Art vs Obscenity-- When is Censorhip valid?

today i took a good dump and i called it art.

then i read a book. and realized... it wasn't art... it was just a good dump.

Wayfinder as one of your oldest friends I mean no disrespect when I disagree with you. What you describe is fantasy art and harms no one if they choose not to look at it. It is not in the same class as Nazi iconography which is not fantasy but something that really happened and serves no purpose but to spread hate and pain.

Next time, defecate on a canvas - then it's art.

I've always tried to keep it simple: your freedom should extend as far as you want until it infringes upon the freedom of another. Thus, why free speech does not extend to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are gobshites who enjoy being virtually anonymous and infringing on the rights of others.

Regards,

-Flip

Who is now?
What is art?

Your statements presuppose that someone already mediates what is and isn't art and that "art" is actually something more concrete than a connotation.

Agreed Susie, and no disrespect taken or returned.

I understand the point that you and Juro make about the difference between actions/ fantasy. And your point about a piece of fantasy art vs Nazi iconography is valid. Of course, there are some who would disagree with both of us about that. They would feel that it's totally ok to put up Nazi swaztika's all over SL; it's freedom of speech and expression. You and I (and Linden Lab, surprisingly) disagree with that, but that's what they'd claim. And as we saw in the thread regarding Naziism... that's what several people did claim.

They fail to see the potential danger in keeping certain ideas alive, in promoting a concept based on hatred. They think it harms no one. They do not see or understand the wrong.

It is possible to "harm" people without ever touching them. There are thousands and thousands of cases of trauma caused by a brief mental image-- trauma that can subconsciously last for years. One prominent school of thought states that the subconscious does not discern between fantasy and reality. It just processes whatever enters the senses (thus the basis of nightmares). There is also a heavily supported theory that states nothing that enters our minds is ever lost; it remains there somewhere. A series of related items can form a psychological pattern.

Fantasy or not, a small fairy or a small child, the subconscious has difficulty differentiating. A scene such as a depiction of a bloody, violent, murderous rape can cause psychological damage... whether people want to admit that or not. They claim "I'm an adult. I can handle it." Then months later wonder why they wake up sweating after a nightmare of a child rape, and wonder where that came from. There have been volumes written on the effects of the environment on personality and character. As a poet stated, "As a man thinks... so is he."

What we feed our minds determines our thoughts. Thoughts form our desires which in turn forms our character-- who we are. These are the basic structures of psychology. And whether people want to believe it or not, it is a proven fact that one single image that shocks the psyche can leave a mental scar that can last for days, months, years or even a lifetime.

I never inferred the person who posted that piece is a child molestor or anything else. Two different paragraphs, and the child molestor point was just that-- an illustration to drive the point home . The concept is this: if someone doesn't draw the line at such a blatantly obscene and objectionable thing... why should we expect that any other line would be drawn?

Any psychologists out there who want to comment on the significant correlation between abberrant sadistic pornography and the incurrence of sexual predation and pedophillia?

These concepts are not unknown. I merely pointed out that there's a very thin line between certain activities, and that thin line is well documented. One of the outward signs of crossing that line (or getting ready to) is seeking public approval of internal thoughts. Thus the danger in such a piece of "artwork". Whoever originally produced that piece of art imho, is one sick individual. And I'd be very leery of anyone who thought it enjoyable enough to reproduce and post it.

In the field of abnormal childhood development, one of the most telltale signs doctors use to detect psychosis is the youth's preference in artwork and the subject matter / way he draws.

So yes, while one thing is an action (the cat killer) and the other a "fantasy"... just a piece of "artwork"... what some fail to realize is that putting that work up on a wall is an action. Admitted, it may not have broken any laws and it may not be considered by most to be criminal. But to totally deny any possible danger is to deny the reality of history. Maybe that's why this piece upset me.

If someone is of a mental disposition that they think such a piece of "art" is funny, or more, that it's worth posting on a gallery wall in Second Life, it shows a failure of a certain area of the conscience-- the part that is supposed to discern what is acceptable and not acceptable by common standards of society. That area having failed... this person frankly cannot be considered "safe". The existing evidence becomes a warning flag.

