Silence does not solve problems
There is a kind of people who argue that if you’re using something, you should not critique it. Not that they hold it as a philosophical view, they just always say, in a more or less aggressive way, “Don’t use it if you don’t like it!”. You’re likely to hear this if you start complaining about Windows for example. In Russia, you’ll hear it if you talk about the infinite number of problems — from total corruption to total unfreedom of speech and political monopoly. “Go live in America if you don’t like it here!”.
They don’t deny the existence of problems, they believe these should be silenced.
The problem is, a problem that is not talked about is not a problem, in a sense that no one is going to solve it. It sounds evident, but to a lot of people, it’s not. In Russia at least it’s a big problem — no one speaks about problems. Some don’t dare, others believe problems should not be spoken about. There is no pressure on the political “elite” to solve the problems, so they don’t bother.
I wonder if this problem silencing phenomenon is cross-cultural, or specific to certain cultures. And if this correlates with economic growth rates and freedom indices.
2nd May 2008
