Asked by:- Shivam Kaushik on twitter: @s_kaushik10
“Free will inevitably causes wrong.”
-Karl Marx
Though I am not a big fan of Karl Marx but this quote of him is one of the truths that is hard to digest. That is why no matter what is the ideology of a state or a society whether a socialist, a communist, or capitalist they have always ensured that complete free will doesn't exist. Free speech is a part of free will so the same goes for it.
I know it looks a bit confusing so before moving on further in short we'll see what is meant by free speech, responsible speech (as per my philosophical understanding).
Free speech in literal sense means that a principle according to which a community or an individual has the freedom to articulate his views and opinions without the fear of legal sanction, retaliation or censorship.
As in relation to this responsible speech means that a principle as per which an individual or community has all the attributes of free speech but he is to evaluate and use this freedom in a responsible manner as not to spread hatred and unreasonable commotion in the society as a result of which the social fabric starts to break down.
Now as we can see not a single nation has really had freedom of speech though they claim proudly to be the champions of free speech. In reality in the name of free speech what they allow is 'responsible speech’ as they all have some sort of legal and moral structure which prevents the individual and community to hit the foundation of the nation which can be done by various ways by hurting the sentiment of the religion, class, sex, race, sovereignty of nation etc. For instance, take our own country Article 19 (1)(a) provides freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right to its citizens but the same article in its clause (2) provides reasonable restrictions on the freedom of speech. So in essence these reasonable restrictions are nothing but the tools to ensure that a person doesn't use this freedom for some malicious purposes but to use it in a responsible manner.
So I here wanted to establish that the state never allows free speech; it allows responsible speech in the name of free speech. For this one of the famous justification is the 'harm principle’ proposed by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
Now hitherto everything is hunky dorey no sane person object to this type of free(responsible) speech.
The problem starts when determining the standards or parameters of free(responsible) speech. That depends not only on the laws of the country but also the society, and the mentality of the ruling class. As we have seen that article 19 was pretty much same from the inception but we've seen different interpretation of it by the government from Emergency times to the current government, most of the time government given leniency and hard interpretation to the reasonable restrictions clause as to fill their own narrative and they are particularly not concerned about the spirit of the law itself. As Fredrich Nietzsche pointed out that “Text often disappear under the readers interpretation.”
Now looking at the topic we have to contrainst ourselves to hate speech as a precondition to free(responsible) speech. In India there is no law in my knowledge that prohibits hate speech per se, but it is often classified under various reasonable restrictions if it comes under it. And its all good.
My issue with hate speech is that it's ever expanding definition 10 or 20 yrs ago what it meant was completely different from what it is purported now. Now we are living in a generation of so emotionally weak people that everything has to be watered down because it is offensive and 'spreading hate’, including the truth. The primitive structure or principle of free speech with harm principle(i.e., responsible speech) was the purest form freedom but now we are again starting to roll on the downside. Nothing is wrong with the concept of free(responsible) speech as it allows you to have an opinion whatever you like as pointed out by Hon'ble Supreme Court in Union of India v. Assn. for Democratic Reforms "One Sided information, disinformation, misinformation and non-information, all equally create an uninformed citizenry which makes democracy a farce. Freedom of speech and expression includes right to impart and receive information which includes freedom to hold opinions".
But there is problem with the present day society though the literacy rate is going up standard of living is going up but the maturity level of the society has plummeted, the reason is that we are never taught to set aside our ego and listen the other party and reflect on it, principle like 'audi alteram partem’ has been just reduced to fancy phrases and only used when they benefitted a person's narrative.
Harper Lee in To kill a mockingbird has said the “People see what they look for and hear what they listen for.” Now the 'woke’ culture has transformed into 'victim culture’ and being a victim though even for the frivolous things or even fake victim card also seen as a tool to make things revolve around yourself and the reason for this has been succinctly put into word by Theodore Dalrymple “We live in an age of ‘Emotional Incontinence’ when they who 'emote’ the most are believed to feel the most” this is also the reason for the rise of 'virtue signaling’(Virtue signalling is a neologism for the conspicuous expression of moral values.).
If we look at the past, most of the bad practices of societies and religion were abolished when people voiced their criticism against those practices and called them out even when free speech was not a thing. But now people become too sensitive. ‘Faith has become “divine madness” an absurdity which requires a leap over our faculty of reason.’ The examples of this are various like the Charlie Hebdo incident and the recent Surleen Kaur controversy. People take things spoken out of the context so as to fit their narrative and be a victim or a virtue signaler like what happened in Carryminati tik tok v/s youtube controversy.
People are now not concerned with truth they are concerned with 'Political Correctness’ as Charles Heston said “Political Correctness is a tyranny with a happy face’ the same has happened with the Harry Potter writer J. K. Rowling on her recent tweet. The same author who has been portrayed as a champion of liberalism on her views on the refugee crisis has been cancelled after her stating biological truth on gender.
We merely do not need to claim to be tolerant but we have to be in reality be tolerant towards the opposite views.
One thing I also like to say about freedom of press or so called 'fourth pillar of democracy’ which now has become nothing more than PR machinery of some political ideology or a political party that ‘It's a free press… There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.’ famous Hollywood actor Denzel Washington also once said that the media has only one aim to increase their TRP so they are only concerned with getting their information out first without checking the truthness of the facts.
I would like to conclude by quoting German Philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche “Man is more sensitive to contempt from others than to self contempt.”
Comments
Post a Comment