After lifting the Martial Law in 1987, Taiwan’s government has quickly lifted nearly all other regulations imposed on other areas. The information sent out from every area is only filtered by each individual. The government no longer interferes. Except for a few circumstances, such as behaviors that undermine public morality according to Criminal Laws, other actions like speeches, ads, arts, news, etc, should be tolerant and circulated. Such development is a symbol of a mature democracy. That is, every speech is equally competed, evaluated in the opinion free market and the public should have the right to know about the government’s decision. Every member in the society is not blinded because information circulates freely. It seems a democratic society is within measurable distance. However audiences, trapped in the flood of information, seem to fail to break through the siege of information. Even though each individual can obtain information easily, uneasiness also pervades. To put it simply, I will point out 3 situations as follows.

First, the violation of privacy

What happens in George Orwell’s 1984 still persists in the 21 century. Each individual’s personal information is more and more under the control of the government. Our health problems, medical records, schooling histories, salaries, criminal or accident records are all included in the network system. The government can obtain each individual's information easily. Viewing from another aspect, we see a world famous network server moves around its street camera cars shooting many household’s living images in order to build up its active version of street scene data base. It also collects unencrypted e-mails, browsing records sent by wifi wireless network. Their invasion of privacy is severely protested. Though the company is well-intended, the invasion of privacy is also a fact.

Second: the garbling of information

Recently, President Ma of Republic of China (also the chairman of the ruling party) and the chairwoman of the opposite party publicly debated over the issue of signing the treaty of ECFA between Taiwan and Mainland China. Soon after the debate, some medias did opinion polls and revealed the result. Surprisingly, a serious argument broke out among the medias. They were arguing if the opinion polls agreed with the morality of the occupation. For example, how did a media set up the poll questions? What were its sampling and telephone interview methods? What was the accountability and validity of statistics? Or was there any maneuver of the poll figures? This case shows that when each individual encounters the opinion poll made by the media, he or she has to consider the intention and fairness behind the poll figures. It also evokes subsequent concern. That is, do we have the ability to interpret these figures objectively? What’s the political position of those media owners?

Third: the overflow of messages

The broadcast of newspapers, magazines, cablevision, broadcast TV, network, and radios makes the reception of messages complicated for an individual. It includes: 1. the same message repeatedly enter our eyes and ears, creating a brainwashing effect. 2. It’s hard to detect the intention behind the broadcast of a message. For example, the government once used soap operas to convey its policies. The audiences are easily political socialized due to their identification of the dramatic figures. 3. As there are too many messages, the importance of the message is lowered to the level of trash. For example, aside from junk mails, there are many messages transferred back and forth. Network users not only have to spend time removing these materials, but also become numb to them. 4. As there are too many messages, message makers try to heighten their stimulation by inviting popular entertainers speak for their ads. The judgments of message receivers (consumers) are blurred due to their identification of the entertainers.

According to the development of the concept of human rights, people in the past 100 years originally asks the government to give positively the information that each individual needs, including protecting the broadcast, circulation, reception, and discussion of information.  Yet according to the previous discourse on the overloading of messages, we had to reevaluate human’s ability to choose and filter the message.  Such consideration doesn’t start today since we do have some regulations and constant discussions on pornographic information, political opinion and the products ads.  Yet these discussions are targeted in some areas so as to clarify the circulation right of certain information.  If differs from the consideration of the relationship between individual and information as an entity.  The relationship between individual and information has to consider human beings as a producers as well as receivers of information and should examine it in a democratic society.  But then we will face a dilemma.  A democratic society is based on the presumption of “civil participation”.  These citizens can judge and discuss public affairs and come to the biggest consensus of the society in the mechanism of opinion free market.  So human beings are viewed as ones with the power of free will and also the rational subjects with autonomous ability.  They can freely listen or read information in the free opinion market and use it as reference to their decision and action.  This is very important.  Now the presumption of subject encounters difficulty.  That is, in the flood of information, can the subject still exist and make a rational judgment?  If the rational ability of these existents is doubtful, or even the subject’s status is affected, then the ideal world of democratic society will also be suspected. 

Thus, if we want to reexamine the existence of human beings, we have to reconsider the construction of human beings. Such construction viewed rationality and free will as the outcome of some inner activity. They all belong to the products of superficial consciousness. If we probe further, we can assume that there is an inner basis for rationality and free will. It refers to human’s spirit . That is, a certain section in the spiritual sphere is the core of a subject. The core does not come from opinion free market, but from each individual’s spirit a priori while each individual is the basis of all the opinion free market. The spirit did not judge consciously, assert any rational statements, nor is it an action will.  Yet it’s the basis of judgment, rationality, and will.  Besides, the inner spirit needs nourishment.  Only through nourishing our spirit can we develop our will, emotion, judgment, rationality and will.  From Western Christianity to Eastern Taoism, Buddhism, they all tell us that the inner spirit not only needs exercise, but also good rest.  It needs time to wake up and time to sleep. 

Thus, while social science constantly discusses human beings’ consciousnesses, actions, and judgments, etc, spirit’s problems behind all phenomena are mentioned in the religious territory. In Christianity, for example, the nourishment of spirit is in the discourse of the relationship between God and human beings. Only by returning to God can human beings obtain fulfillment and the uplifting of spirit. In the Old Testament, it said “Be still, and know that I am God…..” The New Testament also mentions Jesus’ teaching “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest “. Chao-pien, a Chinese official in Sung Dynasty, said in his enlightenment poetry:

Devoid of thought, I sat quietly by the desk in my official room,
With my fountain-mind undisturbed, as serene as water;

A sudden crash of thunder, the mind doors burst open,
And lo, there sits the old man in all his homeliness.
Thus, through the previous quasi-religious explanation, we can say that if we want to take human beings’ subjectivity back, the presumption of democratic society should not be viewed as a status of constant discussion, debate and communication.  It is not a repeated competitive market.  It needs a certain degree of self-control, retreat, settling, digest, and rest.  The description infers that human’s consciousness, actions, judgments or even the democratic society itself is like the four seasons.  It is also the same as the interactive relationship between human beings and nature:  spring plowing, summer cultivation, autumn harvest, and winter storage.  So if we let all information surges into our mind endlessly, human beings will be overloaded.  They then cannot act rationally.  The ideal of democratic society will leave us even further.

