A friend of mine works at a fairly sizable high-tech company. The company had a little contest for various departments to make an entertaining video to show at some in-house company event. One of the entries, which she shared with me, was a really cute spoof of a current hip-hop love song, with all these software engineers done up in bling bling, substituting the usual risque language with references to their part of the company. It was cute on its face, and I’m sure if I worked at the company and could understand the "in" jokes I would have been rolling on the floor laughing my ass off.
This was an extremely mild production, there was no exposed skin per se, although granted, they were making fun of the sexuality of the original video. But this was not a family event… This was meant to be shown in house to people over 18. Compared to what is on TV every night, it was nothing.
Well, out of dozens of people who pre-screened it and approved it, including lots of upper management people, one person in that department took it upon themselves to go to the human resources department and express their concern that it "might be offensive." It was not even clear if that person themselves thought it was offensive; they were just perhaps concerned that someone else might think so.
Well that was all it took. The production was yanked. On the spot. Nobody stepped up and said, "hey wait a minute, perhaps your sensibilities are a little too sensitive." The merest whiff of controversy led to total censorship.
I would like to think that this kind of thing was an anomaly, but sad to say, in reality and common practice, people who have "issues" seem to have more say and more authority in the public discourse than those of us who have done the very hard work of working through our issues and gaining some degree of emotional maturity and perspective.
This is somewhat reminiscent of several Principles of Applied Stupidity. Principle #8: "slowness of mind, not quickness, puts you in charge," and principle #30: "When smart meets dumb, dumb always wins."
I am starting to think that certain people have discovered that they have more power and more sway over their environment if they claim to be offended than for having any truly objective logical reason, or greater moral authority, or training, or perspective, or experience. Hey, if it gives you power, people are going to use it.
This kind of knee-jerk reaction to shutting down anything that is even slightly controversial is a powerful force in politics and history. And certainly, if I am to continue blogging about originality, well, frankly, originality and creativity is easy. Overcoming the resistance to new ideas (both internal and external), and getting around the many little tantrum-throwing tricks that people will pull to repress new ideas and new mental freedoms… ah, that takes training and experience.
© Justin Locke
