NYTimes | What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of
simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about
your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain.
That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful
words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A
culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.
That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur
and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of
something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from
debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.
On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that
genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his
view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a
scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference
between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you
strongly oppose. The former is a danger to a civil society (and to our health); the
latter is the lifeblood of democracy.
By all means, we should have open conversations and vigorous debate about
controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and
torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of
violence.
