Free Choice: Pre-Write

Thesis: In Paradise Lost, God forbids Adam and Eve to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil much in the same way that governments or other higher powers practice censorship and forbid certain ideas from the public as address in Areopagitica. 

--Why doesn't God want Adam and Eve to have knowledge of Good and Evil?

          Most likely, he is trying to protect them. He wants them to enjoy their lives without them having to experience or really know about evil. I kind of get upset about this--God gives them free choice, so He is almost setting them up to fail in the first place, especially because he gives them the commandment (along with not eating the fruit of that tree) to multiply and replenish the Earth. Is that possible without becoming moral (which eating the fruit would cause)? 

          Anyways, this kind of "protection" from knowledge is similar to what is addressed in Areopagitica. Much of the texts that are banned from readers go against the church or are of some heretical nature. The root of the reason of wanting to ban these kinds of works is actually good--to protect people from the evils outside of the church that might make them fall away. We are deprived certain knowledge because it's assumed that we would be unable to handle it without being negatively influenced by the content. 

--Choice is taken away when we are unable to actually choose good over evil.

          I addressed this in another one of my posts: "No reason or agency is involved when we choose good over evil, simply because evil is not available to us by our mothers." (Obviously, the wording would change with the situation.) Isn't knowing someone is choosing good over evil because they personally rejected evil and chose to be good...as opposed to choosing good because they didn't even know there was another option? How beneficial is censorship in the end? We are "good people" because we were led to it, but is that sincere goodness? Besides, sin still exists, even if the books about it are taken away. You can only be protected so much.

Censorship and the Blending of Good and Evil

I was looking at articles that had to do with censorship today, and I found one talking about the censorship in Iran. Apparently the government and Culture Ministry have a tight lockdown on who can publish and what is allowed to be published. One thing I found interesting is the fact that authors aren't allowed to even mention God, whether they would be denouncing him or praising him. He can't be mentioned at all. Likewise, they can't mention alcohol, even if they are talking about its harmful effects. This made me think about a passage in Aeropagitica, where Milton is talking about good and evil. Milton says, " Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably." Milton uses this idea to show the useless force of censorship. 

In regards to this idea of good and evil being inseparable, it shows how censorship doesn't really work because in order to truly protect the masses from evil or things deemed bad, good things would have to be censored as well. I can see this in the article I read. The Iran Culture Ministry went an extra step to remove all things remotely related to something deemed bad. So an author couldn't make any references to something like alcohol, because it was seen as something not good for the people. It didn't matter if the author was denouncing alcohol or simply talking about it. It was all terrible in the eyes of the censors. In a weird way, I can see where the censors were coming from. They wanted to take away all mentions of alcohol to protect the readers. It wouldn't really work, but I can understand their reasoning. 

What I don't understand was their reasoning behind not allowing authors to mention God at all. They couldn't even praise him because the Culture Ministry felt that only certain authors who were faithful revolutionary followers were worthy to mention God. That to me is less of a concern for the masses and more of a political movement. And I think that's where one of the biggest issues with censorship lies. Once it becomes mixed with politics, censorship is no longer about the masses; it's about the people in power. 

That's something I think Milton was arguing against, which was how censorship doesn't serve the purpose of the people. Rather, it serves the purpose of the censors, the government. I hadn't thought about how political censorship really is. Most of the time, it's not the state of the masses, but the power granted to the censors that becomes the driving force for censorship. Seeing that, I feel like I understand a little better what Milton was fighting against. 

Here's a link to the article: 

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-censorship-culture/25134795.html

Three Wise Monkeys

The Three Wise Monkeys, by Tumi-1983
Creative Commons

I've been thinking about censorship of late, and it's Milton's fault. I guess the idea that interests me most, though, is that of self-censorship--what we read, listen to, and watch and how that affects us as individuals. In Areopagitica, Milton proposes as one of his contentions against formal censorship that in order to comprehend and, ultimately, choose goodness and righteousness, a man must be exposed to both good and evil. "[B]ad books," Milton asserts, "to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn and to illustrate."

Now this idea perhaps seems a little bit ridiculous at first, and it's easy to cast Milton aside as a dirty old man seeking to justify his ways. After all, the Doctrine and Covenants tells us to seek learning from the best books, and the prophets have encouraged us to use discretion in choosing which films to watch. But what if I were to tell you that this doctrine was preached in the early days of the LDS church? Brigham Young, for example, wrote in Journal of Discourses 2:93 (cue obligatory JoD eyeroll and sigh):