I wrote this in 2018 and Olivia Pierson kindly posted it on her blog in October 2018. I saw the censorship and self censorship in the public arena was also a feature of the social and private as well.
Free expression is the base of human rights, the
root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights,
to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.[1]
(Liu Xiabo 28 December 1955 to 13 July 2017.)
(Liu Xiabo 28 December 1955 to 13 July 2017.)
Free speech
is often seen as a public platform concern. Examples of public non-platforming are the
instances of Southern and Molyneux in
Auckland and then
Dr Brash
at Massey University. The question this paper deals with is whether
what is happening in the public domain if this also is occurring in our day to
day personal interactions in the social, professional and private domains as
well? I say it is. That non-platforming in the private,
professional and social domains has differing but existential and socio
cultural consequences. These concern the acceptance or not of a person who will and
will not be heard. Cultural consequences
stem from the recoil from curiosity, inquiry and openness.
The recoil to closure has
historically been seen to lead to a
culture of lies. Then in terms of inquiry and knowledge has lead to the society of the Hedgehog.
The latter comes from Isaiah Berlin’s
use of Archilochus’ simile of the fox and the hedgehog. [2] The hedgehog knows only one big thing, if not
an inner light, through which all is interpreted, which has the propensity to lead to the closed
society
.
.
The question
came to mind after I queried a point (made
in a letter to the US Ambassador by a group of lawyers) with a colleague concerning the
present US border immigration issues.
The response was remarkable for its abusive, vitriolic and stereotyped prejudice of ‘deplorable’s’. The response also took no heed of basic human
rights principles nor differences of
viewpoint or any open curiosity to confirm or find out about another view point
or what the facts of the situation were.
I realised I needed to exit the conversation, to say no more nor to
raise the topic again. Possibly I will
carry scarlet letter “D” from now on.
What was
surprising was that this came from a lawyer.
Lawyers are to uphold the Rule of Law which includes human rights. I had expected that there might be an element
of reasoned deliberation and judgment in any reply. The experience signals that there is fragility
in our social, legal and ultimately our political discourse. That a simple clarifying enquiry can be considered
‘unsafe’ that it has tribal ‘in group
orthodox’ belief implications requiring silence for fear of an indelible
Puritan “Scarlet Letter” of some form adhering to us.
In truncating the right of freedom of speech in private social or
professional discourse, two comparable
concepts exist: first, that of self-censorship; and secondly, being silenced or not being heard-
“I don’t want to hear what you have to
say”. In the public domain we can choose
not to go to an event to hear someone.
In the private, professional and social domain the right of freedom of
speech carries with it a moral right or
duty to hear and to listen. It has
been put thus: “If you say something I do not like, I have to listen even
more.”[3] If we are committed to not living a life of the lie[4], but to integrity, seeking truth and understanding the world,
celebrating human dignity, and valuing a
person these become an “ought” or an
imperative.
The further
catalyst- again from a lawyer- for the present article arises from a recent personal experience of
being denied to tell one’s story after being asked of one's predicament because the perpetrator of harm was a friend of the questioner. "I won't hear a word against her". (It is a good example of the banality of evil and refusing to confront the truth) That is why I believe that what is
happening in public discourse also affects, and is mirrored in, private, social,
professional discourse. One
either self-censors or is silenced or is
not heard. It can be seen in people
not asking questions at university for fear of losing grades or being pilloried[5]. Both
have an existential upshot ranging from devaluation to dismissal for the self-censored
and the silenced. Every story of harm, suffering or loss that becomes
devalued and devoid of meaning in itself causes harm and suffering.
That speaking
‘our stories’, and being believed about our
lived experience, and reality, does bear on our present personal existence and integrity. When a person’s story is shut down in a
social or private setting it is to say that the person is not to be believed,
is of no account or of consequence: in short the speaker is socially,
professionally and personally proscribed[6]
and annulled. The story, as it travels
with the person, is similarly proscribed.
The “voice” so devalued becomes one of no account, and
not to be believed or is an “invalid”
understanding. Simply, a nullity, “it does not matter, it did not happen.” It
says that a person, as a speaker, is not to be believed, does not matter and is of no consequence.
