Censorship in a materialist world — by Mattias Desmet

 My dear friends,

A long time ago but I am still here. Two weeks ago I learned on one and the same day that the LinkedIn account of Jakobien Huysman (producer of the Headwind series) and the Facebook page of Alain Grootaers (also a producer of the Headwind series) was permanently removed, that Dutch comedian Hans Teeuwen was visited by six policemen for making a satirical movie about a pro-Palestian rally in Amsterdam, that Martin Kulldorf was fired as a Harvard professor for his criticial stance during the corona crisis, and that Belgian right wing politician Dries Van Langenhove got a one year prison sentence for allowing racist memes to circulate in a  WhatsApp group. What do all these sanctioned acts have in common? They are linguistic acts —acts of speech. When you consider the rise of censorship within its broader cultural context, you notice something remarkable: Society is in the grip of the materialist view on man and the world, which reduces the entire realm of speech and consciousness to a meaningless side product of biochemical processes in our brain.

Man thinks, feels and speaks, but that doesn’t really matter. He is a heap of flesh and bones and from the biochemical simmering in his braincase some thoughts and feelings emerge – God knows why. And from time to time, the machine rattles and creaks a bit and the mouth of the human being expels some noise. This noise turns out to be evolutionarily useful. It allows the efficient exchange of information and that confers an advantage in the struggle to survive. That’s why the human being has continued to speak.

This is how the materialist worldview explains the field of speech and consciousness, this is how it degrades the realm of the Mind and the Soul.  

Nevertheless, this materialist society, which reduces consciousness and speech to a negligible side effect, is in the first place scared of … speech and consciousness. It tries to control thoughts and feelings through indoctrination and propaganda and with censorship it tries to keep the field of speech in an iron choke hold. This ‘velvet glove totalitarianism’ is very real. Every time we use the internet or the social media it steers our mind through state-controlled search engines and AI-generated algorithms; through machine learning each and every dissident narrative is mapped and its most influential representers are identified and inhibited; it recruits tens of thousands of ‘digital first responders’ to ridiculize and criminalize everyone who doesn’t conform to the state ideology, and so on.

The essence of the crises of our time is this: the materialist-rationalist view on man and the world that forms the basis of our society has its best days behind it. While it’s manifesting in it’s most extreme and pure technocratic-transhumanist form in our society today, it demonstrates at the same time that it is not the destiny humanity has been hoping for. To the contrary, this ideology begs to be left behind and replaced by a new perspective on the human being. 

And within that new perspective, the act of speech will be reappreciated as the most fundamental act man can engage in. I said it many times: in the face of what happens today in our society, remaining silent is not an option. We have to speak out. Yet we can speak in many different ways.

I won’t say I know everything about it, but one thing I believe I can say: the kind of speech that truly offers a perspective for humanity, is not so much a kind of speech that tries to convince; it is a kind of speech that testifies to something you feel inside, that reaches out to the other and tries to share the most vulnerable inner experiencing. ‘Everything that is valuable, is vulnerable’ (Lucebert).

True speech emerges from a place hidden behind the harness of our outer ideal image, from a place hidden behind the veil of appearances. If there is one way to define what Truth is, then is that it is a kind of speech which penetrates time and time again through what I call the veil of appearances.

Indeed, good speech testifies to something, it testifies to something in the human being and in life that is more beautiful and pure than mere flesh and bones and biochemical simmering in a braincase.

I believe that it is first and formemost this kind of speech which nourishes humanity, in particular in times where speaking out can get you removed from social media, bereaved of a job and an income, or thrown in prison.

Mattias