Why freedom of thought is intertwined with progress, They are inseparable

Can you imagine a world that is still  dominated by white males and colonialism. Where women are still metaphorically chained to the kitchen sink? Where blacks are still segregated and or enslaved?  ISIS aside where religious freedom is denied? It is specifically because individuals throughout history have had the courage and  commitment to stand up against the grain  of conventional thinking of the time to fight for causes and issues that that gave us rights.
 
I prefer liberty with danger  than peace with slavery wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau  in the eighteenth century. For the French philosopher his continual debate was how to reconcile the individual freedom with the co-dependency we need with our fellow beings.

Communities to survive  and to evolve need to have a whole range of skills between them  from the negative as well as positive traits. At the heart of progress and evolving is the freedom of expression and thought.
 
Where would South Africa be without Nelson Mandela. He stood  up to racial inequality spending  28 years in prison to uphold his principle and bring about change.

The United States would still be mired in segregation if it were not for the civil rights movement inspired by many thinkers from Thomas Paine to George Mason who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights that influenced the Bill of Rights. Martin Luther King, was assassinated for  his beliefs and differences on how to approach that equality.
 
The road to women’s emancipation was through the  suffragettes  movement in the United Kingdom. Women chained themselves to railings at 10 Downing street , were jailed in order to claim the right for women to vote.
 
Our understanding of the movements of planets and earth are due to Galileo assertion that the earth revolved around the sun and   was not the center of the universe which was against the religious thoughts of the time. He was accused of heresy tortured and put under house arrest.

In recent times we have Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl who had the courage to fight  for the rights for women to be educated in her country. We have seen the ordinary man fight for  national independence and break away  from communism and oppressive regimes. At the roots of all these struggles is the need to express.
 
Our history is made up with thinkers, activists ,writers , philosophers and scientist who went against the traditional beliefs of the times to enhance both our knowledge and freedom of thought. All faced opposition and struggled to promote their discoveries and thinking. This allowed  us to arrive in the Western democracies to a space were the rights of the individual to be, to challenge governments , to criticize and fight for those rights be they equal pay , gay rights or freedom of religious practice.
 
Yet increasingly we are witnessing an abundance of failed states who still pursue the route of dictatorship whether its North Korea or ISIS. denying  freedom of thought or any challenge to their rule.

At the other end of the spectrum we have benign rule which is just as insidious as dictatorships. It maybe more subtle, camouflaged as pseudo democracies as in Israel . A state that has as its roots the supremacy of  one religion over another. It maybe oil rich nations that provide facilities amenities as well as opportunities for their citizens to lead an affable lifestyle yet deny freedom of expression if it involves criticism or demand for change. Nevertheless, the denial of freedom of the individual to express and criticize undermine not simply the democratic progress of these nations but more fundamentally the progress of these nations to evolve and become part of the larger world community as equals. Simply put it hampers creative thought in the larger sense, it denies accountability by the leaders for their actions and it potentially becomes an area of explosion.
 
While the Arab spring in many ways failed, it did give the impetus for ordinary individuals to understand what is possible with a struggle.  I do not in anyway support imported ideologies or enforcements. A sovereign state needs to have its own struggles from within its populace and thinkers. If women want equality in the Arab world they need to achieve it from within. It cannot be imposed any more than democracy can be.  Iraq is just one example. .Similarly the physical modernity of a state does not make it a free state and hampers its  development. It merely disguises and deceives.

Yet history has shown over and over again that denial of freedom of thoughts ultimately fails as you can not stop progress or the need to challenge what is.
 
Increasingly  we are living in a world that is moving toward exclusiveness. Brexit has as one of its underlying themes an undercurrent of fear and racism on every level of the other. Recent changes in travel bans in the States are similar. It creates a fear and judgment.  On the other hand the freedom to challenge those debates and decisions has demonstrated that strong democratic nations can and do survive challenges. Activists and journalist are not thrown in jail, nor is the media censured because it offers differing views. The government is held to account.
 
The fear of criticism, change and challenge impedes a nations ability to reflect, to understand and to move forward.  It isolates it from the future. There is no single absolute  definitive way to achieve balance, equity and  justice  for all. Each nation has  its own history culture  that needs to be  embraced but there is a principle of both equity and equality. It is the very nature of us people to want to have stability and control of our choices.

The denial of freedom  to express, lobby, criticize,  debate and demand change from our governments would mean that we would still be living in a world without technology, art, fair play  inclusiveness diversity. A very dark world.