In my opinion, “Don’t You” is the worst of Taylor Swift’s “From The Vault” tracks. It’s not just the song’s slow pace, the screech of the synthetic flute, or the confused mix of genres that makes “Don’t You” dead weight on the re-released Fearless album; The song also isn’t an interesting paradigm for understanding or making sense of breakups. Capturing the awkward moment of unexpectedly running into an ex, “Don’t You” offers an explicit list of “what not to do” in the first surprise post-breakup encounter. Swift demands of her ex, “Don’t you smile at me and ask me how I’ve been/ Don’t you say you’ve missed me if you don’t want me again.” Articulating what not to do– smiling, making small talk, or acknowledging some regret – Swift doesn’t give any insight into what the ex – and by extension her audience – should do in that excruciatingly awkward moment. If we look to pop culture to offer a framework to approach complicated situations, “Don’t You” provides no advice, guidance, or direction regarding what someone should do if they have to see their ex again.
Taylor’s assertion of negative mandates – framing a statement to emphasize what someone shouldn’t do, rather than pointing to what someone should do– is pretty typical. It echoes the way the Bible frames morality, with the bulk of the ten commandments articulating what people shouldn’t do. G.K. Chesterton laughs at the type of people who criticize moral statements like the ten commandments (and Swift’s “Don’t You”) that articulate what not to do rather than what to do. He argues that, “the silliest sort of progressive complains of negative morality…This is particularly plain in the fuss about the ‘negative’ morality of the Ten Commandments. The truth is that the curtness of the Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion but of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things are forbidden.” In other words, Chesterton would argue that Swift (and the ten commandments) offers an expansive view of morality, by only pinpointing a handful of actions that they designate as off-limits. As much as it might be helpful to have a guide about what actions to take, by framing their statements around what people shouldn’t do in breakups, Swift takes a liberal perspective that permits all actions that are not explicitly prohibited.
This sort of framework – explicitly stating what people cannot do, rather than defining what they must do – shapes political conceptions of liberty in addition to breakup-centric moral ideas. Political philosopher Isaiah Berlin coined the idea of “negative liberty,” a perspective that asks “What is the area within which the subject – a person or a group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons” as opposed to a positive liberty that asks “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?” In other words, framing liberty in a positive sense assumes that some external authority can impose limitations on people’s choices (usually because this interference will result in people making “better” choices, according to the interferer), whereas a negative liberty approaches questions with the perspective that there are inherently areas of decision making in which people should be free from interference. This framework of liberty asserts that while there might be some restrictions (for example, people should not smile at Taylor Swift after breaking up with her), it errs on the side of not limiting choices and doesn’t define what people should do.
Like a negative morality, negative liberty in effect leaves open many more possibilities for the way people act. As Berlin, an advocate of negative liberty, wrote “Pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative’ liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great, disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ self mastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind.” He would have loved “Don’t You,” because of the way, rather than demanding what Taylor’s ex should do (a positive or affirmative action that he would see as authoritarian), it only articulates the very specific things someone shouldn’t do, allowing a greater degree of individual choice.
Though he was a hardcore conservative with an aristocratic totalitarian bent, T.S. Eliot shockingly would have supported Berlin's concept of negative liberty and the pluralism it encouraged. Discussing book bannings, Eliot wrote that wide reading “is valuable because in the process of being affected by one powerful personality after another, we cease to be dominated by any one, or by any small number. The very different views of life, cohabitating in our minds, affect each other, and our own personality asserts itself.” Just as exposure to many ideas through a variety of books allows people to form their own opinions and tastes, so too does exposure to different ways of life and perspectives. In other words, Eliot would have supported (in theory) the pluralism Berlin praised, as well as the negative liberty — or opportunity to make different choices — that Berlin believed enabled pluralism to thrive. As such, Eliot would have applauded Taylor Swift’s “Don’t You,” because it provides a reflection of the sort of negative framing of moral mandates conducive to pluralism.