Freedom of Speech and Maturity

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by wellwisher, Dec 8, 2015.

  1. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    To practice the ideal of freedom of speech, where everyone can say anything they want to anyone, requires a culture and people with a high level of intellectual, psychological and emotional maturity.

    If one is not emotionally mature, then words and noises can amp you out. Simple conditioned sounds can overload one's feelings, since one lacks the maturity needed for self control. If one is not psychologically mature, people can say things that touch upon your fear and insecurities, which can amp you out. If one is not intellectually mature, new or different ideas can disrupt the niches of the mind and make you all amped out.
     
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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    In the United States there is in general freedom of speech but of course not all speech is legal.

    Golly, this sounds just like an individual on this site. Can you guess who I am thinking of?

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  5. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    lol My mom would scold me for bad words.
     
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  7. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    We're entering a time when feelings trump speech. Sadly, many in Europe and Canada have allowed theirs to slip away. Universities are becoming "safe zones" where unpopular thoughts are not allowed. I think it's a serious issue, and it's barking at our (U.S.) door.
    I bet I do...
     
  8. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Don't delude yourself.

    In Canada hate speech is a crime, yet in the U.S. cops kill.
     
  9. zgmc Registered Senior Member

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    She was just all amped out by em I guess.
     
  10. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    You mean like what we see on the right end of the American political system e.g Trump, Palin, Cruz, Hannity, Limbaugh, Levin, Blackburn, Bachman, Fox News and virtually every other right wing public figure? You know, the folks who pray on human fears and ignorance literally every day of the year.

    The solution to demagoguery isn't to restrict speech but to ensure everyone has equal speech - something which currently doesn't exist in the US, largely due to rulings by the Republican controlled US Supreme Court - and to ensure the population is well informed and educated (i.e. restoration of the Fairness Doctrine). People are not going to stop acting like people. That's why we have and need systems and processes to save us from our human frailties. That's why we need to restore the Fairness Doctrine where every issue of public importance is required to be discussed fairly. That means no more institutionalized demagoguery like Republican talk radio and Fox News. Because with the Fairness Doctrine, they could still say whatever they wanted to say, but they would also need to fairly and honestly present the other side of the story, something they don't do today. The Fairness Doctrine worked well for the US for many decades. It kept extremism and a largely ignorant electorate at bay by keeping them better informed until Republicans terminated the doctrine during the Reagan administration.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2015
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I think your choice of terms: "trump" and "barking", is very apposite.

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  12. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    If one is not emotionally and intellectually mature, one is apt to say ill-considered, inflammatory and hurtful things. If one who is immature says these things, very loudly, to many others who are also immature, they're apt to burn down houses of worship and lynch people who have done nothing wrong.
    That is why we in Canada feel it necessary to restrict the access to public platforms of the immature among us.
    And now that we finally got free of the "Conservatives", maybe university professors can, once again, speak their minds.
    At least, scientists have had their muzzle removed.
     
  13. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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  14. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    People who are emotionally, psychologically and intellectually mature can better handle any form of speech coming from others, since all speech is are combinations of sounds that humans make. There is no reason to amp out by anything said, other than not being able to handle bad breath. When speech becomes limited due immaturity, the inmates are in charge of the asylum.
     
  15. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose this is obvious to most members but perhaps we need to point it out to wellwisher...

    Not all speech is or should be legal. Example? Try yelling FIRE or TERRORIST WITH A GUN in a crowded movie theater. Only the psychologically and intellectually immature will be "amped" out by that speech, right?
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think it's an indication of immaturity to be wounded or effected deeply by hate speech. If a black man encounters a white supremacist who shouts racist slurs at him, ofcourse that will be emotionally jarring and deeply traumatizing. He may act out in rage at such mere words. But he is not being "immature". Words are powerful and can be used in many injurious ways. Just witness the effect of libel on certain people's careers. I once had this guy in a car at an intersection in San Diego shout at me "fag" for walking out of a gay bar. I was livid. My friend had to keep me walking rather than going over and confronting him. That's not immaturity. That's moral outrage, which is often a sign of high principles.
     
  17. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, and perhaps you can provide some credible evidence to back up your assertions, then again probably not. Now I realize Republicans (i.e. so called conservatives) are fond of falsely claiming free speech is being suppressed simply because a right wing nut case speaker was not selected by a university to give a commencement speech. But that doesn't make it so. That's no more speech suppression than a Republican choosing to watch or listen to Republican entertainers. You are no doubt repeating a nonsensical argument you have heard from Republican entertainers.

