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Florida Book Bans Situation

October 06, 2023

In Florida Moms For Liberty together with the governor Ron DeSantis are fighting against the woke. Or as a different group of Moms pointed out, they are practicing fascism in a supposedly Free Country. The situation is hilarious!

For years there was a lot of complains by various people that the way the Woke culture operates is very similar to fascism. They shove ideas into people's heads with a total refusal to talk about it. They propose censorship laws all around the place. And so on and so forth.

On the other hand we see a situation which is flipped 180 degrees. The anti-woke are in favor of censorship now. And in the name of "Freedom" they take freedom away from people. Which is very funny!

There is a group calling themselves "Moms For Liberty" which is very much opposed to any discussion about sex and gender with children, and they managed with the help of Florida's governor Ron DeSantis, to introduce various laws that prohibit various forms of expression. Basically attacking freedom of speech. But in this case supposedly to promote Freedom.

I can see how this kind of logic might work. There is lot bad press about various mistakes various woke people do. We all know the memes of rage induced screaming people yelling for this or that woke idea. Then there is a lot of woke people that support various kinds of censorship and people like Jordan Peterson that fight those attempts at censorship which I applaud. Pointing out the importance of Freedom Of Speech in the process. Which makes the woke seem less and less related to the word Freedom. To the point that people who do not understand words too well, start to associate Freedom with anti-wokeness. Not even considering that there is an equal freedom of speech for woke to say whatever they want to say as well.

And then using banners and names displaying the word "Freedom" as large as they possibly can, people like DeSantis and the Moms For Liberty are fighting instead for control rather than freedom. They are fighting for anti-wokeness no matter if it means that in the process they also take the actual real freedom away from people.

And all of that leads to book bans that are currently happening in Florida. A state of a country that is built on the premise of Freedom.

The Cinema Theory

To understand how I feel about the whole situation, let me present you with a theory of what is going on and how I think we got here.

Roger Ebert, a famous film critic, once said:


Before movies were a thing, there were stories told on stage or in books. But not a lot of people could read. Not a lot of people read now a days. Not a lot of people would go to a theater. Especially since a theater has living actors in them which are not necessarily cheap. Also getting things across the world was way harder back then. With transportation and then telecommunication and internet everything became much simpler. People back then didn't speak too much with one another. Especially at distance. Also movies are way better at portraying emotions than a book. A movie is a visceral experience that with a good director could immerse the audience so well into the story that they feel inside of it.

When people with money figured out that movies are a good business model, roughly a hundred years ago. And a lot of people suddenly got a lot more stories told with ever more increasing pace. Also with telephone being invented and people slowly being connected to one another across distances. Sharing stories and empathizing with one another. Suddenly you could see a rise in various political movements that were questioning the status quo.

In the very early days of 20s century we got Communism and Nazism. Both of which tried to propose a Utopian regime and both of which failed miserably to establish one. Instead turning into dictatorial regimes. But an early attempts were to address various concerns of the public. It's just that the solutions grew quickly outside of the boundaries of logic.

Then when stories about those atrocities where spread around and empathized with various political movements were starting to emerge. First with something like the Orwellian Novels like 1984 and Animal Farm, which were direct criticisms of Nazism and Communism. But which were written in a timeless way, also to be cautionary tales.

Then there were all kind of human rights movements. As TV slowly started entering homes. And people were bombarded with various types of empathy inducing stuff from everywhere. Women rights, then gay rights started to emerge.

Slowly but surely people connected to the internet and now we are almost in a perpetual livestream of life. Everybody always shares things with everybody else. Everybody always empathizes. And people learn quickly about various problems that others have. And they want to help. And that's how the woke appeared.

Without proper understanding of either the history of the last hundred years, or due to complete ignorance the woke start bullying their way into what they see as justice. Fighting real fights for really good reasons. Since there are actual people that are really marginalized out there. But perhaps over-reacting. Fighting a bit too much. Trying to turn the whole thing in the new form of Nazism, almost.

On the other hand there are the silent disconnected people. People who dislike social media and who do not watch TV very often. People who has not a lot of interest in movies or stories in general. But people who see time and time again the uneducated over-reaction of woke. And how this might at times cross the line of what they call sanity. So they decide to fight back.

But perhaps either because they are also uneducated, or because they do not think about the larger picture, we get mindlessness as a result. A fight for a sake of a fight. A debate for the sake of a debate. No consensus emerge from it. Only polarization.

What the woke should to understand is that Freedom is what they are fighting for. And therefor anything reducing freedom is counter-productive. What the anti-woke should understand that Freedom is what they are fighting for. And therefor anything reducing freedom is counter-productive. And if you look at it that way. Both sides are fighting the same exact fight. But for some reason they go against each other.

Which wonderfully turns my attention to the elephant in the room... The name of the other Moms group.

