Censorship and why “they” pretend to care about your feelings.
(spoiler alert, “they” don't!)
The constitution is beautiful!
I’m not American, but I think the American constitution should be the envy of any non-American that values freedom. The bill of rights is genius! (The first 10 amendments to the constitution) No other country has such a clear and people empowering document.
“The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Nowhere in the first amendment does it say that your feelings will be protected, or you will be supplied with a safe space to suck your thumb when challenged. I suspect that was intentional!
Being offended is a good thing! (if you use it as a mental cue to listen)
Do I want your feelings hurt? Do I want to see you cry and miserable? Not at all. However, hurt feelings are an inevitability with free speech.
When you speak to a child you watch what you say, you censor yourself. There are topics you shouldn’t bring up in the presence of a young child. Why? Because children don't have the ability to detach themselves from their thoughts, they don’t know their thoughts don't define them. They become easily married to ideas/thoughts. It takes a mature mind to learn to separate one's sense of self from a thought.
Are you a child, is your mind not educated? Shouldn’t adults act like adults and speak freely to one another? When being offensive is not the goal, but often a necessary by-product of thinking and expressing oneself. Anyway feeling offended is a sure sign you are too attached to your ideas and need to take a step back. Learn to use the feeling of “offensive” to alert you that your mind is closed. We all do it, it's ok, but few consciously recognize this.
I bet you have many opinions now, that you would have laughed at or felt offended by in your youth. You’ve become the person you are today by changing and updating your opinions. If you haven’t maybe you’ve spent too much time being offended and not enough listening.
Loneliness is a by-product of not being heard. Let your selfish “offense” pass in order for someone else to not feel lonely.
When you censor speech you censor thought. When you censor thought society becomes more separated into this group and that group. People stop talking to each other, hide their thoughts, hide their feelings, and become resentful of a world that won't listen. Any type of social change is then impossible. Speech is only the beginning of the process of change.
How many people do you have in your life that you will talk with about anything? I mean, literally no topic is taboo, nothing is off the table. I would suggest that is rare. Some of us might be lucky enough to have one to a handful of these people in our lives. I fear most people have none.
Now, think how good it is to talk to that person that will listen to whatever is on your mind. That’s not to say they agree, but they listened and listened wholeheartedly. That feeling keeps people sane. It’s a feeling of being understood, that is nourishment for the psyche (don’t mistake being understood for blind agreement). Someone can understand your position and still completely disagree.
Back to loneliness, there are two types of loneliness:
“Objective loneliness refers to the physical state of being alone or socially isolated. Subjective loneliness, on the other hand, refers to the feeling of being alone — even if you’re not actually alone. It’s an emotional rather than physical state.”
Lonely people are sad. Sad people get desperate to escape that loneliness and can act out in ways that we would consider out of the range of their normal character. Could loneliness caused by a censorship crackdown, be the main driver of the divide between people in the US and around the world? What do people do, they find their group on social media and in real life and create echo chambers. They shut out other opinions because they are treating people the same way that they got treated.
I would argue that when people are trying to censor what others are able to say, usually that their intentions are good.
A kind of misguided social police, with a motherly vibe. A mum that doesn’t want anyone to cry.
Although unbeknownst to them causing more and longer lasting harm. However, when large groups of people with economic power (government and large corporations) get behind censorship and start drafting laws like “hate speech” There is more malicious intent. Why? Because they are not a misguided mum trying to avoid tears. They don’t care about your feelings, never have and never will. Note at the beginning of this article I mention the first amendment, and how there is no consideration of your feelings written into it.
“They” (Governments) have never cared and still don't. Its a good thing for them not to care about your feelings. The worrying thing with hate-speech laws are, they pretend to care. You need to be asking yourself, why do they pretend, what's their motivation?
There is no such thing as hate speech!
We are moving towards a world where that title might even be considered hate speech (someone is reading this, and is already upset) I try and challenge people who believe in hate speech to write the law. Draft a “hate speech” law that makes practical sense that protects people or large groups of people (governments and companies) from exploiting that same hate speech law.
Here is an example of something people usually say.
“ People or groups shouldn’t be allowed to say something “hateful” that discriminates or marginalizes against another person or group. Based on race, sex, religion, beliefs or culture.”
Do you see the problem?
What is hateful? Is something hateful if it makes you upset? What makes one person upset, is shrugged off by another. So then what? Hate speech laws will then always lean towards the most sensitive, the most likely to get upset. That’s scary because almost everything is offensive to someone. So it’s only a matter of time and luck, to whether or not you find yourself censored or in legal trouble for hate speech.
We can already see there is a political lean and to who is getting censored and banned and who isn’t.
How does Kathy Griffin not get banned for her tweet calling for MAGA kids to be “doxxed ” (essentially mass online bullying by publishing a person details like a home address)
Or a Disney film producer calling for the MAGA kids to be thrown in a wood chipper? Yet there is a long list of political commentators doing investigative journalism and even comedians being banned without warning.
(tweets below)
The thought police are out in force but they have an agenda and a bias. That is clear!
If you're going to police speech you must police it well and without bias. The speech police have other motives, the MAGA kid hate alines with a political anti-Trump hate, which has been given a social free pass. Last I heard the MAGA kids have filed a lawsuit. Good! This vile bullying and calling for violence shouldn’t be tolerated. No matter which political flag you wave.
