"All right, I think I might have managed to put my finger on a quiet nagging doubt I had before," Keltham says, totally oblivious to any signs of INNER PANIC this might be producing unless somebody actually shows it to him.

"There's at least three different Baseline words that translate as 'dignity' in this language.  But the one I had in mind is - not getting angry at people for behaving the way they're supposed to, or in ways they have a right to do.  Not showing outward anger, not letting yourself react inwardly in a way that could lead you to subconsciously - lower their grades later, or the equivalent of that.  It's the quality that you display to others so that they'll know it's safe to turn you down for sex, even though you're their employer, and if you weren't confident you'd shown that much dignity you'd be afraid to ask them for sex.  Dignity, in the case of my relation to students as a teacher, means that if I make my own mistake on the whiteboard, and you point it out, I don't even internally blame you for my mistake and give you a bad performance review later.  Nobody who lacked that kind of dignity would be tapped to give performance reviews.  Very few higher managers would be stupid enough to promote a manager who was visibly bad enough at 'dignity' that employees would be afraid to tell them what they were doing wrong."

"If you're not in a state of fixed enthusiasm produced by mind-affecting spells, then it's very odd if I just started up teaching again after not doing that for years, in another dimension, across an unknown huge cultural gap, in a non-native language that's translated in my mind by spell, and didn't make any mistakes.  I was wordlessly expecting somebody in the class to go 'wrong, that's not how you teach Chelish students,' and that never happened.  It might locally pain me some tiny bit to be told that, but it's the kind of hurt that's intrinsic to learning not to do something again, not what I'd classify as - the dath ilani word that translates as 'punishment' in the Lawful sense of that - the kind of hurt where you're deliberately making it worse because you're trying to influence my behavior by imposing costs on me."

"So, if my concept of dignity is all about behaving in a way that reassures a skeptic that there are negligible real social disincentives for you to inform me about my mistakes, even if I didn't ask, and your version of dignity is about always looking cheerful and enthusiastic and not giving me any visible sign that I'm making mistakes, unless I ask, there might've been a problem."

"All right, I think I might have managed to put my finger on a quiet nagging doubt I had before," Keltham says, totally oblivious to any signs of INNER PANIC this might be producing unless somebody actually shows it to him.

"There's at least three different Baseline words that translate as 'dignity' in this language.  But the one I had in mind is - not getting angry at people for behaving the way they're supposed to, or in ways they have a right to do.  Not showing outward anger, not letting yourself react inwardly in a way that could lead you to subconsciously - lower their grades later, or the equivalent of that.  It's the quality that you display to others so that they'll know it's safe to turn you down for sex, even though you're their employer, and if you weren't confident you'd shown that much dignity you'd be afraid to ask them for sex.  Dignity, in the case of my relation to students as a teacher, means that if I make my own mistake on the whiteboard, and you point it out, I don't even internally blame you for my mistake and give you a bad performance review later.  Nobody who lacked that kind of dignity would be tapped to give performance reviews.  Very few higher managers would be stupid enough to promote a manager who was visibly bad enough at 'dignity' that employees would be afraid to tell them what they were doing wrong."

"If you're not in a state of fixed enthusiasm produced by mind-affecting spells, then it's very odd if I just started up teaching again after not doing that for years, in another dimension, across an unknown huge cultural gap, in a non-native language that's translated in my mind by spell, and didn't make any mistakes.  I was wordlessly expecting somebody in the class to go 'wrong, that's not how you teach Chelish students,' and that never happened.  It might locally pain me some tiny bit to be told that, but it's the kind of hurt that's intrinsic to learning not to do something again, not what I'd classify as - the dath ilani word that translates as 'punishment' in the Lawful sense of that - the kind of hurt where you're deliberately making it worse because you're trying to influence my behavior by imposing costs on me."

"So, if my concept of dignity is all about thinking and acting in a way that makes there be negligible real social disincentives for you to inform me about my mistakes, even if I didn't ask, and your version of dignity is about always looking cheerful and enthusiastic and not giving me any visible sign that I'm making mistakes, unless I ask, there might've been a problem."

