We pull our punches, don't we? On things about which good people disagree, we avoid ruffling feathers. We treat preferences as either causeless and unaccountable ('there's no accounting for taste') or, at the other extreme, with such prejudice that we elevate preferences to a religion. We absolutize culture, when we label something that, either as beyond critique ("culture is culture - it can't be wrong") or as a commitment to all or nothing ("love it or leave it"). Yet one could argue our preferences and how we engage culture constitute who we are. Stifling consideration of those things without either abject acquiescence or sheer totalization merely says we aren't passionate enough about our convictions to think actively, or too fragile in them to permit it, or else the topics being addressed are unimportant. Case in point: even on things that are extremely serious at a survival level, we speak with a moderation that suggests our concern is ONLY posture or else cynically hypothetical. Here you won't find circuitous mincing about. Asher Black goes off like a rocket. Whether you like what you hear or disagree, it will at least be MANHEARTED.
