The shared understanding that is society, is founded upon a set of shared beliefs about right and wrong. This is the sanity of the society, which is expressed and maintained by tradition.
Hence, the moment a society stops upholding its traditions, is the moment its understanding starts to shrivel. And the moment this shrivelling begins is when a society violently replaces the traditional rule of a monarch with popular rule. This is why Arnold Toynbee noted in "A study Of History", that the decline of every civilisation begins with a class war that displaces the traditional rule of a monarch.
The mind, or thoughts, of the shared understanding, is the exchange of opinions. And while tradition demands the courts penalize expressions of obscenity, treason, heresy, libel or slander, any other restraint must be seen as a deliberate stunting of society's mind.