Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis
The Dark Net ~ Jamie Bartlett
The dark net, like everything else, is amoral: it has no morals. That's not to be mistaken with immorality, demonstrating bad morals, but to be understood as utterly devoid of morality. Things aren't moral; people are. Things are tools; we are the ones who wield them.
We make things good or bad. We know this in regards to money. It's not good or bad; it depends on how you use it. Money often buys power and corrupts people with insatiable greed. But it also affords altruism, freedom, and innovation. Money supports charities, opens opportunities, and funds research. Some rich people hoard their privileges; others share them. It's not a matter of wealth but people. The same concept applies to the dark net. It's not good or bad; it depends on us. It's what we make of it. And what we make it into.
The dark net fosters breathtaking creativity. The majority of the sites I visited were astonishingly adaptive and innovative
Like most things, the dark net was begun with the best intentions, but, somewhere along the way, things have gotten skewed. The dark net brims with power and potential. We're the ones who guide that power and potential, for good or for ill. It's a reflection of humanity. Our actions reveal us: our desires, dispositions, capabilities, and values.
It's a mirror but a foggy one. It's not a perfect reflection, but we're not perfect either. We're human: flawed and confused. We're still discovering this new world, and I think we're constantly discovering ourselves. We'll make some horrible mistakes with terrible consequences, but they'll be mistakes. It's when they stop being mistakes that we should really be concerned. That's when we run the risk of losing ourselves.
It was surprising how quickly I stopped being shocked by anything. Simply put: I got used to everything. That, I realized, can be a problem. It's important to be shocked occasionally. It forces us to examine our moral view. That's why people can easily get sucked into very dark and destructive places. If I had a propensity towards any of these behaviors, perhaps it would have encouraged me
We may find disturbing things on the dark net that make us uncomfortable as we explore its passages. We may find that we're not discovering something outside of ourselves but something found within the deep recesses of our innermost being. We may find that what we're afraid of the is not the dark but of the monsters lurking in its shadows; monsters we've been too afraid to face and have yet to overcome
The dark net is about hiding—and exposing what's hidden. It elicits what lies within us. Sometimes it's our worst parts that we hide away, but sometimes it's our best parts. Just like a mine, it's beautiful and dangerous and full of unknown treasure waiting patiently to be discovered—hiding but wanting desperately to be found
We may find that what fascinates us so much about the dark net isn't the dark net; it's us
Ultimately, the dark net is nothing more than a mirror of society. Distorted, magnified, and mutated by the strange and unnatural conditions of life online—but still recognizably us