From this
flows the civil “othering” of the
speaker from the class of worthy people who should be listened to. That denigrating “othering”, when the other is cast into the out group and of no merit or consequence, is the open door for pretexts
and justifications for prejudice and
discrimination. Holocaust and rape
victims, and the likes of survivors from the Soviet Gulag or Pol Pot killing fields, take offence at having their experiences
invalidated and dismissed as if they were wrong their experience and suffering trivial or
impalpable or non existent. Such conduct it is bad manners-manners come
from a desire to facilitate and please; secondly it impugns the dignity of
the person particularly when the teller has been invited to speak; and thirdly
it is moral cowardice, fleeing opinion,
truth and knowledge.
Weight and praise is bestowed on the ‘authenticity of ‘stories’,
of personal experience, of “giving voice”, recounting their “experience and stories”,[7]
and “speaking your truth”[8]
as Senator Booker says. Socially
directed propositions are distilled from these stories. Yet, Harvard
Emeritus Professor Alan Dershowitz’s “ the shoe on the other foot test” fails in my experience owing to the “identity” of the speaker. Wrongly or rightly for some a syllogism predetermines
whose story can be heard or is contingent on a person’s politics[9]
or a cognitive confirmation bias.[10]
What is the
nature of the two parallel concepts mentioned above? Self-censorship
is where we hold back from expressing an opinion out of fear of adverse opinion, being held in low esteem,
reprisals e.g demotion, economic threats (see. James Damore loss of job from Google for expressing an opinion; and
Ian Buruma from the NYRB[11]),
or public mauling or actual violence. Secondly, it is
where someone refuses to hear/listen because what you might say is “uncomfortable” but the
truth. Excluding the uncomfortable can be effected with a near
McCarthy like fanaticism.[12]
The concept
of self- censorship has been examined by the Danish writer, Flemming Rose, in his compelling book, The Tyranny of Silence (2014).
To be afraid to say something, to
withdraw or hold back from saying something but nevertheless holding an opinion
(from whence comes the thought crime) are forms of non- platforming in social and public
discourse.[13] It can
mean a capitulation to unreason, to blatant bigotry, to arbitrary and unlawful
power and remedies of protest; to having one’s will over borne and suppressed. Implicit is the act of some form of
intimidation whether psychological or physical.[14] Career, passing exams, on-going participation/acceptance
and commercial threats rank high. For example, a Face Book executive is faced
serious opprobrium from Facebook management and staff for his supporting an
appointment to the US Supreme Court.
In my view,
such conduct may beget “Nelsonian
Blindness” and a “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt described in Eichmann
in Jerusalem. To say nothing is on the same continuum of
doing nothing and inactivity enables harm and evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholls, Martin
Luther King and Liu Xiabo have all echoed similar sentiments. In a sense, non-platforming and self-censorship are the
first tottering steps on Claudia Card’s
famous “atrocity paradigm” starting with countermanding the freedom of speech as opinions and intimidation such as othering. Wrongs and errors cannot not be even
understood let alone righted or resolved if a person is not heard. The
rules of Natural Justice appropriately place a high premium on the right to be
heard because Court’s demand for accuracy avoids erroneous decisions and bias. The value to accord each other mutual
respect requires this too.
The concept
of not listening is where someone refuses to hear/listen a contrary opinion or differing
perspective. What you might say is “uncomfortable” and affects feelings or a
belief about “in group” members. I recently experienced this with a lawyer when
the reasons for a situation involved a “colleague- friend” ( an ‘in group’
participant) where speech/opinion, in answer to a question, was abruptly ended on the basis of “I don’t
want to hear”.
Clearly, my answer was productive of cognitive dissonance
with a preconceived equanimity. A differing opinion in these circumstances was a
threat to solidarity with belief implications for the
questioner’s/listeners’ “in group”;
thereby the closure of conversation was retracting from the values of curiosity,
openness, inclusiveness, diversity,
wider social/professional discourse and
human rights concerns. An argument can
be made that this closure of discussion evinces visceral discrimination for
threatened status or power, an “in group
v out group” contest arises. It does have a worrying tendency towards a “velvet totalitarian”[15]
mind set of the punishing of heterodox
opinion. At the level of public
discourse the act of retraction/recession may be expressed as the flight from
the ‘open society’ to the ‘closed society’.
The classical
Liberal culture of Rights and Freedoms are some of our culture’s significant “Apps”.
Both critically and importantly they are self-critically directed and engaged. Criticism and self-criticism mitigate bias in favour of accuracy and enable things
to be examined, fixed and to be learned
from and then incorporated into common sense (as societal shared
understandings) for navigating our world of daily experience. Two points flow: a recognition of dignity of
the person; and truth. I turn to consider each of these.
