Mother May I...Speak and Act Freely?: Walking the Tightrope of Free Thought in a Censored World
Sharing a few burrs under my civil rights saddle
Story-at-a-glance
Examines the tensions between individual freedoms and societal control, questioning the balance between safety and personal sovereignty.
Critiques the seemingly pervasive intellectual arrogance and rigid certainty in public discourse, advocating for more humility, open-mindedness, and genuine curiosity.
Calling for a renewed commitment to free speech and cautions against the encroachment of censorship and overreach in the name of security.
Touching in on Super Tuesday
What’s on my mind?
I’d like to share some musings today about different freedoms restrictions that are on my mind and how we project onto each other with so much certainty.
Certainty
It’s fascinating for me to bear witness to my own process and way of being. Sometimes I am shocked at what a different perspective I seem to have compared to so many people.
I sit and watch how certain most everyone seems to be when they’re expressing themselves online about whatever the issue du jour is. It puzzles me sometimes so I bring it back on myself asking why I don’t feel as strongly or as certain as so many others?
Am I weak-minded? I don’t think so, although I always have work to do to improve myself which is a constant process for me.
Do I not know who I am? I do, but I’m also an open, curious, non-judgmental person that likes to learn and enjoys the challenges of finding out why others might feel so differently than I do without judging them for those differences.
Am I wrong or are they? Sometimes it’s one and sometimes it’s the other. Sometimes we both are right…or even wrong… at the same time.
Intellectual arrogance
I believe there’s a lot of arrogance at play in our interactions even when we may not realize it about ourselves. I see many people, including some I love and am very close to, be what I call, “intellectually arrogant”. They seem to speak from a pedestal as if those people are all of those things that are being projected upon them when often that’s simply not true.
Sometimes the arrogant ones just don’t know what they don’t know and in their hubris, don’t even question it. They confidently and arrogantly know that those people are much more ignorant and much less moral than they themselves are.
They seem to think that they know everything about that other ignorant group of people and will even lump them all together in one category for sweeping judgmental convenience so they can be satisfied with their stance and move on. It’s as if every.single.person in that group is exactly the same. That’s a bit ignorant in my book.
One of my rules of thumb is that when I see sweeping statements about groups of people, I trust that source less than I did before because they seem like lazy thinkers. I think being a lazy thinker is different than being ignorant (meaning that you don’t know what you don’t know), uneducated, or even naive.
Are you willing to engage with someone whose beliefs seem completely opposed to your own? Here’s why it might be worth the effort.
Engaging with those who hold opposing beliefs can deepen your understanding and challenge your own assumptions, helping you see the humanity behind differing views. Instead of reacting with anger, focus on what truly motivates both you and them, creating room for common ground where you might least expect it.
This video shows how this works.
What would I like to see instead?
I’d like to see some good old-fashioned humility and curiosity that speaks more softly and kindly. It asks questions of others to better understand - instead of assume - not projecting the worst on what we think we already know about them. Practicing this would help to stitch our bonds back together.
If practiced by everyone, this one thing alone would change our national and global tone overnight which would benefit ALL of our nervous systems because we’d feel freer to be friendlier and more inquisitive while being less judgmental. We wouldn’t stand in fear of being attacked constantly for the most minor of differences or even worse, for merely asking a question.
It’s through civil discourse that we better understand why others feel the way they do, find common ground to hammer things out, and come to an agreement.
Free speech & censorship
I’m super hot that free speech is being down-throttled in this country. Censorship is going through the roof! Many don’t seem to care much because it’s those ignorant crazy people they don’t agree with who are being censored, so who cares?
I started seeing this way back in 2000 when George W. Bush was running for president. I remembered hearing that they were turning people away from his rallies who didn’t have “proper” t-shirts on. If the powers that be didn’t like what was printed on the front or the back of shirts, they refused them entry.
I thought how ridiculous it was to be monitoring t-shirts for rally goers and raised cane about it way back then which was less than a year before 9/11. For me, the t-shirts were the beginning of a different kind of censorship and we’ve been on a super slippery slope of governmental power and control ever since 9/11.
