Free speech, religious belief, and facts: how does it affect health?

The massacre at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo was shocking and horrible, as are the massacres and atrocities that occur regularly with less immediacy to those in the West, such as those committed by Boko Haram in Nigeria. The most positive result was the massive outpouring of support for free speech, for being able to say and print what you want even if it offends people. And, I would add, particularly if it offends the powerful, which Charlie Hebdo also did. More than a million in the streets of Paris saying “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), with more than 40 heads of state in attendance, even if they didn’t actually lead the march, but were photographed together on a protected side street. And even if many of them sponsor severe repression of free speech in their home countries. 

The inclusion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was particularly problematic given the violently repressive policies of his government, but given that the companion attack was on a kosher supermarket where four Jews were killed, the symbolism was important even if a lightning rod for (largely just) criticism of Israeli government policy. Less appreciated was the message from Netanyahu that French Jews should all come to Israel, and more appreciated were the sentiments of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls that ‘France Without Jews Is Not France’, and the demonstrators, most of whom were not, who carried signs that said “Je suis juif” (“I am Jewish”).

But the necessary condemnation of terror, and moves to avert it, along with the necessary condemnation of anti-Semitism and the conflation of Jews with the actions of the government of Israel (or the conflation of Islam with the actions of Islamic terrorists) does not solve the problem of communication, that people see “truth” so differently. I don’t know that I can offer much more insight into the conflict of seeing truth through the lens of religious doctrine (and of course some people and groups’ interpretation of religious doctrine) and a “liberal” concept of the value of free speech. I was interested in the perspective of Maajid Nawaz, a British Muslim who became a radical Islamist at 16, served 4 years in an Egyptian jail where his readings changed his perspective and later founded Quilliam, an anti-jihadist think tank in London, expressed on NPR’s Fresh Air. Asked by host Terry Gross how he saw himself as the same person, given his loss of relationships including family and friends since his “conversion”, Nawaz spoke about commitment to justice. He said it was the blatantly unjust treatment of Muslims that motivated him to fight as an Islamist, and the same commitment to justice that makes him oppose terrorism. Ideologically, I think that this is a good start.

 Most countries, including France and the US, have a mixed relationship with free speech. In the US (which I know much better), many people not only support free speech for positions that they agree with but also positions that they can tolerate listening to. Of course, however, true support for free speech means support for speech you abhor, hate, despise, think dangerous. Not, of course, the same as action (“your free speech stops just short of my nose”), but certainly includes free assembly and demonstrations to express views. If one’s religious views include opposing anyone’s right to criticize your religion (or, even more, as illustrated by the Inquisition or ISIL’s massacres of Yazidis, not adopt your religion), you are clearly endorsing a society antithetical to free speech. And, of course, with the grossly immoral series of US Supreme Court decisions that money is speech and that corporations are people who can exercise that “speech”, the entire concept of free speech in our country is perverted.

Closer to home, and closer to the usual themes of this blog, health and social justice, we see again how beliefs not only threaten free speech but threaten our ability to act as an honorable and just society because groups of people see things so differently. The reasons given are many: our social isolation from groups of people unlike us (residential segregation by race and class and age and educational level), our ability to receive “customized” news, where what we watch on TV or find on the Internet is that which agrees with what we already believe. When people hold views based on their faith, it may be difficult or even unreasonable to expect to change it; this is what “faith” is. However, when people hold views that are not religious and are demonstrably wrong in the face of the facts, and those beliefs are held as firmly as those that are religious, and those beliefs threaten the core well-being of other parts of our society, we would hope that they could change.

I have often written about the Social Determinants of Health. These are the conditions of people’s lives that make them more vulnerable to illness, less likely to be able to prevent it through both health screening and living in places and circumstances in which prevention is possible. For example, not near areas of high pollution, not in poor quality cold housing, not in no housing. To have shelter, and decent food, and the opportunity for education for themselves and their children. All the things that characterize their lives and come before their access, or lack of access, to the health system comes into play. If we are to improve the health of the American people, we must not only provide equitable access to health care geographically, financially, and socially (with language access and caring and actual interest in people’s health) but also address those social determinants that disadvantage so many in the pursuit of their health.

 

And then I read the results of a survey by the Pew Research Center that says a majority of well-to-do Americans think that poor people “have it easy”. Widely reported, including by the Washington Post which leads with “There is little empathy at the top”, and CNN, which reports “54% of those with the greatest financial security believe that ‘poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return’…Only 36% of the wealthiest say ‘poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently.’" I want to say this is unbelievable, but I have to believe it is true that they think this. I am, nonetheless, aghast that they could think this. What world do they live in? Is it really true that their only contact with poor people is on TV news, Fox News at that? Have it easy?

Would they want to test that? Live like poor people for a while? Even knowing that – unlike real poor people – they could return to their comfort in a month or a week, would they be able to tolerate it? Not being able to pay their bills, not have heat, not have decent or sufficient food, not be able to afford the doctor, not be able to take off work without losing pay to go to one even if they had health insurance? I think – I know – that if they did they would feel differently about it being easy to be poor. But while there is great value to “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes”, there is a way to know what is going on without even doing that. It is called opening your eyes, looking at the facts.

Even when they are uncomfortable, even when they challenge your beliefs, or more importantly your sense of self-entitled comfort. To not do so is part of no one’s religion. This is the responsibility of free people.