As to
dignity of the person, Rose develops an important ideas arising out of the freedom
of speech, namely freedom of expression and thus freedom of conscience[16]. Rose in relaying details from a discussion with
Salman Rushdie, says that story telling helps define and understand the teller.
Storytelling “derives from the language instinct that is a
universal and innate in human nature.” Stopping people from telling their
stories is “an existential insult that turns people into something they are
not.”[17] Telling our stories is the difference between
an ‘open society and a closed one.’
Hearing someone, believing their story, gives recognition and goes to
the very being of a person. They also accord
that singularly great human right value ‘dignity
of the person.’
To decry a
person’s words of personal experience, and suffering, is to annul
a person. That is a serious matter. The
corrosive effect is to rescind and strip a person of their inherent dignity and
existential validity as an individual person [18]
Equally, not being believed, having
one’s trust betrayed or professional reputation sallied is equally destructive
of dignity. It is disempowering and
heinous, causing loss of career and financial loss especially when betrayed by a colleague or friend.
Dante reserved the lowest level
in the Inferno for those who betray others and we could add to also annul others.
It is a violation of their human dignity.
The media may also violate human decency and
dignity. They can betray the truth of a person. Pope Francis[19] in
an article[20] compared fake news to excrement. The trend of coprophillia and coprophagia
has spread, he said, from our politics, the media and to wider culture and into
law but also, in my view, to social and
personal relations. “The Pope also criticized the media’s
tendency to present only half a story while ignoring the rest, which he
qualified as “disinformation, that is, to tell only part of the truth of a
situation and not the other.” The
consequence of “…this disinformation,
Francis said, prevents people making a “serious judgment” and therefore is
“probably the greatest harm they can do, because it sways views in one
direction, leaving out the other part of
the truth.”
The
cornerstone idea he evolved was that of “annulling a person.” To "annul" a person is to deprive
that person of a basic and existential status and right, the Human Right- of
integrity and self-dignity. Discrimination
as the deployment of stereotypes and stigma as well as slander and lies do
that. It is a hurtful and humiliating experience: the corollary or the jural
correlative of humiliation is dignity.
Rose says that shutting
down speech, censoring discourse or self censoring- leads to “living a lie”[21]. That lie about the truth of matters then exists
on both sides of the social interaction.
It is a form of wilful blindness
and thus gives rise to cognitive
dissonance. Truth is important because speech
and reality are often seen as parting company.
The inner light of metaphysical intuition (rather than fact or reality
based), self-deception and lies are corrosive. Thomas Jefferson noted this when he said: He who permits himself to tell a lie once,
finds it much easier to do it a second time, till at length it becomes
habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s
believing him. This falsehood of the
tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.[22]
Lies use language to win arguments, obtain status, impress people,
and denigrate people “to bend the world to what I want.”[23] Lies
also have unintended consequences. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn in his article Live not by Lies
examined the lies create a culture of lies and “a spiritual death.”[24] In The
Gulag Archipelago the social metastases caused by not hearing, not speaking,
and lies led to a culture of the life of
lies. Its outcomes were ignorance, falsification, mistrust and disinformation
and cynical apathy. Functionally this has
consequences. For example, to request a
plumber, say, to attend a blocked drain
requires both truth and trust: that
someone will actually turn up when they say they will; that there is in fact a
problem that is believed to exist. The
inception of the will to disbelieve or to be complicity apathetic in even
wanting to know the facts betrays “truth.” Two
examples from the Gulag Archipelago illustrate
the point:
The
permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as
betrayal… Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial
expression observed by someone. The Lie
as a Form of Existence. Whether giving
in to fear, or influenced by material self-interest or envy, people can't
nonetheless become stupid so swiftly. Their souls may be thoroughly muddied,
but they still have a sufficiently clear mind. They cannot believe that all the
genius of the world has suddenly concentrated itself in one head [Stalin’s]
with a flattened, low-hanging –forehead. They simply cannot believe the stupid and
silly images of themselves which they hear over the radio, see in films, and
read in the newspapers. Nothing forces them to speak the truth in reply, but no
one allows them to keep silent! They have to talk! And what else but a lie? They have to applaud madly, and no one
requires honesty of them.
