#sensible discourse

[mojo-king-bee]

finnthehelper said:  im gonna have to fight you cuz cloudy added 5000 years to my life                          

AND I’M VERY HAPPY 4 U AND ALL THE FINNATICS

no fight pls

although I like that this is the level of discourse in the AT fandom

“this episode was good”

“EXCUSE U I THINK U MEAN ULTRA GOOD”

[nc-t-blog]

Since our group discussions (both small and large) in class, I’ve been thinking a lot about bias when talking about, writing about, and generally discussing such emotionally charged events. 

Bias is unavoidable. Every word written and spoken is a choice, and whether or not you’re able to admit it to others or even to yourself, that choice is affected by the way you think and what you think about. To me, the real question is how should we, Texans, Americans, Worlders, deal with this striking reality. There are, as I see it, two basic approaches: we can make a conscious effort to write and speak as neutrally as possible, or we can accept our biases and try to seek out and share as many differing points of view as possible. I have no idea which discourse is best, if there is a best. There are cases, such as this Wikipedia article, that seem to lend themselves to the neutral, cut and dry facts style, but there are many cases where the best decision is unclear. Should the news edge away from opinionated reporting or should they accept their bias and try to play a ten way split devil’s advocate. Every point of view can’t be accounted for, so should we try to talk about as many as we can or should we group similar points of view into a charicature resembling many opinions but matching relatively few. 

My opinion has yet to fully form. I do not know the answers. I probably will never “know” the answers, but hopefully through discussion and experience, we can all come a little closer to them. And if they don’t exist, maybe we can come closer to understanding as many differing points of view as is manageable.