Should we force people not to say offensive things?
I just read an article which states that the Internet is seething with rage at Mark Zuckerberg. This is because he suggested people should be allowed to voice offensive opinions (even about the Holocaust) on Facebook—as long as those opinions aren’t directed at hurting or harming any individual in particular.
People got angry—how could Zuckerberg not be in favour of eliminating these abhorrent ideas? I empathise with this perspective—certain views can be so heinous that they feel almost sub-human. Plus, there’s a certain security and predictability in having everyone think, feel, act the same as you do. Alas, life is complex and it’s not as simple as stopping people from thinking, saying or feeling certain things.
People don’t understand what they’re really asking for when they push for certain points of view to be scrubbed from public discourse. They think they’re asking, simply, for people to be nice to each other and truth to prevail. But what they’re really saying is:
1.) “We think someone (or some people) should have the power to decide which opinions can be discussed.”
2.) “We think the spectrum of opinions that can acceptably be discussed should be governed by the caprices of these people.”
3.) “We think that people whose opinions fall outside the spectra of acceptable ideas should be barred from accessing certain goods and services in the free market.”
4.) “We think that other people should be able to tell us what to believe and punish us if we disagree, as long as these others are powerful or numerous enough (or both).”
This is why well-meaning people can oppose other well-meaning people when it comes to the subject of censorship. Many see the opportunity cost of such measures as being too great to undertake.
In my opinion, people have also become shockingly terrible at delineating illegal actions from offensive opinions. The former has a material impact on others’ rights and therefore should be restricted — the latter can affect only those who allow it to do so and should not be legislated upon.
A related issue is the problem of judging historical actors based on modern moral standards—aka presentism. Even a cursory look through history shows just how mobile and non-linear humans’ ideas of morality can be. This makes our modern propensity for presentism even more ridiculous—like these students who vandalised an installation featuring a powerful Rudyard Kipling poem. Mahatma Gandhi would not survive presentism (he was racist). Nor would Mother Teresa (took bribes and exploited the poor). Nor would Winston Churchill (also racist). Nor would Nina Simone (abused her child). Nor would, I argue, any other historical great. What are we to do… take no joy in history because all of our heroes had great flaws? It should be obvious (but apparently isn’t) that good things can come from imperfect people—and those things can be celebrated in spite of (not because of) the people from which they emerged.
Pythagoras worshipped the number 10 and told people he would be reborn… but it’s also true that Pythagoras’ theorem works!
Our understanding of goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, wisdom and ignorance—and all other moral dichotomies—tends to be overly simplistic. We assume only one or the other can be present, in a given situation… but both facets often co-exist in a synthesis of less discernible shape and consistency. Hence, people and things do not always fit nicely into the boxes designed for them by our egos.
To illustrate, what if a time comes when the whole world goes vegetarian? Should its people then look back on every single meat eater in history as a murderous, evil barbarian with not an ounce of goodness in them? Of course, those few meat eaters who managed to achieve greatness would also need to be scrubbed from the public’s consciousness.
I couldn’t care less how many people have racist ideas. In fact, I believe most humans, of all races, hold some measure of racially prejudiced views —it’s just that many of us, fearing ostracisation, have become very good at hiding them. As long as people don’t use these ideas as a basis for launching activities which could lead to my harm, they’re perfectly within their rights. The right to think whatever you want is arguably the only truly inalienable freedom with which all humans are born. I can get people not to say what they really think — but I can’t get them not to think what they truly believe. And since people will always (ultimately) act based on their true perception of the world, it is quite wasteful to attempt to coerce them not to think this or to think that.
A racist who never says racist things is still a racist — and a more dangerous one, in my opinion. “The enemy you know is better than the one you don’t…” as the saying goes.
As usual, humans are focussing on the most sensationalist elements of an issue, rather than the most impactful ones. Would it not be better to focus on educating people out of holding flawed ideas? Something which, obviously, requires far more open discourse (not less).
This is why I’m working on a special project (special to me anyway) to solve this problem—and why I’ve recently been less active on Medium. I’m building a web platform that enables society to come together and create *only* truthful and representative narratives about complex topics—such as free speech, immigration, race and gender relations, and so on.
No more echo chambers. No more ad hominem. No more cherry-picked facts to support limited conclusions. No more media spin and bias. No more hate speech. No more dominance of cognitive biases. No more cults of personality and online bullying. No more ideological intolerance.
This is my big vision.
If you’d like to be a part of this project—by being a beta tester, word spreader, financier, contributor of skills (especially developers), co-founder with experience building and launching technology companies—please sign up to my newsletter or drop me a message.
More details will follow soon.
