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Sunday 22 February 2015: You Can't Kill An Idea

Neil Gaiman said a thing about ideas and freedom of speech the other day. I will link it here eventually within this article, but that is not where my argument begins.

My argument is about ... arguments. Oooh, meta. Because an argument stems from the disagreement between two people and their opinions or values. But what exactly is its purpose, in the majority of cases? To change someone's mind? To alert them to your views while they alert you to theirs and see where they overlap? See, it's human nature to want people to agree with us, and for this reason I think arguments primarily exist to vhange people's minds.

And that's not really okay, if you think about it.

Because, yes, you have views; and hey, yes, they also have views. But a correlation of these views isn;t necessary to be friends with or talk to a person. You can still get on with people and disagree fundamentally with their stances on big issues; religion, politics, the abortion debate (which stems mostly from religion or lack of), freedom of speech and many other 'heavy-weight' topics that can be discussed.

In these topics, it is unlikely that debating them will help you to 'change the other person's mind' because their beliefs have been entrenched by upbringing or a genuine belief that it is the best (or only) way to look at a particular subject. You could say that I'm entrenched in my view; which is a one-liner is ever I heard one.

So, people argue to change other people's minds, as opposed to eloquently expressing their opinions. And they generally think that yelling will achieve this. As a rather quiet individual prone to making eloquent arguments that see both sides of the debate, I detest this notion.

However, of late, methods have been used by certain groups to 'regulate' the flow of ideas and stop the spread of ideas that are not liked. I am talking, yes, about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, ISIL in Syria, harassment of women outside abortion clinics and the more recent and less publicised attack on a Danish cafe that killed three people.

Enter; Neil Gaiman.

Highlights from that include but are not limited to;

'I believe that it is difficult to kill an idea.' This links to my earlier point about people's beliefs being hard to change.

'I believe you can set your own ideas against ideas you dislike.' Which means you can argue things out, and will see textual, graphic or visual representations of opinions you do not like. The echo-chamber theory; which is a media studies theory stating we only seek out opinions we like - states that we see less opinions we dislike than those we like, but still see them sometimes.

'I do not believe that burning, murdering, exploding people, smashing their heads with rocks to let the bad ideas out, drowning them or even defeating them; will work.' This links directly to my point immediately below, and the belief that it will be impossible to have a world with just one faith system (ISIL's endgoal), and that killing people with ideas you disagree with is immoral and just plain wrong. Also it won't work, anyway.

'I believe that repressing ideas spreads ideas.' THIS IS THE BEST QUOTE. Because it's so true. Human nature dictates that if you're told not to do something and not really given a reason why, you'll do it anyway just to see what happens. This was also proven after the Charlie Hebdo attack, where a magazine with a usual print run of a few thousand printed about a million copies just to two-fingered salute the terrorists. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but the run was significantly higher, and the paper still had the kind of cartoon in it that the earlier paper had been attacked over. This is ultimately why the idea will win against the gun. Have you ever wonder why paper wins against rock? I suspect this might be the reason ...

'I believe that people and books and newspapers are containers for ideas.' Therefore persecuting people for the beliefs they hold won't solve the problem, right? To solve the problem, you'd have to burn all the newspapers, but ...

'It is already too late.' It's already too late because once the paper has been written and read, the ideas are in people's heads. So there'd be no point burning the newspaper archive. So how do you repress the ideas of people? Answer; you can't. Not properly and for long-term periods, anyway

'I believe you have every right to be perfectly certain that images of God or Prophet or Man are sacred.' This hsa more to do with religion that perhaps it should so I'll simplify. You can have your beliefs or opinions and that's fine, and nothing to do with me.

'I believe I have the right to think and say the wrong thing.' Same point.

'I believe that you have the right to think things that I find offensive, stupid, preposterous or dangerous, and that you have the right to speak, write or distribute these things.' Same point again, but then he adds that it should be okay to distribute those things as well.

'I believe that in the battle between guns and ideas; that ideas will - eventually - win.' Because ideas are intangible and hard to kill, and everyone has them.

However, I have a concluding paragraph that was not included in Neil's speech. It follows thus; just because you have an opinion doesn't mean you have to broadcast it, and you will have to defend it against backlash. I also disagree with (and from here on, I refer specifically to Charle Hebdo) insulting a group by clearly understood terms that you know what you're doing and can't understand the backlash. Now, what I mean by that is, in Islam, depicting the Prophet is blashemy. So the cartoons by Hebdo are blasphemy, satirical or no. In fact the satirical nature of the cartoon is simply the last nail in the coffin, because thehy doing blasphemy and then mocking the religion at the same time.

Sideline point; I also believe satire is 'average' people poking fun at systems of power with more power (or privilege, if you like) than they have. So I don't see the content of Hebdo and its attack on Islam as satire, I see it as an attack. So I don't follow the Je Suis Charlie campaign. I see it's point,  but ...
But I definitely don't condone killing people for disagreeing with ideas or thoughts. And anyone who does ought to, in my opinion, take a long, hard look in the mirror.

There be my thoughts on a thing about his thought on a thing.
You may now resume what you were doing.