Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Let’s banish the water advertisements!

After the last class some nagging questions were still bothering me. To me, it seems very dangerous to start to think about the idea of prohibit commercials, websites and other sources of information, just because we don’t agree with them.
Anorexia as well as overweight can kill, but do you know that water can kill too? As well as the advertisements with very thin people can influence the other (special kids), the water companies strategy to advertise to kids can also be dangerous, seeing that they don’t say that the excessive consume of water can be fatal.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill

http://www.aquapod.com/?CID=BAC-DPAPcomBanner-sPromo06&sz=sPromo&brand=DP

To me it seems to be the same, why people don’t complain about the water companies too?
As other examples to prove my point of view I am listing two website easy to find (just Google the right words) that I don’t incentive you to look. The fist one teach how to committee suicide and the second one how to build a bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_bomb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods

What I am trying to illustrate with my post, is that we can not use dictator methods against the freedom of opinion.
I am not going to build and detonate a bomb because I saw how I could do it, as well as the suicide methods, which will not incentive me to kill my self. If you say that they can be useful to someone who has these ideas I agree. But to me the problem is TO HAVE THE IDEA. My family taught me what is good and what is bad and is not because I don’t like or agree with something that I can not learn about it.
If you agree that extremes body dimensions ( I don’t remember the exact name used in class) could be a bad influence to your kids, or could influence them to do the same, why don’t you talk with them first? Why don’t you try to show way this could be bad? Why don’t you create another site showing your point of view (ex: http://www.suicide.org/)? Instead of trying to banned the things that you don’t agree with.
We can not (and should not) deprive people of having access of information but we can (and should) teach what we thing is the correct and the best. The person chooses are based on their character and on the way they have been educated and not because of the information that they have access.

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