By What Right/Authority Do You Speak?

Some people are shocked to learn that I’m not the representative of Waikiki-Kapahulu yet feel free to represent a point of view not allowed others otherwise -- or just not exercised, so used are people to voting to give up their rights to speak for themselves, and only allowing another to speak for everyone. That is the meaning of union representation -- and how many otherwise independent, competent, educated professionals come to complain that they have no rights to speak for themselves any longer at their jobs -- because they have voted to surrender those rights, for more money -- at the price of more freedom to do their jobs and exercise their own judgment in their own best way, which is the very definition of “professionalism.”

I don’t think many people realize that subtle surrendering of those freedoms -- and why the mayor of Honolulu now insists, “You people don’t get to vote, because you voted for me to do your thinking and talking from now on,” and the opposition, is bought out, because that is the only way to succeed in that society.

Larger perspectives are therefore banished -- because it would make such insights plainly obvious. Once one has this larger perspective of human motivations and behaviors, its power to control is gone -- and the key to this freedom and right to speak with authority for oneself, is the right to be an individual, and not to limit oneself by a group identity, allowing only a properly designated official spokesperson to speak.

Increasingly in the last century, that was the trend for virtually every institution -- this insistence that there could only be one official (consensus) voice, which partly explains the explosion of the Internet in which many speak for themselves -- albeit as “anonymous aliases,” because it is still perceived to be “too dangerous” to express those understandings as who one is.

That, obviously, is the next frontier in the freedom of expression, and not simply more outrageous expressions reinforcing one’s anonymity. That is the next stage of development of virtualizing reality -- that people actually become real rather than remaining these fictitious and largely wishful perceptions of who they want to be.

The First Amendment freedom of expression, is meaningless unless one can express those views, free from the fear of retaliation and punishment -- especially for responsible and liberating speech. That is allowed for irresponsible speech and perspectives because they are largely ineffective, and the status quo will allow all that undermines the credibility of such freedoms because they do not threaten this status quo, but in nearly most cases, reinforce the legitimacy of this surrendering of one’s power to speak independently as oneself -- in exhibiting how incompetent it is to speak for itself.