Conversation

A very American point of view that it took me years to grok is that “free speech” here is defined as the discourse norms that prevail when everyone carries a gun. It’s not quite honor culture phatic speech, but something like “draw ya varmint” as the final escalation of “debate”
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One of the achievements of Deadwood (the show) was to portray idealized American free speech culture as it might plausibly have “worked.” Swearengen, Bullock etc do communicate and think together but in a mode circumscribed by the ever- present threat of escalation to violence
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It’s a definite improvement over say Arab or Afghan style honor culture speech (which tends far more empty and ceremonial-phatic) but it’s not… statue heads debating in the Polis or even an agora/“marketplace” of ideas-haggling some seem to imagine.
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Honor culture language tends to be very good at 2 modes: trash talk and lyrical poetry. Expect to see a lot more of both on here in coming months.
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“Reasonable” discourse norms tend to be bourgeois. Not much at stake, low upside/downside, meaningful conversation exit options, low cost to disagreement (“this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” is rare in risk-averse suburbia).
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Low on poetry, mockery, and trash-talk, high in insight-porn trading, trying to surprise each other, verbal wit, and reveling in existential absurdity, paradox etc. High-culture version looks more like TED talks than rap battles.
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Replying to
I don't think so? TED talks are extremely low-information and extremely high-hype because they treat getting across the key idea to a very wide audience vital (and failure to do so is a ruined career). The not-quite-life-or-death stakes prevent complexity.
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