Monthly Archives: September 2021

Its Truth is Marching On

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In last week’s post I mentioned PE (penis envy) as one of the most powerful drives that has always made the world go round and will presumably continue to do so until the lights go out. And not for the first time either. Each time I do so, I am sure to get some readers’ reactions. They tell me that modern brain science has not succeeded in identifying any such thing (this is analogues to saying that, since the scientific community has been unable to reproduce God’s results, the world does not exist). That Freud was an impostor most of whose opus, including not just PE but a great many other concepts he used in his decades-long attempt to understand how the human mind works, has been deservedly relegated to history’s dustbin. That he used to “molest” his helpless female patients (the worst thing that can be said about any man). And so on, and so on.

Such being the case, I’ve decided to post a slightly updated version of a post I posted for the first time on 16 June 2016. Hopefully it will tell readers what PE is and why I keep my belief in it; in other words, why its truth keeps marching on.

Any comments, welcome.

 

PE? PE!

 

 

 

 

 

The other day, walking through the Hebrew University library looking for something interesting to read, my eye hit a tome with the grand-sounding title, The Oxford Companion to the Mind. I opened it; a thousand pages. Edited by one Richard L. Gregory, CBE, MA (Cantab), DSC, LLD, FRS, and published (second edition), in 2004. The volume differs from the better known Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in that it is more than just a list of all kinds of symptoms, real and imaginary. Instead it is a wide-ranging encyclopedia. With alphabetically arranged articles about everything from the way the ancient Egyptians understood the mind to something called the halo effect.

How wonderful, I thought. An opportunity to refresh my understanding of a phenomenon which, as readers know, I have long been interested in: PE (penis envy). Full of anticipation, I turned the pages. What a disappointment! PE is just not there. Yok, as we Israelis, using a Turkish word, say.

Yet that is strange. It is not as if the volume ignores Freud and psychoanalysis. To the contrary, both merit fairly hefty articles. PE apart, Freudian and Freudian-derived ideas do figure in the book. In considerable numbers, what is more. Among them are the Oedipus Complex, the Electra Complex, the inferiority complex, and many more.
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I decided to check. On Google.com PE has 1,270,000 hits; not a bad following for an idea that is supposed to be purely a figment of one man’s imagination (he himself has 40,400,000, no less). PE has 19,200, the Oedipus Complex 875,000, the Electra Complex (originally introduced by Carl Gustav Jung) 302,000, “inferiority complex” 8,740,000, and “castration anxiety” 162,000. The corresponding figures for Google.scholar are 52,500, 4,550, 2,600 30,900, and 22,300 respectively. On Ngram as of the year 2019, PE figured far more often than “inferiority complex,” “Oedipus Complex,” “Electra Complex,” and “castration anxiety.” All in all, PE seems to put on quite a respectable showing. Yet whereas the other four do have entries in the aforesaid Companion, PE does not.

What is going on here? Some claim that there is no way to prove that PE exists. That may be so; however, the same applies to all the rest. After all the methodology, which consists essentially of listening to patients in a room called a clinic that may or may not contain a couch, is always the same. So I decided to do a little historical research.

Before we delve into the topic itself, though, it is important to note that Freud, like many male gurus throughout history, attracted female patients and students as a lamp attracts moths. No wonder, that, since he valued them and treated them like daughters. It was to one of these women, a Viennese society lady, that Freud owed his professorship, a position he, being Jewish, might not have got without her help. To another, Marie Bonaparte, he owed his life. In 1938 it was she who paid off the Nazis to allow him and his family to leave Austria. Thus any idea that Freud hated women, or did not value them, or looked down on them, is so absurd that only sexually frustrated, half-crazed, present-day feminists can entertain it.

