t know and ask the person he was snooping on for his opinion? He’d have to admit he was snooping, yes, then carefully explain it was for the person’s own good, a good that person could not be made aware of because, well, it would mess everything up, and also because nothing specific had loomed just yet as a concrete threat to protect that person from, which was why the snooper was trawling, collecting all he could get on what the person said and emailed and purchased and divulged electronically, because who knows what could be of use later on? Which is to say, We the People were being monitored. Why do you monitor someone? Because they might do something unsavory. Unsavory in whose eyes? Unsavory in the eyes of whoever possesses that very valuable trove of data. And forget not, like stem cells, data is infinitely malleable; it can be used to make out anything whatsoever as pretty unsavory.

Censorship does have a positive effect. Like a slap in the face. It wakes us up. Quickens the senses. Whets the appetite. Revs us up like preteens who can’t wait to get their hands on that mildly racy comic book. But we are not preteens. We are treated as one enormous, powerful, mature, immensely wealthy organism. And an equally enormous high-tech carapace is being lowered ever so slowly onto us. A custom fit. It will not pinch. It will be flexible. We will have full freedom of movement. We will not know it’s there. We will not know we serve as locomotion. We will not know it is taking us somewhere. We will not know a captain bestrides that shell, so we will never ask who the captain is. That is consummate censorship.

Maybe our captain is called Facebook. Maybe Real-Time Marketing. Maybe MobileMe. More likely, our captain will have as many forms and names as we peck at. I like CyberSynergy. Rest assured, our captain will have only one name for us: TurtleSoup.