My youngest brother lives and works abroad.\u00a0 It\u2019s cool for him because he gets to travel all over the world, and he\u2019ll often call me from different countries to let me know what\u2019s going on in his life.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun for him because it gives him someone to share his adventures with, but it\u2019s also fun for me because . . . well, I love messing with his head.<\/p>\n
You see, my brother is more than a little bit paranoid, and for whatever reason, he believes that while he\u2019s jet setting across the globe, his cell phone calls are most likely monitored.\u00a0 If not by the CIA, then probably some foreign entity who wants to keep track of him to make sure he\u2019s not some sort of super spy.\u00a0 (Trust me, he\u2019s not.\u00a0 I love my brother, but he\u2019s got nothing on James Bond.)<\/p>\n
He loves it when I bring up the Dali Lama, while he\u2019s traveling in China.\u00a0 He enjoys it almost as much as when I chant, \u201cWhat do we want? Oppression!\u00a0 When do we want it?\u00a0 Now!\u201d\u00a0 I can tell I\u2019m helping because he rarely calls from China anymore.<\/p>\n
Now everything I just wrote . . . absolute gospel truth.\u00a0 And yes, I know I\u2019m a bit of a dick to my brother, but honestly, it\u2019s the only way I know how to interact with the world, so at this point, I just go with it.\u00a0 But when I think about these interactions, I\u2019m sometimes surprised to find a shred of sentiment at their base.\u00a0 For whatever reason, when my brother starts to get nutty about whether or not someone\u2019s listening in on his phone conversations, it flips this little switch inside my head that makes me want to give a big middle finger to anyone who has an opinion about what I can or cannot say.<\/p>\n
I am a believer in the \u201cmarketplace of ideas.\u201d\u00a0 You should be free to express and believe whatever ideas you so choose, but you should also have the freedom to partake of the ideas of others.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m not na\u00efve enough to think that every idea in the marketplace will be a great one.\u00a0 Just cruise around the internet for about five minutes, and you\u2019ll see there\u2019s a whole lot of chaff out there mixed in with the wheat.\u00a0 But the point is the ideas, the philosophies, the beliefs, they\u2019re all out there for you to find and judge as you see fit.<\/p>\n
When it comes to your own writing, the only thing that should shape your message is your own beliefs.\u00a0 Sophisticated or not, ugly or not, those beliefs are you, and they inform your view of the world.\u00a0 And that view, that personality, that voice, is what you have to offer the world, so you need to get on with the business of figuring out who you are.<\/p>\n
A word of caution here: while I am urging you to be yourself and let your multicolored freak flag fly, please understand that this freedom of expression is a two-way street.\u00a0 Some thoughts and ideas you\u2019ll want to share with the world will not be all that popular, and that\u2019s something\u00a0you’ll have\u00a0to learn to deal with.\u00a0 Being willing to broadcast your message to the world also means you accept that sometimes people will think you\u2019re a tool or an asshole or even a low-grade sociopath, and they have every right to say it.<\/p>\n
The only gatekeeper in the world today should be you, but choose your words wisely.\u00a0 Understand yourself, understand your message, and understand the ramifications of what it is you\u2019re trying to say.\u00a0 If you\u2019re at peace with all those things, then lock and load my friend.\u00a0 Praise and scorn are just around the corner, and they can\u2019t wait to roll your ass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My youngest brother lives and works abroad.\u00a0 It\u2019s cool for him because he gets to travel all over the world, and he\u2019ll often call me from different countries to let me know what\u2019s going on in his life.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun for him because it gives him someone to share his adventures with, but it\u2019s also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[438,668],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-free-speech","tag-marketplace-of-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}