Tag Archives: freedom

Unzipping my lips

Leave a reply

After writing my last post, I recognized something that I haven’t thought about in a while. Being in a role as a principal of a public school, I’ve held a responsibility to ‘hold my tongue’. There are many blog post ideas I wanted to share but couldn’t. There are many points of view I would have loved to have expressed that I chose not to. I’ve had a responsibility to my position that has prevented me from being controversial.

Not too long ago I learned that a tiny reference to something that wasn’t even central to the point of a post I wrote was brought to the attention to one of my superiors. That person mentioned it to me, to make me aware, but did not ask me to change my post. I appreciated both the heads-up and the fact that I wasn’t asked to change anything I had written. In fact, I’ve never been asked to change my words on a blog post (though admittedly I was for both a Facebook post and a retweet many years ago).

While I’ve never been asked to change a blog post, I have on this blog, and my Pair-a-Dines blog, written posts that have ‘walked a fine line’, but I don’t think I’ve ever crossed that line. I didn’t cross that line in my last post either, but I did write something that could be interpreted as showing a patronizing attitude of superiority, with no real attempt at being humble. That’s not usually my writing style.

Reflecting now, I recognize that retiring and no longer having a role in a school, and a larger district, I am probably going to be able to be a bit freer in my choice of topics, and the stances I choose. No, I’m not going to be taking my metaphorical gloves off, but I am going to be able to unzip my lips a bit where I might have kept them zipped in the past.

I’m not sure how this will unfold yet, but at this moment I’m looking forward to being a little freer with my thoughts and ideas than I have been in the past… with less concern about my words misrepresenting others whom I might represent. Don’t expect instant controversy, but after retirement don’t be surprised by me being a little more loose lipped about things that I might have been more careful and cautious to share in the past.

Right and wrong

Leave a reply

I was talking with a colleague yesterday and he shared two interesting things with me. The first was that he has a friend who works for a large company, I think he said Oracle, but I’m not 100% sure. He told me that this friend has unlimited holidays, but the output expectations are so high that she can’t really take advantage of this. The premise is that you can take more time off than just the designated 10-15 days a year (as a traditional US company would allow) as long as you get your job done. The catch is, the workload probably doesn’t even allow that much time off.

That’s a case of ‘The right idea but the wrong outcome’.

The other thing he said was a prediction that I agree with. He predicts that very soon we’ll see the implementation of 4-day work weeks. The reason he thinks this will happen sooner rather than later is AI and robotics. Essentially the economy requires citizens to have buying power, and so you need a paid workforce… but there won’t be enough jobs to sustain everyone putting in 40-hour, 5-day work weeks, and there will also be efficiencies each worker has, thanks to their use of AI and robotics.

That’s a case of ‘The right idea but for the wrong reason’. The societal benefits of a 4-day work week shouldn’t have to wait for technological advancement in my humble opinion.

I would like to think that we are advanced enough as a species that we could do the right things for the right reasons, but more often than not we have to accept the wrong to get the right. We have ‘just’ wars, citizen surveillance to fight terrorism, over-censorship to reduce perceived conflict… the morality of these is dependent on how one is affected.

If you live in country where you have many freedoms but fear violence, you might appreciate heavy surveillance. If you live in a country where expressing your opinion could get you jailed, surveillance feels Orwellian.

‘The right idea but the wrong outcome.’

‘The right idea but for the wrong reason.’

Right and wrong.

Uncivility

1 Reply

The statements that I wholeheartedly disagreed with almost everything Charlie Kirk stood for, AND that I am deeply saddened and appalled that he was gunned down, murdered, are not contradictory. In fact, put together, these two statements make another statement: They say that violence is not an answer to disagreement in a civil society.

Violence is uncivil.

When societies accept violence as a natural consequence to disagreements, they lose site of what it means to be a free society. They permit further violence as a solution to disagreement. They invite and incite tyranny, control, and loss of freedoms. They go down a path to being less civil, and more dangerous. And they lead to a society more greatly restricted in both rights and freedoms as citizens.

