He eventually ventured into podcasting, as one does. Rogan became a mixed martial arts color commentator. It was a garish but entertaining spectacle, the kind of show where you could spend the entire episode with your shoulders hunched up to your ears, cringing as people humiliated and degraded themselves for a chance at $50,000 and 15 minutes of microfame. Contestants on the show ate bugs, lay down in beds of snakes or jumped from a helicopter into a lake. I remember him from another reality TV show, “Fear Factor,” which he hosted in the early part of this century. That, like the idea that living in an off-the-grid yurt frees one from the demands, responsibilities and complicities of human society, is an illusion. They want free speech to exist in a vacuum, free from context, free from criticism. Too many people believe that the right to free speech means the right to say whatever they want, wherever, whenever, on whatever platform they choose, without consequence. We are expressing our taste and moral discernment, and saying what we find acceptable and what we do not. When we say, as a society, that bigotry and misinformation are unacceptable, and that people who espouse those ideas don’t deserve access to significant platforms, that’s curation. When we are not free to express ourselves, when we can be thrown in jail or even lose our lives for speaking freely, that is censorship. There’s a difference between censorship and curation. And because I am a writer, I know that language matters. Instead, I’m trying to do the best I can, and take a stand when I think I can have an impact. I am not looking for purity it doesn’t exist. And the most toxic voices should not be the only ones that are heard.Įvery day, I try to make the best decisions possible about what I create, what I consume, and who I collaborate with - but living in the world, participating in capitalism, requires moral compromise. Would I walk away from my body of work because I find those people loathsome? No. HarperCollins has published all kinds of people I find odious, dangerous and amoral. But it was symbolic, as most such stands are: Most of my books have been published at HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp, the company started by Rupert Murdoch, whose manipulation of the media has done great harm to public discourse over the last several decades. The right I did have was to decide who I wanted to do business with. (Eventually, it dropped Milo Yiannopoulos’s book.) He had every right to air his political beliefs, but he didn’t have a right to a lucrative book contract. Several years ago, I pulled out of a book deal with Simon & Schuster because the publishing company had bought a book by a white supremacist provocateur. I believe we should be exposed to a multitude of interesting ideas and perspectives, including those that challenge our most fiercely held beliefs.īut engaging with the world with intellectual honesty and integrity is rarely simple. I often write about my opinions, and I know I can’t do that in a vacuum, as tempting as that sometimes seems. That is, certainly, an illusion, but I can see the appeal. It’s clear that what these modern-day hermits want is to exist in a vacuum, where they are not affected by nor do they affect anything beyond the boundaries of their home. Over the course of an hour, I’ll watch someone build a yurt or a mud hut with cob walls or a house on a mountain outside of Denver, powered by solar panels. Sometimes, I watch a reality TV show called “Building Off the Grid,” about people who decide to make homes for themselves in remote places where they can live sustainable lives.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |