A Plea for Nuance

A Point of View

From cancel culture - ancient Greek style - to the binary politics of today, Sara Wheeler argues that the perils of entrenched positions have been clear for a very long time.

In ancient Greece, once a year, citizens gathered in the forum to scratch the name of the person they most wanted removed from the political arena on an ostrakon, a shard of broken pot. Too many appearances, and you got banished to a faraway province for a decade...ostracised by the ostraka. 'Once you were out of Athens in the fifth century BCE', Sara writes, 'you were cancelled good and proper'.

History, she says, ought to teach us the importance of listening to each other and the value of nuance.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith