Are Our Prohibited Conversations Multiplying?

Does it seem that our list of things we are not supposed to talk about is growing ever longer?

I raise this for a few reasons I will explain in a moment. . . not because this is the season, that with the holiday dinners starting with Thanksgiving we get the inevitable advice columns about what to do when, as extended family members are brought together, our viewpoints clash.  (These articles posit that some of your uncles might just be a little `crazy’ when it comes to things you don’t really need to talk about.)

Here’s one reason I’ve been thinking about what we are not supposed to talk about.  The other day I went into Manhattan to participate in a demonstration.  Arriving early, it wasn’t immediately apparent where things were going to be, so I started walking around looking.  A veteran of quite a few demonstrations, my eagle eye caught a large bag– with the sides of collected foam boards peaking up out of it.  It just had to be full of placards.

“Is that for a demonstration?” I asked the fellow standing beside it.

“Yes.” he said, “BUT, it’s a demonstration for . . . .”  Mentioning the demonstration.

“That’s the demonstration I’m looking for,” I said, “do you know where it’s going to be?”

“I’m not sure.  They might be assembling over there,” he said indicating the block across the street.                

“When you told me what the demonstration was for, why did you say ‘BUT’?” I asked.

“Because you are wearing that. .  button,” was his response.  He actually said what kind of button I was wearing that he referred to, but because I want to discuss the principle here, I want to keep this abstract.  He said that I must therefore be some kind of . . . The things he mentioned, I actually am not.  I’m not even truly conversant with the details of what he might have been envisioning or why it would be viewed as incompatible by him.

“Actually,” I started to tell him why the button I was wearing might actually mean, not surprisingly, that showing up for the same demonstration, we might both of us be, at least mostly, or very much, on the same page about the important reasons why we both showing up. . .

. . . I didn’t get very far. . .

“Don’t talk to me!” he said.

“If you’re here to win people over,” I said, “you should want to reach out to people.”

“Stop talking to me!”  He said.

“You’re putting yourself in a bubble, if you’re not willing to have conversations with people,” I said.

He covered his ears.  “If you keep talking to me, I’m going to scream,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it.  Everything I was saying I was saying in a quiet, calm and polite voice.  “This is not the way to reach out to people and win them over,” I said.

It didn’t work.  His ears still covered with both hands, the fellow started screaming, “Stop talking to me!  Stop talking to me!” He screamed over and over again and he started walking around in circles.  It was not a normal scream, but an exceptionally loud and full scream that I figured could probably be heard for at least the length of the block or more.

There was nothing more to do.  I slowly ambled away, shaking my head as I headed in the “probable” direction that the demonstration might form.  As I did, I wondered what the woman who had been standing with this gentleman thought.  Leaning against a building, she had remained impassive throughout our exchange.

Our numbers quickly grew to a pretty good sized and easy to find demonstration.  Presumably lost somewhere in the crowd, I never noticed the fellow again.

It’s worthwhile to note that we were there for a cause that, far from being universally popular in this bleeding and forsaken world, sorely needs more converts to be effective in its aims.

So I ask this: Have we lost the ability to talk with one another?  Are certain topics, an increasing number of them, off limits to more and more people?  I wonder.  It’s not just topics that are off limits; it’s also who we are not supposed to talk to, or who we are not allowed to talk to.  We’ve got a superfluity of categorizations of individuals related to setting up these limitations.

It’s worse than that: Now sometimes the people we are not supposed to are people we shouldn’t talk to, because those people have, in turn, already talked to somebody that they weren’t supposed to talk to.  We seem to be training ourselves to watch out for disqualifying “associations.” “Guilt by association,” is becoming a quick and ready time saving substitute for disqualifying who we can talk to as opposed to bothering to verify that their “beliefs” are actually dangerously at odds with our own.–   And more and more, for other’s people’s beliefs not to be dangerous to own, the people we are willing to talk to have to believe almost everything we believe, rather than just some or most of the things we ourselves believe.    