Freud first postulated the existence of PE in a contribution to the nature of sexuality he published in 1904. Two decades later, in 1925, it became the pillar of a 1925 paper he wrote named, Einige psychische Folgen des anatomischen Geschlechtsunterschieds (“some psychological consequences of the anatomical differences between the sexes;” note the characteristically modest way of announcing a new idea). From this point on it often came up in his famous Wednesday evening seminars where he and his disciples, both male and female, discussed psychoanalysis. Both the men and the women tended to be highly intelligent and quite a few of them later attained fame in their own right. Certainly none was a cretin who simply allowed Freud to overrun him or her.

And how did the women in the company take to the concept? One of the most important, Freud’s own daughter Anna, sidestepped the problem altogether. The rest were divided. On one side of the debate was Karen Horney. Praised by subsequent feminists for having “a mind of her own,” she did not deny the existence of PE. Indeed she called Freud’s discovery of it “momentous.” However, following a then famous sociologist by the name of Georg Simmel, she argued that women envied men their penises not because their biology made them to but because the penis stood as a symbol for the advantages society conferred on men; in other words, PE, and what she called “the flight from womanhood,” was a consequence, not a cause. For expressing this view, Horney ended up by being thrown out of the New York psychoanalytical society.

Several other female members of Freud’s circle disagreed. One was Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, said to be the most biologically-reductionist among all his followers. Another was Jeanne Lampl de Groot. To her, “the absence of a penis could not be regarded as a matter of secondary and trifling significance for the little girl.” Rather, PE was “a central point [from which] the development into normal femininity begins.” “Woman’s wish for a penis is the consequence of a biological datum that underlies her psychic reaction of feeling inferior and is rock bottom.”

More important than either of those was Helene Deutsch. Good-looking, capable and extremely hard working, her Psychology of Women (1944) was considered authoritative for decades on end, Deutsch was one of the first Austrian women to receive a medical degree. She considered herself, with good reason, as “a leader in female emancipation.” Yet this did not prevent her from explaining that the clitoris was “an inadequate substitute” for a penis. As late as 2018, in an article originally published in 1964, a female psychotherapist by the name of Maria Torok wrote that “in every woman’s analysis there is inevitably a period in which appears a feeling of envy and covetousness for both the male sex organ and its symbolic equivalents.” Having made listening to women her profession, she should know.

Back to Freud. Then as today, finding out whether we humans are shaped by nature or nurture was a difficult, very often impossible, enterprise. Perhaps that is why Freud, who sometimes hesitated to tread where his followers romped, never voiced his opinion on the matter. Instead he contended himself with the famous question, “what does woman want?”

I too will leave the question open. I do, however, want to provide some examples of what, in my view, PE is. When women discard skirts and put on trousers, then that is PE. When some women complain (as has in fact happened!) that their daughters are not being diagnosed with ADHD as often as boys are, then that is PE. When women refuse to have children so they can have a career as men do, then that is PE. When women want to follow men to Afghanistan and Iraq so they can get themselves shot to pieces for some obscure cause no one understands, then that too is PE.

When some Jewish Israeli women defy a court order and dance with a Torah scroll at the Wailing Wall as Jewish men have been doing for ages, then that is PE. When famous feminist Betty Friedan says she wants to play in men’s “ballfield,” then that is PE. When feminist writer Jean Sinoda Bohlen says she wants to achieve men’s “potency,” then that is PE. When renowned feminist Naomi Wolf says she wants to see more ads with objects sticking out of “women’s [emphasis in the original] groins,” then that is PE doubled, tripled, and squared. In these and countless other cases, one can only conclude that women do in fact crave “the obvious ‘extra’ that [men] have” (Nancy Friday).

Always focusing on rights, never on duties. Always imagining that men have it better and trying to imitate them. Hardy ever coming up with something really new: not the telescope, not the microscope, not gravity, not the steam engine, not the computer (all the best-known female worker in the field, Ada Lovelace, did was to translate the article of an Italian engineering officer, Luigi Menabrea, and provide it with notes). To quote my wife, Dvora, perhaps the real reason why PE is left unmentioned in the Companion is because it is not a disease.

