Kevin F.

Ellis
English 101
Mr. Schultz
13 October 2006

Censorship

Every country needs to have a certain degree of censorship on the materials that

the citizens are allowed to see. The amount of censorship and the content of documents

that are being censored vary with everyone’s personal opinion. However, all countries

have decided that new military documents are classified. In order to protect the soldiers

who are over in other countries collecting this data. Others have argued that even more

information should be hidden form the public eye.

Plato has suggested that we divide society into three different groups. Those

groups are the commonwealth, the soldiers and the philosophers or leaders, and each

group should receive its own information. Anything that doesn’t advance the purpose of

each group should be considered classified information. For the commonwealth, they

should only be given material that talks about being a good worker. The soldiers should

only be taught about bravery and courage. Philosophers and leaders must only be taught

how the gods interact with each other. For all the information that these groups can

receive, only the positive attributes should be given. Plato believes that if they hear of

any negative idea, they will turn to corrupt and greed. Once evil ideas are introduced,

people will act upon those ideas and the society will crumble.

John Stuart Mill has a complete opposite view of Plato. He believes that all

people should be allowed to receive any information that they so desire, as long as it does

not harm someone else. Furthermore, everyone can do anything that he or she so desires
as long as it doesn’t harm someone else. However, he also acknowledges that every

action that a person commits has the potential to affect somebody else. Since there is that

potential he suggests that when somebody is harmed it is necessary for the harmer to be

punished.

The views of Plato and Mill have the potential to work. However, neither of the

two views are the optimum solution for censoring information to the public, and

influencing the way people interact with each other. The reason why is that neither view

factors into account human nature. That is that humans have a tendency to try and

advance themselves, as individuals. A better system of censoring information and

influencing human interactions is to setup laws that regulate the things that most

frequently affect other people, such as alcohol consumption. Also, the government should

only allow all information except the information that affects soldiers and other military

operations that are currently on-going.