Declining Pointless Risk.

I saw a news report the other day that quite incensed me. I considered making a post about it, and decided not to. Why? Because certain subjects are so emotive that they get wrapped in barbed wire. If you’ll excuse the mixing of metaphors, a single, narrow view is so firmly established that it is effectively writ in stone, and any divergence from that view, however rational and well considered it might be, is simply not allowed. Any attempt to so diverge runs the real risk of being greeted with hysteria and a frenzied call for disembowelment.

This has happened to me several times. I remember one occasion when a supposedly intelligent young woman, who’d had a university education and gained a degree, was so taken aback by my questioning of one of society’s shibboleths that she was moved literally to the verge of hysteria. No amount of reasonable argument would convince her that there might be more than one way of looking at something, and that there was nothing wrong with examining possible alternative views. She was far from being the only one, and it taught me a lesson.

Too many people want to be told what to believe; they don’t want to think things out for themselves, because if they did they might run the risk of rejection. And they’re right about that. Questioning dogma is a dangerous thing to do if you want to belong.

So, a couple of questions crop up here. Firstly, do I think the people who read my blog are the sort who will disallow my right to question whatever I want to question? For the most part, probably not. Secondly, since I don’t really belong anyway, and don’t feel any great need to, should I be concerned about offering a controversial opinion? Therein lies the problem.

If I could be sure that anything I say would be kept private among the regular readers, I would be prepared to say anything. But my blog is public, and it’s become apparent to me that the world is watching, waiting to pick up on a word or phrase and re-publish that opinion to a wider audience. We need to bear in mind that, even in the so-called democratic west, people can still receive the most serious sanctions for offering opinions that certain sections of the populace find unpalatable. There are a number of seemingly respectable bodies out there that work tirelessly to suppress free speech, whatever the politicians like to pretend. And sometimes the politicians are openly complicit. Since I hold no position of influence, any opinion of mine is most unlikely to make the slightest difference to anything, and so I think that circumspection is sometimes advisable. But only sometimes.