If you are surprised at my harangue, here’s more about this that has fixated me in this wondering.  At roughly the same time I went to that demonstration, I went to a “Town Hall” discussion about “Free Speech and Censorship,” instigated by journalist Matt Taibbi who is researching and writing about the subject.  In a provocative mood, he was looking for advocates of censorship to discuss the topic with.  He got some of the action he sought.  The Town Hall was in Park Slope’s beautiful old Montauk Club.

Taibbi has been directing his attention to copious documentation showing the United States government’s coordination with social media companies to achieve the censorship (in various ways) of information and viewpoints that the government doesn’t like.  This includes censoring information and facts that are true but that the government doesn’t like because of the potential influence such true information and facts might have on people.

Some of what has been subject to this kind of coordinated censorship involves quashing what should be considered political speech.  Again, in order to stick with a focus on principle, I don’t want to get very specific about the appreciable list of topics this coordination was censoring, but suffice it first to say that, as can be readily guessed, the documentation shows that among things, the government doesn’t like is speech that is critical of the wars and military actions that the United States is engaged in or backing.

Oh, and once again without being specific, that struggling cause we demonstrated for where the fellow covered his ears and screamed “Stop talking to me”? . . . .  Promotion of that very same cause is one of the things our government and the social media companies are censoring strenuously.

For purposes of all these coordinations, there are theoretically good points of view and bad beliefs, good guys, and bad guys.        

Taibbi began his Town Hall by referring back to 1989, when, in August, Milt Ahlerich of the FBI sent a letter to a small independent record label, Los Angeles's Priority Records setting forth a warning criticism of its distribution of the “Straight Outta Compton” album’s hip hop song, “Fuck tha Police.”  The letter unacceptable to the FBI the lyrics protesting police brutality and racial profiling.  Taibbi noted that, in 1989, this effort at government suppression of speech sparked outrage and that it was widely covered in the liberal media at the time.  Then he noted that the government’s coordination to silence points of view it opposes are currently magnitudes greater, the same thing occurring regularly on an ongoing basis, thousands of times over.  (Protest of police brutality and racial profiling is more acceptable since 1989, although maybe not to the FBI.  It is still targeted for social media censorship.)
            
Taibbi noted that a vast number of people who consider themselves “liberals,” no longer seem to care, and have abandoned the notion that protecting free speech is still important.  One might want to point out that the cause of free speech has been adopted by many on “the right,” except that, in an unprincipled way, when it is speech they don’t like, many on the right are insufficiently antiauthoritarian, and similarly promote censorship.

Clearly, with some self selection, there were many in the Town Hall audience that night who sympathetically following along with the points Taibbi was making, but, there were also contrary views expressed.  It was suggested that the public may need protection from hearing some kinds of information.  There was the notion that when the government has determined that it’s needful for the public to think certain things or get behind certain actions it can be good to suppress true information if that true information may possibly interfere with manipulations to get the public in line.  There was also the idea that the government and social media companies need to be on guard to protect sensitive segments of the population, probably mostly minority segments, about whom hateful, critical or perhaps even politically incorrect things might be said.

Again, since I want to stick with thinking of these things in terms of principles, I want to steer clear of the specific suppressions and reason for them that were advocated to be condoned. . .

 . . . However, we can note that with changes of fashion, and updates that have been urged for societal mores, some in attendance at the Montauk Club that evening hoped for regulating the social media companies into versions of political correctness that could ban lots of communications that used to be (so thoughtlessly?) commonplace in our very recent past.

Midway through the evening, there was a fellow expressing a number of these views about how and why speech should be regulated.  Maybe he was not for real?  Maybe he was a theatrical student trying out a performance on us?  After he expressed a number of these views, he said he was going to produce “a wail” for all the poor creatures who would be hurt and injured and maybe die, if they were not protected by a regulated internet.  Then he began to produce the wail.  Loud, it lasted for maybe the better part of a minute. He had good breath control. I thought of the fellow at the demonstration covering his ears.  Then our wailer abruptly picked up and left the meeting, leaving behind a scribbled manifesto of his beliefs.   

