A Brass Trumpet and a Tin Ear

It’s likely clear by now that endless rounds of attempting to reform political institutions will not heal our political culture until we begin to pay attention once again to democracy as a human enterprise. If we can’t heal and restore the human component of politics, we’ll never come close to healing democracy itself.Obscured by the war games of larger political manipulations is another kind of political life that is emerging at the community level. While we cast about frantically for how we might restore or heal democracy, it is at the local or human level where we must begin. While media maintains its painful focus at the national or political levels, in our communities are occurring thousands and thousands of small but patient steps of citizens eager to take responsibility for where they live. There’s only one problem: they are talking right past one another.In the midst of countless efforts of citizens to take back the right to decide on the fates of their own communities they are finding that civics and civility are not necessarily the same thing. We forget that civil society isn’t merely about action but civil talk. If we wish to restore politics to a human level then we must also restore the way we talk to one another – especially those with whom we disagree.I worked long enough in Parliament to see that the heavily partisan rhetoric was dooming any real chance of getting things accomplished. But in returning to civic life, I have witnessed local initiatives experience difficulty getting off the ground because the vocabulary is combative as opposed to cooperative. Civility is supposed to be our local communities’ most precious gift to the political structure overall - we are meant to converse best with those we live in community with. Yet it is a sign of Western decline that our cities and towns are adopting the more strident tones of their more senior provincial and federal cousins – the very thing people complain of in Parliament is finding its replication in local venues across the country.Let’s not fool ourselves – public talk isn’t civil talk. Listen to most talk radio programs and you’ll know what I’m alluding to – the restive, angry, dogmatic, even vitriolic use of words not designed to persuade but to pummel. We increasingly refuse to start in a place of politeness but defiance and things proceed downhill from there. Seen in context, it is everything but civil. It convicts people rather than convincing them, blames others rather than bearing personal responsibility, it talks without teaching, lectures without learning. Media increasingly buys into this because … well, it’s far more entertaining than the bland civility of an earlier era. Sadly, it is leading to that place where compromise becomes impossible, where one side wins instead of all gaining something.There is one key reason we need a public voice as opposed to something more private. Ultimately it speaks for those in decline, on the margins, forgotten and overlooked by the very governments designed to protect them. Private media will never go there because it’s just not lucrative enough. Between insensitive governments and overpowering corporatism, everything under threat, including the environment, can only hope to get an airing in our public conversation. In essence that is what the Occupy movement has been all about. Prior to their presence on the global scene, governments and the moneyed class had all but passed over the poor, the unemployed, those with mental health issues. Citizens of the middle class were too busy attempting to hold on to a life that was slowly slipping away. Someone had to stand up to the injustice of it all and that someone was the Occupy Wall Street movement.Sadly, no sooner had the Occupy movement made its present felt than the cascading sound of negativism flooded their airwaves, led by pundits ignorant of the more punishing elements of the global financial failure. As time has gone by, the Occupy folks began responding in kind, adopting a more strident vocabulary that ran the danger of alienating the broader public that felt a subtle sympathy for their message. At one assembly of Occupiers, when I offered a way forward with the broader community, I was treated in a manner worse than anything I had experienced in the very Parliament which they Occupiers condemned for its negativity.The kind of public talk that excludes the outlook of others might be clear as a bell, but in the end it is undemocratic and hurts the very people living in a community. To speak responsibly we must hear responsibly; true public talk has not only a voice but an ear. If we can’t refine our voices so that others can be heard, then public talk is just like its private cousin. Listening to others in understanding is the crowning virtue of civil society and its most potent weapon.Talk a look at the picture at the top of the page. It immediately captures the imagination because it’s not what we’re used to seeing. Imagine trying to compose a message with such a keyboard – can’t be done. And yet this picture is symbolic of much of our public and political discourse. It yells, exclaims, asserts, denounces, criticizes, and condemns, but can’t for one second persuade, which is meant to be the key instrument of public conversation. Until we make room for others we will never make a space for civil society. This is a lesson both communities and the Occupiers must learn if we are to find equity and social justice where we live. Find a keyboard that has question marks and you’ll be far better off. Community can then begin the process of rebuilding through curiosity and civility.