Nerve Endings Firing Away

Ever wonder why majority of Indians or for that matter, majority of bloggers are fine with the government banning a few select blogs/sites as long as their blogs aren’t blocked? The root reason may be in not fully comprehending the concept of free speech. But to explain it better, I must hand it to Scott Adams, author and cartoonist of Dilbert:

Researchers discovered that when people hear an argument that opposes their viewpoint, the rational part of the brain takes a coffee break and the emotional side takes over. The irrational part of your brain then reinterprets reality in a way that lets you keep your dumb viewpoint against all common sense and evidence.

Confirmation bias, eh? Everything seems fine until people agree with your viewpoint and when they don’t, all hell breaks loose. Even if somewhere deep down, you may agree that you are probably wrong, irrationality kicks in and fires up your ego causing you to stick to your guns. It may also be called the George Bush syndrome. You will stick to your position, even if it is overwhelmingly proved to be wrong. But then in a free society, such ‘stupid’ opinions also have their place and actually deserve to be out there. Who knows, someday times may change and those stupid ideas may actually be a stroke of brilliance. Ask the Church and Galileo in the whole astronomy debate. And that in fact was a scientific matter. Political opinions and ideological stands are a far murkier matter influenced and shaped by your geographic location, religion, cultural context, and personal upbringing.

Sadly when a majority tends to believe in a particular opinion, they pass laws to stifle the opposing opinion often justifying them as ‘morally wrong’ or ‘danger to the society/national security’. As I like to say, the lines between morality and legality are blurred. Just because you seem to find an opinion stupid or baseless doesn’t make it right to bar it completely. As the economists would say, perhaps there is a market for those ideas and they might just find favor with that clique. Let them all be out there and eventually, the ideas and opinions that find favor with most will stick around. The rest will die, as they deserve to. To conclude, I found Seth Godin’s observation quite apt: