Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Along this same line of thinking, I would like to pose the following: the ultimate danger is not in the misinformation and the disinformation offered by the bad people or the uneducated, but it is the allowance of censorship in a free society by the people, good and bad, that will be the greatest danger to free thought and individual liberty.
Heinrich Heine said, "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
Books are written from the ideas of their authors. Some ideas need work. Some ideas need critical feedback. Some ideas inspire and enlighten. Some ideas educate. Some ideas offer hope. All ideas come from individual minds. All individuals learn how to think through sharing their ideas.
Jordan Peterson has said, "In order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive." It is true that people are offended by ideas that differ from their own. New ideas, seemingly incorrect or misleading ideas, ideas that go against our established way of thinking can agitate the mind. But this exchange of ideas is a healthy thing for humanity. Peterson also said, “We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.” And how do we communicate with those around us today? Through our growing social media options and technology.
Social media and technology is where we share our modern writings, books, digital letters, and journals through a massive interconnected global net of individual minds. What will happen to those independent ideas deemed as misinformation and disinformation after those posts have been "burned" through technological censorship of the offended?
The Omaha Guide, October 13, 1945
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.” - Benjamin Franklin
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/free-speech-is-the-life-blood-of
On April 30, 1903, The Daily Pioneer published an article titled, “Great Pugilist As A Reformer: John L. Sullivan Gives Advice on Many Important Issues.”1 John Lawrence Sullivan was an American professional boxer from Roxbury, Massachusetts.