You're Innocent When You Dream...

What's more important:

Freedom of speech or cultural courtesy?

Being a Dane and living in Denmark, this whole "Muhammed Cartoon" brouhaha

has made me wonder...

Not about my own opinion, so much, which is the same as before,

but about the motivations/sanity/gullibility of certain people.

To me, freedom of speech is damn near absolute.

As my arch-nemesis/somewhat clever friend Reluctant likes to say:

"You can't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater when there isn't one."

That I can accept.

But he's also said (paraphrase):

"You have the right to speak, but not to be heard".

Which seems deceptively reasonable and true...

unless, of course, you really think of the ramafications.

The press, wether gag-ordered, leashed, owned

or just "suggested to",

(Free Press? Ain't NO such thing, miss Blueeyes),

will always slant things towards satisfying the presumptions

of the many, unless they can hear a groundswell beneath

a worthy underdog opposition and decide

to gamble on -that- wave.

The press is a whore in the most capitalist sense:

It covers (or rather, wipes) its ass with ideals

and then rakes in the ad-money.

Hey, in comparison, at least hard-working prostitutes offer something

that is comparatively worth the price.

My point is,

unless you -get- anyone to listen,

your freedom of speech seems shallow.

Saw the news last night...

Some disgusting English "historian"

was convicted in Austria for denying the Holocaust.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I'm so sick of these sort of measures.

Countering Nazi-mentality with Nazi-mentality...

Bravo.

What have you got then?

A turd, by any other name, still smells like shit.

I'll quote Patti Smith:

"I'll fertilize my lawn... with what's running from your mouth".

I consider freedom of speech the way Vaclav Havel

once put it (paraphrase):

"Think not only of freedom of speech as a protection

for your own most beloved theories,

but also as a defence for those utterances

with which you'd most vehemently disagree".

Amen,

and fuck all the Gods.

Reality. What is it and how do we escape it?

It is, of course, nothing but an agreed upon and tainted concencus.
There really -IS- no objective reality.
Or, rather, there might be but we'll never know,
as the simple act of observation changes and interprets the observed
Reality?
Reality is whatever our mind presents to us, filtered through our senses.
I am an atheist, in the sense that I consider all present explanations of the divine as mere
alibis for one group to enforce its reality upon others.
Reality is, indeed, manufactured.
It is formed in the mind.
It is the synapses firing at the right stimuli to produce organic orgasm.
Sticking to strict scientific observances, there is only one being in the world,
and that is I. Or you. Or someone.
Basically, we can never prove to each other that we exist independent of the senses of the one observing us.

The victors write the history-books, someone once said.
True, but I'm willing to bet that whoever said so had his own villains and benefactors firmly
etched in his mind.
But wait!
Am I really saying that there is no such thing as absolute evil and/or good?
Even when pertaining to my -own- conceptions of such?!?
Yeah, I am.
I will fight to protect your right to expression no matter how abhorrent your ideas may be to me.
Just as I will fight unceasingly to prove to you that you are wrong.
Ugly is the Jew who denies his Nazi executioner any human feelings.
Ugly is the Nazi Officer who denies his starved prisoner the same.
Ugly is the human race, regardless of its myriad colors and creeds,
when it denies that its opponents are acting out of anything other than the best intentions.
Ugly are we all.
Live, and if possible, learn.