January 02, 2008

2008? No, It's 1984

Here's something that happened to me today that caused a rant in me containing a burning anger of a thousand white-hot suns. E-mail quarantine.

I was writing a particularly gripping piece to my sister today on the concept of the collective unconscious. It's a theory developed by Carl Jung and proposes that not only do we have an individual unconscious unique to our own experiences, but also a collective unconscious shared by every human being since the beginning of time. I applied that theory to receiving messages from dead people through dreams.

As you might imagine, the note I wrote to my sister was quite complex, containing detailed theories regarding the human psyche, the afterlife, and the paranormal. It took me quite a long time to articulate what I was trying to convey. Finally I was able to click "send."

Within seconds I received a message from the e-mail quarantine center stating my message was deemed racially discriminating and it was not only quarantined but obliterated completely.

Now I can understand if my employer doesn't want me writing personal e-mails on work time or on the work e-mail network thingy. I was in error doing that. I will punish myself for not being more sneaky. But to take a piece of writing, copyrighted merely by its creation, and not only block it from its intended recipient but completely destroy it on the basis of a keyword which may have been construed as racially discriminating? That's out and out censorship. Even if my subject matter had been racially discriminating, I think it's wrong for anyone or anything to delete it from existence - well, my existence at least. Reprimanding is one thing. Being the judge of all things written is another.

So I'm pretty down on Big Brother today. I'm down on the fact that nothing is private. I'm down on the fact that my intellectual ramblings are deleted by my employer, and yet the dozens of people who can't/won't do their jobs aren't being fired. Where will the line be drawn? When will people be able to express themselves as themselves without being censored by political correctness? When will the people of the world just lighten the hell up and leave each other alone?

Geez!

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