If I say what I like here, is it free speech? I don’t think so.
(...edit May 2nd: I am not referring to the actions of governments here, but more to the first world problems of perception that spiral out into larger debates. The removal of hiding places for governments and those in power facilitated by the internet is to be welcomed, but it hasn’t prevented the continuation of violence of course.)
Writing is not speech. Writing is to speech as painting is to looking. Anything expressed in text could be regarded as a publication, a process involving layers of editing and fact checking that are wholly absent online. What I write here goes further than the pub, cannot be taken with a pinch of salt. And so to say “Ah I know you, you don’t mean that the way you said it” is impossible. The printed word makes a stranger of even your best friend because a wall goes up around you. The words that would come out of your mouth, your eyes and how they move, body language that carries your own trauma and upset with it, all this is gone, and whoever is reading your sentences can affect any voice or face they like, a projection, perhaps, of how they are feeling. That is you, the writer, who did that. It’s your fault not theirs.
We no longer know each other, but rather interact with some kind of formal representatives…and this is causing problems.
“Say that to my face” used to be a popular expression, and with good reason. Criticising someone, whether it’s belittling their latest book or denying their entire existence, is no fun in person. It’s something we do through a failure of imagination.
There’s also very little forgiveness from those who observe themselves on the right side of justice, history, whatever you want to call it. Of course, it’s harder to do that, and it’s often right that we don’t forgive. But a student of mine said words to the effect that “an opinion is not a person”. Condemnation without parole is not always the answer.
I am, let’s say, “opinionated”. This means I have opinions, we all have them, but this means something more….that I have the need to transmit them. That my opinions have somehow hardened into facts. Water can be “carbonated”…and if shaken, erupts as soon as the top is even slightly open. The process of carbonisation involves dissolving carbon dioxide in water, and then adding further minerals to soften the taste. Things are added to the water, it then becomes carbonated. The water has no inherent fizz, the bubbles do not bring its inner nature out. Similarly, opinions are added to people. They are dissolved in us, drip feeding our dopamine-addled brains and assuming the form of a personality. And there’s been some real cranky stuff bubbling up since Covid.
Still, we need to take responsibility for it and we often don’t. We cancel, imagining that the cancelled will somehow disappear, as if a simple “empty trash” operation will rid us of those we disagree with, or who, in many cases, make our lives hell. Instead, they usually double down, our counter-aggressive reaction to their own anger evidence, for them at least, of their “oppression”. (Trump has been dragged to the trash many times, and now threatens to reappear in our desktops yet again like a virus that won’t be deleted).
We are all complicit.
But we also abbreviate. C21 finds our faces, filtered and smoothed. Our words, our prospective dates, swiped one way or another into miniatures. Matter loses meaning in its shortening. Memes carelessly grasp at chopped up shards of longer writings, losing context between our fingers as they go.
And people, real people, are hurt. Written insults and half truths in plain sight continue their corrosive work, bandied around by careless thumbs until they are just as quickly deleted once the author has sobered up, or been proven either wrong or just plain heartless. The evidence has gone, the pain remains.
This is partly language’s fault. Too many “I” words in a paragraph can seem narcissistic, yet it might just be a stylistic fail (I’ve done it enough times myself).
A simple rewrite often helps restore some humanity to the irrational, belching force with which first reactions often emerge. In the heat of the moment, the “send” button can win you over. But on the other side of that screen is another word.
“Edit”.
Then there’s “Delete”.
And beyond that, perhaps, the door to an outside world that is rarely as cruel, as unfair, as uncaring as you might think.