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Freedom of speech means you, and I, and all of us are free to speak.
It does not guarantee any of us an audience, a pulpit, a megaphone, lasers or dry ice. It does not mean that anyone else has a duty or a compulsion to amplify, transmit, write down, copy, print, or store anything that comes out of our mouths, or even to listen. It does not mean that what comes out of our mouths is true, or important, or worth paying attention to in any way. That part is up to us.
Words in themselves are important, and can be powerful. They can hurt, they can heal. They can change your view of the world--but only if you choose to let them in. They aren't viruses. Memes are an intellectual conceit, not an actual life form. The most seductively phrased piece of mental manipulation an advertiser can create is powerless if nobody is hearing it. The most addictive meme is nothing if you click past it.
To me, an important part of the freedom to speak is the freedom not to. This is because I have a thing in my head which tries to make me respond automatically when I see something with which I disagree, or which I agree with but think is badly expressed. It's got me into trouble before, many times. The thing is, that's not me being free, that's me obeying the compulsion in my head, which is a bit of a fine distinction but I think it's right. "Someone is wrong on the internet," says the cartoon, which is how I know I'm not the only one. There ought to be a twelve-step programme.
If someone exercises their freedom to speak and talks bigoted, hateful rubbish such as the Christian right are doing right now, what they are praying for (in that very special sense of praying used by those who lost the Christian God years ago) is that someone will obey that compulsion and argue. They want response, because response = attention, and negative is actually better. A hundred enthusiastic "Me too!"'s aren't worth one angry refutation. If someone argues, they get to say it again, and again. Rush Limbaugh became a voice on the radio because he got people's attention. How many people have argued with him over the years? Has it hurt him? Not in the least. He's still there.
Attention is currency in these times. We pay attention, and the payee is enriched thereby. We withhold attention and we are starving him. We invite other people to pay attention and we are, however unwillingly, shilling for him. We call on people to boycott something, and a percentage will go and look to see what we're boycotting. (That's a bit of a catch-22, but is it not true?)
I don't refrain from posting angry refutations to fundie outbursts because I agree with them, or think they might have a point. Part of it is that I do have a life apart from blogging, and I like to exercise my freedom to speak where I think it might actually be worthwhile, but part of it is also that the best way to drain the power from these people, I think, is really to ignore them. They won't go away--they have freedom to speak, like me--but the people who make money from people who pay attention to them will eventually take their megaphones and their pulpits away, and their supporters, no longer able to hear, will find somebody else to listen to, maybe somebody who talks a little more sense. I would love to see the day when Rush Limbaugh's audience is the same size as mine. When nobody listens to him, and nobody cares enough about what he thinks even to argue.
Maybe I'm up a gum tree on this. I don't know. What do you think?
It does not guarantee any of us an audience, a pulpit, a megaphone, lasers or dry ice. It does not mean that anyone else has a duty or a compulsion to amplify, transmit, write down, copy, print, or store anything that comes out of our mouths, or even to listen. It does not mean that what comes out of our mouths is true, or important, or worth paying attention to in any way. That part is up to us.
Words in themselves are important, and can be powerful. They can hurt, they can heal. They can change your view of the world--but only if you choose to let them in. They aren't viruses. Memes are an intellectual conceit, not an actual life form. The most seductively phrased piece of mental manipulation an advertiser can create is powerless if nobody is hearing it. The most addictive meme is nothing if you click past it.
To me, an important part of the freedom to speak is the freedom not to. This is because I have a thing in my head which tries to make me respond automatically when I see something with which I disagree, or which I agree with but think is badly expressed. It's got me into trouble before, many times. The thing is, that's not me being free, that's me obeying the compulsion in my head, which is a bit of a fine distinction but I think it's right. "Someone is wrong on the internet," says the cartoon, which is how I know I'm not the only one. There ought to be a twelve-step programme.
If someone exercises their freedom to speak and talks bigoted, hateful rubbish such as the Christian right are doing right now, what they are praying for (in that very special sense of praying used by those who lost the Christian God years ago) is that someone will obey that compulsion and argue. They want response, because response = attention, and negative is actually better. A hundred enthusiastic "Me too!"'s aren't worth one angry refutation. If someone argues, they get to say it again, and again. Rush Limbaugh became a voice on the radio because he got people's attention. How many people have argued with him over the years? Has it hurt him? Not in the least. He's still there.
Attention is currency in these times. We pay attention, and the payee is enriched thereby. We withhold attention and we are starving him. We invite other people to pay attention and we are, however unwillingly, shilling for him. We call on people to boycott something, and a percentage will go and look to see what we're boycotting. (That's a bit of a catch-22, but is it not true?)
I don't refrain from posting angry refutations to fundie outbursts because I agree with them, or think they might have a point. Part of it is that I do have a life apart from blogging, and I like to exercise my freedom to speak where I think it might actually be worthwhile, but part of it is also that the best way to drain the power from these people, I think, is really to ignore them. They won't go away--they have freedom to speak, like me--but the people who make money from people who pay attention to them will eventually take their megaphones and their pulpits away, and their supporters, no longer able to hear, will find somebody else to listen to, maybe somebody who talks a little more sense. I would love to see the day when Rush Limbaugh's audience is the same size as mine. When nobody listens to him, and nobody cares enough about what he thinks even to argue.
Maybe I'm up a gum tree on this. I don't know. What do you think?