Speaker’s Corner

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Wikipedia:

 

A Speakers’ Corner is an area where public speaking, debate and discussion takes place. The original and most noted is in the north-east corner of Hyde Park in London, England. Speakers there may speak on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers’ Corner only – the same right to free speech applies everywhere else in the UK. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police tend to be tolerant and therefore only intervene when they receive a complaint or if they hear profanity.

[…]

Although many of its regular speakers are non-mainstream, Speakers’ Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell, C. L. R. James, Ben Tillett, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah and William Morris. Its existence is frequently upheld as a demonstration of free speech, as anyone can turn up unannounced and talk on almost any subject, though they are likely to be heckled by regulars.

The Confluence is not a speaker’s corner. It is but a single soapbox in the largest speaker’s corner in human history, an agora of epic proportions. This particular soapbox belongs to Riverdaughter, and she shares it as she sees fit.

She graciously chose to share it with a number of other people including me.  I’ve been ruining her blog for over two years now.

“Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition…But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas…that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Everyone who comes here is entitled to their own opinion. But if they choose to express that opinion they may get heckled by the regulars. The blogosphere is not a hothouse for delicate flowers, it is a marketplace of ideas. You can’t get all butt-hurt just because someone rejects your ideas. Even lots of someones.

Humans are social animals. Throughout our existence we’ve grouped up with each other. Conformity, peer pressure and tribalism are hardwired into us, some more than others. We also have a tendency to engage in group think:

Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. It is a second potential negative consequence of group cohesion.

Irving Janis studied a number of American Foreign policy ‘disasters’ such as failure to anticipate the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941); the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961) when the US administration sought to overthrow Cuban Government of Fidel Castro; and the prosecution of the Vietnam War (1964–67) by President Lyndon Johnson. He concluded that in each of these cases, the decisions were made largely due to the cohesive nature of the committees which made them. Moreover, that cohesiveness prevented contradictory views from being expressed and subsequently evaluated. As defined by Janis, “A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”.[1].

Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group.[citation needed] During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, in hindsight. Additionally, it is difficult to assess the quality of decision making in terms of outcomes all the time, but one can almost always evaluate the quality of the decision-making process.

The surest way to achieve group think is to impose a moratorium on dissent and alternative views and opinions. In computer geek-speak they say “GIGO” meaning “garbage in, garbage out.” If you only allow certain pre-approved points of view into the discussion then the outcome will be similarly constricted.

I am a liberal and I have faith in my ideology. I will passionately argue my beliefs.

If you tell me I’m wrong I will disagree with you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t convince me you’re right.

Just don’t expect changing my mind to be easy.

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