Beneath social hierarchy, saying ‘I’ has itself become an act of insolence.

Evidence

In many people it is already an impertinence to say ‘I’. … The basest person is capable of perceiving the weaknesses of the greatest, the most stupid, the errors in the thought of the most intelligent. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 58

Categorization

• XREF: Connects forward to ‘the splinter in your eye’ aphorism in the same chapter and to Adorno’s whole diagnosis of the damaged, weakened subject; also anticipates the Frankfurt School critique of the administered person who no longer dares claim an ‘I’.
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the modern assumption that asserting selfhood is the first freedom; here, totalizing domination has so dissolved the subject that uttering ‘I’ is subversive. Compressed, but I read this pair with the surrounding aphorisms rendering a full thought.