J.S. Mill and The Thought Police

I was reading the news headlines being broadcast in the lifts in my office building this morning (they’re that kind of lift) and was depressed to learn that a state in Malaysia is going to introduce a special undercover agency to spy on young unmarried lovers and report back to the Islamic authorities. What a charming place it must be. Well, Malaysia’s been off my holiday destination wish list for some time now so it’s not my problem. It does make me sad though, every time I read about some horrible regime oppressing its citizens, or citizens oppressing each other. I hate to think of that stuff going on on the same planet as me. Besides, nastiness is contagious, don’t you think? They should all read ‘On Liberty’ by John Stuart Mill. I recently read about half of it (it started to get repetitive so I took it back home to the library) and loved it. In fact I think it should be obligatory reading for everyone. No-one should be allowed to have an opinion until they’ve read it. Uhhhhm…or have I completely lost the point of his message. Sometimes I think it would be nicer to be an animal and not have to live with bloody people. Except that it’s probably worse for animals as we abuse them and are doing our best to wipe out their habitat whilst patting ourselves on the back for preserving a few of each species in zoos.

Mill’s thoughts are roughly thus: A person’s liberty should only be curtailed by governments, and indeed the establishment, insofar as his actions would damage other people to the detriment of their liberty. It sounds obvious to us today, I think, but he had lots more interesting things to say as well. He discussed freedom of speech at length, saying not only should we have unlimited freedom to express dissent, but in fact, minority voices are to be welcomed simply by virtue of being a minority, however crazy their views. Even if society is sure that the prevailing opinion is justified, discussing unpopular opinions can only enrich us, by exercising our mental faculties and confirming our beliefs. He says, there’s no point coming to a conclusion – and this includes religious beliefs – and then banning debate on the subject, as if the case was closed. Because then we would subsequently begin to forget the reasons for our belief, and the belief itself would have less meaning, and if the situation changed we would not notice that our belief needed to be altered. When he talks about banning debate, he means not just legal restrictions but also pressure from society. People must be free to air their opinions without fear of such consequences as losing their jobs.

That reminded me of my university days. I went to uni with the expectation, as so many do, that I was entering a special a special and enlightened world, where everyone would sit around discussing concepts without fear or prejudice, and where the only goal was to break down thoughts to their logical limits; to discover….THE TRUTH. Like Socrates and his followers, we’d don loose clothing and sit around the campus lawns in little circles, happily reasoning the hours away. Oh, how wrong I was. Lesson number 1 was: you do not violate the PC. You just don’t. If you don’t know what the accepted system of beliefs is, you’d better learn fast. Some things, you are not allowed to say, even as the devil’s advocate, even in the interests of understanding something. I don’t know if you were allowed to think other stuff, maybe nobody cared, but you sure as hell couldn’t say it. The whole place was a controversy free zone – with, of course, the smug self-assurance that piercings and freaky hair made them ooooooooh, so radical and challenging to society, like, my God, no-one’s ever seen a fat teenager with gaudy hair and a lip ring before. Mill said those with unpopular opinions should be welcomed for the challenge they bring to our complacency; in my university they wanted to be complacent. Mill said, what if the uncomfortable opinions turned out to be the truth? Nobody at my university wanted to hear uncomfortable opinions, possibly in case they turned out to be the truth. They had an image of how Britain had to be, and they didn’t want anyone to spoil it for them. I felt that not only in the general student body, but even in the classroom. These young people were so self-righteous it could make you sick. No wonder people hate students. I used to wish the peasants would rise and lynch the bloody lot of them.

My experience at university gave me a very real sense that if the country were to be taken over by a despotic regime, they could probably rely on the nation’s middle class youth to police it for them. No wonder Hitler had the Hitler Youth. He knew what he was doing! Even at the time, I could have believed ‘New Labour’ was vetting the student intake. They were always ready to trot out the party line - it doesn’t take too big a leap of the imagination to picture the more zealous students taking to the streets with sticks and enforcing party discipline on the general population. How did they get that way? Do the state schools have a brainwashing program?

Anyway, I don’t know if I made ‘On Liberty’ sound attractive but it was good. It must have been good because I managed to enjoy it even though I was reading it in 5 minute instalments snatched on buses. I kept smiling widely and thinking how pleased I was I was reading it. Though it could have had something to do with the fact that it’s the first decent book I’ve read in ages. My reading is usually limited to American romances with stupidly-named heroines who stomp and scream at people and call the heroes ‘buster’ and ‘pal’ and have ‘cute asses’. God, I hate the books I read sometimes. I threw the last one out in disgust because I couldn’t bear to have it in the same house as me.