03/10/03

Unwholesome Language

Hi Harry

Have recently discovered your website, I find it spirited, full of great stuff and much needed. Just try to cut down on the bad language a bit, not necessary, but your heart and brain are in the right place. More power to your keyboard, mate.

Do you have any comment on the recent suggestions I have been reading in our dismal national press about finding a way to "gag" or otherwise emasculate internet chat rooms? The intent is, as always, ostensibly very honourable - in this case to protect footballers from wild speculation that they might be the infamous "room 316" rapists - oops, sorry, accused - you are right, it is so easy to fall into the linguistic traps set for us - but is there not a more sinister implication? 

What will happen if and when our great all-knowing and infallible masters find a way to control the web? Curtains for you and me, Harry?

Hi J

Thank you for those encouraging words.

I have posted the links to articles about the footballers accused of rape in the Crime and Mayhem section. And one of them makes mention of the fact that the police are trying to remove websites that mention their names in order to keep them anonymous.

However, as you probably know, I am against all anonymity for such cases. 

My view is that, in the long run, the entire country and the protagonists themselves will be better served if there is no anonymity.

One of the problems, of course, is that people not involved in these sex-assault cases can be stirred up to act violently or antagonistically toward some of the individuals who were allegedly involved, e.g. beating up or killing alleged paedophiles or alleged rapists. And there are plenty of knuckleheaded Neanderthals who live among us who do this sort of thing.

My hope is that such morons will gradually be disempowered through the spread of information e.g. CCTV, GSP, and through interventions and/or arrests following criminal behaviours at an earlier age etc. 

And, of course, sexual assaults by strangers are far less likely to occur if information is more accessible.

For example, as I wrote in another piece ... 

Imagine that by the year 2010, everyone is hooked up to a 'central' bank of information and that they can download a wad of 'appropriate' information about whomsoever they like. 

You're sitting on the train and you ask your little hand-held device, "Who is this person sitting next to me?"

And, by pinpointing your location, it tells you!

It tells you who he is. It lets you see his bank account. It gives you his medical history. In fact, it tells you just about everything about him.

What would it matter?

What has he got to fear from you?

After all, you are being monitored, and have been 'catalogued', just as much as him!

What harmful mischief could you possibly get up to without being caught?

And so, all in all, I'm very keen for us to follow the pathways that lead to the spread of more information and towards methods for dealing effectively with the problems that would undoubtedly arise from doing so.

As for our masters finding a way to control the web, well, my belief (or rather, my hope) is that they won't succeed in controlling it. For example ...

1. There is always some way in which one's views can push against the boundaries (e.g. see Canadian Feminists Getting Worried.).

2. My biggest fear is that certain powers effectively close down the internet - perhaps through spreading computer viruses of some kind, and by blaming this on terrorists of some kind. But my hope here is that those men-who-sit-at-screens who are computer folk and who are not government controlled will be ahead of any such games.

3. Politically speaking I think that it would be impossible to close down the internet because this is where the most active of activists actually live. And, by the word 'activists', I include, for example, all those who work for political parties, other political activists, writers, journalists, scientists, poets, educationalists - the list is huge.

These are very powerful folk!

(Especially when they are sitting at screens.)

4. It is actually in the interests of most of 'the powerful' for information to spread e.g. think about Bush's desire to have a TV satellite system with a westernised viewpoint set up for the Middle East in order to placate the angry people out there.

Indeed, the powerful actually have much to gain from the spreading of information - except, perhaps, power. But there are plenty of other things in life worth having apart from a great deal of power. For example, even politicians do not want to be disliked by the ordinary people who live around them - for obvious reasons. And it is increasingly becoming very much in their own interests to listen more closely to the complaints of the people whom they live among. After all, these politicians might be powerful and, mostly, self-serving, but they are definitely not stupid! And so, in summary, so many people - and so many types of people - stand to gain considerably from the spread of information that I think that they can easily be persuaded to fight actively for it.

With regard to my use of unwholesome language on occasion, yes indeed, it is not 'necessary'. But then, nothing on this website is 'necessary'. The entire website is not 'necessary'.

So. Why do I use unwholesome language on occasion?

Hmm. Let me think.

Aha.

1. I feel like it.

2. It sometimes helps me to get things off my chest. You know, expressing my feelings - and that kind of stuff.

3. I am fed up with being told what I can and cannot say - as are many white heterosexual males these days - and it helps to alleviate my stress over it; e.g. over political correctness.

4. It let's people out there know that I am quite happy to be extremely impolite when it comes to some of the issues that concern me. 

When it comes to a battle of words, therefore, they take me on at their peril. 

Well, at least, that's how I would like them to feel.

5. It tends to keep readers who are offended by such things away from the website and, hence, out of my hair and out of my brain.

6. It often gives a truer impression of what is going on inside my head i.e. it provides more valid information.

7. It often saves me from having to come up with other words and phrases - especially when I am tired; i.e. it reduces my workload.

