I am not targeting any group, race or religion or whatever, just an observation why does it seem that freedom of speech appears to invoke an image of a defence to be an asshole?
I get it, free to speak your mind and all and sometimes hard truths need to be said that but is the concept so out of whack that people have less empathy for others that they don’t agree with that they antagonise another to the point of disrespecting the right to dignity?
It seems like humanity is hard wired for conflict and if it isn’t actively trying to kill itself it seems to find an outlet for violence some way somehow. Maybe it is social conditioning or just some primal urge that makes humans human.
I don’t even know where else I could ask it, and it seems kind of stupid to think about so… have at thee
GenX lefty here.
I grew up with freedom of speech (the overall ideal, not the US legal concept) being a non-negotiable, axiomatic thing.
Every bit of social progress the world has seen, came about by loudly and obnoxiously challenging accepted norms, and refusing to sit down and shut up. Civil rights, worker’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and a whole bunch more - all of them only advanced by brave people getting up on their hind legs and speaking up for them, even though it was considered an affront to common decency, even an abomination.
For a bunch of overprivileged idiots to try and pull the ladder up behind them because their comfort is offended… really fucking bothers me.
I promise, I absolutely guaranfuckingtee that every person alive today will one day be on the wrong side of history; there are norms in society that our descendants (should humanity survive long enough for us to have any) will be utterly disgusted with all of us; and we would be just as disgusted by them. The shiny GenZ hope-of-the-world darlings of today will be the contempible boomers of 60 years from now, that’s just how history works. You can’t stop that from happening; the best you can do is increase social flexibility and mobility so they don’t remain totally rooted in the norms of their youth.
The absolute unmitigated gall of people today to imagine that no, unlike all that came before them, they have the right of it, that their accepted norms must be coddled and protected from any that might dare challenge them, that social change can stop right here… fuck no, fuck that, fuck them, fuck the entire concept.
You don’t disable progress, you mustn’t hobble change. And speech that offends us is the only way you get change, pretty much by definition.
Once you silence offensive speech (of whatever form), you’re locking in the status quo, and ironically that’s the most conservative thing you can ever do. Even if you believe that you and your team will never censor genuine activism, once you enable shutting-people-up as an option, you hand an absolutely terrifying weapon to the assholes that take power next time you lose the election.
Now I will grudgingly concede that the landscape has changed, that the coming of the information age has shifted the way everything works, that the mechanisms and underlying rules are changing, and that the principles of absolute freedom of speech that made sense in my youth no longer get you the same results. The internet is a big scary machine, and its ability to create filter bubbles and viral trends and cliques and misinformation and just general ugh… is pretty damn terrifying. Just look at the damn antivaxers, climate change deniers, the rampant and increasing transphobia, the fascist assholes getting their hooks in everywhere - clearly the marketplace of ideas is a mob town now, and we can’t just expect it to run itself.
How do we fix it? I don’t fucking know. Both sides seem to lead some pretty terrible places - is there a middle path somewhere? How do we trust anyone to steer it?
I agree on a lot of points, although it seems I have a more pacifist outlook while you have a more active outlook which if I am honest does more for progress.
I see freedom of speech - in the general sense - as a means to be able to express yourself and your opinions and I feel that if people could express that without outright spreading a feeling of hatred and rage then I feel pretty much anything goes within reason. As even innocuous well meaning ideas can lead to dangerous outcomes.
That doesn’t mean people should expect the status quo, but sometimes I look at chimps and their “gang wars” and think we aren’t that much different sometimes.
For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
We are primed to respond most strongly with hatred and rage… perhaps some deep primitive instinct and that gets taken advantage of.
Humans nature seems to be a violent one and if I look at history it is unfortunately violence that seems to be the most effective means to get through our thick human psyche to advance. Ancient Egypt, Alexander’s Legacy, Rome’s rise and fall, The Crusades, French Revolution, British Empire, American Independence, The World Wars.
We are forever doomed to repeat history it seems until history can no longer repeat
It is like humanity must experience great suffering and that suffering must reach a tipping point before we as a collective species change
What the next big tipping point will be that forces a change, if we last that long, I don’t know as well