I want to make this clear before I get in trouble. It’s not that I have a problem with “discourse,” the monolithic label that seems to cover everything from city hall forums to Twitter conversations to comments following online news articles.
Usually, I just have a problem with how it’s done.
For the inexperienced college student, mean-spirited criticism is disguised under the well-intentioned veil of public discourse. Vital civic duties are reduced to one-lined dictums — harshly and succinctly worded — with the effect of belittling others into surrender.
The issue with discourse is that it is mostly self-serving, particularly when we are at a time in our lives when our beliefs have yet to become authentically verified by years of life experience.
We argue, only to hear ourselves say — rationalize out loud — how right we think we are. With my own experiences in the classroom, the students who speak most often are usually following an ego-inflating agenda, speaking only to reveal how smart they are and to earn intellectual brownie points within their own crowds.
Most discourse has yet to serve meaningful purposes, even though we purport at every turn that it is necessary for change and progress.
What we say when we engage in discourse turns into fragments of an unsupported belief system, flattening out dialogue into dimensions of forgotten obscurity. We don’t remember, and nothing sticks. As a result, “discourse” never reaches the apex of grand epiphany we hope it does, embracing all those under it with a provocative action plan to make the world a better place.
That isn’t a moment of decided insight, but a sad resignation: We say things just to say them. We debate “for the sake of debate.” Synonymous with “discourse” is now “verbal match” — inconsequential chatter uttered when two speakers are unable to think a little longer about what they are about to say. Critique rarely seems thoughtful or genuine. I guess the word I’m looking for is “kind.”
Effective public discourse and criticism require two things that need more practice: empathy and compassion.
Both words evoke more opposition from jaded ears and unbridled sensationalism from sentimental hearts than they deserve. But empathy is a prerequisite to civil discourse, (call it a precursor to critical thinking skills too, if you want) because it allows us to naturally reason through various, normally unchartered perspectives.
It is the ability to put oneself in another person’s reasoning faculties to explore another’s thought system, but it is also how we are able to interrogate our own. How else should we critique our own modes of evaluation if not by stepping outside of ourselves to analyze what we’re like from another’s vantage point?
Compassion is what keeps the practice of empathy safe. It allows a thinker to feel secure enough to leave the well-entrenched world of his or her own ideologies to empathize with the ideology of another. Empathy and compassion are different from tolerance: “Polite etiquette” we perform before understanding reaches a possible breaking point.
They’re better.
Discussions surrounding the nature of discourse often center in on how it needs to be “changed” or “reshaped,” concerning themselves more with the content of discourse than the form through which it is delivered.
Before discourse can be changed or reshaped, it must be handled with more care — more empathy when we think and listen and more compassion when we react and speak.
Reach the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu or follow her at @ce_truong.
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