Flutterby™! : What you can't Say

What you can't Say

2004-01-05 15:05:15.453673+00 by ziffle 3 comments

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

I hope I will never be a 'yellow-ist' and if I go to 1992 (in the future) I'll remember not to compliment your shirt.

How do those who see things differently get to say what they see? Not easily, and its gotten worse. Paul writes a clear identification of the problem, and is yet another chip out of the wall of political correctness.

Ziffle of Mayberry

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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: What you can't Say made: 2004-01-05 18:07:13.288534+00 by: Dan Lyke

Interesting. When he says:

I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about.

I wonder about some of the tribal cultures in which murder isn't necessarily that big a deal (see Savaging the Civilized for instances)? Of course part of the problems with deriving information from that is that we always recast history in terms of our modern mores, so often we'll drop the mitigating or incriminating bits of the cultures of other customs so that we can turn those societies into examples to reinforce our own beliefs.

#Comment Re: What you can't Say made: 2004-01-05 19:08:10.664757+00 by: aiworks

You know, I guess it wasn't all that long ago in Western culture that duels were acceptable. As I recall how the rules around duels go, more often than not someone didn't survive. It doesn't appear that society as a whole saw duels as a bad thing; today that would be considered capital murder. I suppose that someone who was lucky at dueling would be a serial killer by today's standards.

#Comment Re: What you can't Say made: 2004-01-06 03:09:40.526539+00 by: concept14

Thanks for the pointer to the most thought-provoking essay I've read in a long time.