To me, the freedom to speak and remain sovereign is much more important than the government keeping me “safe” all the time, especially if I don’t have much trust in the smoke and mirrors aspect of many of these governmental agencies.
The censors say the only way to restore democracy is to clamp down on speech, but who gets to decide what is right, what is wrong, and what is “safe” to say, especially when we disagree?
Take off your shoes…forever
Back in 2001, a man named Richard Reid failed to successfully detonate a shoe bomb on an transatlantic flight which still has us removing our shoes in airports 23 years later…from just one failed attempt.
In 2006, TSA started requiring us to throw out our water bottles before the security checkpoint due to a discovered plot by terrorists to ignite a bomb in a water bottle.
Will these policies ever end or will we just keep being inconvenienced and keep piling on the rules each time a terrorist comes up with a new plot?
I’ve often joked that we’re lucky that someone hasn’t tried to bomb a flight by hiding a bomb in a bra. That would be a huge inconvenience at the airport for women, although the men might not mind so much.
I travel a lot and I don’t like these inconveniences, nor the scans that radiate me, nor the right for people to enter the privacy of my luggage that I now can’t lock to keep my belongings safe, all the while treating me like a criminal when all I’m trying to do is get to my vacation destination.
In my international travels, I have found TSA in other countries to be less militant, and much more hospitable and welcoming to their travelers. I’ve had several encounters with TSA agents in places like Amsterdam who are quite thorough at their jobs, but friendly at the same time. They’re competent and don’t make one feel like a nervous criminal. The contrast has been striking, although Africa was a whole other experience.
That said, I’m not naive enough to think that we shouldn’t have any controls or regulations for safety and speech and I truly don’t actually know what the balance is. I know that I don’t care for how far we’ve come and would like to see the control dialed back a bit. If it keeps amping up, we’re going to be endlessly and rigidly watched and restricted which feels terrible to me. I sort of feel like that horse has already left the barn, but it can get worse.
Fast forward to covid
Fear does crazy things to people. Going through the covid era really started to amplify censorship and free speech in ways that most seemed ok with, defended, and still defend.
Generally, I know we each potentially trust in certain political parties, governmental institutions, and “experts”, although I think that trust may be shifting a bit. This is why I think so many have been fine with the censorship that’s going on because they’re censoring those people that they don’t agree with - or are afraid of - due to their differing beliefs. I talk about this in Voting in the Upside-down Part 2.
At the same time, I’m not denying that there are definitely dangerous people out there who are spouting very dangerous rhetoric.
There were different personal risk tolerances during covid. I realize that we’re each risk averse in different ways. Some things scare and worry us more than others, especially the things we don’t quite understand.
Many were terrified of covid and believed, without question, 100% of what the authorities were telling them about these vaccines made with new technologies. Still others were hesitant because they didn’t have longer term trials to prove out their safety over at least a few years in comparison to the standard average of 10 years that it previously took for approval.
Add to this the fact that the vaccines were politicized with a heavy push forcing people to get what they didn’t necessarily have confidence in and a large chasm between beliefs emerged...and many were militant.
I’ve always been a “my body, my choice” person, but was gobsmacked to see that somehow that changed for so many of my liberal friends when it came to forcing people to get vaccinated. I guess that’s only a good rally cry when it’s convenient.
GoFundMe convoy trucker debacle
Out of this came the Canadian convoy trucker controversy that seemed to run down party lines. The truckers in the city making noise etc. in neighborhoods was one thing, but when GoFundMe collected and then froze $10 million Canadian dollars and kept the money from the truckers, it dawned on me that down the line, we’re ALL eventually in trouble and need to act fast to protect what freedoms we have left.
Not only was the GoFundMe account frozen but the Canadian government then turned around and froze the bank accounts of individuals that donated to the cause or were associated with the convoy controversy.