It is, rather, a normal state of mind.

Is That Clear?

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Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that everything around them is subject to change. Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that there are some things that never change but always remain essentially the same (for confirmation, re-read the book of Ecclesiastics). In today’s post I want to focus on the second kind in so far as they pertain to the nature of, and relationship between, men and women.

*

Men on the average are considerably stronger and more robust than women.

Ergo

Without men to defend them against other men, women are essentially defenseless.

*

Ergo

For this and other reasons, men can sleep with women without their consent; the opposite is almost impossible.

Women can have babies; men cannot. On the other hand, men can have far more offspring than women can.

Ergo

Both biologically and socially, women’s lives are more precious than those of men

Lacking physical strength and burdened with young offspring, women are more vulnerable than men.

Ergo

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Starting with war and fighting, in any society it is men who engage in the vast majority of dirty, difficult and dangerous kinds of work.

*

In any known society the vast majority of public posts are occupied by men; the higher the position, the more true this is.

*

Child bearing apart, in any known society both man and women believe that whatever men do is the most important of all. That is why, in any known society women, driven by penis envy, do their best to imitate men in everything; whereas the opposite is rare.

*

Based on these simple premises, any number of different societies can be and have been “constructed” (a term so dear to feminists of all sorts). Some are very small, numbering no more than a few hundred members at most, whereas others are very large. Some live in tiny villages, others in megacities. Some make their living by hunting-gathering, others by engaging in gigantic systems of industry and administration. Some are characterized by approximate equality between their members, others by sharp socio-economic and cultural differences between individual and classes. Some allow a great measure of social mobility, others do not.

Some are so decentralized as to be almost without a government worthy of the name, others highly centralized. Some are monogamous, others (the majority) polygamous, others still (a small minority) polyandrous. Some follow the principle of primogeniture, whereas others do not. Some are strongly influenced by religious beliefs of every kind, others only to a much smaller extent. Some keep men and women more or less segregated, whereas others allow the sexes to mix more or less freely. In all without exception, ultimately it is politics which (to quote Lenin) govern who gets what.

All merge with each other, grow into each other, and, quite often, separate from each other. However much they do so, though, none can escape the fundamental truths as listed above. Not for long, at any rate. And not without triggering processes that, unless they are reversed, may very well end in the collapse of the societies in question.

Is that clear?

The First Casualty

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The first casualty in war, I’ve heard it said, is always the truth. Such being the case, I was intrigued by the tsunami of stories concerning all the terrible things the Taliban, following their victory, have allegedly been doing to their country’s women.

Here are a few examples.

 

“Taliban: Women can study in gender-segregated universities”

(https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/taliban-girls-women-study-men-classrooms-79972251); as if segregating one sex does not mean that the other too is segregated).

“Taliban says women are barred from playing sports in Afghanistan”

(https://duckduckgo.com/?q=taliban+women&t=chromentp&atb=v230-1&ia=web)

“The Taliban knocked on her door three times. The fourth time, they killed her.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“Taliban have started torturing women, Afghanistan witness say.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls.”

(https://theconversation.com/the-world-must-not-look-away-as-the-taliban-sexually-enslaves-women-and-girls-165426)

‘Inside Taliban’s horrifying medieval executions as women are beheaded and stoned to death for ‘chatting to men’.”

(https://www.the-sun.com/news/3467120/taliban-executions-women-afghanistan-stoned/)

“Taliban demands war booty, women aged 15-45, as sex slaves”

(https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/07/taliban-demands-war-booty-women-aged-15-45-as-sex-slaves-in-captured-afghanistan)

You get the idea. Before working yourself into a fury over those inhumane, woman-hating, Taliban rapists, though, you might want to take a look at the past. Not of the Taliban, but of the country in which, thanks to its immense “soft power,” so many of the accusations originate. Such a look will quickly show that the invasion of Afghanistan was not the first time Americans used their enemies’ alleged abuse of women as an excuse for making war on them.

