“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”
Jordan Peterson
Within the world of social media, we are finding ourselves more and more in a world where we “offend” others. Those who seek power use this notion of offense to silence others. I remember the phrase “silence is violence” cropping up around the time of the George Floyd riots in 2020. The left, wishing to capitalize on the tragic death (now judged murder) of Mr. Floyd, railed against those who would remain on the sidelines, wanting the evidence to come out, and wait for more of the story to become clear before passing judgment.
But it seems that nowadays, we are not allowed to reserve judgment. We are given a limited set of facts (depending on the situation even that may be sparse) and are required to give a permanent, unchanging opinion on that entire case and whatever larger implications it may have, and that this opinion will be closed to new information or evidence to the contrary.
Our collective desire for safety is suppressing our spirit of freedom. And it shows. Unless we can run the risk of offense, or to some extent, being offensive, we can never have a free society.
A Place 4Politics 