John Mills onLiberity essays

John Mills onLiberity essays The fear that Mill expresses in On liberty about public opinion is communicated with three major ideas: individualism, liberty, and human nature. Public opinion has the ability of removing each one of these ideas from a democratic society, allowing for change that creates an environment that is unstable to new discoveries and ideas that are vital for evolution. This problem is deemed irrelevant by todays democratic society. However the truth of the matter is that the threat of public opinion is still as great as it was when Mill wrote On liberty. Mill is timid of public opinion for one main reason: that public opinion causes loss of individuality in society. To understand this in its entirety, one person must first understand Mills logic behind this fear. Public opinion causes people to make the same decisions which others have already have made. This choice of following the same path is unconscious, due to the fact that pubic opinion is deeply imbedded in the truths that society hold; such as education. Every extension of education promotes it (public opinion), because education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments (98). In essence, a person believes that he is making a choice when embracing the same opinion as others. However, in reality, individuals have no reassurance that education itself has not given people the same opinion. By having public opinion, no true reasoning is involved, but just accepting of facts. This lack of individual input the down fall of a society in Mills opinion, If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to a persons own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but is likely to be weakened, by his adopting it: and if the inducements to an act are not such as are conclusiveness to his own feeling and character it is so much done towards rendering his feeling and cha ...