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Civility and Free Speech
There’s much discussion in the blogosphere at the moment about the merits of requiring charity and civility on comment threads. For example, Jerry Coyne has a post about his rules over here, while Daniel Fincke writes about his rules here. (Ed: IEET has its own Buddhist Right Speech policy)
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COMMENTS
Posted by Henry Bowers on 08/10 at 09:51 AM
Hear, hear; let’s stop bullying Chik-Fil-A and respect their freedoms of speech, religion, and market access.
Not every chicken-muncher has delineated the wrongness of action from the neutrality of inclination, but Cathy’s comments decried the former, and for staying on topic so excellently he ought to be lauded.
Posted by Joern Pallensen on 08/12 at 01:50 PM
I regret not having the time to comment at length here. Since IEET adopted the Buddhisht-right-speech policy, I’ve intended to write an critical
article.. - This then, is only to give you an idea of my thinking.
Russell Blackford writes:
“Should we adopt an approach of asking commenters to be charitable and civil to each other? For myself, the answer is strongly Yes”
My own answer is an equally strong NO ! - In fact I strongly resent any “Committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice”, be it the religious police, as in Saudi Arabia, or “just” blog-moderators.
It is often emphasized how dangerous “hate-speech” is. I don’t agree, but suppose it is.. - What then, about SHAMING of people considered by said committee to be unworthy of the good, - and “right” company ? - Don’t we just drive them underground and fuel their frustrations and anger.. - Isn’t marginalisation dangerous ? -
Over and over I’ve heard repeated how we should cultivate “dialogue”, but what is it worth if you only want dialogues with people who more or less agree with you ? - To give just one example: Israel will not talk to / listen to Hamas, and vice verse. - I have written articles about Israel / Palestine myself, and the comments I cherish the most are from people who either get mad at me or disagree with me the most !
It depends, of course, on the subject. I mean, if you’re in the process of engineering, say, spaceships, you don’t want to waste your time with no-brains..
Russell Blackford points out that:
“If freedom of speech is confined too closely to decorous speech, this is likely to disadvantage young people, working class people, and many other groups”.
Absolutely, but in my view, it is even a disadvantage to ourselves - who knows right from wrong.. , - who are above the masses.., - who “knows” when free speech = careless talk.. - How can we know anyones true sentiments if we refuse to listen to them ? - Hint: When they become sick and tired of our shaming and start blowing up something - and/or someone…
Running out of time, but this should suffice to give you an idea of why I am completely out of line with IEET policy on “right” / acceptable speech.. -
There is noone I’d rather talk to than my worst adversary !
Posted by Joern Pallensen on 08/12 at 01:59 PM
Re: Poster: “Free speech doesn’t mean careless talk”
“His got nothing on” ! - said the little boy about the Emperor.
“Careless” talk ?...
Posted by Intomorrow on 08/12 at 03:29 PM
Joern, we here in America ought to have been less civil during the last decade concerning foreign relations (or lack thereof). We should have taken the Bush administration to task more vociferously for its dynastic ambitions, Abu Ghraib and everything else in between; the squeaky wheel does get the grease.
As Barry Goldwater said, “freedom means eternal vigilance”, the corollary is if we don’t come down hard on power-seekers they see it as a green light to do what they want—and many of them perceive no upper limit on their ambition, e.g. Nixon’s ‘Imperial Presidency’.
In religion and business one can be civil: in politics civility is not practical at this time. A politician who will be unnamed for civility-reasons insincerely promoted a kinder, gentler politics, ignoring how politics in America was designed in 1789 to not be kind and gentle.. the alternative is to change the Constitution- which doesn’t interest the politically sluggish public.
Posted by Peter Wicks on 08/12 at 07:17 PM
@Joern
I can follow your argumentation, but you know I have a utilitarian perspective on all matters of morality, and freedom of speech is no exception. This means that I treasure it to the extent, and only to the extent, that it improves overall welfare.
What I think we should avoid is a dialectic approach that starts from the conclusion we want to reach and then finds arguments to bolster it, since this leads mainly to a dialogue of the deaf. So I would like to ask you: do you broadly share my utilitarian preference, and if so, do you feel the quality of commenting at IEET has improved or deteriorated as a result of Right Speech? (I would be interested to know what others think about this as well.)
