Occupy Cleveland, the homespun spin-off of Occupy Wall Street that began here on October 6, will wrap up its second full week by pulling up stakes and squatting elsewhere. Its ramshackle row of tents has outgrown the sidewalk across from the northwest quadrant of Public Square, so Friday it will begin a move into the quadrant itself. Whether that move goes off smoothly remains to be seen.
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2011.
The physical space which we occupy has little to do in today’s world of electronic communicaton.
We as individuals are more cyber than physical where our thoughts are concerned. Just as our leaders are on TV or the radio or live net, we as regular people have the same opportunities to occupy the waves of media.
It will not be all that long until holographic images of our bodies will represent us in physical space. We will have most of the benefits of 3-d communication, yet greatly reduced danger. This will make people more likely to speak their mind without bodily harm or intimidation playing a part. Kind of like I am doing now. I am not in fear that someone who hates what I say will demand my silence, as they have done throughout my life as a physical body interacting in public. You will one day not be able to tell the difference between a holographic projection and the real body.
Never before was free speech so easy and safe. Even though these blogs are often filled with hate oriented messages of attack on a party or religion or belief system or race or gender or culture or sub-culture, that is all just part of the growing and sorting out of ideas. That we can freely test our ideas on others is the beauty of free speech. We always seek truth together and abandon that which has no value, no truth.