But this post isn't so much about that person, abberrant behavior or the right/wrong of that particular work. It's not about censorship or anything related. It's not really even about LL banning such an obscenity. It has to do with our right-- and even responsibility-- as individuals to speak out against that which we find to be blatantly offensive or potentially harmful. That is freedom of speech.

Wayfinder you are smarter than I thought. Do you know that I am a MSW having worked with victims of child abuse and fully qualified to talk about the subject? Will wonders never cease.

To try to answer your concern there is no evidence to support the idea that violent pornography causes deviant behavior. It is kind of like the chicken and the egg though. What came first? The violence or the pornography?

It really doesn't matter. When a person is born, or raised in a way to cause this, the personality disorders they develop are out of whack with commonly expected norms of human behavior and viewing those kinds of images in SL or elsewhere will not change them one way or another.

Sorry if I didn't answer anything but that is how Social Workers are.

Censorship is never right -- ever in my mind, no matter how extreme.

Only exploitative or hate-speech materials should be considered for removal or banning IMO. Those rules are well defined and backed by a long history of law.

No matter how graphic, there is an audience for it. If it offends your taste, change the channel, don't look, or listen, and just go on your way.

LOL oboy. A factual debate.

Actually, no. I respect what you've said above and hopefully understand the basis of your statements.

I admit that for years it has been presented that there is no correlation between pornography and deviant behavior... just as psychologists for years claimed television had no effect on the development and activity of children. Those claims are now being debunked and a whole new field of evidence is coming to light. The trouble is that television and readily-available pornography are a relatively new developments-- not even 50 years old. It also must be realized that the first 20-30 years of widely-available television were relatively mild compared to what is available today. The same holds true for pornography; until the advent of the video tape, graphic and violent pornography was both difficult to obtain and held a severe social stigma. The VCR, DVD and Internet have changed all that. And the internet is very, very new (only about 10 years old in mass-market use).

It takes some time for clinical data to be collected and correlated. The new studies that are coming out after 20, 30, 40 years of data collection are startling.

There are people who are born with personality disorders. Some can be clinically treated and even cured. Others not. That doesn't mean that all personality disorders are inherited. I go with the school of thought that the majority of personality disorders are environmentally triggered, regardless of origin... ie, people are influenced by their environment and the influence of people around them more than they are influenced by their genetic heritage.

As time progresses, we become more intelligent in our science (in many areas LOL). I still get a chuckle out of the almost two decades of claims that eggs were "bad bad bad" because they contain colesterol. So people stopped eating eggs. Then after about 15 years of studies they discovered that those who didn't eat eggs statistically had higher collesterol than those who did eat eggs. Why, they wondered? That's when they discovered the difference between LDL and HDL colesterol... and years of claims and studies about how bad eggs were-- went down the tubes.

The human brain is literally physically formed by stimulus of the environment. As we grow up, what is fed into our minds physically becomes hard-wired. A biologist can verify that simple fact. So I am a firm believer (despite the numerous crowd who would disagree) that quite literally... what we feed our minds very much has to do with who and what we become. To be honest, I never have understood why people believe that to be an incorrect concept.

The only thing I can figure is that people as a whole tend to believe what "scientists" say (what a broad term that is, scientists)... and historically, the incorrect studies are released before the correct studies come along correcting the errors. By that time, people's minds are already made up and they find it harder to accept the revised and correct findings.

I read just a month ago about one study in which two study groups of children were allowed to watch TV for 30 minutes and then observed at play. One group watched Sesame Street... the other the Three Stooges. Care to guess which group exhibited violent, aggresive behavior?

What a shock that egg thing was to the health experts. New studies are being released all the time.


[edit: I re-read this post and realized it wasn't a month ago I read this; it was more like 5-6 months ago. Man, SL really messes with my sense of passing time. LOL)

I'm impressed with that spin.

And, I agree with that statement 100% I also agree that it is our right - and even responsibility - to speak out for the rights of the creator whose work might be viewed as offensive to some.

You'll have no argument from me on that one.