I’ve said before, “We need a society that allows disagreement. We need to be civil about how we protest. Because there is no civil society where violence and damaging property works one-way… only the way upset people think it should. Societies that tolerate inappropriate protest are inviting responses that are less and less civil. And nobody wins.”

Nobody wins, civility is lost, and rationalizations or justifications of any kind promote the worst kind of tolerance… tolerance to violence.

—–

Related:

• Appropriate Protest

•

•

•

Happy Canada Day

Leave a reply

I’m not going to watch fireworks tonight.

I haven’t done anything uniquely Canadian.

I’m not wearing red and white, and I’m not waving a flag.

That said, I’m a proud Canadian. An immigrant who calls this land home. And at this time I feel uniquely free compared to living south of our border.

On top of that, I actually had a medical test today that would have cost me hundreds or thousands of dollars down south, and it only cost me $7.50 in parking.

No, I may not be celebrating Canada Day out in the open today, I’m only having a small backyard bbq with family. That doesn’t mean that Canada Day isn’t special… because it is.

To all the proud Canadians out there, Happy Canada Day!

Morality police

I have regularly created AI images to go with my blog posts since June, 2022. I try not to spend too much time creating them because I’d rather be writing blog posts than image prompts. But sometimes I try to create images and they just don’t convey what I want them to, or they come across as a bit too much in the uncanny valley, feeling unnatural. That happened with my post image 4 days ago, and I used the image anyway, because I was pressed for time.

(Look carefully at this image and you’ll see a lot wrong with it.)

I made 5 or 6 attempts to adjust my prompt, but still kept getting bad results, so I made do with the only one that resembled what I wanted.

And then for the past couple days I had a different challenge. I don’t know if it’s because of using the version of Bing’s Copilot that is associated with my school account, but my attempts to create images were blocked.

And:

However, Grok 3, a much less restricted AI, had no problem creating these images for me:

And:

I’m a little bothered by the idea that I am being limited by an AI in using these image prompts. The first one is social commentary, the second one, while a ‘hot topic’, certainly isn’t worthy of being restricted.

It begs the question, who are the morality police deciding what we can and cannot use AI to draw? the reality is that there are tools out there that have no filters and can create any image you want, no matter how tasteless or inappropriate they are, and I’m not sure that’s ideal… but neither is being prevented from making images like the ones I requested. What is it about these images requests that make them inappropriate?

I get that this is a small issue in comparison to what’s happening in the US right now. The morality police are in full force there with one group, the Christian far right, using the influence they have in the White House to impose their morality on others. This is a far greater concern than restrictions to image prompts in AI… but these are both concerns on the same continuum.

Who decides? Why do they get to decide? What are the justifications for their decisions?

It seems to me that the moral decisions being made recently have not been made by the right people asking the right questions… and it concerns me greatly that people are imposing their morals on others in ways that limit our choices and our freedoms.

Who gets to be the morality police? And why?

Free Speech and Audience

For most of my life I’ve been a bit of a free speech absolutist. I believe, or maybe believed, that even idiots had the right to free speech. You want to deny the holocaust or believe the earth is flat? You are an idiot. You are free to express your beliefs and people are free to ridicule your unsubstantiated beliefs. You want to share your stupidity, go ahead and do so to the cost of your social credibility.

But social media has changed, or is changing, my view. If you wanted to stand on a soap box and share dumb ideas, you will likely be ridiculed in the community you live in, and no one will take you seriously. You will essentially ostracize yourself and your message would fade as people got fed up listening to your nonsense.

But move from a town square to the metaphorical global town hall of Twitter and Facebook, and suddenly you get these echo chambers of stupidity that feed off of each other. Throw religious absolutists into the mix and some really silly beliefs start to get amplified. Essentially, there is an opportunity for idiots to find their tribe.

“A theory isn’t a fact,” is a common theme used to debunk scientific explanations. But then pseudo facts that are invented by these people are not held to nearly the same standard. So, on social media, bad ideas spread, gain popularity, and start to build an audience of believers. Instead of ridicule, these fools find a community. Instead of being ostracized, these morons find followers.

