Freedom to debate is all we have left

It was believed for long that the sun revolved around the earth. A radical voice named Galileo disagreed. He said he could prove otherwise, that it was the Earth that went round the Sun. The Pope was infuriated, and restricted Galileo from proving the Church wrong. The restriction was not effective, and Galileo proved his point. Today we live in a world of words, numbers, figures, statistics and speeches. These things unite together to form a network that binds us all together, and gives way to mass communication. Speech, would be an all encompassing mode of communication.

Speech is not everyday talk. It refers to radical opinion, that necessarily generates counter speech or critical analysis to test its worth, or, to very sensitive opinion, which traditionalists would want to impose restrictions on, because it threatens their existence or credibility.

Counter speech is therefore an antithesis, a critical view of Speech, involving opinions counter to what is expressed. Like thesis and antithesis, each is an essential part of the other, and both exist side by side, complementing each other like black and white. Newton does tell us that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.

Counter speech involves healthy debates, by airing out opinions, criticisms, grievances, protests, and giving a voice to all. It highlights and analyzes the specific points of disagreement with speech, the thesis, and is therefore the best way to balance out and neutralize extreme opinions.

It is also Facebook’s new tool to fight terror, according to Ms. Bickert, Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Management. It is a crowd-sourced response to extremism or hateful content. It is a strategy to counteract harmful speech. It includes counter narratives, sharing of experiences that unite communities.

They, on the other hand, are forceful impositions on the human’s freedom to express. They deny an individual a fundamental right. It hopes to hinder the independent functioning of the brain to reach logical assumptions. It is a denial of the right to protest, voice an opinion, which in effect means that opinions contrary to what is expected by the establishment are unwelcome and are therefore silenced, often very severely. Restrictions come from fear, from anticipation that unpleasant truths might come to the forefront, that sensitive content may be exposed. 

It hinders exploration of an idea and whether it holds true. Restrictions come in the form of media censorship, banning and burning of books, imprisonment, forced exiles and daylight butchery. They know no boundaries. It is important to question the real effectiveness of restrictions and the censorship  of media. There will be millions more who shall find out why exactly the bloggers or those in Charlie Hebdo gave their lives for. So apart from their extreme severity, restrictions make people notice what otherwise may have gone unnoticed. In effect, those restricted, reach a wider audience, and the movement against restriction grows and fortifies, rendering all restriction ineffective.

Speech and counter speech result in a synthesis of opinions, perhaps a solution, albeit temporary. In a world where change is the only constant,time will question history, hoping to find new avenues for growth. That is inevitable. So the synthesis, born of the amalgamation of thesis and its antithesis, becomes the new thesis today, generating yet another antithesis tomorrow, in a cyclical continuum. 

So debates must go on, to re-interpret a given, to retest and re-evaluate a system, and find progressive solutions again and yet again. That is how the world changes, that is how parliaments function in an ideal democracy. It is because counter speech is so effective that the role of the opposition in the government can never be redundant.

If this is the case there seems to be no point of imposing restrictions. Because opinions differ. Because better ideas defeat worse ideas. Because debates matter.

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