A lot of what you say has merit to your argument, but then you say you can't understand why people don't believe everything you just said -- when the whole basis was that truth is only as real as the evidence to support it.

Therefore, should we not presume to know anything? And in such a school of thought, is it impossible to believe that perhaps there are people who don't believe your arguments that may actually be right? It could also very well be that no one is right.

I for one, never have believed for an instant that we are formed by our environments -- as such a broad statement would have had me leave home at an early age and in and out of jail while working one dead-end job or another... but I didn't. Whereas someone else in the same situation and environment could have!

You also say it's "what we feed our minds," which to me is much different than our environments. This might have more truth -- more evidence -- to support it as it involves a key part of the human equation... choice. Rationality. Decision. Thought.

Most people choose television. A lot of people who choose it, were likely raised on it -- but their previous environments did not make it a dependence. They do. Same with any addiction on earth as far as I know -- you can choose to stop.

... so in the end, I don't think that graphic or extreme pornographic fantasies are the result of being weened on a poisoned and corrupt culture. I think there are people who choose to see these things, find themselves stimulated by them in some way (maybe not even in a sexual way), and choose to see more of them. If they haven't harmed anyone in doing so -- why must they be censored and told they are wrong?

And what happens when, due to the failure or refusal of individuals to stand up and speak out... that offensive material becomes so widespread that it becomes virtually impossible to get away from it? What if it becomes so predominant that it begins to affect the very manner in which society as a whole functions. Just because people felt as you do above-- rather than speaking out, all we need do is avert our eyes.

A well-known statement: "The only thing evil requires to conquer is for good to sit back and do nothing." (or something like that, anyway).

Yeah Way this is a first for these forums and let's keep it that way. You beat me to the punch. I was trying to post edit my post but you caught me. Personality disorders are most commonly thought to be a combination of a lack of parental nurturing and the use of physical discipline (spanking). Show me a deviant person who wasn't liberally spanked as a child and I will present to you the winners on the 2006 Superbowl- the Seattle Seahawks!

Televison, Second Life, dirty magazines etc have nothing to do with it.

'Deviant person' ?

Why does that sound absolutely horrifying?

Is this a discussion on conformity or censorship? Are they both inextricably linked now?

Censor what you cannot conform?

Actually, that wasn't what I said. What I said is that I have never understood why people refuse to believe what we take into our mind is what we become. To me, that's just kind of a tremendously obvious concept, one of those "duh" things. That some professionals in the field disagree with that to me, is akin to people ignoring something right in front of their eyes.



In such areas, it is important to guard against the tendency to apply a generalized statement to every individual without exception. I did not state that genetics have nothing to do with who we become. Genetics can play a very big part. There are other things that also can play a very big part-- such as a "crossroad event"-- a major thing that happens in the life of an individual to change him forever... but which never happened to his brother or sister, never influenced them, so their outcomes are totally different.

However, the fact that environment plays a major part in individuals is evidenced even among those who believe it is not. It is broadly accepted in the field of psychology that a person's predominant personality traits are pretty much established by the time they are five years old. To argue that this is strictly genetic would likely be tunnel-visioned, for if that were the case, why not formed by the time they are two years old? Three? The evidence that environment plays a major role is heavily supported by case studies. A child who is mistreated at an early age can actually be mentally handicapped and developmentally retarded because of that environmental influence, as is evidenced in the case of ARD children (authority resistance disorder).



They can indeed stop, should they so choose. The question is, does their already developing mental pattern encourage them to do so. If no one speaks out against abberrant behavior, would a person have a reason to stop?




Because if something is wrong, it should be presented as such. And who is to say they aren't harming anyone? A malfunctioning steam kettle harms no one until it blows.

I know that's a moral and ethical judgement and volumes and volumes can be written on that. More educated people than you or I have debated that issue and arrived at stalemates. But again, if no one speaks out against what they perceive as wrong... how can such ever be established?

Or are such ones not permitted the freedom of speech in attempt to establish societal goals? All through history, significant moral victories and even societal changes have been brought about because a single individuals chose to speak out against what he/she perceived as wrong-- rather than remaining silent. When people cease to speak out against wrong... societies suffer.

