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October 18, 2006

A thought as election day nears

Of what value is civil, reasoned civic discourse?

Before answering that question, I have another: How would we know it; what differentiates it from the discourse we now have?

I not not going to attempt an answer to either of those questions yet. Perhaps answers will emerge as we get closer to election day. But I've been thinking today about the Ancient Greeks and their democracy. Male citizens could participate in the legislature and the law courts (for a brief history of Greek democracy and the role of rhetoric, click here). They came to understand their democracy as a public trust and participation as a civic duty. But those two things did not always translate into something like civil, reasoned civic discourse. The Greeks were very contentious people. And despite their understanding of rhetoric as a skill of political science (and their intense desire to learn it), they were quite capable of speaking in civic ways that were less than helpful to the polity.

Related to what I've been thinking about today is this: The Greeks had a more useful understanding of opinion. We tend to think of opinion as a personal possession. But the Greeks largely considered opinion a community possession. In other words, no opinion a citizen could hold was merely personal; it was created and informed by the citizen's socio-political situation.

Okay, so what am I getting at? It seems to me at least two things are working against our culture's ability to deal with the electronically mediated democratic process. We are still operating with the values of Enlightenment Liberalism (not a bad thing, IMO), but we have perhaps lost the ability detect bullshit, spin, fallacies, and propaganda--caught up as we are in the pathos of politics as it appears on television. Or, perhaps, we're (citizens, the press?) not so willing to point them out in those terms. Whatever the case (and I'm sure I don't have this nailed down), unlike the Greeks, we have a civic discourse--experienced largely through electronic media--that arises from bullshit, spin, fallacies, and propaganda offered largely without challenge. The contentious Greeks at least valued the political ability to speak well even if they sometimes failed to achieve it. We seem incapable of even desiring it beyond vague notions that something is broken.

In something like the public sphere that I imagine (an idealistic stretch to be sure), it should be impossible, for example, to utter the phrase "cut and run" (applied to a wide range of ideas from the loyal opposition--including some that do fit that label) without being hounded or laughed off the public stage (I could give you liberal examples, but I'm not in the mood).



Posted by acline at October 18, 2006 11:27 AM | | Spotlight