The famous English novelist and journalist George Orwell once said, If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” What is freedom to me? What is freedom to you all. To me, freedom is the liberty to express, to act and to do anything irrespective of the latter’s opinion. This is my definition of freedom. Across the globe freedom is defined vaguely and they are not identical.
I ask why? To this day, the freedom of speech has been underlined as the most important form of freedom but due some kind of restrictions, it is not usual to see humans enjoying it with complete fulfilment. Instagram hypocrites and ‘influencers’ or as I’d like to call them ‘influenza’ open
that social media app, see a headline and are ready to comment to show that they care about others but most often, it’s plain people pleasing and an attempt to display some sort of concern.
Just a reminder, they are the same ones who will make a video on a sensitive relevant topic and then expect everyone to take it lightly because it’s all just a joke. We talk about free speech issues all around the world but what we need to understand is revolutionary changes do not occur with the help of revolutionary comments and speeches. It takes time and a slow process but I’m very sure, in the end, we all will emerge victorious.
The frequent debate over the extent of free speech takes for granted the value of free speech. We discuss the boundaries or limits of what can be said but pass over the value of what is said within those bounds. This leaves us with a bitter sense of
why uncurbed Free speech matters: We say that it is important because its restraint would undermine our freedom, which is a way of avoiding the question more than of answering it. The famous ancient Roman poet Horace highlighted Free Speech even in the ancient times. He said ‘The pen is the tongue of the mind.’ The tongue speaks the thoughts of the mind.
Horace said those words very wisely that can be interpreted in another way. The pen is like the tongue.
The pen has limited ink. What matters is what you write with that limited amount of ink. What doesn’t matter is how much ink you have. Thus the extent of your freedom should not always be questionable, the importance of even the words you said with the limited freedom of speech should be questionable.
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