Free Speech

Words have become the enemy.

Words, once the means by which we shared our thoughts— our experiences, ourselves— are now meaningless. Worse, they are weapons. The weapons that we fashioned ourselves, then handed over to our enemies.

Every old woman looking back over her life thinks the world has changed, that things were better when she was younger. But in my case, there’s no doubt about it. The world I knew in my youth is gone. In its place is a sterile, disconnected half life. We live alone in small units that serve our basic needs. They are climate controlled, UV lit, equipped with all that we need to perform our basic work tasks. Meals and hydration are offered and the basic necessities provided.

All communication is done through pictures, diagrams, and symbols.

As our units provide light during waking hours and darkness during sleep hours, the whole world is on the same schedule.

As One World the entire human population wakes and prepares for the day at the same time around the globe. We perform our tasks for the set number of hours, stopping at the same time for meals and breaks, working on the same schedule for maximum efficiency. When the work day is complete, we go through our mandatory physical fitness regime, tracked by our implanted health monitors.

We relax by playing games— VR, the games that allow us to escape from our day, our units. They allow us to walk outdoors, allow us to experience seeing other “people” as well as animals. Though they are VR, they are the closest we get to companionship.

Before every meal, task, break, or relaxation, we are shown a series of images reminding us of how the world was before words were banned. The destructive nature of everyone having a voice and of dissenting opinions. These images make their way into the various parts of our day as a constant reminder of how much better things are now. One World, One Voice, One Right Way.

We once were able to share our experiences to the benefit of all, and able to share in the experiences of the world to the benefit of ourselves. Now we have been stripped of all but our own limited experiences in life.

Words that once flowed freely, that expressed the cumulative experience of life on Earth through historical retelling, stories, songs, and conversation…dear God, conversation. How I miss the pleasure of experiencing another person’s narrative. Seeing life through their eyes, gaining the benefit of another’s perspective, having a laugh or even a cry over a shared experience. It has been so long since I have heard the sound of a voice. To be honest, I can no longer remember even the sound of my own.

You may wonder how we arrived in this place. It began, as many things do, with good intentions. With the advent of the internet, the masses were given a platform to be heard and they had a lot to say. Much like a child that finds itself with a microphone and a captive audience, the masses made a lot of noise, and not all of it was pleasant. And a lot of it was anonymous. A few took it upon themselves to police the more destructive elements. They thought to expose their ugliness to their communities. They tried to teach them a lesson about hate by creating more hate. There was once a saying that I can teach you now, and that is that two wrongs seldom make a right. This was indeed the case of the well meaning but poorly executed “social puritans.”

Throughout history people had been silenced by governments, religions, and authoritarian regimes, but this was a new phenomenon. For the first time, the people were being silenced by the people. At first many agreed with the public floggings because those affected were for the most part considered repulsive to the rest of us and it either felt well deserved or we couldn’t bring ourselves to care what happened to someone “like that.”

As partisan politics picked up on the movement, and unscrupulous media presenters saw it as an easy way to gain viewers, it grew. The people, politicians, and presenters became increasingly caught up in finding fault first in their enemies, then in anyone they could find to feed their growing appetite for righteousness. They dug into the pasts and zealously proclaimed any whisper of impropriety. They purposely took things out of context in order to inflame those that only read headlines.

They judged and shamed and demanded a one world mentality that left no room for differing opinions, ignorance, personal growth, or debate. If a word or idea had ever been expressed outside of that day's singular view, the unfortunate individual who had been caught out had their life’s work banished, their whole self deemed not worth living, a scourge of society. There were daily public statements of self-flagellation for one's ignorance begging the public’s forgiveness and asking to please be allowed to carry on in society now that they have learned the error of their ways.

This led to a white washing of ideas. Artists were afraid to create anything that would be deemed offensive. Teachers had to walk a tightrope between the truth that existed and a version that outspoken individuals on one side of the great divide found more palatable and flattering. Individuals were afraid to express even confusion on an issue for fear of being labeled and called out just for asking. Before you knew it, society began nodding along with the consensus. Silently nodding.