So the incentives are there to be inauthentic and to spread misinformation, instead of the disincentives of ridicule and shame. And so absolute freedom of speech no longer has the consequences it once had, and bad information ends up spreading faster than good information.

Even the debunkers and scientific thinkers speaking out against these charlatans peddling misinformation end up feeding the algorithm that puts the bad messages in front of more people. So bad ideas get spread, and this happens at a faster rate than good ideas.

I don’t know how to fix this, and I struggle to think that censorship is the answer. But allowing bad ideas to spread freely seems wrong too. Who decides? Who censors? What criteria do we use? The reality is that censorship is a slippery slope… but we are already on a slippery slope where the current social media models and the algorithms that promote more time on these apps already seem to favour the spread of bad ideas. And the tools used to elevate ideas effectively are being used to share and amplify bad ideas faster than good ones.

Ultimately, despite this, I am still a free speech absolutist. I just think free speech and the right to an audience are two different things. How we police this is not something I think can or will be solved any time soon.

Divided we fall

I’ve restarted writing this three times now. I’m not going to try again. I’ll let the ideas flow and just see where I end up.

I wish that I was surprised. I’m not. I’m disappointed. I’m saddened. But I’m really not surprised.

There are some amazing countries where freedom and equality are almost synonymous. There are countries where political differences do not polarize people into opposing factions. The United States of America is not one of them.

Why does it matter to me, a Canadian? Because ideas are memes that travel beyond borders. Because our biggest and only neighbour seems to be on the precipice of four years of strife, unease, and constant political banter. Because representation matters and I’m not a fan of what’s being represented.

We are entering an era of division. A polarized world where I have more questions than answers. Questions about global battles in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially Asia. About the battle for rights based on gender. A constant battle of words between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.

I don’t foresee unity, I see a great divide. I foresee a constant and painful to watch news cycle that is filled with vitriol and malice. I hope not to see a loss of freedom, a ‘loss of Inalienable Rights’, which should be an oxymoron, but might not be. I hope for the best… I’m just not expecting it.

Ending discrimination

This article was in my inbox this morning: Premier’s, attorney general’s, parliamentary secretary’s statements on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Niki Sharma, Attorney General, said:

“We all must do our part to fight racism in all its forms. But words are only as good as the actions that follow, which is why we will be introducing anti-racism legislation in the coming weeks to address systemic racism in government programs and services, and launching more supports for racialized people. On this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, please join us in standing up against racism to create a more equitable and safer province for everyone.”

Imagine a world where we cared as little about skin colour as we do eye colour. A world where bodily autonomy wasn’t controlled by religiously biased policymakers. A world where entire groups of people were not disenfranchised or discriminated against based on how they looked or where they came from.

If you asked me 25 years ago, I might have said this was possible by now. Ask me now and I fear we are much more than 25 years away from this. How have we gone backwards? What will prevent a further slide? There will not be an end to discrimination in my lifetime, but I do hope it’s possible in my kids’ lifetime.

Intolerance for bad faith actors

I have always been a pretty strong advocate for free speech. To me it’s the underpinning of a robust democratic society. We don’t have to like what someone says, but they have a right to say it as long as it isn’t hate speech or harmful to someone. We shouldn’t allow racism, threats, and doxing, but we should allow differences of opinions and even angry rants when they are not threatening to a person or group of people.

But I’m struggling with the lack of good faith that I’m seeing. In our country, I see a lot of protests and anger towards our Prime Minister. I believe people should be allowed to protest and share their concerns, but when I see articles like, ‘Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians‘ stating that he was “pelted with gravel while at a campaign stop in London, Ont.” Or I read that he was heckled so loudly that he couldn’t continue a speech… Then that is going way too far. This isn’t protest, it’s fascist, it is intolerant and oppressive.

There is a difference between voicing concerns and harassment. There is a difference between protesting and threatening, there is a difference between peaceful, civil behavior and what seems to be happening today.