Ok let's get back to the point of this thread. What was it anyway?

LOL

Discussing the similarities between fantastical fairy rape (tentacles not included) and Nazis, and how the former makes the latter.

LOL bummer. Usually I'm the one caught in the middle of editing.

Sorry, can't resist the comment on spanking. Right and wrong of physical punishment aside, if the statement as presented were true... the majority of individuals who were "spanked" while children would turn out to be societal deviants.

Ask most people if they were ever spanked as children, and if they felt it helped them grow to be a better person as a result. I have conducted such studies; the results weren't surprising that the majority of people I spoke to were reasonably well adjusted and felt the way their parents disciplined them was a beneficial factor in their lives.

Again, this can be a very heavily debated subject, even among professionals. We have Dr. Phil who states that people should NEVER EVER spank their children (and a more rudely mannered psychologist I haven't come across). Dr. Benjamin Spock taught for years that spanking is terrible, then in later life totally changed his viewpoint, stating fear that his opinions had done significant harm to society.

My personal viewpoints in this set aside, I don't think one can honestly correlate standard spankings with deviant behavior. In cases where societal deviants have been spanked, my experience is that the disciplinary measures used far exceeded simple spanking.

A little off subject of course, but hey, what good is a thread that can't vibrate a little?

I hope you forgive my flagrant attempts at possibly twisting your words. I was merely trying to reflect what I understood you to say.

Ultimately, right or wrong is a moral issue and varies from person to person... which ultimately leads me to the conclusion that society has no right to determine what is or isn't right or wrong for an individual so far as that individual brings no harm to society.

The word "deviant person" can only mean a person who does not conform -- but who says conformity is desired by every person? To me... "deviant person" can sound much like "african american" when used in improper context. It's PC, disengenuous, and can be insulting to those it generalizes.

However, my point is not to argue the moral issue -- but the idea of censorship of graphic material. To bring this part of the argument back around... consenting adults who are not harming or exploiting persons who are unable to protect themselves -- are not doing harm to society. Until it can be proven that they are harming other people, it is my opinion that they should not be censored.

And lastly as an aside -- I'm sure the doctors who studied cholesterol before the variances in types thought it was preposterous to believe that eggs were not bad for you. In hindsight I hope they realized that you can't hold onto truth as fact forever... as I've said and many others have as well -- truth is only as real as the evidence to support it. Which in the case of the eggs; changed as we knew more... there are so few absolutes in this world.

Anyhow... I don't suppose we can go any closer towards a truth in this discussion. It has been a pleasure. Cheers.

"But in particular, there was one piece he for some reason found fit to display, which portrayed a small fairy being violently raped by a person ten times her size. She was depicted as screaming and bleeding profusely from every orifice imaginable."

Oh now, this is a good one. The depiction of violent, bloody rape of a small female - nah, there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with that.

Must be art.

coco

There is a world of difference between the depiction of an act and the actual act itself being committed.

I sincerely doubt there's anyone that would defend the act of rape. The depiction of the act via an artistic medium - be it a drawing, painting, movie, etc. - is not the same thing.

If it crosses your personal definition of wrong, you're certainly welcome not to go to this person's land and view it, as he doesn't seem to be forcing anyone to look at it against their will.

Yes, it is art - to some people. Let's have a little sense over this, please. It's a *fairy* for cryin out loud - a creature that ONLY exists in dreams and art. The act is no doubt a brutal one and I would guess the whole piece is meant to bring forth strong emotions from the viewer - which, looking at this thread I would say it has done very well.

So who gets to arbitrate what is art?

Ya know if I was so seriously offended by what someone could (by the account given) legally do on their land - I just woudln't go there again.

I think its a slow news WEEK and folks are really trying hard to find shit to be indignant and offended by.

If half the effort was put into tolerance (I know acceptance and a live and let live attitude is too much to ask) we wouldn't have 90% of the negativitiy on the forums.

I think the issue isn't 'look what was in his house' (which is Mature content in a mature zone NOT out in the open - which is within the TOS)
The issue is : 'what the fuck are you doing poking around in folks houses?'