Consider the merits and demerits of censorship and state your reasons why you think it is un/necessary.

In our society, there is certain sensitivity towards certain issues like religion and politics. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble if you should be careless in the way you speak about these issues. Therefore, most of us choose to avoid them, thus resulting in the existence of what we call, social taboos. Social taboos include pornography, racial differences and violence.

Censorship came about as a mean to protect everyone’s best interest, and to ensure national security. With censorship, anything that is a potential threat to national security is considered unsuitable or offensive for viewing, and will be removed before releasing the film or book, etc, to the public.

On one hand, censorship is somewhat necessary. First off, there are groups of people who need to be sheltered from the truth, namely children and the weak-minded. Children require the protection because of their innocent nature. Knowing too much might do them more harm than good if they are unable to handle the information. They deserve the chance to live in a fairytale-like world while they grow up. The weak-minded need protection as well because they might go about facing these issues with the wrong approach.

In addition, censorship protects the well-being of people. People might re-enact what they see or read. “Monkey see, monkey do”, right? What would happen if a child decided to get violent with his peers after watching a very gory film? People are going to get hurt, unnecessarily.

Most importantly, like what I have mentioned in the beginning, censorship helps to maintain peace and social stability. If sensitive issues are brought up in an offensive manner, certain groups of people might be enraged, causing our national security to be threatened. Then all hell will break lose. Riots and violent acts might occur, resulting in bloodshed.

However, there are always two sides to a coin. Censorship can be unnecessary as well. To rebut the point on protecting children from the truth, censorship would only delay education. Children will grow up to be naïve. Ultimately, this will only lead to them becoming one of the weak-minded.

Furthermore, censorship shields people from reality. The down side of that is that people will become unaware of what is really happening around them. You become ignorant about important issues.

Moreover, you become simple-minded. Since you were shield from reality, you are at a lost when you finally face these issues later on in life, not being able to think critically. Your mentality of the world is child-like, and your level of maturity will be pathetic.

I personally feel that censorship might not be that necessary. There are other more mature ways of dealing with sensitive issues, like through explanations. Expose and then educate people on these issues instead of avoiding them. That way, people are aware of things happening around them, and understand how to go about dealing with these social taboos in a mature and careful manner. The way I see it, that would be a win-win situation. People get to know about reality, yet national security can still be protected.