8. It often allows me to express a deep anger over certain issues that I feel is fully justified and which I really hope others will also feel. Perhaps they might think, my goodness, he's extremely angry. Why? 

For example, I'm not quite sure how else to describe those selfish, self-serving sh*ts in government who deprive those terminally-ill patients in pain access to marijuana. I just don't know what other kinds of words to use - except ones that are even more foul.

I'm not fu*king Shakespeare!

LOL

Between 1985 and 1990 my sister slowly died from cancer. Much of this time she spent in some kind of distress, both physical and mental, which I have no intention of describing. 

I don't know whether marijuana would have had any major beneficial therapeutic value for her. I'm almost too scared to think about it.

But I know this.

If I had known at the time that it would - or might - have been of benefit to her, and someone had tried to prevent me from giving her the stuff, well, who knows to what lengths exactly I would have gone in order to change their point of view.

But, Considerable, and With Extreme Prejudice, is probably the closest answer that I can give you.

9. I often want people (such as the selfish sh*ts above) to know how I feel about them and how disgusted I am with them, and I want them to know that this is the kind of language that I think they deserve and that others may well start to use against them. In fact, there is no language foul enough to describe how I feel about those who deny patients marijuana. 

In fact, I'd like to see them in prison. In many ways, I see them as being no different from cold sadistic mass murderers of the very worst kind. And so I have no intention of ever being polite about them.

And I just cannot understand how these people actually get away with it. How is it that they are not torn limb from limb? Are ordinary people nowadays so scared of the authorities that they allow them to prevent their seriously sick loved ones from getting help without themselves creating a storm?

What the Hell is going on?

Let's just ponder this for a moment.

There are some politicians and law enforcement officers who have the audacity to prevent, by force, and by threats of imprisonment, people from alleviating the serious suffering of others.

Why?

On what grounds?

How can they possibly justify what they are doing?

Whom on earth do they think they are?

What kind of lowlife scum must these people be?

And these are the type of people whom we ALLOW To have the most power over us?

Are we insane!?

These scumbags are just propping up the handsome incomes of various politicians and their various friends in business through keeping the drugs war alive.

And I reckon that many if not most of them know it.

This is nothing but a large organised crime racket that feeds off the misery it willfully imposes on others.

Well. I just cannot be polite about such people. Not only do I detest them, but I want to see them booted out of their jobs and in some deep trouble.

(Also see The Evils of Cannabis.)

10. Hostile negative sentiments mostly have a greater - and longer term - impact on those who are the targets of them than does polite intellectual reasoning e.g. see Respected Academics

11. Those in power are, like the rest of us, far more alert to sources of hostile negative sentiments about them than they are to positive or neutral ones. 

12. When you attack powerful bodies it is often best that they quickly recognise the force with which you intend to state your case. It can save a lot of tooing and frowing and unnecessary aggravation.

You just put your cards on the table..

Indeed, somewhere on this webpage, I intend to post up a piece wherein I suggest that the top police officer in the UK is, in some sense, corrupt. And, needless to say, one has to be particularly careful when doing such things!

And I think that it is worthwhile - both from my own point of view and from that of those about whom I am complaining  - for such people to see very clearly that I am too angry with them to be hushed up into silence by them; and that I am likely to make a fuss about them wherever I go.

As such, leaving me alone, ignoring me and/or monitoring my activities are almost certainly their best, and most likely, courses of action.

But my real hope is that they will also change whatever they are doing that upsets me so. For example, the Police Commissioner might turn round to the Home Secretary and say, That's it! No longer am I playing politics. No longer am I going to deceive the people over the number of rapes etc.

No longer am I going to LIE!

And if he doesn't do this sort of thing, then that is up to him.

And so, in summary, while I can see that my occasional use of foul language is 'unnecessary' from your point of view. ...

From my point of view, it can serve a number of quite valuable purposes!

Finally, I suppose that it is worth pointing out that I don't really feel that I have any choice - at least, not while I continue to live in this country. I can barely listen to the news without yelling at my missus every five minutes. 

"Did you hear that!? Did you hear what that evil witch said? What is wrong with these people? I can't take it any longer! I am going to die if I have to listen to any more of this rubbish! And do you remember that sexist advert last week? The one that ... "

I can barely engage with the outside world without being agitated in some way. If I go the cinema, I'll have an emotionally-inflammatory domestic violence or child abuse advert stuck in my face designed to portray all men as violent and abusive. If I open the newspapers I'll see how boys are further slipping behind girls in their education. If I watch the TV I'll see myself portrayed as a wife beater, a pervert, a parasite, or whatever. If I listen to the politicians I will hear that they want to take away more of my money in taxes, that they are employing more feminist policies to discriminate against me, that they are corrupting the justice system even further against me, that my body does not belong to me, or that my democratic rights are being sold to the European Union.

And I could go on!

And now I also see that we have the strong likelihood of terrorist-created viruses on the horizon together with other such catastrophic delights.

As such, I think that my language is pretty mild considering the horrible circumstances that I appear to be encountering on a daily basis.

LOL!

Best wishes

Harry