If I was to describe my politics, I’m definitely left of center. And while I fundamentally disagree with many things Ben Shapiro thinks and says, I get upset when I read articles that he can’t even speak at a university because of safety concerns… And that was 6 years ago! Things are even worse now. Much worse.

When I recently read, “The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after being accused of evading questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.” I am deeply concerned. Should students be allowed to protest? Absolutely! Should they be allowed to promote genocide of any person or people as part of their protest? Absolutely not.

It’s an easy line to draw. Absolutely not. That’s acting in bad faith. That’s undermining our democracy and our freedoms.

We need to differentiate how we handle protests and free speech by people who are acting in good faith from those acting in bad faith. The very rights and freedoms we are given in a free and democratic society depend on us doing so. When we give those freedoms to people that abuse them, we subvert our own liberty. We diminish our freedoms and allow others, with harmful words and actions, to impose less civil values on us.

When free speech is misused, it harms us all. When violence is advocated or permitted; when protests prevent civil conversation and debate; when harassment is permitted; we all suffer. We can’t let people acting in bad faith weaken our civil liberties. We can’t just expect people to act in good faith, the minority who don’t will be too disruptive. We need to squash the bad faith actors. The trick is that we need to do so with legal actions. We need to have zero tolerance for intolerance, and we need to create laws that clearly restrict and penalize threats, hate crimes, and malice.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance, “The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

Instead, what I am seeing is things like this happening:

People who have caused over a decade of harm to others do not deserve a social media platform. That’s not censorship, that’s prevention of further malice, pain, and suffering to innocent people. As I contemplate leaving Twitter, news like this makes me lean towards shutting down my account. But I don’t pretend that will have any meaningful impact beyond my own peace of mind.

The acceptance of bad faith actors has been building over the past decade, and we are deep into the consequences now. Free speech should only be a right for people who act in good faith. There can be disagreement, there can be discourse, there can even be civil arguments and protests. What there can’t be are bad faith actors and activists using free speech as a mechanism to promote harmful ideas, hate, violence, and disruptions to public discourse. For this we need zero tolerance.

Related: Ideas on a Spectrum

Free speech in a free society

There are a few people I really hate to listen to. They annoy me with their persuasive rhetoric and popular-sounding rifts and quotes that speak to a target audience and to no one else. That said, I don’t think I have a right to silence them. I can be outspoken about what they are saying that I think is wrong. I could choose to block them on social media platforms, and I can even call them nasty names, if that’s a game I want to play, (I don’t), but I don’t get to shut them up.

On the other hand, I think hate speech has no place in a good and decent society. In other words, we should only be intolerant of intolerance:

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

And so when I see news like this, it upsets me. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, whether you are on the left or right, or whether or not you think our Prime Minister is doing a good job or not… He should not have to shorten an event because of angry protesters.

I will defend anyone’s right to protest. Not screaming protesters preventing a speech they don’t want to hear, not things being thrown at speakers, and not disrupting a planned event and making the event impossible to run. Unless the person speaking is spouting hate, we need tolerance. The only thing that should be disrupted is hate speech and intolerance. That’s it. That’s all.

We undermine our own freedoms when we prevent people with different views from speaking. We don’t have to give them a platform ourselves. We do have to recognize their rights and freedoms to think differently than us. Don’t like the the Prime Minister? Then be active in the next election. Do research and speak from a knowledgeable place about his policies you dislike and promote another candidate. Share your opinion, dedicate your time, and change things in the next (free) election. But don’t heckle, scream, and disrupt that person’s planned event. Want to hold up signs and protest, go ahead. Want to share your opposing opinion on social media? Go ahead. But don’t be a jerk and prevent a planned event from happening… save that for groups with names like Hitler Loving Nazis. If that’s a hate group giving a talk, the paradox of tolerance comes into play, and by all means disrupt and prevent that hate speech from happening. Anything less than that, then preserving free speech is far more important than anything you have to say in a disruptive protest.