Everything is relative and everybody lives in relativism. People, relatively speaking, would like to live in places where they can freely speak their minds without getting negative consequences. That's a fact. You need to get out of your own bubble.
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- Thread starter wilburbear
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Everything is relative and everybody lives in relativism. People, relatively speaking, would like to live in places where they can freely speak their minds without getting negative consequences. That's a fact. You need to get out of your own bubble.
Yes, Singapore is wonderful in that you say the wrong thing and might end up in jail for a long time. Any society that penalizes speech is a primitive one, no matter how much economic prosperity there is.
You seem to be focusing on US for whatever reason, there's plenty of countries in Europe who are as free or free-er than US in this aspect.
Not in Asia, most seem to be desperate for dictators. They have this false idea that they themselves are good people and dictators only go after the "bad people". In reality of course that lines is completely gray and they regret their decisions later on.
No, people want to live in places where they feel safe to exist, to walk about their surroundings and work to earn a living. You might want to review Maslow.
That's not true at all. I did witness many sites requiring proof of identity to comment and these sites have absolutely no-one commenting. Threatening people with legal action for opinions just means people will move to other venues.
Many Asian countries are on a completely different level. Being critical of certain politicians means your license will be suspended. You basically have to praise the leadership, no matter how corrupt, or just be quiet. I'll take American "over-opinionation" any day over that.
What's your point? Dictatorships will have you arrested for many valid or invalid reasons, online or offline, be it China, Russia, most of Africa, Venezuela and half a dozen other countries. Nothing new there. All you're doing is using a strawman to state that American "over opinionated" is fine.
In democracies one should take responsibility for their actions, including posting online. We'd have far less vitriolic nonsense online and perhaps we would start mending our differences without going out and shooting people.
This is not just Asia but with the entire Eastern region including the Middle East, Eastern Europe and even Africa to some degree. What I am about to say is not prejudicial, stereotypical or racist as these are just my personal observation and they are in no way judgemental in that just because they have the traits as what I am about to describe, they are necessarily good or bad. And I understand there are exceptions to the rule always but what I am about to say is what I observe generally in the two cultures.
I find that the people from the "East" tend to embrace order and security more. I don't know if this is due to personality or something else but they seem to naturally prefer rules and norms, something that's reliable and when you have preferences for rules and something reliable, nothing is more reliable than having a strong leader, a father figure watching over you, taking care of you but at the same time telling you what to do. Whereas I find the Western culture is more adventurous, innovative, and constantly seeking out new things, new ways of doing things. And because of these traits, western culture tends to be more explorative, less satisfied with the status quo and in a way more rebellious. And when a culture in general has these traits, they would prefer to be more individualistic and have more say about their lives and with a less preference, relatively (@VicBee's favourite word) speaking, for a strong leader watching over them. Even though Western culture still would like to have a father figure like God in Christianity but this God figure has evolved to be more for spiritual guidance and moral compass now rather than someone that has a strong hold on their lives and even dictate their everyday lives. I mean how else would you explain it that both cultures started off with dictatorship regimes and yet after just several hundred years, the majority of the countries of Western culture would embrace a democratic system where a leader is chosen collectively by its citizens and the majority of the countries of eastern culture are still stuck with dictatorship regimes? And even for the countries that have a democratic system, their "flavour" of the democratic system like in the country of Singapore is still different from the democratic system of the West. It has a parliament and an election system but everything is still centrally decided by one person or a very small group of people and the treatment of dissidents, of anybody who criticizes the government is still very harsh.
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Risk?? There shouldn't be any risks for speaking up against something that one feels is not right or could improve the lives of all if one is practicing true democracy. Of course you are right, America is getting closer and closer to being a dictatorship. What can you expect when you have a president whose family business is in a country with the most autocratic regime?