What do all these sanctioned acts have in common? They are linguistic acts—acts of speech. When you consider the rise of censorship within its broader cultural context, you notice something remarkable: Society is in the grip of the materialist view on man and the world, which reduces the entire realm of speech and consciousness to a meaningless side product of biochemical processes in our brain.

Man thinks, feels, and speaks, but that doesn’t really matter. He is a heap of flesh and bones and from the biochemical simmering in his braincase some thoughts and feelings emerge—God knows why. And from time to time, the machine rattles and creaks a bit and the mouth of the human being expels some noise. This noise turns out to be evolutionarily useful. It allows the efficient exchange of information and that confers an advantage in the struggle to survive. That’s why the human being has continued to speak.

This is how the materialist worldview explains the field of speech and consciousness, and this is how it degrades the realm of the Mind and the Soul.

Nevertheless, this materialist society, which reduces consciousness and speech to a negligible side effect, is in the first place scared of…speech and consciousness. It tries to control thoughts and feelings through indoctrination and propaganda and with censorship it tries to keep the field of speech in an iron choke hold. This ‘velvet glove totalitarianism’ is very real. Every time we use the internet or social media it steers our mind through state-controlled search engines and AI-generated algorithms; through machine learning each and every dissident narrative is mapped and its most influential representers are identified and inhibited; it recruits tens of thousands of ‘digital first responders’ to ridiculize and criminalize everyone who doesn’t conform to the state ideology, and so on.

The essence of the crises of our time is this: the materialist-rationalist view on man and the world that forms the basis of our society has its best days behind it. While it’s manifesting in its most extreme and pure technocratic-transhumanist form in our society today, it demonstrates at the same time that it is not the destiny humanity has been hoping for. To the contrary, this ideology begs to be left behind and replaced by a new perspective on the human being. …

True speech emerges from a place hidden behind the harness of our outer ideal image, from a place hidden behind the veil of appearances. If there is one way to define what Truth is, then it is that it is a kind of speech which penetrates time and time again through what I call the veil of appearances.

Indeed, good speech testifies to something; it testifies to something in the human being and in life that is more beautiful and pure than mere flesh and bones and biochemical simmering in a braincase.

I believe that it is first and formemost this kind of speech which nourishes humanity, in particular in times where speaking out can get you removed from social media, bereaved of a job and an income, or thrown in prison.