A Quote by Jeff MacNelly
I really do have a self-censorship problem, which isn't the way you should be if you're a cartoonist.
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Self-censorship happens not only in China, or Iran or ex-Soviet places. It can happen anywhere. If an artist penetrates a certain taboo or a certain power through their work, he or she will face this problem. I'm always saying that commercial censorship is our foremost censorship globally today. Why do we still pretend we are free?
In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that's now in place, the user doesn't know to what extent, why, and under what authority there's been censorship. There's no way of appealing. There's no due process.
Overall there may be less censorship in America than in China, but censorship and self-censorship are not only from political pressure, but also pressures from other places in a society.
Society develops a type of self-censorship, with the knowledge that surveillance exists - a self-censorship that is even expressed when people communicate with each other privately.
You should not be subjected to the pressures, the intimidation, whether by Government or by the private sector, which would force you into self-censorship.
Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.
There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences.
A dreary censorship, and self-censorship, has been imposed on books by the centralization of the book industry.
Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.
Censorship, in my opinion, is a stupid and shallow way of approaching the solution to any problem.
So, the first thing we should introspect - are we concerned about ourselves ? All the time do we think that we are suffering, we have this problem, that problem, or this should be done, that should be done. If the attention is on that, that all the time you are worried about yourself, then you cannot break, you cannot break through this shell of your being which is under the domination of your mental selfishness or self centeredness.
Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.
Can you imagine if you really let it in that you are not a problem to be solved in any way? Imagine you knew that anything that would tell you otherwise is just a movement of thought in the mind that says "Whatever is, isn't the way it is supposed to be." So the biggest act of compassion starts within. And when the self is no longer seen as a problem, this is called "the peace that passes all understanding."
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
I wish I had been less keen to inject my own opinions, but I was a teenager and your teenage self is generally an idiot compared to the adult you. That's the way it should be. If it's the other way around, you have a problem.
I don't consider myself a cartoonist, because to me a cartoonist has a lot of technical ability to draw and such. However, I do consider myself to have a bit of a cartoonist character. I definitely am analyzing and satirizing pop culture and politics and whatever strikes my fancy.
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