I’m not saying tht if commenting as improved that would be a conclusive argument, even within a utilitarian framework, in favour of it - that would be absurdly simplistic - but it has to be a relevant consideration if we are to have any kind of consequentialist perspective on this.
Posted by Intomorrow on 08/12 at 09:04 PM
“(I would be interested to know what others think about this as well.)”
Yes, the quality of commenting at IEET has improved; Pete, its politeness.
BTW, civility depends on where, too—you can expect an ashram in a tony suburb of Copenhagen to be civil, but not the politics of a large country nor its business practices. I can see a half-century from now perhaps life might be civil however you can immediately realize how the old patterns of violence and confrontation are dying v. hard.
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 08/13 at 09:56 AM
@Peter re ” I would be interested to know what others think about this as well.”
I must shamefully admit to feeling less inclined to discuss here since we implemented Right Speech, because I find heated debates more engaging than sedate ones. Also, I think the best friends are those who can liberally exchange the FYA words and remain good friends.
Posted by Joern Pallensen on 08/13 at 01:05 PM
@Peter
I quite like your utilitarian approach, and I respect you a great deal and know you have the best of intentions. Generally speaking, however, I don’t trust any self-proclaimed committee for “overall welfare”. When people say: Freedom of speech, yes, but NO to “unnecessary”, “careless”, “rude” etc. utterings, - they are setting themselves up as the judge not only of what they themselves consider “careless”, etc., - (which I find wise and admirable) - but also the judge of what someone else may very well find essential, constructive, - and maybe even revolutionary. THAT is the problem.
I’ll give you one concrete example of a “committee for overall welfare” that I find.. shall we say.. really annoying. This “committee”, the Swedish umbrella trade organization (LO) is training 150.000 of it’s members - (larger than East-Germany’s Stasi) - to monitor people’s frustration over immigration policy, and anyone caught saying “racist things” will risk being excluded from the union. The consequence of this surveilance is that workers are afraid to exchange views with their colleagues and friends, but not only that: The Sweden Democrats, a nationalistic movement according to themselves, and far right according to the majority of Swedes, keeps climbing in the polls. In other words: The outcome is the opposite of what was intended.. -
“do you feel the quality of commenting at IEET has improved or deteriorated as a result of Right Speech”?
Sorry to say I’ve been rather absent lately - ( I mean to change that soon ) - so I’m not really qualified to give my opinion, but again: I’m deeply suspicious of “politeness”, so if Intomorrow’s evaluation is correct, I would not out of hand take that as an improvement..
Let me put it this way: If Buddhist-right-speech demands of Giulio that he, say, restricts himself in saying: >Joern, your ramblings amount to nothing but a pissing-contest< - that would be both boring and very unfortunate, as I would be prevented from explaining why I don’t see it that way. 
Posted by Peter Wicks on 08/13 at 07:59 PM
@Joern @Giulio
Somewhat ironically, I’ve been commenting somewhat less frequently myself here since we introduced Right Speech. It does make one think twice. But just as politeness isn’t necessarily a significant indicator of overall quality, nor (in my view) is frequency. Another point is that there are plenty of fora in which we can air our views in whichever way we see fit.
I’ll probably write more about this later, possibly even an article from my current temporary-resident-in-Beijing perspective. Staying in China also changes one’s perspective on such matters. But gotta rush now to my Chinese class. Zài jiàn!
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 08/14 at 03:37 AM
Wow Peter what are you doing in China? How long will you stay? Do tell!
Posted by Peter Wicks on 08/14 at 05:50 AM
@Giulio
Learning Chinese primarily (and pursuing potential business contacts/interests/ideas with my wife). Back in Europe late September.
Posted by Henry Bowers on 08/15 at 09:50 AM
For online discourse, wouldn’t a public, mod-points rating system let the forum decide how they want discourse conducted? Slashdot.org executes this well, in my view, as I can browse at different levels of moderation filtering. This is one arena where the democratic process shines brightest.
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