I Write As I Write

Wednesday, Jan 18th, 2012

quote

Most people don’t feel as though they are part of any conversation of significance. They are told what to think and how to think it. They are made to feel inadequate as soon as issues of detail are engaged; and as for general objectives, they are encouraged to believe that these have long since been determined.

The perverse effects of this suppression of genuine debate are all around us. In the US today, town hall meetings and ‘tea parties’ parody and mimic the 18th century originals. Far from opening debate, they close it down. Demagogues tell the crowd what to think; when their phrases are echoed back to them, they boldly announce that they are merely relaying popular sentiment. In the UK, television has been put to strikingly effective use as a safety valve for populist discontent; professional politicians now claim to listen to the vox populi in the form of instant phone-in votes and popularity polls on everything from immigration policy to pedophilia. Twittering back to their audience its own fears and prejudices, they are relieved of the burden of leadership or initiative.

- Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land.

Why do I feel like our public discourse (to charitably call it so) sometimes mimics the worst aspects touched on here? Among them, a lack of discursive thought; general appeals to the emotions of the audience; a prevalence of fear based discussion; the dominance of talking heads offering singular ways of viewing the world, with little space left for questions and answers (in other words, education).

I think that discursive failure is represented by this rise in ‘mood’ meters and the instant reflection of public reactions. It’s reflective and circular, raising passions and eroding discourse. Then there are the talking heads, the pseudo-intellectuals, who not only fail to explore questions, but even ask them. Instead, they present a unified, and usually simplistic, world view; offering their ‘takes’ as the be all and end all of interpretation. Heightening yet again, inflaming in other words, sentiments and passions. Which, inevitably, lead to page views, site hits, viewership ratings, and even book sales.

Discourse fails in the face of intellectual rigidity.

∞12:39 pm: iwriteasiwrite11 notes