Committing violence or directly encouraging or organizing violent acts is where the line is. Just police that, it’s clear and easy to see. Say all the anti-Trump stuff you like, have at it. BUT saying a kid should be thrown in a wood-chipper? Doesn’t take much of an IQ to see a line was crossed there.
The line is easy to spot, watch……
- “ I hate that bitch” (pass)
- “His ideas are so stupid” (pass)
- “I can’t wait till he is out of office” (pass)
- OMG this dude is the biggest idiot on the planet, how the fuck does he manage to put one foot in front of another” (pass)
- Man, I don’t believe what CNN just reported, I have this other theory as to what happened… (pass)
- Give me these kids names so I can direct thousands of followers to find their personal information so we can verbally and physically harass them. (fail, not allowed)
- Let’s throw those kids in a wood chipper (fail, not allowed)
The line is easy to spot, easy to police. So easy AI could do it. There is an agenda behind not policing it this way.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
I remember hearing this so often as a kid, it was drummed into us. Almost to the point of it being so known it was a little Cliché to say out loud.
I think there is real wisdom in that saying. Stop giving people the power to upset and offended you. You have lots of options to deal with speech you do not like.
- Stop talking to this person
- Block them on social media
- Physically leave. (walk away)
Violence is terrible and you avoid violence by allowing people to speak freely.
Is there any speech not protected under the first amendment? Yes! You can’t “call people or groups to commit acts of violence” You can’t rally a group together with clear intentions to be violent, that’s illegal, and I completely agree.
Some would argue that when people post certain things on social media that have a certain opinion or political lean, although they are not calling for violence directly, it “might” result in violence!
What does that even mean?
Since when is the legal system assuming that you “might” do something or “might” indirectly cause other people to do something illegal. I’m sorry, but that’s lunacy and unenforceable. It is so open to interpretation that its power will be abused.
Physical violence is an easy legal line to draw, it’s easy to see physical violence and the consequences of it. Your body is your temple no one may touch you without your permission, but we can’t apply the same protective bubble to thoughts and ideas. If anything, stifling peoples speech will likely turn them towards violence.
Your thoughts and ideas should always be challenged and in a continuous journey of modification and updating. That’s not to say verbal harassment is ok and that is already illegal.
If someone asks you to stop talking to them or messaging them, you need to stop. Again, we have laws for this already.
If you CHOOSE to engage in a conversation you can’t and shouldn't be protected from what the other person says. If you CHOOSE to not engage or disengage from a conversation that has started, then that's what we have harassment laws for.
Stop running away from ideas you don't like. Find someone with an opinion different to your own and TALK to them!
Wheather is on social media, or in real life, find someone with an opinion different to yours and talk with them. Even if you leave the conversation 99% unchanged in your own opinion. It's almost guaranteed that at least you might understand where they are coming from, and maybe even slightly update your own thoughts, even if its only a 1% difference. Over 100 more conversations that 1% adds up!
Tips to talk to someone (especially if they are in another option universe than you).
- Stay on topic.
- Don’t get personal. When discussing anything there is no need to call into question someone’s intelligence.
- Stay calm and don’t raise your voice. This can be hard when you're passionate. You can remind each other to keep it calm.
- If it does get heated. Stop and walk away. It’s not your job to change someone’s opinion and you can’t change someone that at least isn't open to the possibility of changing their mind.
“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.” Liu Xiaobo
So why are “they” pretending to care?
So it's clear they don't care, why would they? Why pretend thou, what's with the big push for censorship and the writing of hate speech laws?
Simple! Its to control the social narrative. Our thoughts shape this world, and our thoughts are expressed through speech, art, song, dance, and writing. Get control over as much as that as possible and watch the world bend to fit it.
Do you think the (usually free) government TV and radio is there to keep you informed and knowledgeable? Do they care so much they will beam it directly into your home for free? You wouldn't be so trusting of any other free product.
What's the catch?
Pre-internet it was easy to control the narrative, nothing was getting on TV or radio without getting approved. The nightly news would keep you afraid of war, show you the weather and finish with a cute animal story! Music was mostly crap, with a handful of artists dominating the charts with meaningless lyrics, usually about money, fame and glorifying violence and sex.
Where were the hate speech laws and censorship then? They didn't need laws or debate about this. They had so much censorship power that you had no idea that your world was being filtered. The censorship was so good you had no idea it was even happening.
Then the internet happened. Anyone, anywhere, and needing ever decreasing resources can get online and say their piece. They need to control this quick and have failed over the last two decades to do so.
So here's the pitch… You need our help, lets us protect you from dangerous thoughts and ideas. Let us filter your world like we used to.
This pitch doesn't work without social division. First, we need to be divided up into as many groups as possible. Black, white, gay, straight, trans, poor, rich, man, woman, young, old, for Trump, against Trump, this list could go on forever.
Then feed us as much news and information as possible. Making us hate others in groups, that we are not in. Then pass laws and regulations controlling hate speech, “protect” all these groups from one another.
The end result, you can't say anything that isn't the social narrative, governments and corporations will gain back control of this social narrative, through these laws. Protecting themselves in the process.
Want to speak out against a large corporation or government? Sorry, that's hate speech!
Don't agree with the already chosen political party that we want you to vote for next election? That's hate speech!!
YOU ARE FREE TO THINK, WHAT WE TELL YOU!
“The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.” Hugo Black