The strongest thing said in favor censorship during the evening was the idea that the internet has changed everything, that we are no longer the same people we were before the internet, that, now, with the internet, everything is out of control in a way that makes free speech threatening in a way that it has never been threatening before.  To me, rather than a brand new argument, this sounds like an age old argument, the age old argument that “free speech” is generally good, EXCEPT. . .  EXCEPT, EXCEPT– Except for this war, except for that emergency, except for fighting communism, etc.

And I am reminded who brought us the internet.  It came out of the DARPA and the military.  It may be that those who brought us the internet have always been ahead of the rest of us in many respects regarding its uses.  Surveillance is certainly one of them.

The internet has been the great disruptor.  And as is the case with a great many rapid disruptions, much as the example disaster capitalism often furnishes, the seeming chaos of abrupt change reliably gets seized upon and taken advantage of by the power elite who are always alert as to how to amplify their interests.

Is it possible that internet, or no internet, the real answers to what is right, wrong, or best for free speech are really still, basically the same as they’ve always been?. . That we are basically the same human beings we have always been . . .

. .  Or do we really suddenly have a world with which we can no longer cope?

Have I given you enough explanation for why I am wondering about how verboten topics seem to have multiplied?

I’ll give you another reason I am thinking about this. . .

. .  Someone senior up in the leadership of the church congregation to which I have long belonged disclosed to me recently that the leadership of the congregation has concluded that the congregation membership is `not very good at handling conflict.’  Therefore potentially conflict-inducing subjects, difficult topics, need to be avoided.  I won’t say who in the leadership told me this.  I won’t specify which congregation.  The latter is probably easy to look up anyway.  Does it matter?  I’ll wager this kind of assessment may be commonplace in  congregations these days. – Some of the thinking seems to be that this helps the congregation “grow” – in numbers.

I’ve never thought that coddling was religion’s role.  I’m extremely wary of religion dictating the answers . .    Still, I’ve always thought the work of religion is tackling tough questions to which we seek answers. “Seeking”— Did I use to think my own congregation had a good quotient of “seekers”?  Our church’s history is resplendent with notables who didn’t hew to conventionality and valued exploration and curiosity.

What does this conflict avoidance mean?  Does it mean that congregation members talking to each other about the wrong topics has to be avoided?  Indeed, maybe so– At least don’t facilitate such discussions.

Even a topic such as the social injustice of censorship and the suppression of free speech may need to be avoided. . . because of where it might lead?  So many social justice issues may have to be avoided, because they might be difficult; so let’s only discuss the few justice issues that everyone can safely agree about, which means perhaps those “issues” don’t really need to be thought about, or discussed much at all. . . . unless you are taking time out to pat yourself on the back.

It generally means don’t rock the boat for powerful interests.

And if discussion of issues that might induce conflict ought to be avoided by the congregants . . . if those exchanges of information and viewpoint amongst congregants can, in fact, be avoided. .

. .  Sermons can be delivered into the resulting void that more adroitly and expertly sidestep the awkward.

There can be soothing sermons that purport to discuss the meaning of life, morality, and/or good and evil, while skirting big issues profoundly affecting most all of us.  Sermons that can skip over our connections to many serious things going on in the world even as those things are life and death issues for the less fortunate.

The hole in what doesn’t get sermonized about might lead to a certain blandness.  Am I a crank to suggest it exalts moral flabbiness?  If we aren’t wrestling with the difficult, is it easier to not stumble in concluding that we are “Okay” moral beings?  MSNBC, to name just one network, similarly never upsets the apple cart for powerful interests– and it is also good at avoiding many significant topics while sending its audience away convinced that they are endowed with a certain righteousness.

I am getting too contentious and I digress too far.  The point is that I worry that as a general populace we are losing our ability to exchange ideas, to grow and learn by listening to each other.  That leaves the lane wide open for our heads to be filled by the noise of the self-serving, harmful nonsense the corporately owned media continually pumps out.  And the powers that be drive home the same messages of how we should shape out ideas via many other channels as well.

If the populace is infantilized into incapacity, then those in power have no problem paternalistically stepping in to tell us what to think.

Maybe part of the growth, potential adulthood involved in learning from one another, involves evolution where we might change our minds or develop thinking that’s more nuanced and complex?

