Can somebody's online behavior actually force you to take a walk on the dark side?
|
|
There are two kinds of people in this world: good and evil. Freedom of speech applies to both. You can't take speech away from anyone, and have it still be free. Free Speech is like cat dander. Sometimes you don't know it's there until it bothers you. It's also an ideal, an amorphous beacon of human rights that continues to test every legal definition of itself. It's the kind of thing that makes tyrants, or groups of people who would misuse power very nervous, because it makes it possible for any individual to speak out and challenge any person's or group's authority over them. It makes people who want to maintain the status quo very nervous, too, because it tends to bring about change. Free Speech is the law of the land, but it's a law that says it's OK to question everything with your speech, even the laws themselves, the equilibrium of society's status quo; right down to the fabric of the society that gave birth to the laws. Sometimes it takes a very courageous person to speak out. While the law protects the right to speak freely, there is sometimes incredible societal pressure to keep your mouth shut. Why? Because sometimes going against the status quo and advocating change is seen as an affront, a threat to comfort. And evil people have found effective ways to persecute others for speaking. Ways that may or may not violate the actual law, but certainly violate the spirit of our constitutional right to Free Speech.
Then along comes the internet and Free Speech takes on a whole new set of possibilities and questions and continues to defy us to define it adequately and in context. These days, we have a way to speak, publicly, in a manner that could potentially reach millions of people across the world... the power to change hearts and minds, even by simple recreational blogging... and we can do it from the privacy of our own homes and offices, without having to reveal our identities. Anonymously. Is it really public then? Or is it private-cum-public? Things that we might be too timid or fearful to say in person, in a town meeting in front of our neighbors, we can say with our keyboards, in a virtual town meeting in a web forum. Now, evil people are even more nervous. Because it is somewhat tougher to persecute or squelch people for speaking freely and exchanging ideas that they might find threatening, when they don't know where you live. Now the playing field is growing more level. Now the ideas themselves, the words, and not who says them are the issue. And people don't need to be as afraid of having unpopular opinions. They can express them in relative (not complete) safety. But even so, there are still evil people who can't handle the idea of Free Speech. The impulse to squelch opinions other than theirs is still a priority for them.
In creating a site such as this, with freedom of expression as its goal, there’s always the risk of words causing dysfunctional people to ACT inappropriately, respond inappropriately. But I'm sorry to break the news, that doesn't make Free Speech a bad thing. Any more than the truth or liberty are bad things. It's the way people choose to react to these ideas that either raises or lowers the bar on Mankind. It's like this: when you enter into a free and open dialog, there's always a line between talk and action. And always a choice as to the flavor of the action inspired by the talk. I have been a participant in other online forums, grew dissatisfied with the rampant tyranny of political correctness and impulse to squelch, and therefore acted to whack together my own modest forum site. In this social experiment that is the internet, I wanted to try my hand. People are always testing and challenging each other. I happen to think that's healthy. I don't need to know somebody's address to think they've got something important to say. Sure, their online chat name might be "HelloKitty224" but they could say something that opens my mind to some way of making the world a better place. Talking the talk helps us walk the walk. But if the talk here makes you abandon the realm of text, and act to deliberately harm somebody, you've crossed into the heart of darkness. Here’s an example: say you are furiously debating some issue and somebody offends you personally. You have a choice to continue to battle it out with words, in the forums, using your free speech… or to opt for a different strategy. If that different strategy involves some variation on the theme of stalking, and trying to bring actual harm or punishment to an individual, or to use some underhanded tactic to intimidate them in order to quiet their voice… such as causing their ISP to deny them service... then sorry, that makes you an evil person. You couldn't win a battle of ideas, with words, so you raised the stakes and attacked on a different level where you felt you had an edge, your ego was so threatened by somebody's words, or you were so afraid of the ideas they contained, that you felt compelled to wreak vengeance on the person who said them. Typical power trip. I put this on the same plane with up and deciding to beat the wife. Both are failures of humanity. Losses of composure. Continued...
|
|
|
|
|
|
 
Free Speech.
Brought to you
by the makers
of Free Will.
|
