Neither the government, nor the police, nor even social networks; only our own lack of discipline
I have hated telephoning since I was a child. Talking to someone I cannot see causes me to tremble. I am not exaggerating. I am unable to gauge agreement, rejection, or irony by hearing alone… So, when a call ends, I replay passages of it endlessly and only calm down once I meet the recipient in person and see the expression on their face. At my age and with my professional experience, it is a rather amusing quirk, but that is simply how I am. When I must make a call, I usually have to command myself, saying “Don’t be a coward!”…
When I want to apologize to someone or tell them something unpleasant, I usually prefer to write it. This avoids the same—often irrational—fear of an immediate reaction. I simply send it and hope it falls on fertile ground and that everything turns out well. And I am not even speaking of romantic matters; there, the terror of rejection is enough to fill entire novels, sometimes even in verse.
With the arrival of mobile phones, I immediately fell in love with SMS, which at least partially relieved me of the necessity to make calls. Social networks have taken this even further in that regard. If one wishes, one can communicate remotely almost exclusively in writing.
Except that it is not free. On one hand, it opens up space for us cowards who are ashamed to communicate—and so we communicate, oh my, how we communicate… Like we have never communicated in our lives. And the networks give us a nice casing for it; it looks almost as if it were written by a professional, wonderful.
On the other hand—when someone truly knows something and understands it, it is not immediately recognizable. Their timeline looks just like ours. It is incredibly easy to succumb to the impression that we are all equal here in everything. And not only that. Once we have emboldened ourselves, for some reason we become increasingly bold. We chat with a Doctor of Science about his expertise as if we were out for a beer together, until he locks his wall just to be safe. Even COVID spread our wings a lot in this regard, because in the face of a common danger, many walls fell and somehow remained fallen.
We behave toward friends we have never seen the same way we do toward “live” friends; we are as brazen toward our friends’ friends as if they were actually our friends from a football team or a country gathering after four beers. Yes, I am exaggerating on purpose, but the ability to distinguish what we can afford to say to whom is indeed easily blurred on social networks.
And then, there is likely some complex involved, some piece of specific cowardice; on the network, we dare far more easily than in reality to tell someone they are this or that, a fool, illiterate, a right-winger, an extremist, a troll (that is a very specific tool across all “opinion bubbles”), paid by this or that person—in short, nowhere else in the world, in a pub, in a field, at school, or in parliament, would any living person venture to be finished with something so quickly as in the safety of a social network.
We lack context, a deeper knowledge of the matter, but above all, we lack a bit of judgment. We rise to every bait in discussions and on friends’ walls as if we had nothing more important or enjoyable to do.
I have stopped discussing on networks almost entirely. I am a grateful consumer of pages about music and fine arts, and with great respect and pleasure, I read the statements of people whose work and wisdom I have long valued. I gratefully let myself be informed about events in war zones or other worlds inaccessible to me, and I mostly comment with thanks. When I want to inform the network about something I consider important, I turn off comments—my goal is not to spark a discussion on the network, but to convey information or perhaps stimulate reflection; the impact is then up to the readers—and usually, there is no reason for it to be immediate or to manifest specifically on the network. I do the same on the website—I have abolished comments. Yes, they increase traffic, but for the wrong reasons. EVERY post can do without immediate comments.
People will have to agree on rules among themselves—and it will be no fun. It will hurt, there will be mistakes and injustices, yet it is necessary. But the greatest threat to freedom of speech is ourselves. Until we learn to control ourselves on the network as we have more or less learned to do in reality, we do not deserve freedom of speech.
Anna
P.S. With great thanks to Viktor Janiš, I am attaching a text by Karel Čapek on this subject:
Laws and Stupidity
Quite a bit of noise has just been made over the Law for the Protection of the Republic. It was called the “Muzzle Law”; it was said or shouted that it is a violation of political liberties, the end of freedom of speech and the press, and other, even worse things. Fine.
One can, of course, imagine far more draconian laws for the protection of the current political order; one can imagine them even more liberal; but were they ever so good and benevolent, it is quite a conceivable case that they might one day clash with some of the best movements of humanity; that some beautiful and liberating word might be bound or silenced by them; that even the most flexible law will be an iron shackle to some future young and vital idea. Should the Lord Christ walk the world once more, it is possible he would have trouble with the authorities for his public pronouncements; should a Žižka be born again, he might sit for six to ten years for armed rebellion; Harmodius and Aristogeiton would receive twenty years of hard labor instead of a monument on the Acropolis (given their youth and previous good character). All this is possible, for the law is harsh; but—
But all the worse if it is necessary. Freedom of speech is a fine thing; less fine is that it is also—incidentally, of course—the freedom of babbling and insolence. Freedom of the press is a beautiful and precious thing; unfortunately, it is also the freedom of lying and vulgarity. Out of personal conviction, I am for absolute freedom of the press; but when I sometimes read this or that newspaper, I feel, contrary to my own principles, that this or that should not be allowed into the light of day after all—not because it is too brave, but because it is too stupid. Freedom of speech, yes! Freedom for every great, and perhaps wild, and perhaps crushing idea; but what will protect us from free and crude stupidity? Freedom of opinion, certainly! But what will protect us from the narrow-mindedness and wildness of fanatics of any political half-truth? Freedom of political action, bravo! But—does it also mean freedom of madness or wretchedness?
Wildness, stupidity, and ruthlessness in political life cannot, in the end, remain unlimited. There are mouths that cannot run without a muzzle; where there is rabies, there must be quarantine. Muzzles were not invented for lions, but for something else; if the muzzle law also gives them to lions, it is indeed embarrassing, but it must be considered whether there are sufficient grounds for quarantine at this time. And here it is almost strange that none of those who vehemently protested against the Law for the Protection of the Republic approached the matter from this side. Everyone fundamentally brandished liberty and freedom; yet no one stood up to say: “But that, excuse me, is not necessary; our political morals are so mild, all public actions so well-founded and non-violent, nowhere any plots or subversions, everything is clear as day—in short, why come at us with such a gun? People, after all, nowhere and on no side, in no house number, at no end of the village, is there anyone or anything that would need to be bound or targeted or legislated or protected. In short, conditions here are indisputably better than your law assumes.” No one said that. And it would have been the strongest argument.
Every law has two ends. How many great artists have already had official run-ins over questions of morality! And they will always have them as long as it is necessary to protect against professional pornography; and if you see what stupid and coarse filth is printed and performed, censorship sometimes seems to you almost too benevolent. Every abuse of freedom is the seed of the restriction of freedom; the true fathers of laws are scoundrels, not lawyers.
The Law for the Protection of the Republic is fundamentally unsympathetic, it is even embarrassing; however, it is made embarrassing by the facts that provoked it. Those who reject it so strongly speak of its consequences; they do not speak of its causes. True: perhaps one day it will be a muzzle to a great active person; but what is to be done in the meantime with the small, lying, shooting, inciting, scheming, corrupt, or narrow-minded fanatics? — And that there are enough of such, you will kindly testify; how else then to plug that wide gap in reason and decency that opens up everywhere where, as they say, “political passions flame high”?
A bad world must have unpleasant laws.
Karel Čapek, Lidové noviny, March 18, 1923
