Free Thought and Official Propaganda

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

Educational speech in 1928 from Bertrand Russell (lemme Google his name to find out if his identity agrees with mine! 😉), particularly useful now concerning numerous topics, such as the concept of free speech, its use beyond government, and what we call "cancel culture" today, but also science, religion, communism, and so on:

 

https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/br-free-thought.html

 

Some neat excerpts:

 

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It is clear that the most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. No great country has yet reached to this level, although most of them think they have. The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so monstrous and immoral that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to them. But this is exactly the same view as that which made possible the tortures of the Inquisition. There was a time when Protestantism seemed as wicked as Bolshevism seems now. 

 

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Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thought. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

Quote

 

In religion and politics on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the modern world would be cured. War would become impossible, because each side would realize that both sides must be in the wrong. Persecution would cease. Education would aim at expanding the mind, not at narrowing it. Men would be chosen for jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered the irrational dogmas of those in power. Thus rational doubt alone, if it could be generated, would suffice to introduce the millennium.

We have had in recent years a brilliant example of the scientific temper of mind in the theory of relativity and its reception by the world. Einstein, a German-Swiss-Jew pacifist, was appointed to a research professorship by the German Government in the early days of the war; his predictions were verified by an English expedition which observed the eclipse of 1919, very soon after the armistice. His theory upset the whole theoretical framework of traditional physics; it is almost as damaging to orthodox dynamics as Darwin was to Genesis. Yet physicists everywhere have shown complete readiness to accept his theory as soon as it appeared that the evidence was in its favour. But none of them, least of all Einstein himself, would claim that he has said the last word. He has not built a monument of infallible dogma to stand for all time. There are difficulties he cannot solve; his doctrines will have to be modified in their turn as they have modified Newton’s. This critical undogmatic receptiveness is the true attitude of science.

 

This is also a piece I've read to my daughter, and even recommended it to her charter school for the higher grades.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[TBoneTX 45,309]

Wasn't this BR a socialist?

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

1 hour ago, TBoneTX said:

Wasn't this BR a socialist?

National or Democratic? 🤠

[TBoneTX 45,309]

Who am I -- Wikipedia?

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

1 hour ago, TBoneTX said:

Who am I -- Wikipedia?

[Joke Needed]

[TBoneTX 45,309]

44 minutes ago, Burnt Reynolds said:

[Joke Needed]

If a cabbage and a carrot held a race, which would win?

The cabbage, because it's a head.

[Voice of Reason 10,298]

3 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

If a cabbage and a carrot held a race, which would win?

The cabbage, because it's a head.

Lettuce rejoice with glee at this organic joke!

[Dashinka 24,512]

10 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Wasn't this BR a socialist?

I think you could call him a classical Liberal.