July 13, 2008
www.TruthForUs.com
Martin C. Boire
Absence of Malice; On the Art of Discourse
Recently I was able to thank someone for a pleasant, carefully though-out discourse on one of my writings. I say discourse because these days most have lost what discussion and discourse really are. Most interaction on American TV and other venues has reduced to shouting matches, with guests spitting out the opposition position of what the other guest says, and all of them merely scratching the surface and failing to touch upon the root of their subject matter.
Discourse has always been about pausing and taking into honest consideration what the other has said, and seeing if there is something there that when applied should produce a change in one’s thinking. Discourse is not so much about what one thinks, as why one thinks it.
When one watches TV shows today, you can tell from the talkers’ expressions and postures that they have their response ready and are simplistically waiting to pounce as soon as the other person stops talking. It is an insult to the viewer.
On the other hand, I remember a man named William F. Buckley who had a TV show, “Firing Line” I think, back in the 1980s here in the States. It was just he and his guest in two chairs on a open stage or platform. I was so busy at the time as a new husband and father and remodeler of our first home, that I don’t recall that I focused much on what was being said. But there are three things I first recall when I think of him and his show. There was never any shouting, quickness, or arguing. After his guest said something, Mr. Buchanan would lean back in his chair so far I thought it would fall over backwards like my desks in school, and fiddle his pen around in his teeth while looking at the ceiling and considering (for an eternity in TV sound-bite land) what the guest had said. Then he would lean forward and say words to the effect “for you to say that, you must believe this . . . ,” having taken the time to see what philosophic basis the guest must predicate his argument upon in order to have gotten where he was. He had actually thought about what the other fellow had said. Bingo - a reasoned discourse aimed to getting to root causes of things. The true nature of an honest discussion.
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