`Changing one’s mind’?: I am not sure whether that is necessarily regarded as either a good or a bad thing these days. . I mean in terms of the off-limits lists.

. . . Recently, I had a long conversation at a wedding with a fellow guest who told that me that a certain prominent individual in the news these days was “crazy” and–  worst part– notoriously never changes his mind, no matter that facts.  When I walked into the Montauk Club’s room for Taibbi’s Town Hall, I found myself almost instantly involved with an individual, somebody there on the side of free speech, who told me that this exact same well known individual was “crazy” and not to be taken seriously, because we was “always changing his mind” so you could never know what that individual thinks.

Personal confession: While I may hope that my principles aren't wavering hypocritically, there are important issues where my thinking has changed in some major ways.

I am obviously not leaving you guessing: I am the side of conversing with people.  Yes, whether or not they agree with me.  The buttons I choose to wear announce my availability for such conversations. As you might have been able to easily tell from what I’ve written here, they lead me into a lot of great and very interesting conversations.

Are you impatient with views that disagree with your own?  Is it distressing when you get angry because others are disagreeing with you, or because others are angry with you because you disagree with them?  I have friends who are tired of the headwinds they encounter respecting what they think are clearly mass delusions.  They find themselves deciding to give up on talking to those who think differently.

It’s oversimplifying and far from the entire answer, but patience is a virtue.  And you don’t have to get angry even when someone is angry with you for disagreeing with them. . .  Ask people why they hold the opinions they hold!  They might surprise you with some interestingly valid answers.  Or they might surprise themselves realizing that they don’t really know exactly why they have decided to think what they told you they think.

Among others, I wear “Don’t Sell Our Libraries” buttons, which I’ve been regularly wearing for a long time.  The beauty of those buttons is that almost everybody agrees with those buttons—   It’s just that they often don’t know about the sale of New York City’s libraries.- Because that’s one more thing the corporate press avoids covering.

I’ve been wearing a “Your Government is Lying to You” button.  It can startle people, maybe generate a chuckle, maybe a nervous one reflecting some unease about its implications.  They might be unsettled about how to direct some possible anger.  Nevertheless, most people find they can’t disagree with that button.    

The buttons I choose are for getting into the conversations we are being trained not to have.

It seems to me that one of the best indicators of exactly what’s most important to talk about is what gets designating as off limits topics and what gets subjected to the most vigorous censorship.  There is, of course, censorship that's straight out and vanilla in nature.  There is also a greater range of what gets done to silence voices.  What gets done includes silencing journalists: We can algorithmically suppress them; we can fire people, deplatform them; we cut them off from collecting funds; we can even imprison them, in some cases murder them; we can target them for execution, sometimes the executions can involve significant numbers of journalists; and, most awful, their family members may be targeted too. . .

These are signals which should tell us to pay attention. . . and where to direct out attention.

I am not going to get specific about the buttons that I’ve been wearing that are most likely to provoke disagreement.  That’s again, for the purpose of keeping this abstract for a focus on principle, but those buttons present subjects that have been made controversial largely because the establishment can be so desperately energetic when trying to keep certain viewpoints down to a minority.

I will, nonetheless, specifically mention that I’ve been wearing “Peace” buttons.  (“Brooklyn For Peace” is a good source of them.)   One might hope “peace” wouldn’t be controversial, but recently, I’ve found it important to include more “Peace” buttons amongst those I’ve been wearing.  It’s odd, but “Peace” buttons are escalating into the most controversial of the conversation starting buttons one can wear.

People, no doubt, are often ready to think that “peace,” abstractly speaking, is a good thing.  At the same time they can fret that “peace” can be a problem when if you might be opposed this or that particular new war.  Why?  Because inevitably, our government promotes our current wars as necessary and good.  And, inevitably, it can take time for a lot of us to catch on our government’s latest lies.

We may sing about “peace,” during the holiday season, but please let us shun the idea of talking about particular wars that need to be ended to bring peace about.

I’ll end by reiterating the question I started with: Does it seem that our list of things we are not supposed to talk about is growing ever longer?

Hmm, if so, are we, through self-censorship, handing over the formulation and structuring of our narratives to others?