Philosophical fallouts of the blocking of the blogs

Sometime back the blogger, the geocities and some other blog hosts were blocked for the Indian viewers. Mine was not visible to me as a surfer. My friends and readers were finding it difficult to access. Of course net-wise people were able to circumvent the problem. But after that I lost my enthu in blogging for the various philosophical ruminations I had been having from that instant. Of course you can say it was restored weeks back and wonder why I should mourn over it even now. I could have taken it in my strides and become happy to internetact with my readers. But the philosophical overtones of the issue bother me even now. Just over the past couple of days I am recovering from that stupor and you can take this as a net-soliloquy, this what I am blogging.

Now what are the philosophical issues I am referring about? First it concerns about the age old value of 'freedom of expression'. Of course as any social issue, 'freedom of expression' can't exist in a vacuum. There is a context always as of any social issue. At the same time no context can be justification enough to cause harm to 'the freedom of expression'. Now in this certain questions can be asked, viz., 'whose expression?', 'whose freedom?'. An anti social element, by the very act that that person has chosen to become enimical to the society as such, has excluded himself/herself from the extense of the operation of the right towards 'freedom of expression'. All the values become meaningful only when the basic foundation-value, viz., LIFE, is unambiguously cherished and actively upheld or atleast not forsaken by thought, word and deed.

The block was said to be caused at the instant of the anti-social activities of some miscreants who were using the blogging for their nefarious acts. Of course as a responsible citizen one has to cooperate with understanding and patience on such occasions. But the block was not of those blogs alone and the time of block-out was not discriminate on purely the basis, to identify the anti-social-content-blogs. Instead the fiasco seems to have resulted from the lack of communication or miscommunication or misunderstanding that resulted from the transactions between the government and the ISP companies. And bloggers had to take it to the notice of the authorities concerned repeatedly and drive home to them what has resulted among the IT public. And of course the government was good enough to clarify the issue and sort it out at last. But that which bothers me is the lack of trepidation on the part of the people or institutions who tread on the people's freedom, knowingly or unknowingly. Actually what should have happened is that the government should have issued a request to the people to bear with the temporary measures taken at the stated instant and the ISP companies should have issued apologies for trampling on the freedom of the innocent bloggers and net-readers inadvertently. I don't know if any such thing happened. As a matter of fact it was blocked and as a matter of fact it was lifted and left at that. Such lack of respect towards the sacredness of the freedom of expression of the innocent citizens defies any attempt of justification or rationalisation. But even these grave ethical lecuna can be kept in abeyance in a climate of terror and anti-social havoc. But now or later, these issues have to be addressed consciously by statesmen, law makers and political scientists. These public ethical issues of grave lacuna are like fissures in the body politic of social confidence, which if left unattended to, weakens the structure in due course. Let us hope our social conscience never sleeps on such issues.

But my dampening spirits were not due to this aspect alone. It goes much deeper in that thinking that such an innocent field of information highway is put to use to causes of pure destruction, a sort of dejection sets in. What this evil, should it be always sharing the tools of life and thought of humanity? Evil has no existence of its own, then where from it retains its strangle hold repeatedly in the history of humanity? The philosophical pop up of the issue teases the understanding and sometimes the misdirected ardour becomes callous enough not to notice the ethical concerns.