On this morning's National Post website (February 18, 2017), there's a commentary piece with this headline: "Where to draw the line on free speech? It needs to be guided by judgment and conscience, not rules." The author, Andrew Coyne, raises some good points about mutual obligations in a democratic society such as Canada's. He points out that "the spirit of free speech" is important, that "free speech exists, as a legal guarantee, in part because of the foundation of social values in which it is embedded."
What the author doesn't address in his very reasonable piece about free speech is the underlying crisis our society currently faces with regard to conscience. Conscience -- the source of our ineffable and awe-inspiring courage and inner strength -- is quickly and efficiently being killed off in our society. Without conscience, we simply aren't able to understand our mutual obligations, let alone grasp the meaning of "the spirit of free speech." Without conscience, we don't have the courage to recognize and confront hatred. Without conscience, we stagger from crisis to crisis and hurl cliches instead of insight at complex issues. Without conscience, we can't hold the line against any of the philosophical movements designed to eradicate differences between individual human beings and their neighbours. Without conscience, we start to believe there's only one right way to be: our way or the highway.
In short, without conscience, people aren't able to be the loving and potential-filled individuals we're capable of being.
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| The
foundation of social values in which "the spirit of free speech"
resides is due in large part to the long arc of Christian values that have
slowly evolved over the centuries. Despite a history riddled with
Christian leaders who perpetrated mistakes and terrible abuses (some of which
have been acknowledged and atoned for), one important aspect of
Christianity (and Judaism before it) is the strong emphasis placed on
women's worthiness before God. You can't have a fully functioning human
conscience unless you're willing to trust that God does not place men above women in Creation or in human society. Shown here is "The Vision of the Blessed Clare of Rimini" by
Francesco da Rimini (prob. about 1333-40), on display at the National
Gallery, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023. |
In place of conscience, without much awareness that what we're doing is dangerous to our longstanding sense of social values, we're tacking together a murky blend of laws, ideologies, logic, and dualistic right-and-wrong morality that currently masquerades under the noble banner of identity politics. Identity politics purports to be a salvific trend which will add to our foundation of judgment and conscience once we totally accept and absorb and see the wisdom of the myriad small but necessary laws that must be put in place -- just temporarily, of course -- to protect certain individuals who believe it's their RIGHT to never feel offended and never feel challenged in their personal beliefs. Identity politics is an ideology designed to give people permission to stop listening to their own conscience and to listen instead only to the System 2 pleasure and happiness networks of their own human brains. The strategy can be summed up in this way: if it gives you a brief neurological high, it's great; if it demands you do the hard work of understand and accepting your neighbour (or yourself!), it's not only awful and unfair, but should be made illegal.
We've seen its ilk before under other names, names such as fascism and totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism of any stripe. These philosophical movements may appear different in the specific political and economic laws they apply to their citizens, but one thing they all have in common is the methods they use to eradicate conscience among their citizens. Once you kill off conscience in the majority your citizens, of course, you can do pretty much anything you like, as successful tyrants such as Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and Mao have shown us.
Regimes such as these -- along with many others now and in the past -- start by trumpeting their claims for Truth. (Obviously, they're not going to tell you it's really a Big Fat Lie.) Next they bombard you with a constant stream of words and speeches and polemical essays filled with countless "wisdom words" (e.g. peace, justice, liberty, sacredness, oneness) to try to force their way into the System 1 networks of your brain -- the networks that are responsible for important emotional and spiritual traits such as empathy, courage, trust, love, morality, fidelity, curiosity, patience, and openness to change. These networks are programmed to respond to cues around relationships and learning and purpose, so they're vulnerable to attack through heart-based words (as every spin doctor in history has figured out).
I should stop here and point out that System 1 (what we tend to call "the heart") is one of two major processing streams used by the brain. The other is System 2 (what we tend to call "the mind"). Researchers in Dual Process Theory, which posits the operation of two different yet equally important processing systems in the brain, are starting to see both the benefits and the pitfalls of having two brain systems with different priorities that can, under certain circumstances, start to compete with each other -- a problematic situation that all too many people today have experienced firsthand.
Once the non-empathetic but highly logical and fiercely dogmatic leaders of a ideological movement have forced their way into your brain's System 1 networks, they start to chip away at your own natural, built-in sense of self. They try to make you doubt your sense of self. They try to make you doubt that you should even have a sense of self. They try to force relativism on you and they try to force determinism on you (both at the same time!). They tell you there's no such thing as free will (i.e. a conscience through which you can apply your empathy and courage and other System 1 traits). They tell you that because people have no conscience and no free will, chaos will ensue and everyone will become traitorous and cannibalistic zombies who will attack you on the street and rape you and murder you. (Of course, these things won't happen if you and your neighbours have a conscience and know how to use it, but what the heck, who needs the truth about conscience when they're shovelling out their Big Fat Lies?)
Once you start to believe these lies, your brain will start to rewire itself to reflect your new beliefs.
(This is the principle of neuroplasticity at work, and it's the
scientific reality that explains how ideologies can reshape your brain
if you're not careful and if you're not paying attention to what you're
putting in your brain.) Your brain will try to do what you've told it to
do -- it will start to demolish network connections that deal with
System 1 emotional and spiritual priorities, and it will try to
strengthen connections in the cortical layers that deal with logic,
rules, competitiveness, agreeableness, neuroticism, schadenfreude,
status, and happiness (which is not the same thing as meaning or purpose).
You'll turn yourself into a member of a hive mind, or, as Star Trek
writers describe it, a member of the Borg Collective, or, as
Battlestar Galactica writers would say, a Cylon who's going backward
instead forward in his or her relationship with Creation and God.
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| This doorway originally served the narthex of a 19th century Ontario church. Eventually the staircase that led to the door was entirely removed. You can still see the doorway, but you can no longer reach it. This is what can happen to your conscience if you allow System 2 ideologies to dominate your brain. You can still see the words that describe your conscience, but you can no longer access the feelings that accompany a fully functioning interior doorway to wisdom. The part of you that's supposed to express independent free will and conscience becomes all show without actual function. Feelings of depression and anxiety often soon follow. |
After you've turned yourself into a member of the hive mind comes the brilliant prestidigitation through which the ideological leaders, who with one hand have stripped your brain of its ability to "know where to draw the line," mercifully offer you with the other hand the blueprint you need in order to become a happy and productive member of society. It will be a pure System 2 blueprint, of course, with eradication of anything resembling free will, conscience, empathy, openness to change, plus all the rest of the amazing human traits you're truly capable of if you're using all the potential of your brain instead of just your System 2's rigorous logic, obsessive organizational skills, and narcissistic perfectionism. And the System 2 blueprint will be presented to you as a salvific act of self-transcendence intended to create more justice and more righteousness for the lowly and the victimized in your society. But really the blueprint is just about the need for certain System 2-dominant brains to compete, to gain power and status, and to take pleasure from the suffering of others who have lost their own ability to tell right from wrong. Tyrants thrive where human hearts suffer.
It's a form of spiritual rape. To enter somebody else's brain and intentionally try to strip away their core sense of self and their access to their own free will and conscience is an unspeakable act of violence.
If we really want to have a society that understands "the spirit of free speech" and the meaning of mutual obligations, we must do everything in our power to raise our children so their brains can process and balance both System 1 and System 2 priorities -- and be able to tell the difference between the two. Only when individuals grow, maintain, and cherish their personal sense of conscience can we act together to recognize tyranny in all its insidious forms.
Conscience is our true protection against tyranny.
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