Nobody cares about swearing today, the censors will come for your ideas – Telegraph.co.uk

We may not intend to hex our enemies these days, as damn sought to do. But weve hardly moved beyond a trepidatious use of language. Today its not bad words that will get you in trouble, so much as ideas deemed forbidden or ideologically unacceptable. And though most of the people going after you wouldnt regard themselves as religious, their moral righteousness often recalls the most austere, dour, unforgiving sect, the kind that might think that fizzy water is an unnecessary decadence and that pictures of kittens degrade the soul.

Perhaps I remember the past inaccurately. When I was growing up in the 1980s, after all, the music industry was dealing with Tipper Gores campaign to place Parental Guidance: Explicit Lyrics on offensive records, which only upped their desirability among teenagers everywhere. But then, as the 1990s progressed, I distinctly recall a general no one is above mockery sentiment amongcomedians and writers everywhere.

The implicit idea was this: censorship is a rotten old idea held by uptight prudes and Christian conservatives, and the Left is a space of free-thinking, liberal transgression, provocation and open-mindedness. This went for the mockers, too everyone was an idiot, and no one was above criticism. As philosopher Raoul Vaneigem put it in his 2015 defence of free speech, it was a time where nothing was sacred, everything could be said.

Today, as we accept the reality of yet another lockdown, perhaps there are other challenges we can set ourselves as a society, beyond making bread, or reading the entirety of Prousts In Search of Lost Time, or whatever else those not deemed essential to the ongoing maintenance of British society are doing. These quests could include listening to each other when we disagree; refining our own arguments before attacking others; imagining that our interlocuter is as well-motivated as webelieve ourselves to be; speaking to each other on the phone before denouncing each other online; forgiving ourselves and others for mistakes weve all made; recognising that people change their minds; and other such horribly reasonable thoughts.

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Nobody cares about swearing today, the censors will come for your ideas - Telegraph.co.uk