We spend a lot of time in shopping malls. That's where this whole thing began for me. Working at the Tower at Willow Lawn I'd interact with hundreds of other Richmonders and area residents every day and at the same time was going through a huge political and social awakening. What does any other moon eyed 20 year old with his first Noam Chomsky book want? An audience. The more I looked into the legalities of distributing literature and engaging public discourse the more disillusioned I became. You can't. This is private property and we determine what goes on here. Private property laws backed up with police paid extra to spend there time off enforcing mall rules. It's a wonderful system full of controls and carefully worded things. The real problem here is that our public areas have been almost completely privatized. All that's left is for our park systems to be sold off to the highest bidder and the mind-fuck is complete. Looks like all we have left is the Intertubes.
But the tubes are threatened at every turn. They are a series of interconnected privately held networks mind you. People treat Myspace like it's theirs, like they own what's going on there. Legitimate right? Owned by News Corp, the fine folks who control Fox News and a big ass chunk of global newspapers. Our ISPs, our blog posts, our digitized thoughts, our entire fictional identities are owned by hedge funds, investment groups and shareholders. So where is the impetus to allow free discourse? Why should any individual fight for the right of someone else to hold a belief they don't agree with? Especially when it's their money on the line. Who's talking about the loss of something just as precious? Our right to talk to one another.
The free exchange of ideas and information have a few safe places. Some colleges provide such a place for discussion and for that I am intensely grateful. What happens when you don't have the money for college? Where do you go then to learn what there is to be learned, to hear out your fellow citizens? Well damn, is that even a value in this society? I don't really run in to too many people who'd like to actually have public discourse so maybe the shape of the world just fits what people really want. But there are safe havens, bookstores and coffee shops mostly. We rely entirely on the effort of brave individuals who dedicate their lives to providing such places, both here on the web and in real life. It just makes me sad to think that the vast majority of our culture will never walk through the door of a local coffee shop, get a cup, sit down and find out how someone else lives.
So what can we do about it? Should we really do anything? When it comes down to it, it's up to the people who make up a society to determine the rules by which they live. I think Americans tend to forget that. Laws that have been around long enough start to seem like truth, like they are a permanent part of our world and they've always been there. The fear of authority runs deep, and we're taught it quite well. It's up to each of us to fight for our rights in every moment. The freedom of speech is not granted to us, we take it, we keep it alive. It is eroded every day we do not speak out against it's slow legislative demise, every time we tolerate the silencing of dissenting opinion, every time we allow a journalist to be beaten and imprisoned and every time we brow beat another person for not agreeing with us.
The walls between us get thicker every day, there is always one more reason to not engage a stranger in conversation. There are enough ists and isms out there to keep every ones nose in the air and their opinions to themselves, enough fear floating through our collective unconscious to keep us huddled in our comforting illusions and reruns. I say be brave, talk to strangers. Find out how someone else gets down. But remember, don't talk down to people, never think you are superior and leave people alone if they start getting agitated. Most of all, don't be a dick.
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