Moms For Liberty vs Moms For Libros

I know, it was an intentional joke on their part. But how damn well this represents the point I'm trying to make here. Look how insane this whole situation is.

So for example. Moms For Liberty tried to ban certain topics from schools. Taking away Freedom Of Speech. To which there was a call to ban Moms For Liberty from platforms. Taking away their Freedom Of Speech. It's just perfect type of irony.

A lot of people might side with one ban or the other based on whether they are woke or anti-woke. I look at it and laugh. Because both are doing the same exact thing. And both are doing it for a goal opposite to their actions. One group tries to promote freedom by reducing freedom. The other wants to promote freedom by reducing freedom. But somehow they are opposite to one another. It's just beautiful.

It is funny even though both groups technically trying to achieve the same result, they fail to have a meaningful conversation. Some are outright refusing conversation with a person from a different group. But then thinking about it made me confused. How the hell the two groups do not recognize that they are doing the same thing?

I remember scrolling Mastodon one day. I am subscribed to a #freedom tag there. So I get various opinions on the subject from both ends of the spectrum. And one post somebody linked to was an article titled How Right-wing ‘Free Speech’ Sites Censor Legal Expression. I obviously wanted to know what their point was and I found an interesting observation.

Odysee, Rumble and many other places have no bans on anything violent in nature. But do have bans on stuff sexual in nature like pornography. And the article argues that it has to do with the fact that the websites are anti-woke, since a lot of woke, especially, LGBTQ+ messages are sexual in nature. Therefor they limit speech to a certain category of ideas by banning sexuality topics and porn.

This was very interesting to me since I signed up to LBRY for the fact that it was YouTube + PornHub in one place. If something like porn can normally coexist with just videos about other things, that means that people are truly free to discuss anything they want. But then Odysee happened and due to various pressures from various groups Odysee didn't show any porn. And now LBRY is nearly dead and there is only Odysee. A centralized website without actual free speech at all left. Therefor you can see me now in Tor. A place where even the most gruesome porn in available to anybody.

I remember earlier than that when I was a teen I was exposed to an idea that American sensibilities permit more violence, while seeing sex as more of a taboo subject. Unfortunately it was so long ago that I don't have a link to that. On the other hand European sensibilities view sexual expression as more normal than violence. Which is wonderfully demonstrated by the types of cinema both types of cultures do. American cinema is mostly glorified violence. And even romantic films are very tame with sex. Films like The Room are often criticized for having way too many sex scenes way too frequently.

While on the other hand European movies are more open about sexuality. Directors from Europe like Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn, French Luc Besson, Maïmouna Doucouré and Gaspar Noé, Italian Luca Guadagnino and many others are notorious for near pornographic ( if not entirely pornographic ) depictions of sex or explorations of sexual taboos in films like Nymphomaniac, The Neon Demon, Léon: The Professional, Cuties, Love and Call Me By Your Name to name a few.

It doesn't mean that European movies cannot have violence and it doesn't mean that American movies cannot have sex. It just I'm generalizing the attitude toward one or the other from the two sides. But it doesn't seem even that clear anymore.

Anti-woke, so called Right-Wing people while are opposing expressions of sexuality, are fighting against gun control and various censorship of hate and violence. While the woke or Left-Wing are more in favor of sexuality like with the LGBTQ+ community and less in favor of guns, hate and violence.

So perhaps the whole "woke indoctrination" fear is a manifestation of fear of foreignness. A fear that Europe will concur America. So to stay American you have to stay a guy with a gun. With the only expressions of sexuality to be more violent than loving. And keep those Europeans with their love in Europe.

I'm starting to understand those misunderstanding a bit more now. But it doesn't end there. Yesterday I was curious what various real people think about this whole book bans situation in Florida and I asked a few real hackers about it. Some of which are registered on this website. The discussion I got was interesting, because it lead us directly to...

Paternalism

Yes. If you read my articles, you know how much I like to say bad things about Paternalism. And yesterday a paternalistic discussion happened to me on the subject of book bans.

The nature of those book bans is not entirely uniform to every person. Which a lot of people might consider a not a problem at all then. Especially if they are themselves in the group who does not experience the book bans.

It's like living in Germany during World War II but not being Jewish. You might see the war as the problem. But not necessarily see anything bad with the government since you are not the one oppressed by it. On the same note, it's the same as being a white American during the slavery. You are not the one oppressed, so why bother? Right?

This same problem is present with the current book bans, because the implementation of it doesn't seem too terrible for an average adult person. The idea is simply to have age restrictions on certain types of material.

See how as soon as I mentioned this, you probably felt like it's not a big deal what so ever. That's because an adult nearly never feels any age restrictions. But if you only let your mind for a minute go back in time a little and try to empathize with the kids out-there. You might see a different story.