No sooner had the War of the American Revolution broken out in 1776 than the rebels accused the British of engaging in mass rape in Rhode Island in particular. From then on the accusations have been piling up. And up. And up. Indeed it would hardly be too much to say that Americans have convinced themselves that they are the only people who know how to treat women properly and feel duty-bound to oppose anyone who does not do so.

Again, here are a few examples.

  • The Mexican War. As always happens when migrants flow into new territories and start opening them up for settlement, during the middle of the nineteenth century the American West was suffering from a deficit of women. Nowhere more so than in areas comprising the future mining states where, it is said, men sometimes outnumbered women by as much as 200 to one. To help alleviate the situation, the Americans convinced themselves that Mexican women were caught in the clutches of their Catholic priests and tht it was their own duty to rescue them. They started doing so, and the rest is history.
  • The Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin notwithstanding, the primary purpose of the Northern Aggression, as the Confederates called it, was to prevent the South from seceding. Freeing the slaves only came a distant second. By way of useful propaganda, slavery itself was sometimes presented in the form of a chain-wearing, nude and nubile young black woman.
  • The war with Spain. There once was a young and good looking woman by the name of Evangelina Cosnio y Cisneros (1877-1970). The daughter of a leading member of the Cuban revolt against Spain, she was arrested and sent to a camp. There the commanding officer, a Colonel named José Berriz, harassed her and, when she refused his advances, threatened to have her stripped and whipped as so many other Cuban women allegedly were. Or so the story went. Evangelina’s sad fate caused the famous American newspaper tycoon, William Hearst, to send a party that successfully pulled her out of jail, put her in a man’s clothes, and took her to the United States. Once there, properly wined and dined and blessed by President McKinley, she became an active participant in the campaign that ultimately ended in the American “liberation” of Cuba from the Spanish yoke.
  • World War I. Like most wars, this one was launched for the best strategic reasons as understood by the most hard-headed, toughest, statesmen and soldiers of the time. By the time America joined the fray in 1917, though, American propagandists seem to have concluded that, to prepare their public for the butchery to come, it was necessary to take a different tack. Whereupon “poor little Belgium” was drawn in the shape of a half-naked female being caught in the arms of a monstrous, pickelhaube-wearing, salivating, ape-like creature called “Kultur.” The poster became famous and has remained so down to the present day.
  • World War II. I am not aware of Americans claiming to save German or Japanese women from the sexual advances of their equally German or Japanese menfolk. It is, however, worth noting that, in the west at any rate, the Wehrmacht was well disciplined. So well that, according to a document I once saw, once the American troops had landed in France they raped more Frenchwomen in six months than the Germans had in four years of occupation. And so well that, according to Mary Louise’s What Soldiers Do, some members of the liberated French population actually hoped for the Germans to return.
  • I’ve been trying to find material on American troops sent to rescue enemy women during Korea and Vietnam, and the 1991 Gulf War; to no avail. What I did find, though, was something equally interesting: to wit, stories about Saddam Hussein’s men throwing young Kuwaiti babies from their incubators. The following are just a small sample:

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“When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators.”

(https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html)

“Saddam and the incubator massacre.”

(https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/35797

“Operation desert lie; Bush 41, Nayira, and Saddam Hussein.”

(https://midnightwriternews.com/operation-desert-lie-bush-41-nayirah-and-saddam-hussein/)

“The fake news in 1990 that propelled the US into the First Gulf War”

(https://citizentruth.org/fake-news-1990-that-ignited-gulf-war-sympathy)

“Selling the Iraq war to the US.”

(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/selling-the-iraq-war-to-the-us/)

The first casualty, once again.

