Decline in Public and Scientific Discourse

Has Our Culture Adopted a "Courtroom Procedure" Mentality?

In US and UK society and culture it feels to me that we have become so very divided, polarized, politicized, susceptible to "othering", and dehumanizing, and generally traumatising ourselves via the current nature of our public discourse. This is undoubtedly, to my mind, having significant negative impact on collective Nervous System dysregulation and mental wellbeing, ramping up the defensiveness even more.

To help diagnose the problem, I've been wondering if this is, at least in part, because we have replaced the prior cultural and societal systems for sense making and truth seeking with a Courtroom Procedural style system, at least the version of the courts that is portrayed to us on television and in the movies?

Have we, as a culture, adopted the mindset of (television and movie) Lawyers for the purpose of our public discourse?

Here are some sweeping generalization comparisons between the Courtroom Procedural system and current nature of public discourse of any particular topic:

• the discussion is, by nature, utterly oppositional and combative, with absolutely no middle ground, compromise or synthesis of ideas to be had, is winner takes all and very high stakes;

• each side it is out and out to "prove" their case, whether they really believe they are in the right or not, and even when they know deep down their side is in the wrong, as to admit any error is to lose face;

• there is often no direct dialogue or discussion between each side, but both are seeking to convince, and are talking at, an external judge and jury represented by wider society;

• each side cherry picks and overly emphasises the evidence which falls in their favour;

• each side finds and promotes expert witnesses with the highest reputations whose opinions support their side, while undermining the experts of the other side through character assassination and reputation damage;

• the main thrusts for winning the argument are through trickery, gaslighting, trying to trip witnesses up with sophistry and to make them contradict themselves, forcing yes/no answers to very nuanced questions, forcing shades of grey to be black and white, name calling, silencing, censoring and otherwise shutting the other side down in mid-sentence by raising objections and via technicalities;

• is performative and theatrical, indeed this is why those so called Courtroom "Dramas" are so popular on television and film in the first place;

• the side which wins is usually the one which is the best or most practiced at playing such games, regardless of where the objective truth, or reality, actually lies;

• categorizes people on the same side as victims, and people on the other side as perpetrators;

• one side prosecutes, while the other side is on the defensive.

Most disturbingly, it seems to me that this is the modus operandi that our own governments are increasingly adopting against us, the people who they are supposed to be serving, exploiting the inherent power imbalances to “win” these games.

If this analysis is correct, then I think the mainstream news media has a lot to answer for in creating this cultural changes, and for normalizing this form of public discussion, especially since the 24 hour news cycle arrived on to the scene and on our screens. The time-limited format of very short sound bite interviews and debates in the news, which exclude any nuance, naturally leads to this type of discourse. The advent of short form social media posts, especially the cesspool which is Twitter, no doubt also inherently exacerbated it, due to the limited character count nature, which again doesn’t allow for nuance.

However, the one area where I have seen this change most starkly over just the last couple of years, and is perhaps the most disastrous example, is when it comes to discussions about scientific questions, and amongst academics and university types.

True science should be open, collegiate, collaborative, and be about synthesis of ideas and expertise, working together to get to the bottom of things, and to the heart of the matter, in order to find the closest thing to the objective truth. I now see most examples of public scientific “debate” as being quite the opposite: ferociously anti-collegiate; siloed; holding subjective truth above the objective.

Indeed, when I was trained as researcher and scientist, the overarching guiding principle was that a true scientist does everything they can disprove their own hypothesis, and to test their own ideas to destruction, including inviting critique and good natured challenge from colleagues. The second guiding principle was to act from a place of humbleness and humility in the face of how much we just don’t know, and how fallible we can be in our thinking.

I see very few of these true scientists these days, at least in the public square. Instead, I encounter a lot of a new class of lawyer-scientists in the media. This type holds on to their own pet theory unto the death [literally], and, indeed, their very identity is indelibly intertwined with their research papers. They use precisely the Courtroom Procedural mode described above to “prove” their theories “right”, and demonstrate a great deal of hubris about how much they think they know. The move towards ultra-specialization, and a disdain for generalists, in science, is I believe a big part of this problem.

If I am correct in my “courtroom procedural” theme of breakdown of public discourse, what can we as individuals do about it? I would suggest, as usual, cultivating awareness and self-awareness, and getting our own house in order, are probably the first steps. We can start by calling folks on our own “side” out (or at least take them aside and have a quiet word in their ear) when we spot them engaged in such sophistry. We can remind each other and even ourselves that our society is in desperate need of more True Scientists and less TV Laywers!

Fortunately, I already see this self-correcting, because the anti-dotes are here in the good natured long form discussions that we can now readily find in podcasts, on every possible topic, and via long form written social media posts, with very nuanced and collaborative comment threads which makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts, especially here on substack.