We could characterize the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment as: freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom to assemble and express your conscience. The convention delegates didn’t use those terms because they were facing contextual problems that seemed more pressing than probing for deeper, underlying principles. Further, they lived in a social context that was far less tolerant than we tend to believe. They were together a fair representation of where Western Civilization was headed, where the dominant body of thought was repressive materialistic middle class social expectations only lightly flavored with the pretense of being open and intellectually free.
The single greatest flaw in modern political discourse is the dispute over whether rights are absolute or must be granted by some authority. The question itself if anti-Christian, so long as you understand that Christ was an eastern mystic, and virtually nothing in Western Civilization actually follows His teachings. And if you don’t like “Jesus talk,” quantum moral reasoning finds the whole question of rights entirely artificial. It is the nature of the beast: The very existence of a government that is not based on tribal-family social structures means you are dealing with people who are hostile to good moral reasoning. While a certain amount of resistance is wholly necessary for those of us with a quantum awareness, we dare not be sucked into their false structures. Be aware of the structures so that you know where they fail and how to resist without violating cosmic moral standards.
That cosmic morality starts by warning us that we who seek it will always be in the minority. Get used to it. We cannot know the truth without leaving the majority behind, so what we know will never, ever be the basis for seeking broader social and political change. It is immoral to apply leverage against anyone unwilling. Cosmic morality is first and foremost voluntary in nature. Our mission is to bring attention to ultimate reality so that those capable of receiving it can discover the answer to their inner longings. It is something we freely offer as the fundamental reason for continuing this life, but we have zero choice in who receives it. Truth cuts its own path in the human heart, or it’s not truth.
Your mission is giving full vent to that truth within your own context. You give it life, and it gives you back a life worth living. It’s not a matter of content; the very act of free expression is the truth. If you don’t expect to get things wrong in the process, you don’t understand how truth works. Sorrow and conflict come for many reasons. At the minimum, you should expect at least some folks to be offended simply because they will find the demands of truth afflicting their conscience. These are the folks who are the most likely to receive the message, just not right away. Our mission includes persisting in the joy of truth in the face of their resistance, whatever form it takes. Dreading that resistance is to retreat from truth.
That does not mean you tolerate everything, but that absorbing some crap is a default assumption. Sometimes truth does mean hitting back, though we have to be very careful how we think about that. Truth is more valuable than your own life because it’s more valuable than all human life. Most of the time you simply run up against the limits of your contextual resources and move away from the conflict. Within your own soul you come across moments of decision when the question is: What does it take for you to continue the mission? What does your mission itself demand? It’s not about the personal insults, but the mission. Respond with mercy and stop striking when the mission is safe again. By the same token, mercy for others can mean permanently ending a threat to all at those odd moments when you are the only one in a position to do it. Truth is discerning when a threat is more than merely a threat to you personally.
More often we choose to invest in armoring so we can ignore assaults. That’s the wisdom of, for example, learning defensive martial arts over aggressive attack styles. We prefer to disengage, not destroy. That leaves things for another day, or for another servant of truth to try again later. We depend on the existence of others who serve truth because that’s how truth works; that’s the very nature of trusting truth.
In the virtual world, I admit I know precious little about attacking. I know an awful lot about defense, AKA compsec. I know that the nature of networking itself requires I promote the full freedom of all to express their content. People cannot freely decide if they don’t have the full range of what others claim as truth. It takes a silly Western legalism to assert that I am thus sponsoring evil if I help “evil” people get their message out, too. If I work to censor their message, on what grounds do I stand when seeking freedom for my own? The reality of how the Net works demands full freedom. The alternative is, in essence, no Net at all. Even malware is part of this game. It is my job to block malware on my own machine, just as it is my job to avoid saving false messages on my hard drive.
