Month: September 2025

Civility As A Filter

The DM 0 Comments

I long ago determined that civility, or its absence, was the quickest and most accurate gauge of a person’s character, and that it’s probably an umbrella category, under which are usually also found; courtesy (a more proactive expression of good will than mere civility) and thoughtful consideration, nuanced and good humor, empathy and compassion, and a generally reasonable disposition, and will commonly also be accompanied by an open mind, curiosity, and critical thinking. People displaying civility very often turn out to be people I want to know and associate with, be around.

Where civility is absent, I have found that many of those other traits will also be absent, and most relevant with respect to the line in the sand that western human society already crossed over many years ago, and as a result is now facing a profound schism, I believe it’s accurate to say that there is no chance at all that someone displaying routine intentional incivility will be an ally or someone I’d want to live in voluntary community with, the kind of communities that are likely needing to form now, of necessity.

Intentional incivility (I’m not talking about someone having a bad day and being momentarily angry or hostile, and apologizing for it later) is mean-spirited and miserly of spirit, very small, very low. It is not an enlightened state, and those expressing it are not, in my experience, trying to attain one. Such people are not inclined to remedy, goodwill, concord, reason, humor, or harmony.

Often also humorless and snide, sometimes shrill or strident, sometimes just conspicuously withholding or absent where engagement is obviously appropriate, required or requested, people who display routine incivility are drawn to contention, conflict and discord, and would immediately undercut and destroy such places of voluntary community with acrimony, controversy and pointless adversarial debate for the purposes of creating a recreational backdrop of drama which makes their life feel interesting and meaningful, and are also very likely to be controlling, as intentional acrimony and/or passive-aggression are usually obvious in such people, and are inherently controlling in spirit, and nothing to do with a pursuit of freedom or enlightenment or a ‘live and let live’ outlook.

Such people are meddlesome and quarrelsome, pull rugs, and rain on parades. They are the crabs in the pot preventing others from crawling out. It’s as clear as that for me.

Where I confront this now, I disassociate, as that trait does not alter. Such people will never be actual allies, assets, friends or good neighbors. I’m sure of it.

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‘Censorship’

The DM 0 Comments

The word ‘censorship’ is used incorrectly regularly, getting invoked routinely in reference to the interactions of private citizens, often when, say, one private party decides to end an association with another, and in so doing removes that now unwelcome party from their space, whether virtual or physical, which necessarily ends the removed party’s ability to ‘speak’ in that setting, the remover then getting deemed a ‘censor’ by the removed.

That’s not censorship, and isn’t about free speech. That’s an exercise of the rights of association and property. The removed party having no ‘right’ to be in the other’s private space, he was there by the owner’s leave, and the curtailment of his speech in that setting as a byproduct of his removal from that setting, a non-public space, is not a free speech issue, and has nothing to do with the reasons for that aspect of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Censorship is state restriction of citizen speech. That’s all.

This, however, is censorship, or will be, if and when enacted: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/15/danish-justice-minister-we-must-break-perception-of-right-to-private-messaging.html

This will be the state, whatever state that adopts this, and whatever the justifications offered, proscribing how private conversations may be conducted between private parties. If states can proscribe truly private electronic messaging (if that even exists or even could – which I doubt), and demand to be able to proactively eavesdrop on all electronic messaging in real time or be able to review any of it later, then they can demand to do the same to private verbal or written communications, and by this reasoning, could forbid also the how of those exchanges, as well, whether verbal conversations in unsurveilled settings (say a swept and secured Faraday room in a house or office), or the writing and passing of private unreviewed or unreviewable (by the state) physical documents.

Like an inmate at a prison, one could write a letter, but it will be read and discarded if the content is deemed unacceptable by the warden. In curtailing the how, the state is also thus curtailing the what, the content of what would have been conveyed, but possibly no longer will be, the privacy of the communication being eliminated or the communication just being prevented by the state in the first place.

That rationale is the same, and that’s the state restricting – while also violating, in the U.S., property rights and the 4th Amendment – the speech of private citizens aka: censorship.

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