…
…
Therefore
every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not
to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases,
of labels, a selection of ready-made lies. And not one single speech nor one
single essay or article nor one single book—be it scientific, journalistic,
-critical, or "literary," so-called—can exist without the use of
these primary clichés.[25]
Alfred Adler
called this “a life of lies.” [29] A life
of lies entails the manipulation of
reality for predetermined ends. It has
says Peterson two premises. First, that current knowledge- I know everything I
need to know- is sufficient to determine what is good for the future; and
secondly, reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices. This is
objected to on the grounds that it assumes the objective is ultimately worth
obtaining and that there is no error in that course. Then it is valid only if reality is
intrinsically intolerable and can be manipulated. Reliance is placed strictly on rationality,
which Peterson says inclines to arrogance.
He draws a parallel with John Milton’s supreme star rationalist, Satan,
from Paradise Lost.[30] Bending oneself to a life lie, if the goal is
wrong, is a path to an unhappy torment.
The ‘life of
the lie’ predicament and the topic of this essay may also be explained by Isaiah
Berlins use of the archaic Greek poet, Archilochus’ simile of the hedgehog and
the fox. The hedgehog knows one thing
and is closed whereas the fox knows many and is open to data and reality of the
world.[31]
Where a
person’s reputation is at stake truth is vital.[32] Lawyers for example have a duty of candour to
the Court for integrity of decision making.
The Client Care Rules support
this but the rule seems to have a half-life in reality with some counsel or
they sail close to the line with innuendo, spin and sophistry. (E.g. “that
theft is a practical commercial solution”).
In
conclusion it is my argument that to
thwart or avoid a person’s story so as
to avoid a contrary view which is a discomfort in favour of therapeutic conformity of
comfort, as defined by an ideological
tribal group, rather than that of truth,[33]
is to live a lie. Lies betray human
rights, human dignity and degrade social interactions to ones marked by, insincerity,
indifference and lack of empathy. Where
the motive is avoidance then sins of commission and sins of omission are not confronted. To fail to speak and to hear are the means of
how the trains ran to Auschwitz, how a colleague is bullied at work and
succumbs to a break down and discrimination.
When that happens the curiosity to discover, to see what is authentic and
meaningful in life decomposes to a decadent nihilism. Life and reality becomes the deceptive, unreliable and inchoate
shadowy world of Plato’s cave simile.
******
Graham Hill, MA (Hons) Ll.B (Hons)
Nelson
24 October 2018
[2] The simile is that of the fox, who knows many things
and the hedgehog who knows one big thing
is from the Archaic Greek poet Archilochus
fl 680 to 645 BCE. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedeghog and the Fox: An Essay on
Tolstoy’s View of History, Phoenix: Orion Books Ltd, London 1953 1978,
1999. The hedgehog is suggestive of the
totalitarian mind set of the closed society.
[3] Thomas D Williams, “Pope Francis: If you say something I do not like, I have to listen even
more.” In Brietbart 4 October 2018 (https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/10/04/pope-francis-if-you-say-something-i-do-not-like-i-have-to-listen-even-more/ (Accessed, 5
October 2018)
[5] “Lushington D Brady,
“Bureaucrats to the Rescue” Whale Oil 12
October 2018 (Accessed 12/10/2018)
[6] In the republican Rome a form of othering or
“un-personing” was proscription: “Proscription, Latin proscriptio, plural proscriptiones, in ancient Rome, a posted notice listing Roman citizens who had been
declared outlaws and whose goods were confiscated. Rewards were offered to
anyone killing or betraying the proscribed, and severe penalties were inflicted
on anyone harbouring them. Their properties were confiscated, and their sons
and grandsons were forever barred from public office and from the Senate: https://www.britannica.com/topic/proscription.
[7] Law Talk # 913
(1/12/2017) Feminist
Judgments Project Review: http://www.lawsociety.org.nz/practice-resources/research-and-insight/legal-publications/from-tempting-idea-to-weighty-tome (accessed
5/10/2018); In New Zealand there is The Workshop, a research, policy and storytelling
collaborative: https://www.theworkshop.org.nz/
[8]Jonathan D Salant, “Booker tells Kavanaugh that Christine
Blasey- Ford’s Accusations were no Political Hit”, in NJ.com 28 September 2018.
Speaking
your truth is species of the “inner light” or “calling and is of a slightly
differing order: https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/09/booker_to_kavanaugh_fords_accusations_were_no_political_hit_job.html (Accessed 6 October 2018)
[9] Rod Liddle, ‘The Truth is We Prefer to Lie’, The US edition of the Spectator:
htps/spectator.us/2018/10/truth-prefer-lie/
(accessed 5 October 2018).
