In which Wolf discusses the net tightening around you right now, and what you can do about it. Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/d-GMzuwKJ_k
Laws are rules. But they're rules with a higher purpose. Laws are rules that attempt to embody higher values. Laws that set speed limits, or that require the use of seat belts attempt to uphold a value, the value of "safer driving conditions."
But law never perfectly embodies these values. People still speed and refuse to wear seatbelts. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that in last year, 2021, almost 43,000 people died in the United States due to road accidents.
You could pass ever stricter laws, forcing people to drive even slower and require everyone in the vehicle to wear five point harnesses like race car drivers. But would it really be safer? Would the additional burdens outweigh the risks? Would you need to add a roll cage to every car or make drivers and passengers wear helmets as well?
In short, laws will never be perfect. And laws can and will be broken. With the number of laws on the books, it's been estimated that the average American commits three or more felonies a day.
But what about values? Values can't be "broken" in the same way that rules and laws can. Values can only be betrayed .
What do I mean by that? As I've mentioned in previous videos, every situation calls on us to put our values into a hierarchy and decide which ones we must uphold. Does that means that we're "betraying" values that fall lower on the list in a given situation? Usually not. What I mean by betrayal is when we fail to act in accordance with our stated values even when there isn't really a higher value to be upheld.
Sometimes telling the truth really is the most important thing, and we know it. And yet, if we continue to lie then we are betraying that value. Our shadow might be saying to us, "If we tell the truth right now, we'll just die!" But we know that isn't literally true. Or our shadow might be saying, "I wonder if I can actually get away with this— that would be a thrill!" But we know that our addiction to living on the edge isn't really a value; it's one of the "cursed artifacts" hiding in the warehouse of our personality.
These sort of impulses are what cause us to betray our values.
The First Amendment to the highest law of the United States, it's Constitution, says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Constitution is a document that limits the ability of government to interfere with the rights of the people: "Congress shall make no law..." The Constitution isn't there to grant anything to the citizens that our Founders didn't believe was there already: they understood our rights to be "God-given;" inherent in our being. They also believed them to be "unalienable," which means that they are sacred and not only may never be taken away, but literally cannot be taken away. Not to say there aren't still people who would like to try.
Free Speech is more than just the law of the land: it's a fundamental American value. Our Founders enshrined it in the Constitution as a way of keeping the government from using its power to betray this value. But it was never supposed to end there. Free Speech is a value that our Founders intended to be more than just a law, and apply to more than just the government. They understood that if Americans don't uphold Freedom of Speech as a Value and not just a law on a piece of paper, then we would be headed toward losing all our freedoms.
When you live in a totalitarian regime, you are strictly limited in what you can express. History is rife with examples where people were suppressed or killed for expressing ideas that went against those in power. Totalitarians regimes can come from the political left, like communists, or from the right, like fascists. What they have in common is that they believe they know what correct speech is, and they strive to take the power to suppress anything they don't agree with, and it doesn't stop with government. Businesses, NGOs, and religions all have power too, and totalitarians want all of it.
In George Orwell's novel 1984 he, envisioned a dystopia where the party INGSOC was attempting to control even what people could and could not think by using a whole spectrum of techniques: propaganda, the fear of continual war, deprivation, the rewriting of history, and the progressive introduction of newspeak: a language which has the defining feature of getting smaller and less expressive with each new edition, with the goal that the only concepts that could be expressed were those that upheld the Party's worldview.
Today, we live in a world where people of a totalitarian mindset in government, in media, and in big tech are telling us what "correct" thoughts we are allowed to have and talk about, and an ever-growing list of incorrect and offensive ideas we are not allowed to have or express. These people pay lip service to the value of Free Speech, but then slip in ideas like "Silence is violence," which means that if you don't say what they want you to say, then you are a bad person. Simultaneously, they say "hate speech is violence," and of course they are there to tell you what qualifies as hateful today.
So if you deny being a witch, well then that's exactly what a witch would say. And if you don't deny being a witch, well then you obviously are one.
This tactic has become known as "kafkatrapping," after Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, where an inaccessible authority accuses a man of undisclosed crimes, and all of his actions attempting to defend himself only deepen his persecution.
The goal of kafkatrapping is to create an environment of fear that stops independent thought and induces compliance.
The only way to deal with this is to learn how it's being used against you, call it out wherever you see it, and teach others to do the same. And what does it mean to call this out? That's your exercise of critical thinking and Free Speech.
When you dare to call others out for kafkatrapping, you will be called offensive, regressive, a hateful bigot, a Nazi, and anything else they can think of. At that point, turning their volume up to 11 in an attempt to drown you out is all they have left.
Of all the human rights, there is no right to never be offended. Most people don't want to offend others, and this natural compassion is exactly what totalitarians want to use against you. If they can make you continually afraid of giving offense, then you are giving totalitarians permission to bring the walls of what counts as "offensive" in tighter and tighter around you, until you find yourself in a world with not only no freedom to think or speak, but one in which you will literally need their permission to breathe.
But what do you think? Let me know in the comments, and if you found this valuable, give the video a like: It definitely helps the YouTube algorithm find other people who would like it too.
See you tomorrow!