A Hyde Park in Every Town?

He got up and read some poetry he had written with some fierce and suggestive lines. But before that, he had something to say that made us sit up and pause.

At Writers' Night in Sturgeon Bay, you get about ten minutes to read either essays or poems. The crowd is supportive and largely empathetic; many of them know the kind of chutzpah it takes to display your wares in front of a live audience.

This fellow's approach, though, was a little different. Keeping in tone with recent developments, he opened his remarks by saying that he wondered whether or not it was still all right to say what was on his mind any longer, in a country that had begun to abandon that watchword. A fear had crept up inside of him.

Oh, nothing's been said about limiting people's speech, at least not yet by the overbearing, excessively stupid regime that we have somehow elected. But we all know it's capable of trying it; 47's attacks on undesirable press indicate that all too well. And it's not too excessive to believe that the pressing thumb of authoritarianism and creeping tyranny is within the scope of possibility. If that's what the gentleman meant, he might have been expressing what the rest of us now wonder about.

I had never heard anyone discuss that before in this country, though, and I've been around this country a few times not that long ago, saying pretty much whatever in the hell I wanted. Nowhere, at no time, have I or anyone else ever wondered whether they'd be muzzled from what was supposed to be free expression. But the fact that, upon mere observation, this fellow could come to that conclusion is a danger of which we should take note.

Free expression is America, simple as that. If ideas, however distasteful, cannot be aired publicly, the moment will come when airing them privately might expose someone to penalties as well. At that moment, America will be dead. Laws will not be passed due to open conversation about their possibilities; they will be forced upon us by someone who thinks they know better.

When that happens, self-government disappears. The contentment that comes from understanding that, regardless of what side you're on, you had an equal chance to affect public affairs will be robbed from us as surely as a pickpocket would come and take our money without our knowing of it. We will lose an important part of our individual originality, the sign of what it is to be unique human beings.

So there must be a place in which to engage in opinions and information which cannot be altered or cancelled. The British have one: the Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London, a place I attended some forty years ago. According to a website devoted to The Royal Parks, it was established as a send-down from the tradition of the condemned who wished to make some final statement before being hanged. It became a social event and went on for nearly 600 years before hangings became non-public.

The real creation of public speaking in London, though, came from women, namely those belonging to the Reform League in demand of the franchise. They would hold marches and protests normally terminating in Hyde Park with applicable speeches. In 1866, one of these marches resulted in the entrance to Hyde Park being chained shut. Three days of rioting followed. The next year, a crowd of 150,000 formed and the police didn't intervene this time. The Home Secretary resigned the next day, and in 1872, Parliament passed the Parks Regulation Act, officially establishing the right to utilize Hyde Park's Speakers Corner as a place for free discussion, legalizing what had already become true.

Was it supposed to be completely anarchical? Well, no. The police were there the same day I attended to keep order and prevent the speaker's words from being "illegal," whatever that means. Actually, the speaking area of Hyde Park officially extends far beyond the Speakers' Corner, but it's the place people normally congregate. It's also still used for public demonstrations and rallies. On Women's Day, June 21, 1908, 250,000 women marched to the park to hear speeches from 20 different places within it. The police banned the Women's Social and Political Union from meeting in the park in 1913, but the suffragettes ignored it.

Among those who have stood there to express themselves have been Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and George Orwell. Orwell marveled at the opportunity for people like "Indian nationalists, temperance reformers, Communists, Trotskyists, freethinkers, vegetarians, the Salvation Army, and a large variety of plain lunatics" to exercise their free speech rights. About a hundred speaking places were found weekly on London street corners between 1855 and 1939. Speakers' Corner is the last to survive.

Speakers and crowds tend to gather there on Sundays now. The listeners don't stand idly, either; if they have something to shout back at the speaker, they help themselves. Such happened when I was there. The speaker, who had brought his own stepstool, had some nasty things to say about homosexuals, and some in the crowd fought back in defending them. 

