John Stuart Mill: Can We Create A Greater Society?

In the age of the Internet personal liberty in speech and thought needs to be left with as little amount of censoring as possible. We see this increased call for censorship because as a society, you see a greater intolerance for truths that go against other people’s beliefs. Like John Stuart Mill, I believe that by maximizing personal liberty of speech we will create a greater society because we will all be free to discuss our views and hear the ones against us to further develop ideas and information. There is not a definite opinion. Truths change on a daily basis because new arguments can be found at any given time. In his book Mill says, “To refuse a hearing to an opinion.. is to assume their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.” (Mill page 23) We can’t just assume we are right, because it is not possible to prove with one hundred percent …show more content…
People should have the right to think through ideas and come to honest, intellectual decisions. If we try to take that right away, it can create a mass population driven by ignorance. On page 40 Mill says, “in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much as the rival of bigotry… permanent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people.” He is trying to say that by trying to stop the flow of information we create an intolerance of our own people. I don’t believe that we should censor information because we need to have everyone acknowledge that opinion exists and also help come up with a solution. It should be left up to the people to decide what action should be taken. Censoring our thoughts creates distrust within oneself. If we can’t discuss what we are thinking we cannot validate that our thoughts are true. By not validating those thoughts there is no way for society to know if the thoughts a person is having are harmful to themselves or even another person. This leaves the point of censoring invalid because instead of avoiding violence we created more