1: there’s been this blurring of public and private life with the internet. Public life, at least in the eighties and nineties was very anodyne. Excessively so, but it feels like the idea you would self censor in public was an inherently conservative value. As public and private life have merged, and the window of acceptable behavior has broadened, it’s changed the way we think about acceptable behavior to me in bizzare ways.
2: did it used to be controversial that people should watch what they say? This feels like a new thing. Like a very normal ethic.
JohnFen•7mo ago
> did it used to be controversial that people should watch what they say?
When I was a kid, not only was this uncontroversial, it was desirable as a default in public discourse. Not so much "watch what you say" in terms of there are ideas you shouldn't express, but more in terms of being attentive of how you express them.
It's desirable because doing this is an important part of having a functioning society where there is a wide variety of different and often opposing viewpoints. I don't know if this particular change is the reason or not, but we (in the US) seem to have lost the ability to work with or have reasonable discussions with those who don't agree with us. Increasingly, we can't even seem to tolerate the existence of people who don't agree with us (whatever our opinions may be).
techpineapple•7mo ago
1: there’s been this blurring of public and private life with the internet. Public life, at least in the eighties and nineties was very anodyne. Excessively so, but it feels like the idea you would self censor in public was an inherently conservative value. As public and private life have merged, and the window of acceptable behavior has broadened, it’s changed the way we think about acceptable behavior to me in bizzare ways.
2: did it used to be controversial that people should watch what they say? This feels like a new thing. Like a very normal ethic.
JohnFen•7mo ago
When I was a kid, not only was this uncontroversial, it was desirable as a default in public discourse. Not so much "watch what you say" in terms of there are ideas you shouldn't express, but more in terms of being attentive of how you express them.
It's desirable because doing this is an important part of having a functioning society where there is a wide variety of different and often opposing viewpoints. I don't know if this particular change is the reason or not, but we (in the US) seem to have lost the ability to work with or have reasonable discussions with those who don't agree with us. Increasingly, we can't even seem to tolerate the existence of people who don't agree with us (whatever our opinions may be).
That bodes very ill for our future.