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A Conspiracy of Silence — Why We Don't Speak Up

It happens everywhere — sometimes people are being polite, other times they are afraid.

All of us have behaved in a manner where we are not expressing our real thoughts. I personally remain silent or demur rather than "engage," but 2020 has caused me to engage more when people are making statements disconnected from facts and based much more on their opinions alone. 

Which brings me to the Hidden Brain podcast below. Worth listening to because we are immersed in a culture where there are different forms of political correctness on all sides, the "right and the left." What I found terribly interesting was the segment where the person being interviewed shared how people can express "the party line" while not believing it themselves. They are coerced into saying the "right things" even when they don't believe them. Crazy, but true!  

Consider Timur Kuran's book, "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification" described as "drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities."

"Preference falsification" is discussed in more detail in the interview.

"A Conspiracy of Silence"
Hidden Brain

"We all self-censor at times. We keep quiet at dinner with our in-laws, or nod passively in a work meeting. But what happens when we take this deception a step further, and pretend we believe the opposite of what we really feel? This week on Hidden Brain, economist and political scientist Timur Kuran explains how our personal, professional and political lives are shaped by the fear of what other people think."

 

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.
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