Where's the discourse?
(Or, You're not on politics again, are you?!)
Alexis de Tocqueville (What a great name!) observed that Americans love to talk politics - everybody! everywhere! all the time! Neil Postman, in his execllent analysis of television's impact on political discourse, pondered the "dumbing down" of this discourse into what I like to call argumentum soundbitum. Sound painful? It should!
Read Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business and draw your own conclusion from his arguments. I'll address one of them, and add my own partial-rebuttal.
The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates were lengthy affairs. An earlier debate between these two opponents went like this: Douglas spoke for three hours. Lincoln, noting the time, suggested the audience recess for their dinners before returning to attend to his four hour rebuttal, which would be followed by Douglas' hour-long rejoinder. This is an eight-hour debate, folks!
After your jaw returns to its normal position, ask yourself how long you would sit through a political debate before (yeah) changing the channel. Then ask yourself why. Surely political matters are important to you, right? You're an American, after all, charged with the awesome responsibility of contributing to the governance of this great nation.
Sure, we still talk politics, and that's a good thing. But I would posit that such chatting does not constitute discourse. Discourse is involved discussion. It's not something that lasts only until the next commercial break. It's not made up of soundbites and "elevator speeches". And it certainly doeesn't begin and end with a preference poll.
Lest I grow wordy in elaborating the point, I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks (laziness, partisan bias, etc.) of contributing factors in our present discourse dearth, and will move instead to a partial-rebuttal of this otherwise-wholesale condemnation.
Many of you are politically-informed in spite of our ADD-inspired (and -inducing) culture. You read and digest op-ed pieces, the modern-day equivalent to 15-minute single-issue stump speeches. You devour books on opposing sides of issues, the closest thing to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate we'll ever see in our lifetimes. You're more interested in and more prepared for serious, non-partisan, thorough discussion of political and social matters confronting America than the fellow who gives his "opinion" to a pollster only to have it regurgitated back to him in tomorrow's USA Today as though it were news that somehow impacts his life.
Digesting ideas takes time. Prematurely acting on ideas is as foolish and harmful as exercising too soon after eating. Similarly, discourse takes time. Argumentum soundbitum just won't cut it. And even argumentum smokebreakum fails to satisfy. Those of you with whom I've had the pleasure of "closing down Starbucks" know how much I enjoy good conversation, whether for 30 minutes or 5 hours. And although Starbucks may have gone PC and $4 for a cup o'java now strikes us as exquisitely insane, the need for reasoned discourse and deliberative discussion has only grown more apparent.
Alexis de Tocqueville (What a great name!) observed that Americans love to talk politics - everybody! everywhere! all the time! Neil Postman, in his execllent analysis of television's impact on political discourse, pondered the "dumbing down" of this discourse into what I like to call argumentum soundbitum. Sound painful? It should!
Read Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business and draw your own conclusion from his arguments. I'll address one of them, and add my own partial-rebuttal.
The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates were lengthy affairs. An earlier debate between these two opponents went like this: Douglas spoke for three hours. Lincoln, noting the time, suggested the audience recess for their dinners before returning to attend to his four hour rebuttal, which would be followed by Douglas' hour-long rejoinder. This is an eight-hour debate, folks!
After your jaw returns to its normal position, ask yourself how long you would sit through a political debate before (yeah) changing the channel. Then ask yourself why. Surely political matters are important to you, right? You're an American, after all, charged with the awesome responsibility of contributing to the governance of this great nation.
Sure, we still talk politics, and that's a good thing. But I would posit that such chatting does not constitute discourse. Discourse is involved discussion. It's not something that lasts only until the next commercial break. It's not made up of soundbites and "elevator speeches". And it certainly doeesn't begin and end with a preference poll.
Lest I grow wordy in elaborating the point, I'll leave it to you to fill in the blanks (laziness, partisan bias, etc.) of contributing factors in our present discourse dearth, and will move instead to a partial-rebuttal of this otherwise-wholesale condemnation.
Many of you are politically-informed in spite of our ADD-inspired (and -inducing) culture. You read and digest op-ed pieces, the modern-day equivalent to 15-minute single-issue stump speeches. You devour books on opposing sides of issues, the closest thing to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate we'll ever see in our lifetimes. You're more interested in and more prepared for serious, non-partisan, thorough discussion of political and social matters confronting America than the fellow who gives his "opinion" to a pollster only to have it regurgitated back to him in tomorrow's USA Today as though it were news that somehow impacts his life.
Digesting ideas takes time. Prematurely acting on ideas is as foolish and harmful as exercising too soon after eating. Similarly, discourse takes time. Argumentum soundbitum just won't cut it. And even argumentum smokebreakum fails to satisfy. Those of you with whom I've had the pleasure of "closing down Starbucks" know how much I enjoy good conversation, whether for 30 minutes or 5 hours. And although Starbucks may have gone PC and $4 for a cup o'java now strikes us as exquisitely insane, the need for reasoned discourse and deliberative discussion has only grown more apparent.
posted by Lear's Fool | 11:00 AM
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