Free speech is increasingly important in our symbolic culture
What the reign of the Virtuals and the Fourth Industrial Revolution tell us about free speech and hate speech.
Recently I argued a case for free speech in a Stuff op-ed—three reasons to think free speech is good for us and good for society, and that this should be the starting point for thinking about hate speech laws. But I left something out, a fourth argument that needs a little more space to tease out than op-ed word limits allow and that’s a little different in character. It’s based on this observation: thanks to technology, virtual reality is swallowing up more and more of our lives. What is intangible, un-touchable, is increasingly how we define culture and therefore reality. Speech is a primary way that we create and make sense of this world of ideas and symbols so as that world expands, our ability to participate in it and express ourselves grows increasingly important. This is all rather abstract, so let me try to explain what I mean by connecting the dots between our current “ruling class”, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the symbolic culture that they produce.
Let’s start with the rise of the “laptop class”, aka “knowledge workers”. These are people whose work can be done remotely, through a screen and down a broadband connection. People who could keep working throughout a pandemic, whose livelihoods didn’t depend on physical proximity to real things or real people. People like me, who interact with the world by manipulating intangible things like ideas, symbols, and narratives. The commentator NS Lyon dubs these people “Virtuals”, and while there have always been people like this—clerics, philosophers, artists—most of the time most of the people have been part of a different class.
Lyons call this second class the “Physicals”, meaning people who work in the physical world with real things, like cows, machinery, and food. There are more Virtuals these days and fewer Physicals. For example, in 1960s New Zealand 25 percent of our population lived in rural communities where most people would have worked on or in connection with the land; today, the figure is 14 percent. And the Virtuals are even more virtual than they used to be—an artist produces a canvas you can hang on a wall, a comms manager produces a tweet that only exists in the digital ether. The Virtuals matter because, says Lyons, they make up the “ruling class” in modern economies and democracies. Consider the average MP: lots of lawyers, ex-parliamentary staffers, and union officials; not too many former tradies.
Now consider the rise of digital technology and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We dwell in cyberspace as much as in real life—maybe more, in the case of the Very Online—awash in wi-fi, harvested for data by our devices, and projecting our hopes and fears into the blank indifference of the internet. This is part of the “technological revolution” that is “characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” So says Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, who points out that these technologies will change the way governments and citizens interact. For example, “governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure.”
But the issue isn’t just direct control; it’s also the softer ways that those in power shape our informational environment. This is what I call politics as comms, at which this current government is particularly masterful. That’s not a compliment, because politics as comms is defined by expression rather than achievement, the ability to talk a good game without necessarily changing anything in the real world—in fact, sometimes in complete defiance of real world outcomes. Kiwibuild is an obvious example. It turns out that you can’t simply speak 100,000 homes into being—God creates ex nihilo, governments do not—and this should have been blindingly obvious not just to voters but to the politicians who made the promise and surged into power on its back. The Prime Minister has defended this approach on the basis that it’s “aspirational”. Not only can you not build houses out of aspiration, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the slide into a culture where what matters most is what you say, not what you do. Then there are the fulsome promises of transparency (real world outcome: BAU obfuscation and delay under the Official Information Act) and the behind-the-scenes briefing of “COVID commentators” in an attempt to shift public narratives in favour of government action. Politics as comms is possible with older technologies, but digital technology radically amplifies and accelerates this approach—think memes, tweets, hashtags, social media tiles, candid Facebook Live streams direct to the populace without any of those meddling journalists and their pesky questions interfering with the party line.
Put these two things together—the reign of the Virtuals and our immersion in digital technology—and more and more of our common culture is defined by symbolism rather than reality. As is probably obvious I think this is overall a bad thing, but that’s a subject for another day. For now, the point is simply that it is a thing, and quite a consequential one. People who are good merely at manipulating ideas and expression are increasingly rewarded with public power. They wield that power to shape our informational environment. This is part of a larger move in which culture is increasingly contained in and created as virtual reality rather than real reality. This symbolic culture reinforces the reign of the ideas-wielders, the Virtuals.
That’s why participation in this symbolic culture should be as open as possible. We need reasonable limits on expression, but they should be the least possible and carefully calibrated to prevent genuine harm. There are obvious dangers when cultural capital or power is reserved to some class of people who are skilled at some arcane set of practices, and encrusting these practices with unnecessary rules actually reinforces the power of this elite. Think about this in terms of speech and hate speech laws. These laws privilege people who know how to navigate them, maybe by exploiting ambiguity or simply by knowing how far you can go before you say something that gets you in trouble. Everyone else just knows that there are hate speech laws and, because they don’t want (or can’t afford) to get in trouble for violating them, mutes themselves rather than risk an accusation of saying something hateful. This strengthens the position of the elite, and round we go again.
The best solution is to allow the greatest number of people to participate in creating and challenging the symbolic culture that shapes what we believe and influences who holds power. Start by recognising that expression is even more important in a technological society than in the past. Then acknowledge that means there should be as few barriers to participation as possible. That, I believe, is another reason the debate about hate speech laws shouldn’t start from the position that hate speech is bad. Instead, as I said in my op-ed, it should start from the principle that free speech is good—and not just good, but increasingly important.
So excellently and concisely put!
I am sad to be living in a time where people cannot speak honestly to each other for fear of censure. Currently, when I get brave enough to give my personal opinion, I risk getting socially shunned. At least I don't get punished by law... yet.
BTW I'm pleased to see somebody call out the presentation and role of the "COVID commentators". A similar strategy is used in China, where the experts always seem to support the government line.