I think that the english language and our perhaps our culture has a “should” problem.
The implicit if.
Making a should statement always has a implicit value-statement or perspective attached. In a world where shared values are not guarantees (although their commonality is frequently understated). I think that is important to consider.
All should statements can be be represented as follows:
X should Y (if Z)
If the if Z statement is omitted or simplified, than whoever is making the statement is taking it to be self-evident or implicit through context or shared experience.
Convenient and appropriate as this may be, it poses a large hole for misunderstanding and frustration, with some misunderstandings being more common than others.
t-Should vs b-Should
I think there is a common scenario where two individuals take different perspectives to a should statement, and falsely interpret the other as having incompatible or unreasonable values, when in reality, it’s a framing issue.
Specifically, I see a bottom-up perspective that emphasises personal responsibility in the face of reality; and another top-down perspective that emphasises the moral systematic issues of virtue and culture. I think a lot of discussions and arguments would be served by clarifying the should.
Consider the statement (suspending your own position for a moment): “Women should expect harassment if they wear makeup in the workplace”
| Top Down Should | Bottom Up Should | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner of the should | Community/Culture/Group Identify | Individual |
| Lens | Moral | Pragmatic |
| Application to this example | Not reasonable, if you accept that harassment is bad; and that a culture is engineered. | Reasonable, If you accept we navigate a world where people exist who do this kind of bad stuff . |
| Position on culture | Engineered/Controlled/Decided | Emergent/Observed |
Aside / footnote (expand for clarifications)
If it’s not eminently clear, I am trying to make a semantic/lexical point here. I don’t really have strong positions on gender-politics. It’s a punchy, illustrative & convenient example.
Aside from there perspective issue, there is also the question of the frequency, intensity and mode of harassment to expect; which is not described in the statement, and another potential axis for perceived misalignment despite a possible common truth.
If you’re really interested in some I think on this. I’d advocate that individuals mostly-silently normalise what they deem to be reasonable self-expression, accepting the level of risk they deem reasonable and present.
I think that our culture is, to some extent engineered but the influence an individual has over it is either negligible or finite for most people.
I think both positions are perfectly reasonable to take, and that it’s unreasonable to expect or demand that an individual makes your group-identity issue theirs.
I think clanning and group-identity is often useful, and should be done deliberately along meaningful axes; but, clinging to a group-identity on the basis of bodily similarity is usually kind of lame.
Conclusion
I don’t condemn the use of should statements; neither do I prescribe lengthy contextual exposition of context in the everyday use of should statements. I do think that there is space and need to offer some clarifying positional information under some circumstances; particularly along the group/individual axis that I have discussed.