The Orchestrated Moralist Slippage towards a Low Tolerance Society

Singapore.
The final speaker in this ICA 2010 closing plenary is Josephine Ho, who suggests that there is a developing new social sensibility, a low tolerance sensibility, that aims to create a morally induced responsiveness towards devious content. This goes beyond religious use, but generally turns censorship into a justfied and desired action.

Online, anonymity can release hostility and repression, Josephine suggests, and the ease of photo and video sharing makes a greater range of images shareable. The split between private and public behaviour has been blurred, and more and more private moments are being shared; these originate from private desired and distinctive tastes and tap into the immense diversity of feelings and values that lie beyond state-sanctioned content.

This creates a myriad of effects and impressions that encrouch upon the delicate sensibilities that are seen to be a hallmark of civilisation. The accessibility of content also gives rised to a new interdependency, a mixing of various lifestyles, a new directness, vitality, and spontaneity, inciting ever more candid and up-front presentations. This is further accelerated by the multiplication of social networks extending far beyond the conventional networks of society.

This constantly titillates our sense of propriety; sensitivity to the variety of modes of conduct increases, and this is conducive to the formation of a convoluted structure of feelings that eats away at civilised sensibility. The construction of sensationality creates a sense of alert that rigidifies the original sensbility. Freedom of speech especially related to sex-related information is constricted, especially through calls in the media for a return to morality; it is now common practice for journalists to pick sensational stories from the Net as this is media- as well as cost-effective.

Journalists are often compelled to frame such stories in a moral context, while netizens continue to proudly share images of their daily misdemeanours, unaware of such media exploitation; normally, this behaviour would not have attracted much attention, but now, newsworthiness is constructed by the journalists' performance of concern and well-constructed vox-pops and leads to stories about the contemporary decline of moral values. This calls upon the audience to be outraged and become vigilant, and calls for mob and state actions to combat such delinquency.

The result is a general lowering of tolerance levels for different behaviours - a low tolerance sensibility that narrows the span of normativity in the offline world and deters even the permissibility of anonymous online activity. Through the further efforts of the Christian right, in particular, there is a further normalising of such views and a greater rigidification of moralising views. This is especially framed around a childhood and parenthood discourse - our children must be safeguarded by towing the low sensibility line, and constitutional rights to freedom of expression and information are positioned as obstacles on this course. All information and communication must be made safe for the imaginary, idealised child. In turn, this also further strengths the power and influence of the conservative lobby.

This process has been operationalised in new censorship initiatives and directives in the Chinese-speaking world; the (failed) project to install the Green Dam Youth Escort screening device in all newly manufactured computers in China is a key example, as are various laws against 'immoral' communication, including personal communication as well as news. Hong Kong characterised all discussions of sex as pornographic, and China has shut down a wide range of sex-related sites, including sites about sexual health and related topics.

Activating parental concerns is also convenient for justifying state censorship methods, of course. Political governance overall can be strengthened by this war on anything transgressive; but even liberal societies are slipping into this low tolerance trajectory, and censorship laws have been allowed to come into place that violate universal human rights. Dissent is made more and more difficult; this is the politics of sensibility that we have to contend with at this critical moment.

(Wow. Just wow. And with that last hurrah, it's goodbye to - and from - Singapore.)

Technorati : Christian right, ICA 2010, bigotry, child protection, filtering, low tolerance, moralism, self-censorship, sex
Del.icio.us : Christian right, ICA 2010, bigotry, child protection, filtering, low tolerance, moralism, self-censorship, sex