7 Years Ago

Darin Stevenson updated his status.

Sep 21, 2018 1:27:54 pm

Notes Toward an Essay on Freedom of Speech. • Freedom is a principle that is delimited or endowed by context and participants. This implies something counter-intuitive: it is not a property that can be »generally embodied; any embodiment is specific and subject to the natures of the contexts in which it is discovered. • The non-general nature of Freedom includes unusual properties analogous to those revealed to us by physics and mathematics. Examples are the species of unique »domains of liberty (ways in which liberty may be expressed), as well as »degrees of liberty (the origins and limits of freedom) specific to a domain or form of liberty. • Furthermore, Freedoms, including that of speech, cannot exist independent of specific foundations; a useful analogy is a tripod that supports an instrument. Without legs, or if one is missing or damaged, the entire structure fails to serve its intended purposes. Freedom of Speech depends upon such foundations as a deep and inquisitive education, particularly in Rhetoric, a context amenable to the free exchange and questioning of ideas, and the purposes that enhance, rather than delimit, the intelligences of the individual and group. • The educational status of any given collective, be it formal, informal, historied or momentary will necessarily delimit both the domains and degrees of liberty therein accessible (or tolerated). Poorer degrees of education necessarily result in constrained degrees and domains of liberty, and vice-versa. • Purpose is a foundational aspect of Freedom; where one (or a group) is deeply constrained by limitations of perspective or purpose, we will find that the possibilities of liberty are sharply or even cruelly delimited. For this reason, individuals or collectives whose purposive orientation is crude (meaning poorly endowed with the capacity for insight) may engage in ‘the free association and communication’ implied by the idea of Freedom of Speech, such activities will only nominally qualify as free. This is due to the fact that minds intent upon imposing a frozen ideological structure cannot reasonably be understood as ‘free’ at all, and therefore are often nearly incapable of demonstrating anything resembling freedom outside the extremely limited definition of ‘say whatever you care to’, which is a mode of freedom that we may recognize as falsified since it has as its goal not freedom, but coercion, declaration, defamation or compulsion. • It is therefore possible to ‘speak freely’ without actually embodying intelligence, insight, awareness or the desire to learn or correct falsely held opinions, and while such speaking may be ‘important to allow’ for the sake of upholding a principle, it is, at the same time, often an instance of the conversion of a positive principle to a negative situation. It is not really ‘freedom’ to be subjected to uninformed or crudely formed diatribes… although we may practice the freedom of participation, refutation, or dismissal. And there is an exception worth noting: if we prohibit such speaking, we render ourselves uninformed as to its origins, purposes, structure and potential refutations. Therefore, in order to have the opportunity to properly examine ideas that we may find reprehensible, we must first allow them to be communicated. • It is imperative to recognize the unavoidable influence of context on Freedoms in general and Freedom of Speech in particular. Most of the ‘common’ contexts we encounter and participate in are staggeringly limiting due their purposive and historical foundations. To actually understand either property, we must first discover, with and for each other, how to assemble contexts that are friendly to both Freedom and the possibilities of insight and intelligence. Prior to the discovery and establishment of such contexts, what we shall know or experience of Freedom of Speech will often be so starkly limited as to represent a charade, or even its opposite.