On what you can’t say. (A thread!)
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Replying to @SimonDeDeo
I think I disagree that “what you can’t say” is a *problem* for everyone, at least in that form. I more often struggle with the problem of influence and imitation. What you don’t see in your social contexts, you find yourself not thinking. And I worry about that.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SimonDeDeo
The boundaries of what counts as “a thing”, a nameable thing, enough to consciously notice it. Perceptions often don’t rise to the level of being “things” for me if they don’t seem socially legitimate enough, though I’ve put some effort into countering that.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SimonDeDeo
But the case of “you know a thing, consciously, but you can’t say it” — it seems like sometimes an inconvenience but not a tragedy. How bad it is depends on the situation, right? Sometimes you get killed, sometimes you lose friends and funding, sometimes you get lonely...
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SimonDeDeo
But these seem like costs, not tragedies. Not every bad thing that happens is a tragedy. Not even every bad thing that *inevitably* happens is a tragedy; some seem more like “the reality we must accept.” (Eg entropy; I don’t think the mature perspective sees it as tragic.)
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SimonDeDeo
The emotional force of watching a tragedy, I think, comes from the internal struggle between “I don’t want this bad ending” and “but it’s inevitable.” Rehearsing that losing fight against the inevitable in order to learn to accept it.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @SimonDeDeo
Any inevitability you thoroughly accept with a light heart, is not something you need to process through tragedy.
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(I also think that tragedy can be harmful as well as helpful; it can train people into “processing” and accepting sad things that are not inevitable. Seems possible that the Oresteia “taught” giving up on justice.)
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