Below are my feelings as an author on the new “fear of words” in the media, in news organization, online in social media, at universities, and in books of the past in an attempt to stop hate, racism, and bigotry.
This idea of canceling and censoring opinions and ideas in America is a failed and immature attempt at changing the world by pretending to change people’s views…..views which never change. This silencing of people is an ideal which only carries power through the weight of the laws and leaders we elect each year. Banning books and canceling people will not move the world to your cause. For morality and change lives only in your own heart and the life you live as example, not through the evil of silencing and shaming of others.
Censoring and filtering ideas will not improve the world. It is simply a power grab masked as a massive critique of people and history by the younger generation in 2020 that damages freedom of speech so they can feel vindicated, feel secure, feel protected, and feel more in control of their own darker Humanity. That is the sad truth of it all. We forget that people have many views, some good…some bad. No one alive or in the past is without some hate or bias or bigotry….no one! We are all Human, so naturally flawed. Its what makes us powerful with executive function over our own lives, as we have been granted the power to control the demons inside us that constantly trip up our better angels. That is what makes us heroic as Humans.
No one is free of error or mistakes. No person’s past or their ancestor’s pasts are free of criminal behavior or violence or evil. No one is the God of Morality either. No one is capable of playing judge over others. So knowing all this why judge others in the shallow Court of Public Opinion? Why try and block a person’s views or opinions, or destroy another person’s career or livelihood, when all you can do is change your own life?
There is a recent surge to also ban books or remove racist or hateful authors, filmmakers, tv show writers, news, art, or music of the past. Many books and novels of our recent past were written in a Postmodern Age where freedom meant giving oneself the right of expressing good as well as much bleaker views of Humanity than our much more closed Millennial Generation and society today now reject. I think no one should filter, burn, hide, or rewrite books, nor hide them from anyone, child, adult, or future generation. Would we want others rewriting our words or hiding our views? Does stripping memory from History change History? It just dumbs History down.
Humanity is flawed. We are all flawed. We are also not Gods, nor judge and jury over our fellow Man, nor the dead. We now have empowered each other such that we think we can modernize fiction by sanitizing it of all hate, racism, bigotry, and “scary words”. We are arrogant to think we have Moral Authority. Yet I think we all acknowledge we have a society built on morality by laws constructed to protect the rights of others. Laws matter not public shaming and censoring.
Some of those rights “seem” on the surface to extend to powers over freedom of expression, but they don’t. The key is to separate Freedom of Speech from morality and law. We must be able to allow the most hateful people and disturbing artwork and music and film to flourish. We must give the most hateful and most racist the right to openly express themselves or Democracy dies a slow death. Who has to listen to their bile? Not you or I. But to destroy others so we no longer feel pain from words doesn’t change them nor stop hate. It simply buries it so we no longer fear words. And so forcing others to fear words is simply the price we inflict on others over our own fear of words. It shows you are weak.
Who wants to live in a place like China where all voices are silenced for fear of words? Only those who sing of the value of the Chinese State or some social media “groupthink” like is found on Facebook and other social media sites that bans bad words is allowed to now speak! That is where we are slowly heading today in American society at large if we do not all rise up and cry our for FREEDOM OF SPEECH AT ALL COST!!!!
It’s ok to debate the immorality of words and authors, or protect your own kids from such things, or challenge hate when you see it online. Its not ok to silence them from the world, or spread cancel culture, or use reverse racism to attack educated people who may not look like you or think like you from expressing themselves. Democracy means democracy for all, including the haters. If you feel you silence others today because your culture has been silenced then VOTE! Did you even vote last election for the people that will enact the laws you believe need to exist? But banning or censoring others is a crime, truly. Its a crime of intimidation, reverse-discrimination, and fear.
There is no rational for creating fear of words. There is no rational to fight fear with more fear, hate with more hate. Your cause is then lost…
If we censor others then from silence will come a shadow over all words in the future if we don’t stop that terrible movement now sweeping across America. It smells of extreme ignorance in our youth. It feels like some power struggle, not for justice and an Egalitarian world but for power and ego.
For creating such an Authoritarian World whose premise is now some Orwellian Fear of Words will force us all to hide away the truth we see in our own secret hearts. Mankind will then become a ghost of its former self for fear of the Crime of Words and the Thought Police that come to enforce it.
We may soon find us in a world where we struggle to raise our tiny pens in the shadow of our rooms to challenge these fated authorities and their own hateful and misguided justice against free expression. For in such a dark world we will rue the day we ever denied people to speak their true minds as these self-elected Morality Police come to destroy our lives as they haul us away for the simple crime of a few misguided darker ideas….the crime of being all too Human.
— the Author