[10] Tversky etc
Ian Buruma https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/09/ian-buruma-new-york-review-of-books-exit. (Accessed 6
October 2018) see alos n 3 above.
[12] Harvard Emeritus Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz cited by Lauretta Brown,
“Dershowitz on Kavanaugh: What’s Happening is Sexual McCarthyism-‘setting a
terrible precedent’ in Townhall 5
October 2018
[13] How often are the Lawyers Client Care Rule 2.8 – the
rule to report lawyers’ misconduct and unsatisfactory conduct - invoked?
[14]
Flemming Rose,
The Tyranny of Silence.. Cato Institute, Washington DC 2014, 2016,
outlines the threats to one of the cartoonist of the Muhammad cartoons
featured in Jylannds Posten; and then
there are the murders of staff at the
offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and
the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The US
campus non platforming cases do seem have this as a sub text or theme.
[18] Pope Francis Compares ‘Fake
News’ to excrement[18] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/12/07/pope-francis-decries-fake-news-like-excrement/#disqus_thread.
[19] It should be noted that Popes John Paul ii and Benedict (who spoke in the UN in April 2008) were active in promoting
the human rights standards for the Roman Catholic Church with emphasis on
the inherent dignity of the person (which after all is a Christian value):
Compendium of Social Doctrine for the
Church 25 September 2006.
[21] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live
not by Lies, Moscow 12 February 1974,
Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com Index on Censorship 2 2006 at
203 accessed on 05102018; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 2, 1918- 1956 Parts III to IV, Collins
Fontana, 1975, 1976 . In Part 4 chapter 3, “Our Muzzled Freedom”; Flemming Rose, The
Tyranny of Silence.. Cato Institute,
Washington DC 2014, 2016, p. 119, ,
[22] Cited as a chapter mast head in in James Comey, A
Higher Loyalty: Truth Lies and leadership, MacMillan 2018 at page 50
[23] Dr J B Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, Penguin 2018 Rule 8,
p,. 204
[24] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live
not by Lies, Moscow 12 February 1974,
Downloaded from ioc.sagepub.com Index on Censorship 2 2006 at
203 accessed on 05102018
[25] Language also
ceases to be neutral. Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
2, 1918- 1956 Parts III to IV, Collins Fontana, 1975, 1976 . In Part 4
chapter 3, “Our Muzzled Freedom”
at 617 he talks of universal ignorance, mistrust, and disinformation- the cause of causes of everything that took
place p 628-9-8 Solzhenitsyn discourses
on this topic for several pages- e.g. “There is no man who has typed even one
page .... without lying. There is no man who has spoken
from a rostrum . . . without lying;
There is no man who has spoken into a microphone . . . without
lying. But if only it had
all ended there! After all, it went
further than that: every conversation with the management, every conversation
in the Personnel Section, every conversation of any kind with any other Soviet
person called for lies—sometimes head on, sometimes looking over your shoulder,
sometimes indulgently affirmative. And if your idiot interlocutor said to you
face to face that we were retreating to the Volga in order to decoy Hitler
farther, or that the Colorado beetles had been dropped on us by the
Americans---it was necessary to agree! It
was obligatory to agree! And a shake of
the head instead of a nod might well cost you resettlement in the Archipelago…. But that was not all: Your children were growing up!
If they weren't yet old enough, you and your wife had to avoid saying openly in
front of them what you really thought; after all, they were being brought up to
be Pavlik Morozovs, to betray their own parents, and they wouldn't hesitate to
repeat his achievement. And if the children were still little, then you had to
decide what was the best way to bring them up; whether to start them off on
lies instead of the truth (so that it would be
easier for them to live) and then
to lie forevermore in front of them tool or to tell them the truth, with the risk that they
might make a slip, that they might let it out, which meant that you had to
instil into them from the start that the truth was murderous, that beyond the
threshold of the house you had to lie, … just like papa and mama
[29] Ibid p 210 citing
Adler 1973, “Life Lies and responsibility in neurosis and psychosis: a
contribution to Melancholia, in P Radison, The
Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, Littlefield & Ass.
Totowa, NJ
[31] Isaiah Berlin, The
Hedeghog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History, Phoenix: Orion
Books Ltd, London 1953 1978, 1999.
No comments:
Post a Comment