Speak Nicely and Say Nothing?
I've written many times before that the demand for 'civil discourse' misses the point and is more often than not a demand that people with uncomfortable
things to say simply "shut up"... see here, from another writer:
" There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that civil discourse has occurred
whenever two or more people are nice to each other, say something, and
don’t get into an argument. That is misleading on all three counts.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries have not been crossed.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries that define spaces
of sound and spaces of silence have not been recognized and honored.
...Where there is no argument, there is no civil discourse.
We must openly disagree if we are to discover what binds us together and
what we can accomplish. We must talk to each other in order to disagree.
We must speak honestly as well as decently, which means that we may
sometimes need to say unpleasant things about each other. And about
ourselves."
from: http://ahistoricality.blogspot.com/2005/07/civil-discourse.html
" There is an unfortunate tendency to assume that civil discourse has occurred
whenever two or more people are nice to each other, say something, and
don’t get into an argument. That is misleading on all three counts.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries have not been crossed.
...civil discourse has not occurred if boundaries that define spaces
of sound and spaces of silence have not been recognized and honored.
...Where there is no argument, there is no civil discourse.
We must openly disagree if we are to discover what binds us together and
what we can accomplish. We must talk to each other in order to disagree.
We must speak honestly as well as decently, which means that we may
sometimes need to say unpleasant things about each other. And about
ourselves."
from: http://ahistoricality.blogspot.com/2005/07/civil-discourse.html
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