Erik Naggum's Ideas and Principles

Security and Censorship

To feel secure is a fundamental psychological need, the lack of which leads to serious personal problems. I think security can be expressed as the belief that what you do not see or know of will also not harm or threaten you. When this belief is challenged, most people will work to reestablish security, but some acquire psychological disorders, instead. Perhaps religious beliefs are based on the premise that something or someone will ascertain that the unknown is harmless, and that religious doubt is precisely inklings of the threat that the unknown is harmful.

Censorship is founded on the premise that if you can hide it, then it also ceases to be a threat, even if it does not go away. Many actions taken by politicians are aimed at showing the public that visible problems are taken care of, to imply that invisible problems are also taken care of. I think cries for censorship surface when the belief that the unseen is harmless breaks down and instead turns into paranoid delusions that nothing unseen is safe. This naturally happens on computer networks, where it is very hard to find the rejected data, which would tend to reinforce any paranoid beliefs in the evils of the unseen.