I embark on this commentary with some ambivalence. Like most people, I like a pleasant environment. I may not have created the most comfortable environment for everyone on this blog, but ordinarily I enjoy to spend time in places that are clean and with people who are polite, friendly, and in control of themselves. Does this characteristic give my Mormon background away? Mormons are past masters of creating pleasant environments. Mormon temples are the apotheosis of pleasant. They are not very lively. Mr. Rogers would have felt very comfortable with the level of stiumulation in a Mormon temple.
The Chinese government is also interested in maintaining what it considers to be a pleasant environment on the internet. The New York Times online edition of May 9 reports that 500 students at Shanghai Normal University are employed voluntarily as internet monitors, who report explicit and controversial material and steer heated debates in more 'appropriate' directions. The students who participate deny that they are controling speech, but claim they are rather "guiding" it. They are very concerned about the moral environment of the net. Says one volunteer monitor, "a bulletin board is like a family, and in a family, I want my room to be clean and well-lighted, without dirty or dangerous things in it."
Sound familiar? The reasoning sounds very persuasive at first. After all, who wants to live in a garbage bin? Like many of you, I prefer a safe environment. I suppose the problem is that I prefer to make my own decisions regarding my safety. We rightly fear the Patriot Act precisely because in embracing safety uncritically, one can sacrifice a great deal of constitutional freedom. Such freedom is not simply a legal fiction, it is supposedly one of the pillars of Mormon theology. Some would call it moral agency. Modern technology is challenging our belief in moral agency. Agency can be lost through addiction, and modern technology has found the means of fostering addictions very effectively. Agency isn't gone, but it is severely challenged by powerful drugs, etc. Freedoms also leave us exposed to their misuse by others with whom we disagree.
How far are we willing to go to seek after safety? How much power do we want to hand over to governments and other human leaders to protect us from ourselves and the decisions of others? At a certain point, the power we give to these people will be used by them for their own interests. Not yours and mine. It's the nature of the beast. Any institution that hopes to continue its existence will fabricate its moral imperative to exist, and will thus take the measures necessary to continue that existence at the expense of others. For this reason we must be very careful when we give power to these institutions to keep us safe.
In the case of the Chinese government's bid to tame the internet, it is clear that there is an effort to strike a balance between the safety of the internet and the safety of a governement that sacrifices a great deal of what Americans value in the principle of freedom of expression. Mormons as a group tend to feel comfortable with the idea of voluntarily sacrificing a great deal of their personal freedom for the safety of the kingdom of God. As long as that kingdom exists within the boundaries of larger entitities that really call the shots when the chips are down, this is not viewed as especially dangerous. You can get out by writing a letter. Therefore, Mormons are happy to look to leaders to give them the guidelines to remain safe from the ravages of "the world", which is usually characterized by the worst aspects of extra-Mormon reality.
I agree that this is relatively harmless. No one but Mormons need be concerned. Until, of course, the financial might of the Mormon Empire is committed to efforts like fighting against gay marriage, the supposed dangers of which seem largely illusory. We fear these seemingly benign institutions like the Mormon Church today because they organize themselves behind political issues and exercise a great deal of power thereby. The fact that Mormons want a safer internet may translate into you living with a more restricted internet in the future.
You may be happy to sacrifice pornography in order to have a safer internet, and if this were the limits of the issue I might be inclined to agree. Mormons claim that the political issues they involve themselves in are moral in nature. There is of course, the little issue of the definition of moral. And, from my perspective, Mormons have a bad record of separating the moral from the cultural and the political. Was ERA really a moral issue? Is the motivation to raise the gay marriage amendment issue now unrelated to the election cycle? Is it related to the election cycle for purely moral reasons (i.e. use of the strategic advantage of elections for the sake of the issue v. use of the issue for the electoral advantage of a party)?
One small example may illustrate my concern quite handily. Years ago a young, female BYU student was hrown out of BYU for protesting against Geneva Steel. It boggles my mind that a student, who did nothing to violate the school's honor code, was expelled for protesting against a business! While this kind of travesty does not happen every day at BYU, it is an interesting and troubling example of the kind of injustice that can occur when we give institutions too much power in the quest to remain safe from the world. Every institution will try to expand its powers in the quest to thrive and achieve its agenda. We cannot, however, allow these institutions to get out of control.
Go back and read the words of Jesus in the New Testament. The Sabbath was made for man. This dictum should apply to all institutions. When these institutions become harmful to human progress, let them change or die. Of course, we are the ones who must change them.
