This is not well understood in the US because it's in the past, and remnants are not obvious, but the public around the world was historically NOT a place anyone could speak. It was very specifically an elite "platform" defined by who was NOT allowed to speak there.
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Which meant that "know your place" often meant "you can't say such things in public because it offends elites who have first right to such places; you can only say it skulking and muttering in ghetto alleys, and we'd better not hear you by accident!"
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Observation: I rarely hear loud complaints about cancel culture except from people who are already talking a lot. Makes me wonder -- who isn't talking to begin with because they unfortunately "know their place" all too well. Who are born canceled and stay that way?
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Personal angle btw... I've never felt either place or tone policed in my life. I have almost never wanted to say something and been unable to say it, or had to leave a place because I spoke out of place. And I obviously talk a lot and at great length in every place I can access.
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Either I "know my place" very well and have internalized my boundaries to the point I don't notice myself staying within them...
OR I have better ways to fight when I want to than words...
OR... I don't have much to fight about, and am too selfish to fight for anyone else...
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Like most people, it's probably some mix of all 3, alloyed with a healthy dose of just pragmatism of the don't-make-jokes-at-a-funeral variety... reasonable consideration for others.
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In case it isn't obvious, I'm agnostic on this whole matter -- having opinions about the morality of tone policing or place policing is like having opinions about the existence of weapons.
Weapons exist. Conflict is real. Get good at using the appropriate ones when needed.
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I'm also agnostic about US gun culture tbh. I think it's really regressive and dumb in a religious way, and have no interest in getting literate in the use of guns, but don't have strong feelings about wanting it gone so long as I can stay safe myself. I can live with it.
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Replying to
saw this tweet first before the whole thread, which ended up being not what I expected. It’s a good thread, good observations especially re: languages with hierarchical forms of address
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I think it’s relevant that liberalism (in the JS Mills meaning) has always been hung up on the metaphor of the agora, which was very much a physical space, and one that excluded certain bodies
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Hannah Arendt threads the implications of that pretty well I think, in her analysis of the public in The Human Condition. That tends to be my starting point of analysis for such things.
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Yes, my next tweet was going to be about Arendt and the Greeks but it was worded so vapidly that I went ahead and deplatformed myself
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