SOFiA values the honest (and clearly-expressed) exploration of ideas and views that challenge or reflect on the status quo in the fields of reason, philosophy, ethics, religion, science and the arts. We share a common interest in discovering, as individuals, what we can and cannot believe in.
Our Network is therefore, by default, a fan of free speech.
Nine Media commentator Elizabeth Farrelly has outlined some important fallacies regarding free speech, fallacies well worth reflecting upon:
- Disagreement is insult.
- Words are deeds.
- Silencing a thought disempowers it.
- Ideas come in bundles.
- Emotional comfort is your right.
- In an ideal world everyone agrees.
I would add one more fallacy, in light of trends in political debate across the Pacific (if not here): a shared sense of reality and rationality in debate is unimportant.
Disclaimer: views represented in SOFiA blog posts are entirely the view of the respective authors and in no way represent an official SOFiA position.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
The tribalism of the group-thinkers with their herd-mentality is quite frightening.
There is more than one ‘tribe’. And their numbers are over-whelming. So we are caught in the cross-fire of their culture wars.