Carpe Diem

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Carpe diem, my grandmother (1894-1986) used to say. With corona making life hard for hundreds of millions if not billions around the world, I thought it would be appropriate to concentrate on a few of the good things by which I, and hopefully a great many others, are surrounded. Such as have always existed and, let’s hope, will return in full force once this nightmare is over. As, either because of medical advances or because we will get used to it, sooner or later it will be.

1. A good meal with family and friends. I am no gourmet. I dislike the kind of people who boast of being able to distinguish between fifty kinds of wine, and I do not particularly like restaurants. After a few days, even the best ones—not seldom, particularly the best ones—get on my nerves. Especially Israeli ones, which tend to play loud music, making it impossible to hear oneself and others think. Fortunately Dvora is as good a cook as they come. She also keeps experimenting, meaning that the food is never boring. Imagine a sunny winter morning or a cool summer evening here near Jerusalem, some 2,200 feet above sea level. Imagine a balcony looking out over a small but carefully kept and beautiful garden. A small group of family and friends, perhaps accompanied by some children, gathers. A bottle of wine is passed around, making everyone feel slightly—but only slightly—tipsy. As Herman Melville is supposed to have said, anyone who has that can feel like an emperor.

2. Music. When I was six or seven years old my mother tried to teach me to play the piano. I did not want to learn and she desisted, but not before telling me I would be sorry. In this she was right. Following my father, my tastes in music are mostly Western and classical, running from Church music (both Gregorian and Eastern Orthodox) through the Renaissance (Monteverdi and Palestrina; as sweet as honey, both of them) through the Baroque (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi) and the nineteenth century (Beethoven, Schubert. Wagner) to the years around 1900 (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov). But occasionally I also enjoy listening to Chinese music, Arabic music, and popular Israeli music. Two favorites that do not really fit into any of these categories are the Carmina Burana and the Misa Criolla.

To conclude this section, two additional comments. First, my son, Eldad, gave me a set of good speakers for my computer: they are one of the best presents I ever got. Let me take this opportunity to say, once again, thank you, Eldad. Second, our next door neighbor, a lady in her early sixties, has decided to take up the piano and is plinking away. I cannot say it, but hats off nevertheless. 

3. Art. Not everyone can be a Michelangelo, a Bach, or a Sophocles. Creating beauty, the kind of beauty that wills survive for centuries, is something reserved for the very few. One in ten million who tried, I’d say. Such being the case, all that is left to me is to enjoy the art of others; particularly painting, sculpture, architecture, and design. My tastes run form the ancient Greeks to the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century (de Hooch, Cuyp, Vermeer, Rembrandt) all the way through Biedermeier—for me, a recent discovery I made during a brief visit to Warsaw a few years ago—the German Romantics and the Impressionists to Picasso and Fernando Botero. Nor will I miss a good show of Chinse, or, Indian, or Islamic, art. Flea markets are a joy to attend. Old posters, based on the history of the period in which they were created, are often wonderful. However, over the years I have come to dislike abstract art. Judging by the number of visitors I meet in the galleries, I am not the only one.

Normally I visit museums with Dvora, who herself is an accomplished painter. For those of you who do not know, looking at pictures in the company of a painter is a unique experience. Most people, including myself, tend to focus on what they see; the sea, say, as Painted by Turner, or the human body as presented by Rodin. Dvora, on the other hand, asks how the artists achieved the effect he did. To do so she comes so close to the painting that her nose is practically in it. How many times did she not alert the guard who came running!

4. Sport. Truth to say, I, was not born with the sportsman’s talents. In fact so bad was I that the coach who, sixty years ago, taught me to play tennis, a very nice man incidentally, later told me that, on seeing how clumsy I was, he had considered recommending that I take up another sport! Later I spent thirty-five years of my life long distance running up and down the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Rugged terrain, I can tell you. The kind that teaches you what determination is all about. Feeling one’s body go on automatic, so to speak. Floating in the air, as it were, and one’s thoughts freely fluttering about—there is nothing like it. Unfortunately my knees have long forced me to stop running. That was over twenty years ago, and I still miss it. But I do enjoy walking. And swimming in lakes, of course.

