Over-Saturation: When Free Speech Blinds
“There is no need to ban books if people are not reading them,” wrote Edward Luce, the D.C. columnist for Financial Times, in his widely acclaimed book, "The Retreat of Western Liberalism."
With witty commentary, Luce claimed that Trump’s America is no different than a moderate version of Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," in which ordinary citizens are entertained and given constant gratification to all their needs so that they have no reason to desire freedom and individualism.
Refuting Orwell’s more recent yet simultaneously less sophisticated version of dystopia, Luce wrote, “Orwell’s fear was that we would always be watching you. Huxley’s dread was that we would be too busy watching Big Brothers on TV to care.”
The traditional "1984" view of control is no longer as relevant in today’s world; towards the latter half of the 20th century, Western leaders and activists watched the fall of authoritarian governments in the Eastern bloc with euphoria, declaring, “Here comes the age of freedom and democracy.” Now, two decades into the 21st century, neither word retains its consecrated sheen.
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a dedicated practitioner of the contentment-breeds-docility principle, is the perfect real-life example of finessed authoritarianism, Huxley style. Unlike Communist China, Russia does not bother to block Western media with firewalls; the bulk of internet traffic is directed to sites featuring kittens and Kim Kardashian, not global news or dissident blogs.
Unlike Communist China, Russia does not bother to block Western media with firewalls; the bulk of internet traffic is directed to sites featuring kittens and Kim Kardashian, not global news or dissident blogs.
“The new Kremlin won’t make the same mistake the old Soviet Union did: it will never let TV become dull,” wrote Peter Pomerantsev, Soviet-born Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs, London School of Economics. “Most Russians are happy with the trade-off: complete freedom for complete silence.”
This reality stands in stark contrast with the interconnected, globalized world extolled by freedom fighters and idealistic believers of the net. According to them, following the advent of the world-wide-web, all Luddites would be enlightened, all extremists would be neutralized and all wars would end.
How could anyone cling onto false, one-sided convictions when humanity’s collective reservoir of wisdom lies just a click away? What many fail to take into consideration is how this leap of faith is just another iteration of the same blind optimism that inevitably follows the birth of any new communication technology.
The radio tycoon Guglielmo Marconi once exclaimed, “The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.” A century later, most of us have access to Wikipedia, Google Translate and the libraries of the world, yet we are still as rooted into our preconceptions, biases and group identities as ever—not just members of Flat Earth Society, neo-Nazi groups and the Ku Klux Klan, but every single one of us. Outside bipartisan America, the same principle holds true. “Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims,” said Evgeny Morozov, one of Europe’s most prominent researchers and writers about digital-era politics. Challenged by a world full of contrary ideas, local institutions insulate members by employing group psychology, appealing to morals and the us-against-them rhetoric that never fails to persuade.
Freedom is a fragile and complicated thing, and is never absolute—its illusion is often more tantalizing and powerful than its realization.
Throughout the previous two years, I have had much occasion to ponder upon this. Flicking through the many op-eds on my Google Drive, I stumbled upon one written in the early days of my op-ed career, cautiously titled “Censorship in Asian Countries.” Its content was the expected storyline—to the Western netizen: cherish your freedom of press!—from a child born in the repressive Vietnamese Communist regime.
“I still remember the inexplicable joy that first day in September, when I clicked onto BBC and Human Rights Watch articles without reading the lines ‘Error 451—The websites you are trying to access contain delinquent and immoral content,’ ” I had written, panegyrizing the left-leaning sites with almost religious zeal. How many times have I voluntarily accessed these articles again, unless it is for material to write another op-ed or put into my Model UN binder? Not a number I am proud of—I will not expose myself.
The view that freedom to knowledge equals civic engagement is beyond simplistic; if anything, it is in the half-immersed pockets of society, the urban areas of authoritarian regimes flooded with news of freedom, that the desire to learn, express and discuss politics burns the brightest. The difficult challenge is to preserve this desire, within oneself and one’s community, after traversing from an information-depleted to an information-saturated reality, to not yield to the boundless human ability of being tempted by entertaining distractions.