They did not comment, as the consensus might change and the comments would come back to haunt them. They did not openly state opinions as a recording may find its way out at the wrong time. They stopped participating, because they might ignorantly associate with a group deemed unsavory. The fear of not knowing something you should know or misunderstanding a situation that you have no reference for became so great that people retreated into smaller and smaller groups. They began communicating with gestures and pictures for fear that their tone would be taken out of context.

The unscrupulous in society feasted on the fear. They used it to divide and conquer, and the people were left with no avenue to fight back because they had lost their greatest weapon. They had lost their words.

With that loss went debate and discourse through which we learn from the lives and experiences of others and gain the benefit of a different perspective that may clarify a situation that we had not understood. We lost the ability to relate to people that are different in some ways, but the same in ways that truly matter. We lost the freedom to speak out against the things that we, as individuals, consider unjust. So in silence and fear we lost our individuality, our curiosity, our ability to know the world as it truly is, to benefit from the beauty and ideas of others, to express our own ideas. As the words faded farther and farther from memory, we lost even our own ability to formulate and express ourselves, quietly in the deepest parts of our own minds.

Into the void stepped those that had fed on the fear all along, the ones that benefited from the sound bites and misrepresentations. They split us into sides, then split those sides even further until the violence and fear so overwhelmed us that we only felt safe alone in our units. Now we see the pictures, and we believe what they show us. We watch for the symbols to know what to believe.

Those of us that remember the days of words, when words were everywhere, lament the loss of them and everything they gave. Songs, books, deep thought, inspiration, communication. Children today know nothing of these things.

But I am old now.

I have lost my fear of the world and I have a secret. I have carried my secret with me these many years tucked safely into the heart shaped locket hanging from my neck. The weight of it between my breasts has comforted me through the dark silence.

You see, as a young woman my life was dedicated to words and ideas. I was a professor of literature. I dedicated my life to words, to reading them and teaching them, to sharing the experiences and ideas written throughout history. In my classes we gained first person perspectives on war and famine, slavery and religious persecution, the norms and morays of different times and places, great achievements, love, life and joy in all things.

We went on great adventures, experienced significant loss, fought for what we believed in, and lived quiet lives of deep meditation. Words, and individuals' confidence to express them without reserve or fear of repudiation, had given us the opportunity to live all of those lives and learn all of those lessons. To discuss and debate the ideas that had been common but were now seen as outdated.

When words started to be used as weapons, there were those of us that saw the writing on the wall. Some spoke up. They were quickly labeled and struck down. The rest of us held our tongues. Instead we resisted in our own quiet ways. Some continued to teach openly but when the consensus shifted one way or the other, their materials were deemed offensive to that day's cause and they were effectively banished.

I went a different way. I feared the loss of the words I loved, so I saved them. One by one, I saved the greatest works of literature in my heart. Then some works that were less great because who am I to judge. When words began being used less and less, I saved dictionaries and encyclopedias in every language I could find. As music disappeared, I saved it too.

My work task for many years now has been to edit the pictures that play throughout your day. I apologize. I am responsible for the images that have brainwashed you for years. I worked my way through various positions to reach the one I have today. I knew there would come a day that I would be in a position to share my secret. I carry a chip with all of the words in my locket and at long last I have found the courage to set them free. I will stand up to those that used our fears, and our desire to see a better, kinder, more fair world against us. I will remind those that have their language buried deep in their minds how beautiful words can be. I will give the new generations the benefit of living life outside of themselves. I will return to them the great repository of experience of the world that can only be gotten through words.

I know that I will be imprisoned. I know that those that have sat on the neck of society will not give up without a fight, and turning the masses against me is the price I will pay.

I know this yet I open my locket for the first time in decades, and there I see the word inscribed within. I have held the image of this word in my mind, repeated it as a mantra even as many other words began to fade from memory. I held it as a beacon, and as I insert the chip into the mainframe and sent out my collection to the collective minds of mankind, I read the word aloud.

Freedom.