2023-10-25
Technocracy News and Trends brings us the Westminster Declaration, a commitment to human rights and freedom of speech, signed by a veritable who's who of independent-minded international journalists, academics, artists, authors, activists and technologists.
Patrick Wood comments:
"In March 1783, George Washington gave an address, “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” This only tells that there are always those who want to muzzle everyone else. Today, the most prominent anti-free speech cabal is led by Technocrats, and demonstrably so. These are the pied pipers, ne, the Sirens of Crete who lured sailors to their death with irresistible music.
In Greek mythology, the music of the Sirens of Create crowded out all other melodies, and they could only be killed by more beautiful music. Today, Technocrats are wrapped in a simulacrum while spreading their pipe dreams that surely will result in the death of civilization. The only remedy is Free Speech.
'Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.'
⁃ TN Editor"
Personally I'm less sure about the "Industrial" bit, but certainly "Corporate" fits the facts and is more inclusive, which these days seems important.
Nit-picking aside, the Declaration is a useful checklist of everything that is going wrong with our public information provision these days, and includes a useful reminder of what we can all do about it.
If we cannot know the truth then we cannot make informed decisions, nor formulate nor support appropriate policies, nor by extension can we elect appropriate politicians. Everyone would agree with that, but the central question arises - who is to determine the truth?
"In a democracy, no one has a monopoly over what is considered to be true"
This is not a matter of dogma, it's a straightforward matter of practicality.
We are all human, therefore we are all liable to err. Centralised "truth" brings inevitable error, whereas distributed determination of "truth" is inherently less likely to lead to overall error because it can be challenged, corrected, or mitigated through voting numbers; nevertheless error is still possible, as various hoaxes can, and indeed do, take hold within an uncritical population.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" - and the distributed determination of "truth".
The bottom line is that we should each decide for ourselves what we consider to be true / likely true / unlikely true / definitely dodgy, and to do that we need the fullest information possible. Those who work to suppress that are working against us.
The Declaration deserves more publicity.
Read: The Westminster Declaration