Even though these are not scientifically proven, they definitely deserve an honorable mention: Stress Food allergies Hormone changes (like menopause, for example) Genetics Many cases develop after gastroenteritis (stomach flu) Poor diet (processed, high sugar foods) As you can see, many of these Irritable Bowel Syndrome causes constipation symptoms but also alternates with diarrhea. cipla viagra online Apart from tablets, a patient can use the simplest cheap viagra from india form of genuine drug if getting issues to swallow a pill. It is a biologically active to the most gram-positive and gram-negative infections including Staphylococcus aureus and viagra without prescription canada Streptococcuspyogenes, and also other kinds of streptococci. This helps to generic levitra online ensure that the most important concepts are driven home and that your teen learns all of the safe and effective driving techniques the course is designed to teach. 5. Scholarship. For as long as I can remember myself I have always been a bookworm. If I had a great aim in life, it was Rerum causas cognoscere, to understand the causes of things. Probably not with success; looking back, I often think that I know and understand fewer things now than I did at the time I first gained consciousness of myself. I do not think I have made any great discoveries.

How these things work in the natural sciences I do not claim to know at first hand. In the humanities and the social sciences, though, practically everything has been said before by someone at some time at some place; with the result that making such discoveries is, in one sense, next to impossible. But the subjective feeling of having understood, or feeling one has understood, something one had never thought about before—that is an experience the quest for which is worth spending a lifetime at.

6. Nature. The expanse of a field, reaching far away into the horizon. A forest, dark and mysterious. A lofty mountain, enveloped in the kind of silence you only get where there are no people around. A lake, shimmering in the sun. The sea. The eternally changing, all-powerful, sea. It is enough to make you want to weep.

7. Love. It has been defined countless times by countless different people. My own favorite definition is as follows: love is when one’s beloved shortcomings make one laugh. As, for instance happens whenever Dvora sees me with my shirt buttoned the wrong way, smiles, and starts making fun of me. Another definition is that love is trust so great that one never has to say sorry. Not because one never hurts one’s beloved; only angels can do that, and they tend to be rather boring. But because he or she knows that it is not done on purpose.

Anyhow. Love, accompanied where appropriate by the kind of sex that makes the body and mind of both partners radiate with happiness, is the most wonderful thing life has to offer. Pity those, and the older I grow the more of them I think I see, who have not found it.

8. Last not least, a heartfelt email thanking me for one of my posts, such as I sometimes get.

 

Shut Up! On Censorship

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Since long before I started posting on this blog almost seven years ago, I’ve been concerned with freedom of speech on one hand and censorship on the other. Including the censorship which has been applied to me, almost turning me into an academic unperson (one reason for continuing to post for as long as I can). And including that which others have fallen victim to. I therefore thought I’d start thinking a little about the matter. Who knows, perhaps one day these few notes will serve as the starting point for yet another book.

So here goes.

What is censorship? The attempt by one person, or group of persons, to prevent others from speaking their minds.

When did censorship begin? There probably never has been a society without censorship. If not of the formal kind, exercised by personnel specifically authorized for the purpose, then of the informal one that is rooted in public opinion. It is as Hobbes said: absolute freedom can only exist in a desert. That applies freedom of speech as it does to any other kind.

What makes censorship possible? The power some people exercise over others. In other words, the existence of government, institutionalized religion, organized public opinion, or all three.

What conditions favor censorship? Dictatorship. War (“truth is the first casualty”). All kinds of disasters for which no one wants to take responsibility. Bigotry. Monotheistic religion (“You shall have no other God before me;” “There is no Allah except for Allah”).

