When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read; This you must not see; This you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

ROBERT HEINLEIN

Is any subject taboo to learn about?

We learn about so many topics in life, either as a prerequisite to doing something in order to move forward with some aspect of our lives, or we come across these topics through countless stimuli that spark our curiosity and our innate desire to understand something that we may not previously have known about.

When these topics are within our reach, we are able to drill down on information that we might not otherwise have ever been exposed to.

These exposures give us a continuous opportunity to expand our horizon and enable our curiosity to continuously mature, with ever greater doses of information which we deem of value.

There are many in life who would readily suppress information that we might have an opportunity to read, or to seek out through more difficult channels, in order that we might delve into topics that are less mainstream and more specific to the expansion of our consciousness into categories, heretofore unknown to us.

What is it that makes this knowledge so threatening to parties who might opt to control our thought process?

In the majority of circumstances, limited access to information, is usually enforced by a small-minded group, who currently hold a position of prominence, and who are working to exercise their power over the rest of us, through any means possible.

One of the early expressions of this took place in in 1497 in Florence, Italy, when the city was under the sway of the Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola, who ordered the burning of objects that church authorities considered sinful, such as cosmetics, mirrors, books, and art. This was called the bonfire of the vanities, and there have been countless examples going forward of the same small-minded, terrifying perspective on life.

Almost all of them are perpetuated by a political or religious belief system, which ultimately feels their base of power being threatened by their followers choosing to believe in something disparate from that which they are being taught within their specific party or denomination.

When we look at societies that are opting to behave in accord, we are continuously seeing small-minded, terrified people at the helm of such insanity. The overt desire they have to exert their will over others is indisputable, and the materials which they feel so obligated to ban are almost inevitably venturing astray of whatever doctrine that particular group is ascribing to.

If we are seeking to remain a free society, it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that the access to content remains open, even if some of that content is patently offensive to us.

If you truly believe in free speech, then you must be willing to defend the right for someone to distribute content with which you do not agree whatsoever, because their right and privilege to do so, must always remain sovereign.

That is not always an easy pill to swallow.

Happy Saturday!