    Here is the problem for Republicans, and this is why Republicans have found it necessary to conduct a war on education and in particular higher education. Because the better informed people are, the less they will become Republican, hence the Republican war on higher education. God forbid voters should be well informed, they might vote Democratic. That's why Republicans have repeatedly and continue to attack institutions of higher learning. Truth and reason are not ideological. It just so happens truth and reason are existential threat to the Republican Party and that's why Republicans love and need to attack institutions of higher learning. People might discover, among other things, global climate change is real.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2015
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    I wouldn't contest your latter point; I just need a springboard. But it's worth noting that our neighbor actually wrote an accurate sentence:

    When speech becomes limited due immaturity, the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

    (#11↑)

    The problem, of course, is in our neighbor's application.

    At forty-two years old, I can remember the idea that not using words like "nigger" and "bitch" in the workplace was somehow an intrusion on free speech; indeed, all these people ever wanted was the right to use the leverage of being an employer―whether private or public―to hurt others, specifically those in their employ. The idea that a shift manager shouldn't call his subordinate, "Nigger!" somehow equaled "thought police".

    Meanwhile, where situationally tailored language enters the realm of thought patrol is not in basic PC, which describes basic courtesy, but in bureaucratically suitable (BS) lexicon, whereby we devise terms like "collateral damage" to mean "murdering an innocent person". Consider the Iraqi Bush War, in which we argued that while war requires sacrifices, people should not see what those equal because it would be inflammatory to basic sensitivities. Once upon a time, the flag-draped coffins of our dead were solemn symbols, a call to reverence. Now they're unfair and inflammatory propaganda, or so went the argument during the Bush years.

    And our neighbor has bought into all this right-wing hype.

    Still, though, he is correct on one count, even if it's merely the blessing of a broken clock: The immaturity of people who demand the power to insult, denigrate, demean, and harm others with abusive language in circumstances in which insult, denigration, dimunition, harm, and abuse are inappropriate is what forced prohibition.

    And now we keep tying ourselves in knots trying to find new ways to outlaw reality as politically incorrect, and pretty much entirely because our bigoted neighbors need it that way. He's right. We long crossed the line at which people's immaturity means the inmates are pretty much in charge of the asylum.

    The ego defense mechanism is called projection.
     
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  19. zgmc Registered Senior Member

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    He was just jealous.
     
  20. tali89 Registered Senior Member

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    If someone is truly secure in who they are, why would slurs (be they ethnic or otherwise) phase them? For example, if I went up to Arnold Schwarzenegger during his prime and called him a weak POS, do you think he'd be deeply traumatized, or would he find the whole thing laughable?
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    In the rural Pacific Northwest in the 1980s, there were plenty of defenses of ugly speech. I had an elementary school principal whose answer to racism was to tell our one African-American student and two Asian-American students that the solution to racism was to try harder to fit in.

    And then he told the kids the story of a guy named Detlef Schrempf, who worked really hard to get rid of his German accent until people stopped making fun of him.

    What he never explained to us is why anyone would pick a fight with a 6'10, 235 lb. white guy.

    And the coming NBA contract didn't hurt, either.

    But it never has made sense; I asked my dad if he remembered the episode, and he did. And then he told me a couple other stories, like the time the guy tanked the Little League All-Star team so he could take all his players; they didn't make it out of the county. But I do remember the time he assaulted one of his students during a baseball game; in those days, that kind of shit was acceptable, apparently.

    Nobody ever did explain, though, why he picked a six-foot-ten white guy as his example of the oppressed, especially on the heels of a student being assaulted by several older, larger students.

    In later years, I found out about our nasty, northwestern white supremacist movement, and yeah, it made sense. No wonder he picked an about-to-be-rich, outsized white guy as his example.

    At least he didn't pick Conan the Barbarian.

    Just once I want to hear Conan do a Roseanne impersonation: Fuck with me, Arsenio! I dare you!

    You know, the flip side of that elementary school story is one I've told before. In the 1990s I lived in Oregon, and one of the Portland affiliates ran this story about local Asian-Americans going to extreme lengths to look white. Not just contact lenses and bleach jobs, but freaking plastic surgery and skin bleaching. Round the eyes, alter the cheekbones, sharpen the chin and nose, lighten the tone. And they used words like shocking to describe the trend.

    I don't know, maybe they found five people in the greater Portland area who did this.

    However, we might call it any number of things. Appalling comes to mind. But it was only shocking to those who weren't paying attention. An entire generation of nonwhites was raised on the idea that all they had to do was try harder to fit in, and then the hatred would stop.

    And when I was a kid, they always lectured minorities on how to be more like white guys nobody would fuck with.
     
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  22. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Yet in the U.S. you won't spend time in jail for having an opinion. In Canada, thoughts are illegal. Other than that, having been to BC twice, it's hard to understand why Canada needed such control over speech.
     
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  23. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    You can't be that dumb.

    Really, come on.
     

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