Quote:
Originally Posted by Quentin
I wrote about this for YNOT a couple years back -- with apologies to John Stuart Mill for my amateurish summarizing of his immensely important work. |
Hey quentin, there's one speciffic point in there that I'd like to settle. You say
Quote:
|
It’s useful here to note that no known society, ever, anywhere, has adopted a standard of entirely "free" speech – meaning that literally anything can be written and/or said without risk of running afoul of that society’s system of law, however that society’s law might be codified and executed.
|
This is not actually true. The greeks, who invented the thing we strive to copy today, and who made it work where ours to date hasn't yet, did have such freedom of speech, and it was limitless. And they considered that limitlessness key to their little engine that worked.
Actually, let me tell you a story.
Diogenes Kyon was sitting in the forum one day and masturbating. Some citizen or other passing by wanted to know if he doesn't it find it silly to be spending his time in the forum jacking off.
"No. And if hunger should also go away through rubbing of the belly, oh what a perfect world we'd inhabit".
Here's the one obscenity test that makes sense : Anything short of jacking off on the senate floor with the senate in session is not obscene. And so jacking off is not obscene either. Just a little silly.