Freedom of speech is an essential ingredient of liberty, as political philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment showed clearly. Without freedom of speech, societal and scientific progress stalls, error is allowed to flourish unchecked, ideas cannot be examined to establish their truth or falsehood, the human capacity for logical reasoning atrophies, and eventually, as J S Mill pointed out, even true beliefs become ritualized dead letters that we recite without understanding, and without the intellectual capacity to justify them.
Freedom of speech is thus essential to society. However, for individuals, freedom of speech is not always comfortable. Mill set his limits to freedom of speech at the point where it was likely to cause serious harm to a person who was spoken about. For example, it would be legitimate to criticize a person’s behaviour whilst speaking in a calm meeting, but illegitimate to employ the same words to incite a mob outside that person’s house.
My point is, we have inculcated in recent generations the notion that giving offence is wrong, that people who give offence are therefore wrong, and in order to prevent them from giving offence they should not be allowed to speak at all. In order to prevent them speaking, it is deemed reasonable to employ abuse, shouting down, deplatforming, and sometimes even violence.
Let me give an example in order to show that protecting people’s feelings isn’t necessarily good, even for them, let alone for society at large. In order to learn my trade as a writer, I had to subject myself to a lot of criticism. At first, I didn’t like it one bit. Not all of the criticism, as I thought, was even valid; some of it was upsetting or came as a shock. But the fact is, some of it was right, and necessary to my improvement; it took me a while to admit it, but without this criticism, I simply wouldn’t have learned enough to be professionally published. I could have protected my feelings by refusing to listen to anybody who didn’t see fit to praise me, but I would have unknowingly paid a great price. In practice, I still need constructive criticism because I’m a long way from perfect at what I do, even after all this time.
The crucial issue therefore is, not only is there is no right not to be offended, but being offended is a necessary part of human development. You do not suffer serious harm by having your feelings hurt. It may even do you good in the long run.
It has been truly pointed out that everyone is offended by something, and you can’t ban everything.
Today, however, various groups and institutions have mistakenly taken the view that certain sensitivities should be protected from criticism because of the sincerity with which they are held, or because of their cultural origins, or whatever. In consequence, we have opened the Pandora’s Box of trying to work out what might offend other people, and being vicariously offended on their behalf. It is not infrequently discovered that such proxy offence-takers are far more sensitive to imagined slights than the directly-affected people themselves. Self-styled righteous indignation rarely troubles itself with complexities and nuances. The path of emotion can lead to falsehood as easily as to truth.
An important axiom to remember is that a person who loses his temper loses the argument. It is much more effective to offer a rational refutation than to offer abuse. Assuming our interlocutor is rational, we are bound to conclude that if he had a rational counterargument to our position, he would use it. Therefore, by resorting to abuse, he shows he has run out of good reasons to object to our point of view. He simply can’t allow himself to admit it.
Sometimes there is no single perfect answer. There may several good answers which different people may genuinely prefer for different reasons. Not everyone who disagrees with us is necessarily wrong. Sometimes we must agree to differ.
Sometimes an issue is so complex that several people can each hold a piece of the truth, whilst failing to realize that their differing points of view are not actually as contrary as they may superficially appear.
At some time or other, you may even be wrong. Consider this: if our opponent proves his point through rational argument, we have gained a truth and given up a falsehood. We should be grateful to have learned something, not angry we lost. That response is what distinguishes a true lover of knowledge.
Needless to say, all these things are a great deal easier said than done. But in the long run, it’s truth that sets us free, and prejudice that mires us in ignorance.
