so, i'm a conspiracy theorist or what? (repost)

Jul 18, 2008

i've had a really interesting conversation with a guy that works at the store with me.
he claims that piracy is becoming the 21st century's worst plague. of course i had to disagree with that.

he said that music and movies are the proprety of the creators, that you should go buy anything before even listening to it once, and that free sharing is destroying our economy.
think of it a second. forget the music. forget the movies.
are you tired of all this crap passing in the news on and on?
don't you think you should know what matters more than another mafia related murder or another drunk redneck trying to roll away from cops?

if so, keep reading.

i answered him "are you gonna tell me that hitler has rightfully burned all of voltaire's books while you're at it?"

he almost read my thought by saying that i thought that the government were trying to restrain information sharing to limit our spans of ideas. he also said that it was an idiotic way of seeing things.

basically he called me a conspiracy theorist.

let's stop the quoting there and have a little blast from the past. shall we?

remember the apparition of the printer in europe? in Paris near the end of the middle ages, Gutenberg brought the first printers to paris, along with hundreds of copies of the Holy Bible that were freely distributed to the masses.
representants of the clergy, thrived by curiosity and worry, discovered their sacred books perfectly and identically copied on a large scale!
well guess what.

they accused Gutenberg of black magic and said these books were the work of the devil. surprising eh? accomplishing god's will by spreading the good news was quite a clever move, Mr. Satan.

were the high clergy trying to restrain information contained in the bible so that people would not see them as the greedy and deceptive persons they were? absolutely. the bible does not oblige the high clergy to be that rich. and it certainly not commands to kill the non-beleivers as they often did. the word "heretic" was quite often heard at the time.

what marked the end of the renaissance was the french revolution. the clergy failed controlling such an immense spread of information sharing and some books other than the bible started spreading. new ideas, ideals and an easier way of communicating them. this ultimately lead millions of poors, sick and starving, to make a move and take over power from the rich and selfish royals that did nothing but build palaces, send poors to wars abroad and pile up immense fortunes from high taxes. the royal family was beheaded and a democracy was established.

interesting story eh? see where i'm getting at?

i want to tell you this right off before anyone reading gets me wrong: i dont wish a revolution i only wish SOME changes to be made. our society is far from hopeless and all we need to do is embark in the machine and start making peacefully effective actions.

now that this is ruled out, let's get back on the topic:

free sharing of information should never be controlled in any way. the internets are our modern books. not because they will start a revolution but because it already has. and it is unstoppable.

we are now able to share ideas as i do right now and have it available to the whole internets. wich is a whole lotta people.

wether you beleive what i beleive or not, i know some governments censor all the information that comes inbetween their hands to hold down the voices of some people wich ideas are simply different.

so who is the conspiracy theorist?
a small fraction of the population trying to control information millions of people see everyday in the media to avoid some opinions from spreading? or thousands of people like me and maybe you who think that this minuscule fraction of the people control a little bit too much?

when was the last time you saw your opinion in the mainstream media networks?

if you were to start a liberal news network in the U.S. on wich liberal politics and popular views on politics could be heard, what would happen? let me tell you what: you simply could not.

now who's afraid of a conspiracy? politicians who control broadcasting licenses and limits information sharing? or normal people who want their voices heard here and abroad?

who's afraid here?

if there is nothing to be afraid of, why try and control what we see, hear and read?