Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition or Muzzles and Witches

With apologies to Monty Python.

Aren’t there just some things you’ve always wanted to say and have been just waiting for the opportunity. Well, this is one of them for me!

Follow up:

And, this brief snippet from the holy grail

CROWD: Burn her! Witch! Witch! Burn her!
BEDEMIR: Did you dress her up like this?
CROWD: No, no... no ... yes. Yes, yes, a bit, a bit.
VILLAGER #1: She has got a wart.
BEDEMIR: What makes you think she is a witch?
VILLAGER #3: Well, she turned me into a newt.
BEDEMIR: A newt?
VILLAGER #3: I got better.
VILLAGER #2: Burn her anyway!
CROWD: Burn! Burn her!

Well it’s basically old news now, but I do spend some moments each day reflecting on how administration of an Internet site can go bad. And I try to understand the utility of taking away the ability of a member to post without moderation, and a member’s right to send out Personal Messages from the site. What end does that serve? It seems like an attempt to demonstrate power, but what really does it do? Does it make anyone feel better? It’s not like such things stay quiet. Force in these situations works for a time, but then people simply walk away, and that’s what happened here. At first it does hurt, but in time....the hurt fades and we find other things to do. And we hope that we learned from the experience. So that’s the Muzzle part.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition in the sense that no one expects things to go so horribly wrong, but I guess they do. As for the witches… well that’s a little more complex. Some people see shades of grey, and others only see black and white. They are with us or they are against us. If they are against us, get rid of them. Burn them, expel them, shut them up. And while there is evil and good, there is no clear black and white.

We want desperately to find the evil and stamp it out. But we all carry the evil within, and it sits there right next to the good in each of us. We may want to look for witches and divest ourselves of them, burn them, … but if we think that will eliminate the problems, we have only to look in the mirror, for the problems are still there. All the time.