Empowered by Privacy, Why Freedom of Speech is Essential

As @tomkirkham illustrates in his post, "I Have Nothing to Hide" Privacy Argument is a Fallacy, you really DO have things to hide, and that’s ok!

Privacy is necessary, even essential for a free society.

The flip side of this coin, is that freedom of speech is likewise essential, and without it, all our privacy is near meaningless.

Without privacy, there can be no freedom of thought. For it is in our inmost seclusion, be it deep in meditation or safe in the confines of our homes, in the absence of external stresses, where we are most free to feel, to think, and to create. While privacy is our shield and our refuge, freedom of speech is our sword, our plough, our staff; it is a way of creating possibilities, affirming and defending a vision, and moving to bring that vision into existence.

In order to create a free society, we must retain both our natural rights to perceive, and give voice to that perception, to receive and extend, to conceal and reveal.

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” -George Washington

So, what stops freedom of speech? On the most visceral level, it is violence.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 1205 journalists have been murdered around the world since 1992. So we can see that on one level, violence against journalists or others who speak out is one way to stop freedom of speech, but it is the crudest form of such supression.

By extension then, we get the threat of violence.

The threat of violence is the first level of abstraction which begins to percolate into the human psyche. If one fears pain, suffering, death, or imprisonment, one will naturally be less inclined to engage in activity which puts one in such jeopardy; one will weigh the necessity of taking action, or speaking out, against the possibility of bad outcomes, and here already we have set out on the path of self-censorship.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul. -Emma Goldman

For those of us in modern, so called 'developed' Western countries, the methods of thwarting freedom of speech are generally more subtle than outright violence and often even more subtle than even the threat of violence, although violence is always lurking just beneath, or right above the surface. In our modern social construct, we have any number of things to fear from truly expressing ourselves, real or imagined, and it makes little difference when the outcome in either case is silence. Much has been written on the subject of why people don't speak up, and why they instead quietly acquiesce to the cultural script which is provided for them. Many feel their voice does not matter. Many have learned through the example of others that despite impassioned calls to action, and the eloquent survey of a world gone mad, change is slow or nonexistent. Many have grown weary, standing defiantly in the face of overwhelming cultural inertia, only to be crushed or pushed aside. I am not writing now to provide an exhaustive survey on the topic of self censorship. I am however writing to suggest that now is a most opportune moment to bust open the escape hatch of this ever narrowing corridor of cultural thought, and step forth into the sunlight. Hey, I think I see one right... here!

You could make a good case that the history of social life is about the history of the technology of memory. That social order and control, structure of governance, social cohesion in states or organizations larger than face-to-face society depends on the nature of the technology of memory--both how it works and what it remembers... In short, what societies value is what they memorize, and how they memorize it, and who has access to its memorized form determines the structure of power that the society represents and acts from. -Eben Moglen

Let's look at that last line one more time for good measure.

In short, what societies value is what they memorize, and how they memorize it, and who has access to its memorized form determines the structure of power that the society represents and acts from.

Enter the Blockchain

They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn. Well, the opportunity for shaping the structures of power that our society represents and acts from has never been greater. Do you think this is just unabashed naiveté? The information age is giving way to the age of crypto economics, and in this quickly moving realm of development there are emerging innovative and adaptive solutions for the unstoppable spread of immutable information. We've come a long way since the printing press, and we will go much further still. With Steem, we are just beginning to have a glimpse into what a blockchain can do... just a glimpse mind you... the best is yet to come. In my next post, I will dive deeper into what I see as the revolutionary possibilities for utilizing our newfound power to create a more free society.