A Point of View

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Sara Wheeler on the perils of entrenched positions.

Sara Wheeler reflects on the perils of entrenched positions, with a lesson from ancient Greece.

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

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