Today nearly all real public discussion has become impossible. Which is why nearly all public thinking has become impossible. Which is why the thinking has gone bad on nearly every major issue now facing us.
It isn’t just politics that is finding it hard to operate. It is also the media and every other piece of sense-making apparatus we used to possess. The negatives accrued to any individual or institution for thinking or saying anything remotely controversial now means that they don’t bother any more. We’ve lost the art of discussion and with it the ability to find honest solutions.
There are a number of causes. Take the collapse of the ideas of private and public language brought about by technology. Throughout all of human history up until today the idea that you might say one thing in private and another in public was stored wisdom. It could lead to double-speak, for sure. Hypocrisy, certainly. But it was also recognised to have a utility: people — including politicians — needed to try out thoughts and ideas. No longer.
Today every politician and private individual has to live their lives (and voice any ideas) with the constant threat that what they are saying might be for the few people around them or (thanks to Twitter and other social media) for every other human being on the planet. Anyone doubting the extreme implications of this should consider the case of the 18-year-old schoolgirl from Utah who last year posted a photograph of herself in her prom dress online. By the end of the evening the image had circulated the world and (because the red dress was Chinese-inspired) she was being globally berated for ‘casual racism’. All she wanted was a few social media ‘likes’. What she got was a hurricane.
Young people growing up in this world are unfairly derided as ‘snowflakes’.
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