I Am Free to Speak My Mind!

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

Freedom I have always maintained is a defiant energy. The human species always tries to break barriers, cross hurdles and demolish opposition of all kinds. Bridge the rivers, break the mountains, kill the enemy-these come very naturally to man for he is a growing animal (physically, mentally, spiritually), a doing animal and above all  a speaking animal. Speech is the master weapon of the human race. Man will speak his mind in all circumstances as he is a free being. His limitless freedom, he thinks, permits him to speak on and about everything. No secret no, mystery shall remain undiscovered. This mindset is not reflective of his quest for truth, rather his freedom is to unearth everything- real, unreal, imaginary and impalpable or unreachable. This is how he has grown from the amoeba to the present form and has multiplied himself to live and explore every nook and corner of this multilayered universe. The atom of knowledge must be further exploded to discover its components. And this process is endless: within the country, society, family and even within his own mind explosions go on – the Big Bang still reverberates and the universe still manifests changes.  Man’s freedom to ‘ask’ questions about everything is self- guaranteed. He now asks why doesn’t Nature speak my language? Some claim to have understood what the sky- earth- fire etc speak; what the birds speak? His last question is why should man die? He has already asked why does man grow old, and has found some solutions to prolong youth and age.

But man’s nastiest use of freedom is to interfere in almost everything and not to accept anything as final. The social media – FaceBook, Whatsapp, Twitter have given a platform to the free- biased, subjective and partisan expressions to reach the known and unknown multitudes; even the  half lettered village folk too have confident gossip propagations untaxed and uncurbed. The law is bound to remain silent, for any legal action shall be deemed to be an authoritarian interference in human free speech. The constitutions of all democracies have given guarantee to free speech. Views opposing any institutional policy or public proclamation of governments can be criticized by any idiot (I too have the right to use the mild hurting words empowered by the same constitution).

 

If right to speak freely on any subject, person, decision is man’s democratic prerogative a cacophonous society deafened by noise will be the only end point achieved by democracy. Freedom is not an unbridled licence, nor is  it a birth right as claimed by all political groups. In one of my recent pieces I had commented on the fakery and abuse of language and decency, which makes democracy somewhat farcical. The right to speech is definitely welcome but the speaker must talk sense. But often we notice that speeches are made according to party line ethics- if there is any. What the free speech advocates forget is that speech is bound by rational articulation on an issue of social and national importance. All speeches free or commandeered are fundamentally founded on Reason. A sentence is constructed to mean something rational. But some people spread lies not out of malice but due to ignorance. For instance those who say that global warming is caused by holes in the ozone layer are ignorant. But such false statements or ideas are followed by others who get easily panicked by any kind of rumour – scientific or political. This happens because people do not know the difference between Idea and Opinion: opinion and rumour. And this ignorance stems from a weak sense of Reason. Often the cultural allegiances to certain Belief Commons or Superstitions are expressed with gay abandon. The herd instinct enjoins them with the rudimentary voices of the culturally – religiously motivated people. The vicarious satisfaction of having joined a so called worthy betrays their below average minds.

 

There are in the world today, including in India, people who have a form of motivated reasoning which was not noticed hithertofore. Biased logic, fault finding mindset, sheer instinct to hate, these days have gained more voluble space thanks to the Internet, we do not have public debates except in Assemblies and Parliament. There the debates are party-focused but are substantiated by statistics. But the common man and women use words and phrases in a cavalier fashion.  At times personal frustration and suppressed feelings find Freudian outlets, especially in the non - artistic, non - scientific people. The social media users are mostly intellectual imposters with inflated egos. They do some point scoring by using swear words against celebrities.

 

It has been noticed all over the world that the genius never uses the social media. The genius as Kant put it is “the innate mental disposition (Ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.” People who have no eye for beauty, form, symmetry; no ear for rhythm, no mind for nature’s integrated variety and vast amalgam of contrarian matrices can never ever comprehend the scope and sweep of reason of human affairs. And such people claim free speech as their birthright, the constitution is only an added prop to their claim. In India the political ideologies are sacrificed to manipulative power politics, hence the higher the decibel the stronger is their ‘right’. The Supreme Court of late is critical of the PILs which are filed merely to distract judicial attention. And the vocal lies, fakeries and deceitful narratives shut Reason and good sense to desperate wordlessness. If some politician abuses the country and praises the enemy the mindless blokes are happy:- This definitely opens up the empty space in our socio-political reality. But who will inject reason into these dead veins? Hope they will utilize their minds and become reasonably human.