INFORMATION DELUGE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OLD-FASHIONED CENSORSHIP

There are two ways to control inciting ideas: deny people access to them or bury them in a sea of useless information. Today in America, we have access to just about everything, yet 99 percent of this information is distracting, irrelevant, or simply wrong. Meanwhile the Chinese have limited access to social media, blogs, and accurate historical information about their country. Most people view this as the most insidious form of censorship, but to me there is a huge upside to this old-fashioned style of censorship. The problem with keeping information from people is that eventually--as history has always shown--people will find it, and the act of censoring or hiding it actually acknowledges the informations' power and worth. In a world where many people struggle to establish value for themselves, this act of censorship actually does the heavy cognitive lifting for those who may not be able to do so on their own.

In America we have a new approach to censorship. We make everything available: every useless, distracting, divisive, unfounded, ridiculous, baseless piece of information is only a click away. Mixed together in this useless sea of ones and zeros are the rare fish, the knowledge that could wake people up to the unsettling truths that are beginning to stack up all around us: That elites are amassing huge stockpiles of our resources, that the penal system is enslaving significant sections of our population, that the media serves to polarize all who indulge in it in the most effective divide and conquer campaign since the colonization of Africa, that corporations are raping and pillaging our planet, that people are being shot on the streets of our cities because we don't understand the subtle yet complex racism that is hard-wired into each of us, and finally, that the American Dream--one of the most powerful myths ever created--is only possible at the expense of others. People throughout the world suffer every day for our dream. And now the American Dream is a global ambition; our wasteful selfish lifestyles have become models for others, and our planet can't sustain it.

None of the truths I've mentioned are censored from the American people. Like all the nonsense, they are a click away. It is a cruel irony that with wisdom comes calm. The ignorant scream at the top of their lungs and draw all the attention. We live in a world with an unprecedented amount of distraction that works like a magicians slight of hand taking our eyes away from the crucial realities.