Back then, the New York Times said that Canadian authorities “were lifting freezes on hundreds of bank accounts associated with protest organizers and Canadians who had blockaded Ottawa’s streets with their vehicles.” People couldn’t even access their accounts to make bail. That doesn’t sit well with me.
The ripple effect of this happening to them will likely eventually be turned on us when the other side doesn’t like what we’re doing. I have a huge problem with governments having the ability to keep us from accessing our bank accounts without being convicted of a crime.
Whether we’re poor without enough money to keep our financial lives going, and even if we’re rich, none of us should be locked out of our savings without being convicted of a crime. Add to that, they could eventually also freeze our credit cards and lock us out of our phones for whatever they don’t agree with. No bueno, me thinks. I’m not a fan.
I don’t care which side of the controversy you stand on, to see a fundraising agency make the decision not to pass on donations showed me that, in the future, if they don’t like what you’re doing, they will freeze your money running interference with your ability to survive. No one should be able to lock you out of your finances because you’re protesting, especially if you haven’t broken the law.
Twitter shuts Trump down
Eventually, Twitter shut Trump down. Again, I don’t care where you stand in your beliefs around Trump. I understand why he scares people, feels threatening, and why they wanted to shut him down.
What matters to me, though, is when social media companies can shut the voice of the President of the United States down - which is the highest office in the land - you can be sure that us peons don’t have a chance should they decide to do the same to us.
Who’s going to speak for us when we haven’t spoken for others?
Regardless of your ideology, can you see how this can be a dangerous infringement on our civil rights going forward? Once that civil rights rope is let out, it’s very difficult to get our rights back.
As for me, I’m for freedom of speech as long as it doesn’t incite violence. Don’t even get me started on the malinformation, disinformation, and misinformation that’s been cooked up as a response. Corporate media says things that are later proven to be untrue all of the time, but we can’t censor them or freeze their bank accounts.
The Company We Keep
One man sought out
those who would
challenge his
view on the world.
Because he knew
that he could
never know for certain.
Another man sought
out the company
of those who held
tight to his same view.
So that he could
believe himself
to be right.
~Nic Askew, Soul Biographies
Super Tuesday
With national elections this coming Tuesday, I know many of us are afraid of what the results might be which makes almost the whole country sharing that same fear at exactly the same time. I guess maybe that’s something that we can all agree on.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but what I do know is that I won’t be happy with either candidate winning. I have huge concerns on both sides as I’ve shared before so I can feel my sense of being unsettled already.
So what will we do?
Hopefully, we’ll activate the serenity prayer with the understanding that we’ll accept the things we cannot change while activating the courage to change the things we can while engaging with the wisdom that knows the difference between the two. There will likely be lots of things that we don’t like that will come out of this election so we need to stay vigilant.
If your party wins, please don’t sit back on automatic pilot thinking everything is ok because it’s not. BOTH parties manipulate for their own gain while lying about the other side. We’re simply a pawn in their process.
They are part of a very large machine that needs things to continue on in their favor for as long as they’re in the driver’s seat. Lulling us into a sense of safety is part of that plan. They’re not taking care of things for us, they’re taking care of things for them.
Try to be as critical thinking and questioning with your own side as you are with “the other side”.
I wanted to share some things on my mind for your personal consideration. Whether you agree or disagree doesn’t matter much to me. I simply think it’s important to bear witness to an average person trying to make sense of this rapidly-changing world we’re trying to navigate together in case it either affirms how you’re feeling or opens you up to something new.
Community questions
How do you feel about what I wrote about certainty, intellectual arrogance, freedom of speech, and censorship? Does any of it resonate? What do you disagree with?
Do you talk about these things openly with others?
Did you know that the only people who can comment on Substack posts are subscribers?
If not, I hope this encourages you to interact in the comments more. I’m brand new at this and don’t have many subscribers so our community is nice and cozy…and most especially safe.
Please feel free to share your thoughts. I’m always interested in learning other people’s points of view and why they feel that way.
If you know someone who might find this article interesting, please feel free to share.