“They verbally attacked each another with Mao’s quotations, making cynical use of his guru-like elusiveness – It was easy to select a quotation of Mao to suit any situation, or even both sides of the same argument.”
From “Wild Swans,” by Jung Chang
I once had a friend who said that poor people should not be allowed to have children. “In that way,” he said, “The number of poor people will slowly be reduced.”
This friend of mine now works in a bank. Should someone who has said such a controversial thing be allowed to keep his job? Shouldn’t the bank fire him for his unacceptable opinions?
No, they shouldn’t. It would be especially harsh to fire my friend for his opinion of poor people, because he said it when he was about 13 years old. He has probably changed his mind since then.
The trouble is that nowadays 13 year olds’ opinions are recorded on Twitter, or other social networks. And when they apply for a job ten years later, their most stupid childhood comments may still be visible. The same is true not just for children, but for adults too. Maybe in the past people could get away with saying stupid things after having a few too many alcoholic drinks. Now if they post a stupid comment on the internet after drinking a bottle of wine, the message may haunt their life forever more.
Even if you say something that is not very controversial, it is easy for another person to take what you have written out of context, to twist the apparent meaning into something else. I remember reading in the book “Wild Swans,” which describes life in Mao’s China, how dangerous a time it was for writers or poets. They could be attacked so easily for what they had written.
A poet might write about how beautiful a sunset was. Then one of his enemies would attack him, saying that the poet really meant that he hated communism and Mao. The beautiful sunset actually represented the pre-communist era, and the poet was sad that this beautiful era had ended. Soon the poet was in a prison camp, or worse.
If we are not careful, in our own society
too it will become too dangerous for anyone to share their opinions, or even to
write poetry. People must be allowed to
take risks with words.
Vocabulary:
verbally – with words
a guru – a kind of teacher, especially a
religious leader or cult leader
elusiveness – a quality of being difficult
to catch or capture
to get away with something – to do
something without being punished for it
for something to haunt you – for something
to be an ongoing source of strong regret (eg. “The accident still haunts me
after ten years.”)
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