“We’re in a world where people are having their reputations destroyed and careers threatened for tweets they sent as teenagers” Said Sam Harris during an interview [1]. Let that idea sink a bit more: everyone is prone to become a has-been by cause of something they expressed [2]. Isn’t that staggering?
Picture this: someone goes to an interview —which no one demanded him to do at the first place, and starts to talk about his past, specifically about something he did which he’s are not proud at all. Next thing that happens is everyone coming at him calling names and forbidding him to be part of the public realm anymore.
That’s exactly what happened with Liam Neeson when he was part of an interview done by The Independent [3] where he, in a very brave and honest manner, opened himself up to a very dark chapter in his life — needless to say, he talked about it with a journalist.
What happened was that a friend of Liam got raped and it was done by someone that his friend identified as a “black person”. He said he was so mad he walked around the city with a “clog” hoping to stumble upon a black person to “kill him”.
This is obviously a very striking statement filled with triggers for us to take the road of judging and being ashamed of Liam. However, lets settle down for a moment and think this through: he was never obligated to confess to this, he did it because he acknowledged how terrible this was and he had the guts to open up a conversation about how he reacted when he confronted a situation in which a close friend had been raped.
We have to slow down our impulsive thoughts that trigger “disgust” for the expression of ideas. We cannot improve as a society if we keep repressing ideas that make us feel awkward [4]. It its imperative that we talk about these issues and allow everyone to express themselves so we can have conversations that offer the opportunity to help us get a better picture of what is happening around us. Let’s not fall into the trap of “tabooing” every single topic that jitters our minds. Let’s not end people’s lives for things they regret doing.
1 Sam Harris at The Joe Rogan Podcast, where they talked about the left, how to beat Trump on 2020 and the importance of dialogue, among many other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA106wrMUe4
2 One example is Comedian Gilbert Gottfried who is voice of the Aflac duck. He was fired because he made an “insensitive joke” about Japan on Twitter: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-fired-2011-5#dont-tweet-bad-things-about-your-potential-employer-1
3 Liam Neeson opened up about his “mental illness” during a stressful period own his life: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/liam-neeson-interview-rape-race-black-man-revenge-taken-cold-pursuit-a8760896.html
4 Read more on “Cognitive Dissonance” here: https://medium.com/zero-infinity/cognitive-dissonance-3e6f63c36a
