The imbalance of freedom: part 2
To regain our freedom, we have to act free and demand our right to be listened to
If you’ve not read part 1 yet, go here…
The biggest lie people like J.D. Vance tell you (like he did in his speech from Munich) is that ‘free speech’ is for you as well as him. It’s not.
Vance, Trump, and their allies — such as Nigel Farage — are taking your freedom and hoarding it with their wealth and power. You don’t have much left, and what freedom you do have is worthless. Because no one is listening to your free speech, are they?
This is what I’m calling an imbalance of freedom.
This isn’t going unnoticed, nor unchallenged. It’s why people felt sickly gleeful at the deaths of those ultra-rich people in the lost submarine, the super yacht that turned over, the healthcare CEO who was shot. We need to begin charting this practice of welcoming the deaths of the ultra rich, because unless we change the dynamic of spiralling inequality and distance between the rich and poor, it is only going to grow.
And it’s understandable. Underlying this phenomenon is that people are deeply, painfully feeling the inequality of the world. The richest 1% have the same wealth as 95% of the rest of the world. It’s called greed. It’s called hoarding. It’s psychopathic. It’s self-terminating. This is what it looks like:
The top 1% own 43% of all global financial assets.
Just two corporations control 40% of the global seed market.
The “big three” US-based asset managers — BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard — hold $20 trillion in assets, 20% of all investable assets in the world.
People don’t want to be poor any more. The bottom 95% have been abandoned by the ultra-rich. We all know it. What the ultra-wealthy have been really good at, though, is convincing people that they could be ultra-rich too.
‘Don’t stop me from being rich, or you stop yourself from ever being rich!’
This is their line. And that’s where ‘freedom of speech’ comes in.
It’s an emotional distraction. More, a shield for their extraction, like Dracula’s cloak as he sucks you dry. They don’t make money. They extract it from you. Taxpayer money. Your money.
But ‘freedom of speech’ they cry! Defend ‘freedom’!
For them, they mean. Not for you and me.
Unless we act free. Unless we get really so sick of the imbalance of freedom, of being ignored, that we do something about it… together.
That something is democracy
Back in Ancient Greece, where democracy began, there was a freedom of speech (for some, anyway). But it always came with the equal and just as important, perhaps more important, “right to be listened to”.
The ancient Greeks called it isegoria. It ensured all citizens had a right to be listened to, for their voices to be taken into account.
It’s the right or freedom Trump, Orbán, Vance, Farage, and the other authoritarians don’t want you to have. They don’t want you to exercise your right and freedom to be listened to. They just want you to listen to them.
Because if every one of us who is suffering, who is struggling to pay the bills, to get by, to feel secure in our homes and neighbourhoods, exercised our right to be listened to, they’d be fucked. They’d have to listen for a change. They’d have to start sharing everything they’ve hoarded, including freedom, and to help everybody spread it around.
It isn’t theirs anyway, by the way.
Money, freedom, power. It’s ours. They’ve nicked it. Fran Lebowitz famously said:
I object to people who are rich in politics. I don't think they should be allowed to be in politics. It is bad that rich people are in politics, it is bad for everybody but rich people, and rich people don't need any more help. Whenever people say, "Oh, he earned his money himself," I always say the same thing: "No one earns a billion dollars. People earn $10 an hour, people steal a billion dollars."
A functional democracy only works if people respect… not freedom of speech, actually.
A functional democracy works when people exercise their freedom to be listened to.
You can speak all you like, but if the system isn’t listening, it isn’t working. Being listened to requires a reciprocal, respectful, caring relationship. It is this relationship between speaker and listener that IS a functional democracy. It is why the public (you and me) put respect first among all the values we look for in our politicians.
That is why democracy is actually under threat, and disappearing. Because we get fooled into thinking ‘freedom of speech’ is somehow a good in itself. But it isn’t.
The good in itself is the freedom to be listened to, and to listen back. This is political care. It’s democracy.
Care and freedom of speech
It is never just freedom of speech. It is always care and freedom of speech.
Lots of people I listen to are saying similar things. We’re all saying it slightly differently, for different ears. That’s a good thing. My friend Indy Johar calls this listening “epistemic responsibility” — which, as I interpret it, is taking responsibility, by listening well, to validate the knowledge that other people are saying. That is: is it ‘truth’ they’re speaking? If not, then, sure, they have the freedom to speak it, but we have the freedom to refute it.
I’m talking about the doing of that thinking.
Listening to each other can be done at no cost. So we can’t invest much money in it; only non-material things like time, attention and thought. Maybe this is why the super-rich hate listening so much, because they can’t steal our money through it.
Is our attention a currency? Some think so. If so, though, can we create commitments to spend it more carefully? Does the money you would save from stopping drinking or taking drugs help you to beat addiction? I’d say: probably never. Does the love and connection you save help? I’d say: always yes.
Here’s my freedom: exercising my right to be listened to
It’s why I’m part of projects (like this and this and this) that are about going to places and listening to what it is people really care about, and what they really want. I respect their freedom to be listened to. I don’t weaponise ‘freedom of speech’ to hide the crimes I commit against the world. I want to help others exercise their right to be listened to, expecting my right to be listened to, to be respected in turn.
Timothy Snyder writes, the first condition of freedom is sovereignty. And sovereignty is not something that belongs to a king or queen, but is the ability to make the conditions and be in control of your own life.
And yet Hannah Arendt writes that to be free you must renounce your sovereignty. I take that to mean that you cannot expect control alone to work for you; you depend on others at all times. We are social, interdependent beings, always.
Does Vance’s ‘freedom of speech’ give you agency if you live in a falling-down council house, or if you are having your benefits cut? Or does the ‘freedom to be listened to’ work better to get the roof fixed, because the council actually has to listen? Sovereignty requires not only freedom but also care. Giving enough of a shit to be listened to, and listen back in turn.
How did it become such a radical act to listen to each other?
My freedom is nothing to me if it makes you less free, or unfree. It is not freedom then, but corruption.
A culture war attacks its own people
This is the culture war that Vance, Trump, Farage, Tice and others are waging on you, with their pretence to freedom. You know, what became clear to me while reading and thinking deeply about freedom of speech, is that a “culture war” is exactly that: enacting a war against people’s culture. When those people are your own fellow national citizens, it’s a massive psychological fight against your own people, isn’t it? An aggression to your own population — no longer ‘divide and rule’, but ‘divide, rule and grift’.
What we need is maximum freedom, yes! As much freedom as we can share equally with everyone. Me, you, even them. Because I don’t want an imbalance of freedom for anyone. Not me, not you, not them.
Freedom becomes balanced through respecting everyone’s right to be listened to. It’s that simple. It will take a lot of work, though, to rebalance what has become so imbalanced.
A freedom for everyone, freedom that doesn’t make other people unfree in the process. Freedom to determine what it is we do with our lives, not have it determined for us by ultra-rich politicians, tech bros, and dictators, by poverty, by bullshit jobs.
The next time you hear one of these snake oil salesmen talking about freedom of speech, ask them:
Okay, mate, you ready to listen to mine?