It had the effect of reducing the impact of what the speaker had to say. It's another place where free speech can be claimed but the responsibility and consequences of which can neither be predicted nor necessarily approved. Such is its benefit; you learn that as deeply as you believe in what you might say, as logical as it may occur to you, it isn't the only opinion on God's green earth. And you must respect what comes your way on account of it without committing violence, or orderly society as we know it will be dashed.

I wonder whether we can establish such freedom in this society, so the above mentioned fellow need not worry about whether he will have the opportunity to expound his ideas. Most towns, large and small, that I know have at least one public park in it. Would it be too much to ask for a small part of it to be carved out for the purposes of unfettered, guaranteed public discussion? Would that mean that public discussion elsewhere within its boundaries would be, by implication, curtailed if the police think it necessary? Would that work at cross purposes? Or would it calm people down and keep them from the tension that removing civil and human rights causes? Would such an arrangement also need a "no solicitation" warning nailed to a nearby tree, limiting the free market in favor of free speech?

The police here in America would have to be just as wary about protecting the speakers themselves than they would about "illegal" speech. Wherever you find free expression now, there is always fierce pushback that sounds increasingly ugly and threatening. The common phraseology about that is that it provides a "safety valve" and allows people with edgy, controversial philosophies to get what's bothering them off their minds to no or little real effect. 

But I wonder: Would that be where it ends now, with an actual attack on our U.S. Capital lurking in the background, many of its perpetrators now pardoned by a political monster? Will they then get away with masquerading as purveyors of "free speech," when it actually was an assault on democracy? In the name of democracy, would a Speakers' Corner in every town serve to ruin what democracy actually means?

Hard to say. The need for maintaining political speech could beget efforts to contain, and thus reduce and/or control it. In 1791, the states chose to codify what the republic was supposed to stand for by passing the First Amendment. They understood that, in order for liberty under law to properly function, a wide berth must be given for allowing ideas to flow and be exchanged, popular or otherwise. 

I find it stunning that someone might need to suggest that the places for that expression previously provided--practically everywhere--might be closed here and there. Would we instead have to guarantee such discussion in carefully outlined territories? The edge of that cliff is still in the distance. But we can see it from here.

Mister Mark

How Come One Is Famous While the Other One Isn't?

I couldn't just absorb the moment, though I wanted to sit there and do just that. I had to think quickly, and gratefully, I did. But the reason I had to do so is still pretty astonishing.

Luckily for someone who loves books, I live one block from probably the best and most attended independent bookstore in all of Milwaukee--Boswell Books. Like so many other businesses, it had to crawl through Covid, another ship tottering without help on the horizon. But it stayed afloat.

One of the surest signs of this is that, after months of online presentations, it has gotten back to the habit of inviting authors for live conversations about their work. Another one of those arrived the other night, when a Japanese-born professor, Shigehiro Oishi, came to hawk his work Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. As far along in life as I now am, I've been through enough experiences to deep questions to myself: What makes a 'good' life? What constitutes 'happiness'? Is that even worth pursuing? Or is it something else that should spur us on?

Oishi is a professor of social psychology at the University of Chicago, one of those credentials that leaves you with one thought: Hooooo. Pretty sharp cookie. What he explored in his work, apparently, was what he called a "psychologically rich life"--one in which curiosity, a variety of experiences, and a sense of doing good for others keep one actively involved in the business of enjoyable living.

He has found, for instance, that the 19th Century Webster's Dictionary did not define "happiness" in terms of material success or the need to achieve something. That shading of definition has morphed into that direction in the next century, the one from which we've emerged. If you keep that in the front of your mind, he says, you find yourself in a trap from which you may not escape: the need to make more money and be more famous, regardless of how you may have already 'succeeded.'

What I thought, and still think he was trying to do, is to tell folks to keep it all in perspective--that other things, like helping people and maintaining a positive influence on them, are far better things to try to live for (which is a large part of what teaching as a calling and profession has always been about, whether paid for it or not). Such thinking isn't all that new, but perhaps his research is; I have to read the work now and discover what "evidence" he's developed.

