Why Free Thought and Expression are Essential?

This is a part of the article series that I will be writing, titled "My Free Thought and Expression Advocacy". This series will tackle and explain the human right to freely express thoughts, the challenges it faces and its supposed limitations.

Anthony Canales-Ranque

Article 19 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights tells us that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” There is, however, a question that needs to be answered first: “Why are free thought and free expression essential that the state should not broadly stifle it?”

People make sense of their surroundings by thinking through language—verbal and non-verbal words. The proof of this is that we make stories about our surroundings beyond what we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell, as well as how we make sense of what we sense or what we feel differently. And by making sense of it is we organize our thoughts and ourselves and also the community where we belong. Moreover, people make sense of morality using language.

Without words, it is impossible to differentiate good and evil, of what are the things that contribute to or cause the downfall of society. Censoring the free flow of information can cause damage to democracy. Imagine, one morning and raining hard in which the rain symbolises the information and the dam is the receiver and the one that will share the water. If we close the dam in which the information will go free, there will be a huge possibility that the dam will destroy itself by closing itself and not sharing the information with a larger portion of society. So if the democracy closes itself in receiving and giving information, it will be a dam that will be destroyed because of closing itself.

And we can see that in the Soviet Union’s history when Joseph Stalin sided and favoured one scientist in the name of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko to solve the famine. Other scientists who made theories on how to solve the famine got arrested, gunned down, and removed from their positions, the laboratories were shut down. And we shouldn’t be surprised that the result of this stifling the free expression of the scientists that didn’t win the favour in the eyes of Stalin got the famine worse. Millions of people died of hunger because of food shortage caused by the unquestioned thought that led to a failed experiment.

And it means that it is very important to question, scrutinize, make fun, critique any ideas it may be about any field for the knowledge to grow, will be fruitful, and the one ridiculous idea may be soon rooted in logic and facts by challenging its structure intensively.###