Freedom of Speech - Quareness Series 83rd "Lecture".
Many of our beliefs and ideas are coveted addictions and are likely very personal and highly charged issues for us...when they are challenged our responses more often than not tend to be emotional and defensive. Many of us are also quite receptive to ideas that satisfy our perceived needs to ease our miseries, calm our fears, band together to compete with other groups and to generally understand the cause and purpose of life, and as a consequence we may get overwhelmed with opposing dogma and rituals. And this is how a true understanding of reality may be lost in needless complexities, theatrics and exploitation.
Many are content to embrace a particular myth, adopt a creed, or fall under the spell of a charismatic personality. Indeed some followers are prepared to do almost anything to satisfy the doctrines of their faith but it rarely seems to occur to them that what they do is way more important than what they believe. Having become like tiny islands with limited resources, few of us seem to find contentment as we defend rather than share our unique qualities. Again it rarely seems to occur to us that our many needs are probably mutual and connected. In choosing to address our differences as opposing principles in competition rather than as complementary ones that enhance each other, we may be unable to comprehend the intrinsic value and infinite potential of those differences. Much of our inability to advance may stem from failure to discuss long-term interests, from unnecessary polarisation and from excessive divisions along ideological lines.
“We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” - Anonymous.
A more enlightened humanity could move from alienation to community, from despair to hope, from idleness to action, from ignorance to knowledge and from apathy to concern within a culture where the outlook is for the long term and where integrative
approaches to problem solving are utilised. It seems increasingly important now that we focus on our common interests rather than on stubborn positions that lead only to conflict. Once our interests are defined, options for mutual gain can be explored and
developed and we can then usefully address the issues that benefit everyone rather than cling to ideologies that separate us. If we hope to transcend our divisiveness, our attention needs to be directed at the interdependence of diverse interests. And more than the outcome of any debate, we need to protect this kind of approach and process.
We can choose either a world divided against itself and engaged in power struggles between its parts, or one whose richly diverse components work together for their mutual benefit. By accepting that we are all interconnected, we can come to see that attitudes among individuals and institutions must change in order to recognise the balance in life and the importance of mutually beneficial life forms for the next step on our evolutionary journey. And such an understanding of the significance of our connectedness and interdependence can serve as a powerful change agent.
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason…There can be no right of speech where any man…is compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” - Frederick Douglass (US Abolitionist Social Reformer).
Taking this rather stark statement to heart it seems hardly unreasonable to point out that any confinement of upsetting words to “safe spaces” may open a door best kept shut in that if speech is itself regarded as violence, then a violent response can be
justified. And today we seem to be witnessing widespread and growing intolerant attitudes toward free speech which perhaps can also be reasonably construed as hostility toward basic civil liberties.
Why is the protection of free speech so important to liberty? The pro brigade may tend to focus more on the idea that wherever this protection is whittled away, government is enabled to stifle dissent by placing increasingly expansive swaths of speech into the banned category...thereby opening the door to greater susceptibility on the part of our societies to succumb to totalitarianism down the road aways. However, there's also the very real possibility that banning certain types of speech can actually make them more powerful and subversive..."undesirable" thought which is pushed underground can fester and strengthen more than when it's exposed to the light of public discussion/scrutiny. In this way censorship can (does?) defeat its alleged purpose and our freedom/right to both speak and hear is confirmed as the real antidote.
Thinking of one's own group as better than all others has to be an immature and unconscious way of seeing the world. It's a type of thinking which appears to attract very insecure people...those who cannot look at themselves individually and be proud of the person they see and who latch themselves onto an established superiority myth in order to feel better about themselves. Many (most?) of us today, however, appear to be conscious enough not to fall for the most basic and primal type of tribalism (e.g race-based) but more nuanced superiority cults (e.g. based on mindless nationalism, political, religious, sporting or social identity) may be far more entrenched and present a much greater danger to our future. For example as soon as any "hate speech" becomes illegal it can rapidly transform from say grotesque and pathetic to rebellious and subversive. And this is particularly likely to occur in a
society where institutions have lost much credibility amongst the public (familiar today?).
Despite Mark Twain's ironic summary of the limits of free speech - “In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to exercise either of them.” (Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar) - the best way to fight back against "terrible" unconscious ideas may be to allow them to be expressed and discussed in public. In any event you can’t really legislate consciousness and banning ideas will not make them go away. Such insight can hopefully help us to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot...again.
Burdened by original sin
Nobody's to blame
Carrying the hard knowing
In playing life's game.
Hard to avoid
Those arrows and slings
In chasing good vibes
And spreading our wings.
Silently parked
Weaknesses remain
Waiting to spark
Into consuming flame.
Entangled in chains
Hard to see shame
Living beyond our means
On other people's dreams.
And each morning face
Shows yesterday's race
An inevitable trace
Of our being awake.
Our burdens grow light
Through the soul's dark night
But only from within
And from where we begin.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
October, 2017.
I've touched on this subject previously in December 2015 - "What You Can't Say" - see link panels at top/bottom of page.