All of this was kind of fun to listen to him extrapolate. His Japanese accent was evident, but not overwhelming; I kept thinking that a lecture from him might be fascinating to listen to. No doubt, either, that he must still be giving lectures; he didn't look much over 40. I got immersed into the discussion when a question occurred to me. I was the last one to be recognized before we broke up and allowed him to sell and autograph his book.

I wanted to know, in a way that might probably expose an obvious (slightly politically charged, too) answer, so I raised my hand and asked: Who had (has) the more fulfilling life--Elon Musk, or Albert Schweitzer? An admired humanitarian and religious philosopher, Schweitzer never seemed to focus on personal fame or profit, and helped thousands of west Africans through various diseases in the period between the world wars. Everyone knew who he was, I thought. That's why I used his name.

But Oishi thought he heard Schweitzer's name wrong, that I was referring to someone else. I repeated it. He gazed at the crowd and his wife in confusion. I thought it was an amazing moment: A professor at the University of Chicago, a social scientist to boot, didn't know who Albert Schweitzer was.

I gave him a path out of embarrassment. I quickly changed the comparison to Mohandas Gandhi, and he recovered. But you can't unring a bell. I wasn't trying to ambush him; I thought it was a softball question, something he was driving at all along. And, in fact, he riffed on how Musk is probably already caught in the success 'trap,' and someday that will occur to him.

That was fine, but--Wait a minute...I had indirectly brought up a new but tangentially applicable question: What makes people 'famous'? This very learned person had no clue about Albert Schweitzer and immediately knew Mohandas Gandhi, who lived roughly at the same time and had hopes for humanity, much like the (apparently) lesser-known but well-regarded Schweitzer. In fact, Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 (You can look that up). Given that award, Schweitzer should be more highly regarded, right? Gandhi was nominated for the Peace Prize five times (which I bet is a record), but never won it (amazingly).

Was it because Schweitzer lived 90 years and died a natural death, while Gandhi was assassinated and lionized in literature and film? Was it because that, while Schweitzer was a controversial religious philosopher at one point, much like Gandhi, he didn't try to merge two intense religious sects together? Is that what makes the best example of active living? Is that what makes people more memorable?

Or, in a sendup of the future, is Schweitzer doomed to the shoebox of lesser-knowns, even though he doesn't deserve such a fate? Is that because he did his work on the perpetually forgotten continent, Africa, the wealth and vibrance of which has never been sufficiently recognized here because it prompts the follow-up question: Then how come we enslaved so many of its inhabitants and had to fight a bloody war to free them?

Should we give Oishi a break, though, seeing as how he understandably has a greater residence of memory in Japan? If you became a professor in Tokyo, wouldn't you forget about, or never be informed about, others who gained significant fame because Schweitzer had little to do with the U.S.? But Mohandas Gandhi had little to do with the U.S., either.

As we move through time, certain names resonate while others just as deserving somehow fade. Some are occasionally resurrected, and the rush to remember surges for a while. We build statues to them. We also leave statues up when they should be torn down. What is recognized as shining history is often the function of who is in a power position to voice that shining, or how well it is done. That is why, for instance, the 1619 Project has never really gotten off the ground, because some racial chauvinists insist on making a 1776 Project to obscure it. The overly dramatized "lost cause" of the Confederacy flicks at emotional attachment that is attractive to encourage perpetual victimization, yet not deserved. Some statues of Robert E. Lee remain up, while others come down.

We are somehow still confused by treason, attended to by those determined to shape memory. Perhaps a statue devoted to the rioters of January 6 (a date which no longer needs a specific year to underline its importance, like September 11) will also go up at Mar-A-Lago. Many of us cringe at that possibility, but its leader was elected president twice. He has already made it a point to direct schools not to include the teaching of diversity, equality, and inclusivity in their history courses. 

Is it ridiculous to imagine a world that forgot that? It's possible in a world that has forgotten Albert Schweitzer.

Be well. Be careful. Resist, regardless of how futile it seems. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark