Week #11

I believe that the most important value of free expression was the fourth value: individual, self fulfillment. I think the idea of individual, self fulfillment is so important because without our individualism through free speech none of the other speech theories would happen. I think that our free speech forms who we are, if you want to be someone who rivals the status quo you are more than able to participate in protests. If you want to use your free speech to express yourself through a movie or a song you can do that. If you wanted to go on youtube and voice your opinions on how the government is corrupt to millions of people you can do that because you are able to express yourself through the use of free speech. I think that this is the most inspiring to me because as a young age you are told how unique you are and how you have to make your mark on this world and what better way to do so then to express yourself. You always see on the news how people’s actions are what makes their mark, like Steve Jobs creating the Iphone or Mark Zucerberg creating Facebook but I think the most important actions come in the form of words. Just look at the millions of different stories that come in the form of a book, I think that we need people like Elon Musk who lets their actions speak for them but we need those like J R R Tolkein who puts their ideas and their imagination into words on a piece of paper that helps us all imagine. I think that this is the most important speech theory to me because I think like everyone here we all want to place our mark on this world, we all want to make it big but this speech is how we separate ourselves. No one wants to do the same as the person next to them. We all want to be known as the person who did “this” or “that” and our individual fulfillment helps us do his by separating ourselves from everyone else by making us unique. The last thing I wanted to touch on is what is the most underrated speech theory, that would be number 7 promote tolerance. Especially in recent years tolerance has become one of the more important virtues we as society need to learn patience and tolerance when it comes to people voicing their opinions, especially online. Everyone is so ready to voice their opinions and it also seems we have become more “sensitive” in recent years so it is easy for us to become offended by someone’s ideals and then in turn insult them or in the worst case scenario do harm to them.