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VIEWPOINT

A Life Less Ordinary

by Hilath Rasheed

One fine morning I had the unpleasant ordeal to sit through at breakfast with two of my friends who were arguing about the pros and cons of the Hollywood blockbuster Gladiator.

One friend claimed that the director had not done his homework: "In not doing adequate research, Ridley Scott had distorted facts, and resorted to sensationalism and melodrama."

The other friend disagreed, reasoning that Scott is one of the most renowned directors in Hollywood, the magical hand behind such masterpieces as Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise. He argued that Scott knew his job and was doing exactly that: make an entertaining movie that was spectacular and appealing to masses.

The terrible part about this quarrel was that both my friends took each other's opinions as personal attacks on the other's tastes, character and integrity.

These days it is difficult to keep a decent conversation going. So many critical and debatable issues are bound to come up. But this must not pose a problem. Conflicts in views and opinions are what make the conversations interesting. As individuals every person holds unique beliefs, values and opinions towards certain issues and these are what make life interesting -- the fact that we are different. Life will be boring without conflicts: quarrels, arguments and fights make our social lives more liveable!

However, these differences must not be taken to heart. Conversations, debates and discussions should not become a clash of egos; nobody should hold grudges, store hard feelings or develop a poor opinion of others, just because they happen to have different, alternative or conflicting views .

You would have thought that with the degree of liberation education that is now available to us we would have become more tolerant, civilised and open-minded. But that is not how things have turned out to be. We may hold liberal and open-minded beliefs, and profess and preach these to our friends, but in our anxiety to belong to the circle of liberals, intellectuals and the intelligentsia in general, we began to stubbornly stick to only our personal way of thinking. We tend to disregard other people's sensitivities. And we go to extreme lengths to defend our own perceptions, though this is narrow-minded, or at least looking at things from a very narrow angle. When this happens, on paper it would look something like this: "liberal views vs. liberal views", "liberal views vs. itself", "liberal views against itself", or more appropriately "one available version of a certain liberal view vs. another available version of that same liberal view". Sounds silly, though.

In the process to gain social acceptance, and the upper hand over our compatriot liberals, we disregard our friends' views, because of a selfish and false belief that our "liberal" beliefs are more superior than that of our friends' beliefs, that our views are the standards against which other "liberal" views have to be weighed. As in George Orwell's Animal Farm, we tend to regard that our liberal views "are more equal" than other liberal views.

Once, we all struggled to stand for liberalism and tolerance, but sadly this is not the case now. And worse, we cannot even recognise the fact that we have fallen into this trap; that we have become the narrow-minded and the intolerant; that we have become the beasts that we were so anxious to tame.

When a debate or a discussion becomes a clash of egos, there is no point in continuing the conversation any further. But here also there is no escape. My breakfast table friends were disturbed with the fact that I was keeping quiet right throughout the conversation, without contributing any views. They gave me looks that questioned why I was not chipping into the conversation.

I was trying to sit on the fence, but it did not help either. Soon they started giving me suspicious looks which clearly indicated that my two friends were distrusting my silence, developing the perception that by keeping quiet I was taking the side of one against the other.

What was I expected to do? I, a neutral element, was caught in the crossfire of two warring parties.

Come to think of it, were not all wars fought for the sake of beliefs, whether they are religious, social, or cultural? Human beings have been fighting wars since the dawn of civilisation just for a single cause -- in order to impose the dominant ideology over the weaker.

All this time we thought that when society began to call for free speech, liberalism and open-mindedness, that it was a good thing. But then for reasons that have yet to be determined, these sacred calls took a wrong turn, and those who used to be the preachers of free speech transformed into inquisitors against free speech. Sadly then, there is some truth when communications scholars such as Stanley Fish say that "there's no such thing as free speech, and it's a good thing, too!"

It is true that there is no such thing as 'free' speech because speech is never free; it is always accompanied by actions or consequences. For every word we utter, there are consequences and actions that directly result from our speech. Just because I have the right to free speech cannot give me the freedom to call someone a liar, as the consequence of this can possibly harm him or her, verbally or psychologically.

In the United States -- the champion of democracy and the protector of free speech -- the society is facing a host of problems resulting from free speech itself. Individuals and parties with hidden agendas always invoke the First Amendment in order to gain their own fishy ulterior motives. The concept of free speech has been abused so much to incite hate speech, libel and defamation that communications scholar S. Johnson was led to remark: "Nowadays the First Amendment is the first refuge of scoundrels."

Individual freedom can be allowed only to the extent that freedom of all individuals are protected. While each individual is entitled the right of individual freedom and of free speech, these freedoms by nature are limited due to the social responsibility they hold in ensuring that social harmony is maintained for the greater good.

(This article appeared in Haveeru Daily in July 2000)