With the thought in mind, we now can come to the level of constitution and see that the broadcast of information has something to do with the freedom of speech.  As the constitution reacts to the problems human beings face, we need to rethink the traditional freedom of thought and speech since we are suffering from the problems caused by information.  In the past era, the freedom of thought and speech are interpreted in the context of fighting against government power.  It then leads to the issue of balance among the human rights, for example, the balance between speech and privacy.  Yet what matters is not whether the flow of information behind the speech is free or not, nor is it about the violation of privacy.  Rather it’s about the necessity of spirit coming to rest.

According to Article 2 of Taiwan’s constitution, constitution can be viewed as a contract of all citizens, a concept of Rousseau’s General Will. The aim of the contract represented by the constitution is to enable each individual obtain freedom. That is also the original meaning of designed general will. Thus freedom is the most important intention of human rights. When rational thinking, discussion, or even privacy is under threat, we should rearrange all the values existed in the constitution. The reangement should take the protection of spirit into consideration. Otherwise human’s freedom will encounter difficulty. A rational democratic society will also hard to achieve. Thus we need to reexamine the freedom of thought derived from the freedom of speech. In the past constitutional discussion, the freedom of thought is not limited since its essence is an internal activity.  Unless the thoughts are transferred into outward speech and action, otherwise there is no limit.  Viewing from the topic we concern in this article, we can say the freedom of speech should examine its status quo.  That is, “thought” represents the inner activity.  It’s a rational, emotional, and willful activity.  But that does not mean that it should be active all the time.  There is a time of rest, or a time of settling down.  The description shows that our being is not active all the time.  It is fluctuant.  So spirit is important to the existence of holistic person.  It involves religious level and is what constitution should concern.

Among all the items of human rights protected by the constitution, the freedom of religion concerns the existence of holistic person and the right to discuss spirit.  We try to explain the freedom of religion, which is protected by constitution, from another perspective.  Though traditional explanations of this freedom of human right focus on personal freedom on choosing religion, forbidding establishing national religion, protecting absolute belief freedom, and protecting the freedom of relative religious activity, yet we can reexamine such context.  That is, constitution not only protects each religion having the opportunity to propose the direction of the explanation of spirit, but also should admit the necessity of protecting spirit.  Besides speech, publication, thought, travelling, property, occupation, assembly--activities that demonstrate the existence of “person” from the perspective of law, spirit can also become an item protected by the constitution.  It is also a key point to demonstrate the existence of human beings.  In other words, the freedom of religion can be more than freedom of personal choice or the protection of plural existence of religion. It can advance to become the fundamental base behind personal rationality and the freedom of will.  It possesses inevitable necessity and universality to human beings.  How then can the constitution protect the spirit level of religious freedom?  As our country is governed by laymen, the main point is to let information makers, the government or the free market of speech be humble and restraint as they are not ultimate value from the perspective of constitution.  They should also admit the limitation of human beings’ rationality and the freedom of will.  When the former learns to be humble and self-restraint, it leaves human beings’ spirits untroubled and some room to rest.  Only then can human beings rationality and will be vitalized.  As to how to rest our spirit is up to each individual’s freedom of choosing their own religion.  This belongs to traditional explanation of the freedom of religion. 

Indeed, the right of spirit is still a long way to go.  For example, from the negative perspective, can we set up a mechanism that monitors the over production of information?  (In the past, owing to the concept of freedom of press, there is no limitation in quantity but only in quality, such as the limit on pornography and violence.)  From positive perspective, when companies are promoting their products, they should restraint their information, not over emphasizing a certain aspect or using hypothetical terms in case that people cannot judge correctly.  An individual can ask for compensation if such damage is caused.  Besides, we should also think about how to design an institution that can oversee the overflow of information. 

Not only so, we should legislate to limit the production of improper information as nowadays the government, companies and other interest groups are constantly developing their marketing strategies.  For example, the legislative Yuan in Taiwan prepares to set up a law to limit the celebrities’ endorsement of products.  If the products cause any damage to the customer, spokespersons and companies must take the attached responsibilities to compensate.  The important message here is that we cannot let companies manipulate customers’ sense of trust on celebrities.  It also asks celebrities to take up more justice and legal responsibilities when they are enjoying both fame and interest. 

All these legal regulations cannot be achieved in a short time.  It is like the environmental right at the beginning.  At first it starts from philosophical anthropology and the meditation between man and nature.  It becomes concrete later on, like setting up the carbon exchange regulation derived from environmental right.  If we agree with this context, the establishment of spiritual right draws us back to ask the question--what element makes human beings real human beings.  What is an ideal type of men?  We should also draw the concept of human rights back to the level of philosophical anthropology and the discussion level to that of constitutional right.  The protection of spiritual right can derive from the freedom of religion.  We can call it “the spiritual right or the freedom of spirit.”  It can change the presumptions of free market, freedom of press, and rational men.  When spirit is properly nourished and maintained, it is possible for the existence of holistic person.  Only then can a democratic rational society be desired.