Does Face Book Censorship equal the "Lottery"
It seems that it's an automatic thing as far as I can tell. If enough people report something it's automatically blocked (I think). I've not yet had enough people report my group to get it blocked so it must be a substantial number. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any review, so I'm out of luck as far as registering a protest goes. But I tried, and that is what matters to me.
This is indeed a dictatorship of chance and the fringes. Everyone will enjoy this:
Jorge Luis Borges. Collected Fictions. Tr. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1998. Pp. 101-106.
The Lottery in Babylon
"Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave. I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. Look here-- my right hand has no index finger. Look here--through this gash in my cape you can see on my stomach a crimson tattoo--it is the second letter, Beth. On nights when the moon is full, this symbol gives me power over men with the mark of Gimel, but it subjects me to those with the Aleph, who on nights when there is no moon owe obedience to those marked with the Gimel. In the half-light of dawn, in a cellar, standing before a black altar, I have slit the throats of sacred bulls. Once, for an entire lunar year, I was declared invisible--I would cry out and no one would heed my call, I would steal bread and not be beheaded. I have known that thing the Greeks knew not--uncertainty. In a chamber of brass, as I faced the strangler's silent scarf, hope did not abandon me; in the river of delights, panic has not failed me. Heraclides Ponticus reports, admiringly, that Pythagoras recalled having been Pyrrhus, and before that, Euphorbus, and before that, some other mortal; in order to recall similar vicissitudes, I have no need of death, nor even of imposture.
I owe that almost monstrous variety to an institution--the Lottery-- which is unknown in other nations, or at work in them imperfectly or secretly. I have not delved into this institution's history. I know that sages cannot agree. About its mighty purposes I know as much as a man untutored in astrology might know about the moon. Mine is a dizzying country in which the Lottery is a major element of reality; until this day, I have thought as little about it as about the conduct of the indecipherable gods or of my heart. Now, far from Babylon and its beloved customs, I think with some bewilderment about the Lottery, and about the blasphemous conjectures that shrouded men whisper in the half-light of dawn or evening.
My father would tell how once, long ago--centuries? years?--the lottery in Babylon was a game played by commoners. He would tell (though whether this is true or not, I cannot say) how barbers would take a man's copper coins and give back rectangles made of bone or parchment and adorned with symbols. Then, in broad daylight, a drawing would be held; those smiled upon by fate would, with no further corroboration by chance, win coins minted of silver. The procedure, as you can see, was rudimentary."
Read the entire translation of "The Lottery"
here.
