Greek athlete, Voula Papachristou kicked out of London games for posting a racist joke on her twitter account. She tweeted, 'With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!'. Don't you think that she exploited freedom of thought?Honestly, I thought getting booted out of the Olympics for posting something on her 'personal' twitter account was too harsh, don't you think so?
Obviously, there were several hundreds of replies to her tweet, some taking it as a joke, while some saw their tempers flare and posted extremely rude responses. Did she deserve it? Maybe or maybe not! I'm not sure.
The core problem here is exploitation of freedom, or freedom of thought in particular. That tweet, as she had stated in her apology was meant to be funny and tasteless, but alas the 'world' did not perceive it in the same way.
One thing was sure from what she did, she never really knew how to use her freedom and wasn't really aware of what is right and what is wrong. I personally think that tweet was ABSOLUTELY unnecessary right before the most important event of your life, isn't it?
Voula Papachristou was booted out of the Olympics for her racist tweet
Credit - Getty Images/DailyMail
Lets apply the same to ourselves, do you know what freedom of thought is? Do you know how, when and where to implement it? Is your conscience good enough to know what's right and what's wrong?
Nope, very few or in fact no one really knows what freedom of thought is and so most of them are scared to use it, even if they have some really positive and good thoughts. Why?
We're scared of how others would react to our thoughts, not bold enough to tackle them head on, not resilient enough to stand criticism and justify our thoughts and so we find it comfortable enough to hide in those 'dark corners' and live a shallow life.
My point here is not to highlight Voula's exploitation of freedom of thought but to tell you that if you have something really good in your mind, something that can help your fellow humans, then you should come out with it, present it boldly and stand the criticism with your head held high.
Remember there will always be critics, negative critics, to anything and everything. Why, Gandhi and John Lennon too were hated, while all they wanted to do was to spread the message of love and peace.
My conscience is clear, I know what basically is right and wrong and I will always express my freedom of thought, no matter how badly I get criticized. I'll always live by that.
Would You?
Are you scared of freedom of thought? Or is your conscience clear enough to let you express it boldly? Do you have any wonderful ideas stacked up in your mind? Please let me know, I promise I'll support you wholeheartedly.
Who's Managing This?
Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Pinterest | Stumbleupon | Linkedin
