Defining Discourse Down

By Kevin DeYoung
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

No one has mistaken our day as an age of powerful, rational discourse. The McLaughlin Group doesn’t usually evoke memories of Lincoln-Douglas, and Twittering about your favorite bagel from Panera isn’t exactly correspondence on the level of John and Abigail Adams.

But perhaps I’m being unfair. When has any debate in the last 150 years evoked memories of Lincoln-Douglas? And how is Twitter versus America’s most remarkable letter-writing first family a fair fight? But even if these comparisons are stacked, who would argue against the notion that we have defined discourse down? The discourse of the average educated adult conversing in the realm of ideas with another average educated adult is not, on average, very educated, let alone interesting.

So what’s the problem? It’s not that we are all suddenly morons. This is not going to be some elitist rant on “if only everyone could be smart like me and my friends.” Likewise, the problem is not the banality of the world around us. There is plenty to discuss, dissect, and disagree on. The problem is not even that television has robbed us of the ability to communicate in complete sentences (though it certainly hasn’t helped). The problem with our discourse—are you ready for this brilliant insight?—is that some people are jerks and some people are too nice. the rest-First Things