Films, and such.

Why freedom of speech is overrated.

Now this sounds kind of contradictory, to speak against freedom of speech on a blog, but freedom of speech is grossly overrated.

I do agree that there must be some form of freedom, but to view freedom of speech as central to social and cultural development is misguided at best. Freedom of speech should be presented in a controlled environment if it is to be beneficial.

Singaporeans love to complain about how 'authoritative' the government is. And yes it is. Arguably, there are severe restrictions placed on the people by the government. However, how much that handicaps a country and society remains debatable. The most advanced countries do not necessarily have the most freedom of speech. China, for example, is soon to be the largest economy in the world, and it still imposes restrictions on its population. Tiananmen comes to mind.

Countries and peoples do not naturally warm towards freedom of speech. Russia in the 1980s was a firm example of how destructive freedom of speech can be. An unravelling of the system as a result from the glasnost policies and political easing of restrictions. Countries with overt freedom of speech often find themselves in constant political turmoil.

What is most obvious to me, is that freedom of speech often means too much noise and too little substance. First problem: bad information is passed around. Look at the United States of America. They pride themselves on dialogue and freedom of speech, but look at how it handicaps their political process. When everyone, and i mean everyone, can speak up, there is often plenty of misguided or poor information around. You have a government that is trying to bridge the political divide and often what comes between that is the at times irrational opinion extreme leftist or rightist individuals. Rush Limbaugh comes to mind. My tutor spoke of her homeland, Greece, where everyone has the right to express themselves and how that results in nothing being done.

The second problem is much more difficult to admit, but people simply fail to filter through the information. Back when there was a limited amount of opinions, people have the freedom to believe whatever they read comes from a well-informed academic. Unfortunately, freedom of speech has exploded that amount of opinions online. Now, with the previous problem of bad information, the readers seldom realise that they are receiving so much wrong information. This results in a misguided population, which in itself is a major problem.

So in essence, freedom of speech leads to problems. That is not to say that freedom of speech is useless, but it must and can only work inside a framework. In a sense, this contradicts the idea of freedom of speech.

I could expand to look at the other side of the coin, but i won't (cause i don't have the time). Besides, i'm in my friend's lecture. Ok, goodnight.