ISLAMABAD:
Not all who wander are lost. This line from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings may resonate with many doing their own thing, following their heart and speaking their mind, at least in the realm of dreams.
Yet, one wonders whether such freedom really exists? Are we as free as we think to be? Or are we mere puppets with our strings being pulled?
Reflecting over the idea of free speech and whether it should be regulated, the Socrates Café met up in the hushed ambience of Kuch Khaas on Tuesday.
Hassan Bajwa, the facilitator, explained the fortnightly talk sessions as a platform for public dissent. Why Socrates Café though? “Plagiarism!” he joked, saying the idea was derived from the book of the same name, written by Christiphor Phillips in the US.
The idea was inspired by groups of people questioning and questioning to learn or discuss things that mattered to them. In their search for truth and meaning, the conversations are at once refreshing, humorous, troubling, confusing, encouraging, depressing, and provocative.
Likewise, the topic invited diverse ideas and raised many questions. What decides the limits of our freedom? Who is to legislate it? From the hierarchy of a patriarchal system at family and national level, international laws and philosophic meanderings did the rounds. While radical elements exist, they should not hurt a person or violate their beliefs.
From Pastor Terry Jones’s extreme action of desecration of the Quran to a common man on the street, facts became interpretations. The meeting discussed technology as a tool to express opinions freely, something unheard of just 50 years ago. And how to not land up in a Salman Rushdie-esque situation. “There are so many Salman Rushdies just in Pakistan inciting hatred, fuelled by foreign interests,” one of the speakers pointed out.
Freedom of speech might be relative to cultures and traditions, it was discussed. In the microcosm of Pakistan, defining what’s acceptable is a top-down phenomenon, from individual to family to state level, influenced by factors of military, feudal lords and other governing systems.
As with all dissent of philosophy, there were no concrete conclusions. Only philosophising and exchange of knowledge, as Socrates, the inaugurator of the Western philosophical tradition, would have it.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2011.
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