"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
- Soren Kierkegaard
I look, always, for good speech, seeking out those who have something to say. Whenever those who make a fetish of free-speech ever get round to saying something, it tends not to be worth listening to. Given that cognitive resources are limited - brains can only receive and process so much information in a given length of time - we are always, all of us, 'censoring' to some degree. You can't listen to everything and everyone. So be a wise audience and learn to screen noise out. That's not the same as screening people with different views out. It means screening out those with different views who see communication as a war-game, a zero-sum competition. Gresham's Law in economics holds that bad money drives out good. Something similar applies with respect to ideas. Good ideas are hard to come by, and are easily drowned out in the noise. As soon as I see that someone is deceitful or playing a political game with their arguments, I screen them out. There are plenty of other people, of all varieties of views, worthy of your time.
Facebook politics is a sink, an emotional and intellectual drain, a complete waste of time, and an utterly depressing experience. People involved in the fight really cannot see that they are selecting the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave and attempting to beat each other over the heads with them. They will seize on any article or post they agree with, and post a link to it, claiming it as evidence that demonstrates the truth of their particular position. They ignore the myriad other articles and posts that could have been selected to contradict their claims. There is no way out of that mindset.
Free-speech is fruitless in such a context, because it is almost entirely devoid of people capable of accepting a reality check. I once worked on databases. Even the boss told me that it was a soul-destroying job. He said he sees it in terms of "feeding the monster." You just pour information into the machine everyday, getting precisely nowhere, other than merely existing to do the same another day. It seems pointless. Until you realize that people who have got more or less all that they want out of politics have a vested interest in neutralizing the public and intellectual, rendering it impossible to say and do anything worthwhile. They love free speech simply because it allows them not merely to drown truth but to destroy a belief on the part of people that there is such a thing as truth, that it can be known, that is can be shared. Having destroyed public life in this way, they will find themselves in a bunker, trying to keep the world at bay. Mentally and morally, they are already there.
I saw someone claiming that fact and logic were on his/her side, someone who routinely commits every logical fallacy in the book whilst uttering half-truths, quarter-truths and downright lies, always omitting the whole context so as to give a very distorted view of reality. And the point is - if people are so divorced from the controls exercised by fact and logic that they cannot see how they abuse such standards as they assert them, then there's no getting through to them at the intellectual level. I have a feeling this works for the whole of society - unity and connection has to be built elsewhere.
Individuals who select facts and arguments that fit a pre-formed position are neither thinkers nor truth-seekers, but game-players, seeking to draw each and all into an unwinnable game, negating public life, voiding communication, poisoning relations, destroying connections. Their motives are transparent, always striking at the weakest point of an argument they dislike, always concealing the weak points of the arguments they favour, never conceding the strengths of those arguments, never seeking the commonalities that enable compromise - always the war. They insist that you 'debate' them, and then proceed to negate, obscure, nullify, and obstruct. No thinking ever goes on here, merely the forceful assertion of pre-determined positions. Nearly always the 'debate' ends in a breakdown of communication and a breaking off of connection. The only way forward is to create clusters of cooperators, people who may well have different views, but share a political and ethical commons allowing for exchange, dialogue, and compromise. That may encourage non-cooperators into cooperation, on the basis of compliance. But as soon as they revert to destructive ways, they can be removed, to exercise free speech in whatever bubble is prepared to accommodate them. Having abused others' trust time and again, they don't deserve company. We are none of us obligated to provide people will ill intentions with an audience. People can say what they like. We don't have to listen. Check a person's track record to see if they are trustworthy. If not, we are not short of people who are worth listening to.
This world is crying out for political, intellectual, and spiritual reformation and renewal, because people will eat themselves alive at this rate. First step is to stop feeding the monster. Break the cycles. Light the path and invite people to take it. And avoid the calls trying to claw you back into the dog fight. There is actually such a thing as truth. By challenging that notion, in an attempt to expose power and its rationalisations, the postmodernists have, unwittingly, let power consume truth. It's time to claim it back.
Facebook politics is a sink, an emotional and intellectual drain, a complete waste of time, and an utterly depressing experience. People involved in the fight really cannot see that they are selecting the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave and attempting to beat each other over the heads with them. They will seize on any article or post they agree with, and post a link to it, claiming it as evidence that demonstrates the truth of their particular position. They ignore the myriad other articles and posts that could have been selected to contradict their claims. There is no way out of that mindset.
Free-speech is fruitless in such a context, because it is almost entirely devoid of people capable of accepting a reality check. I once worked on databases. Even the boss told me that it was a soul-destroying job. He said he sees it in terms of "feeding the monster." You just pour information into the machine everyday, getting precisely nowhere, other than merely existing to do the same another day. It seems pointless. Until you realize that people who have got more or less all that they want out of politics have a vested interest in neutralizing the public and intellectual, rendering it impossible to say and do anything worthwhile. They love free speech simply because it allows them not merely to drown truth but to destroy a belief on the part of people that there is such a thing as truth, that it can be known, that is can be shared. Having destroyed public life in this way, they will find themselves in a bunker, trying to keep the world at bay. Mentally and morally, they are already there.
I saw someone claiming that fact and logic were on his/her side, someone who routinely commits every logical fallacy in the book whilst uttering half-truths, quarter-truths and downright lies, always omitting the whole context so as to give a very distorted view of reality. And the point is - if people are so divorced from the controls exercised by fact and logic that they cannot see how they abuse such standards as they assert them, then there's no getting through to them at the intellectual level. I have a feeling this works for the whole of society - unity and connection has to be built elsewhere.
Individuals who select facts and arguments that fit a pre-formed position are neither thinkers nor truth-seekers, but game-players, seeking to draw each and all into an unwinnable game, negating public life, voiding communication, poisoning relations, destroying connections. Their motives are transparent, always striking at the weakest point of an argument they dislike, always concealing the weak points of the arguments they favour, never conceding the strengths of those arguments, never seeking the commonalities that enable compromise - always the war. They insist that you 'debate' them, and then proceed to negate, obscure, nullify, and obstruct. No thinking ever goes on here, merely the forceful assertion of pre-determined positions. Nearly always the 'debate' ends in a breakdown of communication and a breaking off of connection. The only way forward is to create clusters of cooperators, people who may well have different views, but share a political and ethical commons allowing for exchange, dialogue, and compromise. That may encourage non-cooperators into cooperation, on the basis of compliance. But as soon as they revert to destructive ways, they can be removed, to exercise free speech in whatever bubble is prepared to accommodate them. Having abused others' trust time and again, they don't deserve company. We are none of us obligated to provide people will ill intentions with an audience. People can say what they like. We don't have to listen. Check a person's track record to see if they are trustworthy. If not, we are not short of people who are worth listening to.
This world is crying out for political, intellectual, and spiritual reformation and renewal, because people will eat themselves alive at this rate. First step is to stop feeding the monster. Break the cycles. Light the path and invite people to take it. And avoid the calls trying to claw you back into the dog fight. There is actually such a thing as truth. By challenging that notion, in an attempt to expose power and its rationalisations, the postmodernists have, unwittingly, let power consume truth. It's time to claim it back.
Comments