On Common Discourse

Building understanding within and between various groups depends on certain skills and “habits of mind” requiring much time and practice to develop. Certainly necessary are a willingness to learn, the ability to listen, and some facility in reassuring others that their points of view have been heard and their experiences and intelligence are honored. But just as important are abilities to effectively marshal facts and present reasoned cases in ways tailored to the backgrounds and sensibilities of others. Effective argumentation also includes the capacity to respectfully subject the opinions and reasoning of others to critical analysis - which necessitates accepting the same conditions for one’s own faulty logic, informational lacunae, and prejudices.

But common and public discourse in the United States provides few models for the types of discussion that build community while also clarifying legitimate differences of opinion and interests. The reasons for this are myriad.

First, past experience and intense affiliations may even preclude a basic willingness to engage in serious, respectful debate. These experiences may include fury at being shown up by misleading and faulty arguments presented in glib, dismissive or domineering manners. These experiences can serve to reinforce pervasive and deep rooted feelings of frustrated helplessness and battered self esteem. Partisan and social affiliations generally have an acutely negative impact on open mindedness.


But there is always hope.


Noam Chomsky frequently invokes an era (the 1930s and earlier) when unschooled working class individuals were often more educated and articulate than aristocrats - or managers.

Unfortunately, that era also coincided (in the US) with incredibly bloody violence directed against workers who attempted to organize and participate in labor actions. To be fair, workers often did their best to fight back with their own lethal ferocity, but they were up against the full fury of corporate power with its private armies, labor spies, and beer soaked thugs. And of course the firepower of the US Army along with National Guard and local police was frequently and ruthlessly unleashed against upstart elements of the working class.

Between 1871 and 1937 there were on average two major massacres per decade. (This is a conservative characterization.) After that corporate power, supported by government, used more sophisticated methods to divide, distract, and demoralize the population. (Anybody who earns their living by working instead of passively "owning" is a member of the working class.) These methods include the sophisticated propaganda of the sports/entertainment/advertising industries for the "lower orders" along with the subtler selective coverage and snide vacancies of the "middlebrow" press. The public education systems continue to "level" their products to give vastly different types of education (outlooks and skills) to teens on multi tiered career "tracks".

In my experience which reaches back only to the 1970s, I see no decline in the quality of people's discussion skills. Those, along with the public discourse that might serve as a model, remain at the same abysmal level I have always experienced.

But maybe the people I have associated with have always been but a "special kind of stupid".



The thesis here is that people's discussion skills (along with information levels and capacity for critical thinking which underlie meaningful discourse) are being intentionally stunted to prevent meaningful solidarity - which is the fellow feeling that engenders mutual support among humans with a common interest.

Unfortunately, despite any mewling protests to the contrary, major cultural institutions (mostly schools) in the US do very little to promote meaningful or useful discourse. They are too busy inoculating their “products” against appeals to solidarity and preparing them for compliant roles in what is obscenely referred to as “the labor force”.