Beauty Walks A Razor's Edge, Someday We'll Make It Ours.

I want for people to be better than they are.

What do I mean by better? I mean rhetoric— discourse, debate, communication. I want people to be honest, I want people to be skilled, I want people to be smart. There's potential there. I see it. But we're not there.

Academia is frustrating; I've been avoiding it. (That's a whole other issue I don't wish to discuss here.) I care more about mass communication— politicians, journalists, ordinary citizens communicating through media (television, print, radio, Internet).

Why am I talking about this now?

On the Internet, there is the increased trend of snark. This topic was brought up by an lj friend some weeks ago. Snark stands in the way of my wants: honesty, skillfulness, smartness. I don't consider these goals to be part of some lofty, unattainable idealism. Civility, tact, and caring are other wants that come to mind. Why can't people exchange ideas better than they do currently? I feel mine are very simple, humble desires— not lofty, not impossible— not necessarily so.

I've been participating in political communities more in the past few months than in months and years prior. A couple days ago, I basically conceded that an active, snark-free, political community with significantly heterogeneous viewpoints is not realistically viable. Said the person who drew this conclusion out of me,

there is a reason they say the two things that dont come up in polite conversation are religion and politics. people tend to take their politics very personally, they get worked up over it. There are varying degrees of irrationality and blind faith, varying reactions to things that challege their beliefs, varying degrees of impatience with certain things, and so on. Its unreasonable to blame people for that which is in their nature.

Still, LiveJournal is a Mecca of beautiful discourse compared to the the sewage that is YouTube commentary. In a sub-par country music video meant as a sort of back-handed acceptance of Obama, I drudged up the following comments here. And in so doing, lost all faith in humanity.

But let's not look at the sewer of human filth. Let's look to the elite— elite minds of our day, top of the top, cream of the crop, and all that. Economist Paul Krugman and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had been kinda/sorta lightly/slightly battling and combatting one another's ideas for what's best concerning the US's plan to address the bank crisis. Moreso, it's been an all-out onslaught from Krugman, followed by a passing references by Geithner here and there to the ideas Krugman's been spouting out. Krugman is criticized for being too much the idealist, honing in too much on the economics, not considering enough political and pragmatic considerations. Geithner is criticized for being a Wall St insider whose intentions are well-placed but whose mindset is a bit too far stuck in the status quo to be capable of making the sorts of decisions that are best for the public. But the point that concerns this post isn't the critique of either man or his ideas but the nature of the discourse itself. A commenter on the ongoing indirect dialogue between the two had this to say:

I feel like both Krugman and Geithner would put up much more in depth arguments for their plans if they had to go up against each other [in face-to-face debate].

And I feel that way too. What you see from both are relatively superficial explanations. From Geithner: We have to bring confidence to the markets. From Krugman: Geithner's plan doesn't sufficiently address the real problem, we have to nationalize the banks. But there's much more too it than that. But they're not pressed sufficiently to truly challenge their rationales for their competing ideas, because the press and the general public aren't — returning to my initial points — honest enough, skilled enough, or smart enough. That being said, the level of discourse on Sunday morning talk shows like This Week are so insanely better than the typical cable-chatter discourse. The difference is like that between LiveJournal comments and YouTube comments. There's still huge room for improvement, but the difference between the two is significant and stark.

So with all that as background, today, I happened upon some sort of somewhat spontaneous YouTube video debate. It's everything— well, not everything— It's many things that YouTube comments aren't— namely, substantive. It's actually wonderfully revelatory of what potential lies in such exchanges. I mean, one of the participants is actually employing the YouTube sidebar, not to promote some site or link to something funny, as is common practice, but to actually support assertions with facts from legitimate, academic sources!

Now, this is far from the pinnacle of debate and far from devoid of ego-laden inanity. But can you imagine the potential? Imagine if academics communicated in this fashion—debating through ten to twenty minute YouTube videos, expounding upon their points, and linking to lists of peer-reviewed journal article citations in the sidebar. This is what I want: for the Internet to provide a popular medium (tens to hundreds of thousands of viewers) that is used for genuinely fruitful exchanges of ideas, and changes of minds, growth of minds.

This is not lofty some idealism. This is a realistic goal.

In the meantime, there is TED, bloggingheads.tv, Rachel Maddow, and The Young Turks.