{"id":2016,"date":"2016-09-03T06:57:15","date_gmt":"2016-09-03T10:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2016-09-03T06:57:15","modified_gmt":"2016-09-03T10:57:15","slug":"where-do-we-hear-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=2016","title":{"rendered":"Where do we hear each other?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/cultural-comment\/trump-the-university-of-chicago-and-the-collapse-of-public-language\">This article<\/a> describes how one reporter has struggled with the ways in which Americans communicate with each other at this point.   There were a number of killer insights but several stuck out: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In recent years, in my reporting, I\u2019ve come to uncool conclusions. For one thing, I\u2019ve begun to think that instilling public purpose into private communities is the hardest thing in the world. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019ve increasingly found myself a supporter of messy public process: the legislation pushed through government slowly, in curtailed form; the interminable, fruitless-seeming town-hall meeting; many of the government\u2019s lumbering, error-prone efforts at regulation. These processes are cumbersome, often wasteful, and inevitably infuriating. But at their best they have the virtue of occurring in a common arena, the place where all parts of a population meet. They force us, if we hope to get anything done, to translate our values and thoughts into language that communicates broadly. The more I observe, the warier I grow of privatized efficiency: in time, it indulges clannish thought. Let\u2019s drive our language out of private circles, back toward the public sphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What I appreciate about this latter idea, particularly as a teacher, is that Heller is trying to move us back to the circles where you have to get something done.   For example, if you want safe water, you&#8217;re going to have to meet with a lot of different stakeholders. Getting all of those individuals and institutions to agree on something let alone change their behaviors and policies is going to require a lengthy process, one that&#8217;s, in Heller&#8217;s words, <em>cumbersome, often wasteful, and inevitably infuriating<\/em>.Or you can retreat to a closed, private space, say an on-line community, where you can develop your own language and vision in essential isolation and then lament why nothing seems to change.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article describes how one reporter has struggled with the ways in which Americans communicate with each other at this point. There were a number of killer insights but several stuck out: In recent years, in my reporting, I\u2019ve come to uncool conclusions. For one thing, I\u2019ve begun to think that instilling public purpose into &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=2016\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Where do we hear each other?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-of-note"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-ww","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}