Essay- Freedom at the cost of responsibility

Simply, words are power. Power is never without cost. We pay in responsibility.

Words are the vectors of our ideas and the bedrock of our cultures. They give our economies of thought currency. But those words are not and should not be free. The ultimate power in our world is in words. Where we give literacy willingly, we also expect the holder of such power to pay it respect, and to bear the responsibility of its many uses.

The cost of words is not one of crude barter or expense nor one of equity; it is one of responsibilty. The act of speaking is indeed an action and the choice of words can also trigger a call to action. The power of speaking to enthrall and command, to coerce and mobilize is an act that should have checks.

One should be free to speak one's mind to any who would listen. With that freedom comes a duty to recognise that speech is at every turn an interaction between two or more people. One to speak and one or more to interpret those words. Understand that words do not simply vanish once their meaning has made it across the gap.

We often create structures to protect our most vulnerable. Unfortunately, some of us are deeply susceptible to the power of words. We are easily swayed more by the tone of voice than the actual words. They sound correct and keep with logic. Even the best of us have biased our minds to grasp willingly at the first thing that sounds right. The charm and thrill in a pleasurable sounding voice can reach right past our critical faculties to our base emotions. The glib subvert resistance. I often wonder how much it is our own sensitivities over a speaker's talent that drive us to believe their words. I suppose that would be a matter weighed by each individual.

Even from a young age we are taught that our words should be carefully chosen. Should we find that we have caused harm to someone by our words and behavior, we are corrected. As we grow we find more limits to our freedoms. At work we are bound by the workplace culture to be responsible for our actions and words. While we are still free to speak our minds, so is our workplace free to choose whether to continue associating or not, based entirely on those freely spoken words. Even our public life is limited. We are not free from responsibility should we publicly defame people, or verbally abuse them. We are certainly not free to incite violence or threaten harm.

Our words even bear this responsibility in our private lives. We should not lie to those we love, and we shouldnt abuse with our words.

I would like to believe an idyllic world is possible where we have this true freedom, but sadly that world is fantasy. It would require every single one of us to be capable of an impossible level of personal responsibility.