Let's Talk About Free Speech
I discuss free speech, and the importance of speaking your mind and sharing your interesting and original thoughts.
One must be incredibly careful what you say nowadays. If you step out of line, and dare to share an original and interesting view, you can immediately become suspect to a barrage of hate. Look at these comments I received for daring to suggest UBI (universal basic income) and ranked choice voting are good ideas!
I also received a number of comments calling me fascist, an idiot, and a number of other hateful terms. I decided not to include them here.
I understand that sharing one’s opinions online will naturally open one up to criticism. Of course, I’m aware of that. However, I think that a line is far too often crossed. Instead of taking time to consider the intellectual value and validity of someone’s argument, people are far to quick to jump to personal insults and direct online hate to the person who dared to share their original and interesting view. Instead of understanding the value of a strong discourse and marketplace of ideas, people are far too quick to aim hate at the person for sharing their views. For many, people would rather you merely mimicked their trendy talking point instead of utilising any critical function of your brain. And when one does, they all to often feign frustration and jump to directing hateful, personal comments at the author.
This discourages people from daring to have an original thought and contribute to the discourse in any meaningful way. It makes people more likely to jump on and endorse a trendy view, instead of making an interesting contribution to the discourse. This leads to many people who subconsciously live in fear of speaking their minds.
Of course, it is good to call out hate speech. There are some things that should never be said, as they are genuinely hateful. Andrew Tate for example, springs to mind as someone who I think traffics in hateful comments. Hate speech should not be tolerated under any circumstances. Nonetheless, there is an important distinction to make between hate speech and free speech. People who direct hate at others for daring to have an original thought, more often than not, as opposed to preventing hate speech, become perpetrators of it themselves.
People are scared to speak their minds and have an interesting or original view out of fear that they will become the centre of a barrage of hate. From my own experiences, I was surprised to find that those who traffic in hate come from all ends of the political spectrum. As a UBI-loving lefty myself, I was surprised to see that the majority of people who sent hateful comments my way were democrats who were outraged at my speaking for the need of democratic reform and UBI.
What makes my point even more clear is the fact that I rarely discuss anything controversial. I do not think there is ever much value in doing so. I merely mainly express my support of and opinions towards policies like ranked choice voting and UBI. I am not some right-wing extremist who you may expect to receive some blowback. I always make an effort to consider counter arguments and to present my opinions in as balanced a manner as possible. Nonetheless, in today’s society, this oftentimes does not suffice.
People need to encourage original views for the sake of the discourse and progress. If people become scared to speak their minds and have an interesting, original thought, society will suffer as a result and not move forward.
So, next time you read something you may not agree with, be sure to not attack the writer personally. The ideas, are fair game of course. But we need to foster a society and discourse where people are comfortable sharing their interesting and original ideas. Nowadays, unless you hold the popular position on everything, the Twitter trolls will attack you no matter what. To begin to move in a positive direction as a society, we need to do one very important, yet simple thing more often. Listen to others.