Enlightenment, Realization, Awakening (2/3)

After the conversation I had with Harry, Lea, and Fauna I started on a day full of self reflection. The two things I was thinking about were why am I so mad at myself, and is my opinion just completely wrong. This reflection was only further brought on by Dr. Terrence Roberts, of the Little Rock Nine, who came to my school as part of a school wide program to help feel respect and community, within the school. The first big question I had when I just finished arguing was "Why am I so mad (and sad) at myself." Normally I am a very upbeat person, with what one would call a completely frosted view of the world and its people. At this point though I was feeling like coffee instead of coffee cake. My self reflection here was interrupted by the assembly and the new reflection it brought on. Roberts was an amazing speaker, being very passionate, charismatic, and intellectual at the same time. His view of he world was very bleak though, talking about how progress really hadn't been made for the improvement of African American lives. What this theme brought on to me was Lea's previous comment that I was too optimistic, in thinking that someone who had posted hateful material could change at all if you give them help ( Because they are not the people who would look for help). Was I being optimistic though?...

While that part of my argument could very easily be seen as my belief in humanity other parts were the exact opposite. I had argued against the banning of hateful material because of the possible snowball effect that It could cause on the infringement on the freedom of speech(Which could bring complete eradication of free speech). I actively believed that people couldn't be trusted in restricting only the hateful things, that on a moral level I believed should be completely banned. I was not being my frosted self from the beginning of the argument because the bulk of it was based on an inherent disbelief in humanities ability to be good. With this I started to think more, asking myself "Has any country with a high level of freedom of speech banned hateful material?" And like that my mind jumped to many European countries which had successfully done this, banning swastikas. These countries still kept their freedoms while getting rid of the hateful speech. This was the final breaking point for me, because inherently I had been arguing for something I completely disagreed with. I could not find a way to be on a side in which I felt was completely wrong. The fact that stuck with me later was that my fear of restrictions of speech had been able to overpower almost all other intellectual, and emotional ideas within in me. Even after this though, I still felt terribly sad, and what was weird about it was that it was not because of the astonishing power I had found fear had on me. My answer to that came on my bus ride home.