"All right, I think I might have managed to put my finger on a quiet nagging doubt I had before," Keltham says, totally oblivious to any signs of INNER PANIC this might be producing unless somebody actually shows it to him.

"There's at least three different Baseline words that translate as 'dignity' in this language.  But the one I had in mind is - not getting angry at people for behaving the way they're supposed to, or in ways they have a right to do.  Not showing outward anger, not letting yourself react inwardly in a way that could lead you to subconsciously - lower their grades later, or the equivalent of that.  It's the quality that you display to others so that they'll know it's safe to turn you down for sex, even though you're their employer, and if you weren't confident you'd shown that much dignity you'd be afraid to ask them for sex.  Dignity, in the case of my relation to students as a teacher, means that if I make my own mistake on the whiteboard, and you point it out, I don't even internally blame you for my mistake and give you a bad performance review later.  Nobody who lacked that kind of dignity would be tapped to give performance reviews.  Very few higher managers would be stupid enough to promote a manager who was visibly bad enough at 'dignity' that employees would be afraid to tell them what they were doing wrong."

"If you're not in a state of fixed enthusiasm produced by mind-affecting spells, then it's very odd if I just started up teaching again after not doing that for years, in another dimension, across an unknown huge cultural gap, in a non-native language that's translated in my mind by spell, and didn't make any mistakes.  I was wordlessly expecting somebody in the class to go 'wrong, that's not how you teach Chelish students,' and that never happened.  It might locally pain me some tiny bit to be told that, but it's the kind of hurt that's intrinsic to learning not to do something again, not what I'd classify as - the dath ilani word that translates as 'punishment' in the Lawful sense of that - the kind of hurt where you're deliberately making it worse because you're trying to influence my behavior by imposing costs on me."

"So, if my concept of dignity is all about thinking and acting in a way that makes there be negligible real social disincentives for you to inform me about my mistakes, even if I didn't ask, and your version of dignity is about always looking cheerful and enthusiastic and not giving me any visible sign that I'm making mistakes, unless I ask, there might've been an inter-cultural problem."

"All right, I think I might have managed to put my finger on a quiet nagging doubt I had before," Keltham says, totally oblivious to any signs of INNER PANIC this might be producing unless somebody actually shows it to him.

"There's at least three different Baseline words that translate as 'dignity' in this language.  But the one I had in mind is - not getting angry at people for behaving the way they're supposed to, or in ways they have a right to do.  Not showing outward anger, not letting yourself react inwardly in a way that could lead you to subconsciously - lower their grades later, or the equivalent of that.  It's the quality that you display to others so that they'll know it's safe to turn you down for sex, even though you're acting as a manager, and if you weren't confident you'd shown that much dignity you'd be afraid to invite them for sex.  Dignity, in the case of my relation to students as a teacher, means that if I make my own mistake on the whiteboard, and you point it out, I don't even internally blame you for my mistake and give you a bad performance review later.  Nobody who lacked that kind of dignity would be tapped to give performance reviews.  Very few higher managers would be stupid enough to promote a manager who was visibly bad enough at 'dignity' that employees would be afraid to tell them what they were doing wrong.  We go through training to avoid that being true of us even subconsciously where our conscious minds wouldn't notice."

"If you're not in a state of fixed enthusiasm produced by mind-affecting spells, then it's very odd if I just started up teaching again after not doing that for years, in another dimension, across an unknown huge cultural gap, in a non-native language that's translated in my mind by spell, and didn't make any mistakes.  I was wordlessly expecting somebody in the class to go 'wrong, that's not how you teach Chelish students,' and that never happened.  It might locally pain me some tiny bit to be told that, but it's the kind of hurt that's intrinsic to learning not to do something again, not what I'd classify as - the dath ilani word that translates as 'punishment' in the Lawful sense of that - the kind of hurt where you're deliberately making it worse because you're trying to influence my behavior by imposing costs on me."

"So, if my concept of dignity is all about thinking and acting in a way that makes there be negligible real social disincentives for you to inform me about my mistakes, even if I didn't ask, and your version of dignity is about always looking cheerful and enthusiastic and not giving me any visible sign that I'm making mistakes, unless I ask, there might've been an inter-cultural problem."