We make/discover tools. That is our greatest thing. Even language, speech, etc are nothing more than tools. There are animals that use tools as well, but nothing comes close to what we have done in this regard.
If you consider what a human is without clothes, without language, without anything other than your bare skin and body we are rather unimpressive. It is the tools that make us impressive.
Virtually every tool I can think of can be used for a Malevolent/Evil/Destructive purpose, or a Benevolent/Good/Constructive purpose. The tools themselves do not make that determination. We do.
Therefore any malevolence or benevolence happens first in our minds. The problem was not initiated by the tool, it was initiated by the human using the tool.
Tools tend to extend our malevolent and benevolent capabilities.
So when a new tool is created or on the cusp of creation people will tend to fixate on either its malevolent or its benevolent purposes. These days if it has a malevolent use and is advanced enough that seems to be where our governments will focus development, but that does not mean there is not a benevolent side as well.
Likewise when a great new invention comes out and people are talking about these great benevolent uses, there is usually a potential malevolent side as well.
One mistake we often make is to act as though the tool was the source of the malevolence and call for banning such a thing. Yet malevolence occurs with in the minds of the humans using the tool. A tool may act as a force multiplier and will likely make certain tasks easier, but the actual malevolence occurred within the mind of the human using the tool. You do not stop that malevolence by banning the tool. That capability of thought is still there. That impulse to malevolence is still there. You may have made getting a tool more difficult to acquire, yet if malevolence is our goal there are always other ways. If the person is a type that recognizes what they are doing as against the law, etc in the first place then banning access to a tool as a law will not stop them from getting it. They were already okay with breaking the law with their initial malevolent intent. So why would a law that it is illegal to have a certain type of tool even phase them? The answer is that it likely wouldn't.
As tools can have malevolent and benevolent uses when a tool is banned due to fear of malevolence that also shuts the door for the people who only had benevolent uses for it.
If you wish to actually deal with malevolence and benevolence then that fight/education is in the human mind, not in the tool. Aiming at the tool does nothing to actually treat/solve the actual source of the problem.
Let's put away our ban hammer. This includes the ban hammer that would ban certain types of speech. Speech and language are perhaps our most important tool.
Steem On!
