Tani Newton
I’m feeling more chirpy than I have for many a day, after a rousing public meeting with Jonathan Ayling from the Free Speech Union, followed by stimulating conversations. It was a breath of fresh air which felt all too sorely needed.
It’s easy to feel indignant when freedom of speech is under threat out there in the public space, where people are being intimidated or even punished by the forces of law for what they have thought and said. But the slow death of polite disagreement is more insidious when it’s in here, in the private spaces of my own thinking. I’ve had to reflect on how often I think about shutting down, cancelling and invalidating other people and whether or not I put it into action. It’s as if those have become the tools conveniently to hand, and every day it takes longer to walk to the other end of the shed and pick up the old tools of reasoned debate, intentional listening, friendly reproof and genuine analysis.
The whole world, it seems, has become so polarised and angry that people have retreated into tribal opinion groups talking in echo chambers. I’ve realised with a horrible shock that this is making me intellectually lazy. The limbs of my debating mind have waxed pale and flabby.
So it’s a good time for the philosophical discussion group that one of our friends is starting. Things seldom happen in isolation, and it wouldn’t surprise me (although it would thrill me) to find out that other people in other places are spontaneously doing the same thing. Or maybe different things – debating groups, for instance. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s a gym where the logic and reflection muscles can have a workout.
Much as polite disagreement is needed, I couldn’t agree more when Jonathan Ayling says that no politician or political movement will solve our problems. Like charity, free speech begins at home. It begins with countless individuals making countless individual choices to speak their minds and allow others to speak theirs – even, if necessary, to defend to the death their right to do it. Let’s make these friendships, let’s have these conversations and let’s forge these bonds that will be proof against the weapons of our enemies. It may sound corny, but it’s not: love is stronger than hate, and reason is more powerful than violence. Be prepared to go to jail, but the truth will win in the end.
