Starting point: this is all one huge mess.

Speak up and you potentially start a fight — something that just rips society even further apart. Say nothing and you judge yourself complicit. All this equals dilemma without exit.

The conflict comes from our natural tendency to be sociable, at the same time as we have learned ‘values’ that we hear others contradicting.

But don’t underestimate the power of silence, body language and the occasional frank stare. Once you commit to language, you have immediately given the other something to bite you with: they can challenge you words, arguments, ideas, logic etc. What’s more, you have reduced your position to abstraction — and things only get messy as you struggle to quarrel but remain sociable. Everyone knows this viscerally, and it is why we are so reluctant to speak up.

Looks can kill. And even though that is not quite the goal, we all know what is being said by a disapproving but sympathetic — maybe even empathic — stare. It’s something like I recognise you as a fellow human but your behaviour right now is a problem for society. And there is nothing in that for the other to argue with.

We can give others warning messages without actually attacking.