Week 6 Blog

 Stable Change: The Necessary Expression Value

As I glance over the eight values of free expression, the one that resonates with me the most, as well as reflected within our society today, is stable change. Since under the first amendment we are given the right to petition and protest (peaceably), us citizens have direct access in communicating with the government to voice our concerns. In addition, this freedom allows for people to express their anger in a professional manner, as opposed to destroying government property or leading to a revolution. As Benedict Spinoza points out, it enables the government to also conduct surveillance on potentially dangerous groups/organizations. 

The reason why I value this free expression over the other seven is because I am a person that likes to vent and get my emotions out of my system so I can feel better. Bottling up any emotion, in this case I am assuming anger, is unhealthy and will lead to drastic measures being taken especially if these emotions are forced by the government to be bottled. Imagine if neither the Republicans or the Democrats had the ability to yell at each other and their communities the issues they have with each other. These disputes lead to people realizing the issues related to not having civil discourse, thus resulting in a completely divided America. Let's take a look at the social climate of Instagram. 

 Instagram has a seemingly endless amount of political accounts from the extremest-left to the alt-right. The photo above this section is taking from the account POPlitics, a populist account with a lean-conservative ideology that views pop culture objectively. In accordance, the descriptions under each image generally have some form of anger relief, such as calling someone an idiot for their beliefs, spouting how much the government has failed us in letting Hollywood do specific things, and general rants about celebrity culture. This channel not only lets themselves get their anger out but, but creates a safe environment for people with similar views to express their anger about topics, as well as people on the opposing side to combat the opinion expressed. I personally believe channels like this are extremely important for the political climate in America, so long as the opinions expressed are constructive and presented in a professional manner. In a time where sharing one's political opinion could ruin not only relationships, but a career, it is important to break this developing ideology of "my opinion is the only opinion that is right, and anyone that disagrees with me is wrong/stupid". The only way this can be achieved is through civil discourse and open discussion.

 

Relating stable change to recent events, the obvious example would be the black lives matter protests found all over America at the moment. Specifically, the recent decision on the court case with Breonna Taylor, this article tells us that the cop accused of murdering her was not convicted on the charge of murder, but on "three counts of wanton endangerment for firing rounds during a raid that went into neighboring apartments (Paul Best)". As a result of this decision, people are tweeting about how they feel as if their voice is not being heard by the government, and thus are resulting to destructive actions in order to spark some form of justice for Breonna. The protests are beginning to escalate as armed guards are making their way down in downtown Louisville, riot police are having to push back the mob of people trying to get past their barricade, and several arrests are being made on assault charges. What we can see here with direct relation to stable change, in that as a result of people's anger not being heard, acknowledged, and blatantly told wrong by the decision, people are resulting to violence in order make themselves heard. As I have said above, this is why it is important to provide an outlet for these people to release their pent up aggression. One may argue that these violent actions are only done by the minority of protestors, and that because others are able to freely express their opinions, the amount of peaceful protests greatly outnumbers the amount of violent rioting because of this case. Since the case is so recent, it is hard to say what will happen, but my prediction is that the majority of people will peaceably protest since they have the right to voice their concerns and distaste for the American legal system, yet the minority will still cause property damage and and destruction to the public.