I love it when cultural essayists rediscover a core Quaker observation about plainness and human nature and finding it up with a new name. A few that’s ago, “normcore” became a thing.

Now we have “uni-context,” the idea that our online social lives bleed into all of our different networks (think: friends, work colleagues, romantic interests) so much that the networks have been flattened. Where once we could show different faces to different audiences, now everyone sees all.

First off, I’m not sure I really buy it from a cultural tech perspective. The original Facebook ideal of wide social graphs and public accounts feels like a dinosaur. Gen Z is mostly absent and usually keeps pretty locked down accounts. TikTok is public but every popular account there is highly performative.

But granting the “uni-context” conceit for argument, this is a big post of Quaker plainness. Yes there were mostly unwritten rules but if you open up an old copy of one of the *Books of Discipline* and turn to the plainness section, you’ll find that it focuses on intention. My favorite query asks if you dress in a way “calculated to please a vain and wanton mind.”

It is the Quaker concept of *intregrity* at play. Going back to root meanings, something that is integral cannot be broken into pieces without losing its identity. We should act and present ourselves in the same way in all context. Who we are should be who we are, whether at work, play, church, etc. Similarly our *yeas* should be *yeas* and our *nays* *nays* in all context so that we don’t need a special incantation of swearing to tell the absolute truth.

Of course our lives are complex. I’m a runner and I put on running gear when I go out, especially in the August heat. But I’m not doing that for a calculated reason but a practical one. And I often have a pre-run running shirt on when I log into a work Zoom call.

Anyway it’s sort of sad that so many Friends have consigned old Quaker practices to the dust heap. The ethics, if not the details, might be something philosophers are seeking today.

A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird

Once you learn what the “uni-context” is, you won’t stop seeing it everywhere

Quaker Ranter

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