The article I mentioned in the intro to this article tells a story of a teenager called Iris Mogul. Who was trying to get a course to read about black people's history. But the state’s department of education told her:


So Iris Mogul got so pissed at this bullshit that she, as teenagers do, started an underground club dedicated specifically to banned books. I presume that with the help of their parents they get books into a little illegal library of sorts where other kids are welcome and encouraged to read anything that the government of Florida deemed inappropriate for them to read. I respect those kids! We need more like them!

When I brought this discussion into a chatroom the main consensus was that the law is not bad since kids should be protected from bad influences. In this kind of situation there is only 2 options for you. You can disagree with the fact that the influence is bad. Or you can disagree with the fact that kids should be protected from influences of any kind. And knowing that it is a question of Freedom Of Speech I chose the second route, arguing that any speech should be available to any human. To which I got more paternalism arguments.

You know the typical stuff: Kids are too dumb; They have no mental capacity to judge things for themselves. And so on and so forth...

And it struck me. The other side, the woke, when arguing for censorship argue for the same exact points. They operate a lot in teaching facilities imposing strict freedom of speech damaging "political correctness" rules in order to keep the youth from bad influence.

Both sides that supposedly fight for Freedom, undermine Freedom in the process, because of the stupidest, most annoying thing, Paternalism.

To give you a short briefing on Paternalism, because I don't expect nobody to click any of the links I linked. The idea is best presented like this:

Say there is a dude going right onto a bridge that you know for sure is about to collapse. But the dude doesn't stop. He doesn't show any apparent signs of knowing that the bridge will collapse. You yell at him, using your Freedom of Speech. Nothing. He still continues to walk up this bridge. The question is, can you stop him with force?

If you are a Paternalist you will say yes. But it will be against the person's Freedom. So any person that is truly fighting for Freedom will say no.

In this case the question might be something like: Is safety more important than freedom? But Paternalism is a bit more complicated and at times it might actually be paradoxical when what you trying to save the person from, for example, is a loss of Freedom.

You can think of something like a ban on Communist ideas as a form of governmental paternalism over the country. Where the rationale goes something like this: The country is Free now, and it has Free Speech, but if people will believe in Communism they might vote for a communist and there will no longer be Freedom or Free Speech. So we need to make an exception to the freedoms. But notice how this undermines Free Speech immediately because of a potential risk of Free Speech being undermined otherwise some unknown time in future, maybe. Even basic math in this case says that Paternalism is stupid.

Unfortunately the same logic is today applied by some countries to ban various ideas like holocaust denial. Which end up effecting the status of Free Speech in that country very strongly. And therefor being an act of governmental freedom suicide.

Fighting for freedom is not only fighting against tyranny, but also sometimes fighting against paternalism. Even if it might ultimately lead to some potential, theoretical terrible disaster as a result. As I already talked about it in an article about The Ultimate Paradox Of Freedom, Freedom is inherently unstable. True Freedom is nearly impossible to achieve. But there are a bit more stable states very close to true Freedom that are achievable. And one of those states is the Maximum Freedom - Minimum Power state. Which is a form of governance that exist only to maintain the stability of freedom. But without any paternalism added to the system.

So say a law could be implemented that Free Speech is a fundamental right that cannot be removed no matter how many people vote it to be removed. So even if a strong idea to remove Free Speech will emerge, it will fail to be legal to implement. And constitutional amendments in the United States are those kinds of laws. But it seems like they are failing miserably at the moment.

Unfortunately paternalism still manages to creep into the legal systems of many countries. For example, a crime of any kind should be able to be pardoned by the victim. Which means, for any crime there has to be a victim. In which case the victim is to choose whether the crime was bad enough to be punished or not.

A good example is a shop-lifter scene from Hot Fuzz. Where the policeman saw a person stealing from a supermarket and arrested that person, just for the supermarket's director to decide that he doesn't want to press charges against that person. And so the person is legally free to go. Another very good example is the way the copyright licenses function legally. In a weird twisted way, copyright insists that when you copy something the victim of your copying is the copyright holder. And therefor the copyright holder can pardon you, so to speak, and allow you to copy something.

In the case with the book bans, who is the victim? Well theoretically, if we would agree for a moment with the views of anti-woke, the victim is the child that will read the harmful text. Because who is harmed? The child. As much as a child is also a victim, when watching porn or drinking alcohol or anything like that. And then the criminal is either the book seller or the porn distributor or the person that might give that child alcohol. And so on. So if the legal system is Free, the child should be able to pardon that other person, making the book selling, or porn selling, or alcohol giving, legal. But the system is done in such a way that this is not the case. The child doesn't have the ability to pardon the criminal. And it's because the law has paternalism that sneaked into it.

So in order to have freedom to the maximum allowed level, you have to eliminate all paternalism out of it. Perhaps that is something both woke and anti-woke can focus on. And we can finally arrive at some consensus and stop this stupidity.

Happy Hacking!!!

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