Who has done the censoring? In the past, it was almost always rulers and/or priests who set up the appropriate legal authority to enable them do so. Nowadays, thanks to the social media a growing number of private organizations are also involved; what started as an instrument for liberation has turned into the most extensive system ever devised for preventing people from saying “inappropriate” things. See under Facebook, see under Twitter. For what they have been doing to those dared express their approval of former President Donald Trump, including Trump himself, I hope they rot in hell. And may their place soon be taken by other platforms which will allow even “Bozos” to say what they think.

Shouldn’t those who mislead public opinion by pronouncing and spreading falsehood be censored? They should. Beginning with the authors of the Bible who, without any proof, have claimed that God exists and keeps interfering in human affairs.

Who has been censored? In general, those who 1. Produced and disseminated information considered undesirable by using any of the available means; such as speech, writing, the plastic arts, photography, film, broadcasting, and, nowadays, the Net. 2. Those who were of some consequence. If only because there are so many of them, there was often no point in censoring nobodies; that, however, seems to be changing.

He makes contemporary Christian writings as entertaining unlike any rhetorical analysis of a thesis on religion. tadalafil buy india The most essential components are included in the HVAC system such as vibration isolator, gas burner, gas line, condensation probe viagra line, compressor, condenser, and many more essential coils, etc. However, viagra cheapest pharmacy remains first choice for men who don’t want to consult with the physician or stand in a queue over the counter. Through viagra prescription this, body relaxation is highly achieved. Socrates apart, the list of those who have been censored or punished for speaking their minds includes Giordano Bruno… Francis Bacon… Galileo Galilei… Thomas Hobbes… Baruch Spinoza… René Descartes… John Locke… Isaac Newton… Charles de Montesquieu… Heinrich Heine… Arthur Schnitzler… Thomas Mann… Boris Pasternak… Jean-Paul Sartre… André Gide… Simone de Beauvoir…

What methods does censorship use? 1. It destroys as much of the “secret” or “heretic” or “dangerous” or “unsuitable” material as it can. 2. What it cannot destroy, it seeks to keep secret 3. It silences those who produce, transmit, or distribute the material that is being censored, either before it is published or after it has been. For an  account of the way one of the most rotten, most reactionary, regimes in history used to do it, see Maxim Gorky, The Mother (1906).

What kinds of material has been censored? Depending on the time and place, 1. Anything that might anger the gods or contradicted the way the established servants of religion saw the world. 2. Anything declared to be immoral; especially if, as in the case of Socrates, it was considered likely to “corrupt” the minds of the young. 3. Anything that might present a danger to government, either from within or from the outside.

Why is censorship dangerous? Because 1. It is, always has been, and always will remain the instrument of tyranny par excellence. 2. Because of its all but inevitable tendency to spread. Until, in the end, what started as a cloud no larger than a man’s hand comes to cover the entire sky, making not only speech but even thought itself impossible.

What is the effect of censorship? Very often, to draw people’s attention to the speech, or information, that has been censored. As, for example, happened to me when, following an Israeli court order banning a Palestinian movie, Jenin, Jenin, I made sure to watch it on YouTube. 

What fate will overtake censorship in the end? Here it would seem that the last word was said some nineteen hundred years ago. The author is the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (Annals, 35):

The Fathers* ordered his** books to be burned… but some copies survived, hidden at the time, but afterwards published. Laughable, indeed, are the delusions of those who fancy that by their exercise of their ephemeral power, posterity can be defrauded of information. On the contrary, through persecution the reputation of the persecuted talents grows stronger. Foreign despots and all those who have used the same barbarous methods have only succeeded in bringing disgrace upon themselves and glory to their victims.

 

*   The members of the Senate.

** The reference is to Aulus Cremutius Cordus, a Roman historian who lived under Tiberius. In 25 CE he fell foul of Sejanus, the corrupt but all-powerful commander of the Praetorian Guard, who had him brought to trial for allegedly offending the memory of the late Emperor Augustus. He ended by committing suicide.