Speaker’s Corner revisited
In 1872, the British Parliament decreed Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park of London as a place reserved for free expression, and initially it attracted all those extremists who, although qualifying as nuts, still had the right to vent their opinions. Lately, we have all witnessed how the original Speaker’s Corner speakers moved into Speaker’s Studios and now radicalism, anarchy, or fundamentalism is voiced on prime-time television. All of us others considered as boring in-betweens, have now to settle gratefully for slots in after-midnight cable television, or Speaker’s Corner, (or FT when they published us).
Sir Cass Sunstein discusses the fundamental issue of “How the rise of the Daily Me threatens democracy” January 11, and he should be commended for it since indeed the most dangerous weapon for mass-self destruction in any society is divisiveness; as a columnist in Venezuela I should know; there I write in green but my readers can only read me in yellow or in blue.
The current sheer overload of information forces many to use a very simple though also very dangerous initial classification system that uses some basic common denominators. The one of these most recently used is of course Bush, and which has otherwise clear-minded people thinking: “Hugo Chavez speaks against Bush? Then he must be good!”
How do you fight it? The only way I know is by always pointing out the many shameful similarities of the extremes and trying to make life in the middle seem interesting, fun and chic. But, it still takes guts to swim in the middle of the river and not crawl up on an extreme safe shore!
Sir Cass Sunstein discusses the fundamental issue of “How the rise of the Daily Me threatens democracy” January 11, and he should be commended for it since indeed the most dangerous weapon for mass-self destruction in any society is divisiveness; as a columnist in Venezuela I should know; there I write in green but my readers can only read me in yellow or in blue.
The current sheer overload of information forces many to use a very simple though also very dangerous initial classification system that uses some basic common denominators. The one of these most recently used is of course Bush, and which has otherwise clear-minded people thinking: “Hugo Chavez speaks against Bush? Then he must be good!”
How do you fight it? The only way I know is by always pointing out the many shameful similarities of the extremes and trying to make life in the middle seem interesting, fun and chic. But, it still takes guts to swim in the middle of the river and not crawl up on an extreme safe shore!
Posts
