Is silence agreement?

Silence can look a lot like agreement but we need to understand that it’s not. You can’t help but see what’s happening related to this topic, out there in the zeitgeist.

People are genuinely afraid to speak. Not because we don’t see what’s happening or because we don’t know something is wrong. But because we look around, see everyone else staying quiet, and conclude that it’s our thinking that must be the problem. So we go along with the majority and the silence grows. And with it, our inadvertent complicity.

This isn’t a weakness we should be ashamed of. It actually has a name (it’s called pluralistic ignorance). The whole thing is about everyone privately disagreeing with what’s happening but assuming that the quiet around them represents consensus from everyone else. So nobody speaks out because who wants to be that person raising their hand when you think everyone else is on the other side of you? The silence starts to feel like the majority’s opinion. It isn’t. What it is though is collective fear that looks a lot like agreement.

This is exactly what unchecked authoritarian power relies on. They count on our desire to not raise our hands or speak out when the majority aren’t.

Rule of law only holds its legitimacy when it exists to protect people. When law becomes used to protect people in power from accountability, rather than protect people from power, the moral obligation to obey it changes. And so does the dire cost to society of staying silent.

History is unambiguous on this. The moments in history that we as a human race look back on with deep shame are rarely the moments people spoke up. They’re the moments people went along with the crowd and, in doing so, normalized the abnormal. They told themselves it wasn’t their place to push back or disageee. Or they waited for someone else to go first

Nobody is coming first and that’s seriously the thing that’s so unsettling. We really do need heroes who are willing to be both first and loud. We all can be first. I think our heroes are indeed us. Everyday people who are using our voices even though we feel alone or afraid in doing so. I know I’ve felt that fear when I’ve used my voice to say that something doesn’t feel right. I know how hard it can feel to find the courage to say something and then have trolls and bots and, yes, real people, disagreeing with me and putting me down with personal attacks

But I also know our voices, especially when it feels inconvenient, professionally risky, or socially uncomfortable, are not a small thing. They are THE thing. I believe it’s the most important expression of free agency that we have.

And, when people who have been on one side of the argument change their views to the other side and finally do speak up, we can’t then trash them and shame them. We have to meet them there. They somehow found the courage to say what they actually believe and not what they were coerced into defending. That deserves our respect, not a social media pile on.

Silence in the face of wrong isn’t neutrality. It’s a choice. And authoritarian powers know exactly what our silence is worth.

❤️🇨🇦