Incomprehension.

This week on the blog, we've been looking at reasons NOT to write. I can think of many, but none so scary as the idea that my words will at some point be taken out of context and used against the freedoms they are designed to protect. In my menial twenty six years on this earth, I have had the displeasure of knowing some people with pretty hard line views- these people know who they are and I've mostly had the conversations. They do have a knack for spinning a line though, much in the way that newspapers report a story or the TV  stations delegate airtime to the soundbite that backs their angle. Cut and stick is no way to do quotes. 

Since doing an English degree I have developed something of a personal obsession in cutting through the proverbial- in as much as we're constantly being fed what they want us to hear, often hiding the actual story. We all know it goes on, it always has and always will but with events like those in Woolwich this week, it would pay us all to take a minute from our lives to think about what things appear to mean, what they can be twisted to mean and what they are generally perceived to mean. This is not a call to arms for conspiracists or  inferrers, simply a request that we all try and understand a little more about what we're being fed. The more we suck up, the less we understand sometimes. 

The alternative to not making an effort? Well, we could end up with censorship placed on our reading- the banning through fear of more influential books for instance but with no means in place to realistically do that or to stop groups popping up with their own schools of thought and interpretation, you have to worry where the lines will be drawn in the hi-tech future. Any restrictions would be a reason not to write indeed but please, no reading licences. Amazon, Apple and Google will end up doing super tax deals in exchange for information and those of us without the snazzy versions- will we be holding paperbacks with image capture perhaps?

Thanks, Shaun.