I’ve occasionally posted on the curiously angry state of the current world – the Eeyore Zeitgeist we live in now.  If the stock market goes up, we talk about its inevitable coming collapse.  If the stock market goes down, we talk about the betrayal of capitalism and Armageddon.  Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that truly bad things aren’t happening, just that the world has always had things like the Plague and the Little Ice Age that caused starvation throughout much of Europe.

So why so dark now, when the world as a whole is healthier and safer than it ever has been in terms of all relevant statistical measures?  I was too young to have fun in the sixties like the flower children apparently did; I was just a child.  But I was old enough to understand the nuclear menace that was brought to public consciousness by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  After that terrifying week, I read Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, a post-apocalyptic novel from 1957 about life being snuffed out continent by continent as the radiation cloud slowly drifted around the world.  I was nine years old and frightened for months.  The world felt precarious and possibly short-lived.

We seem to be living in a similarly preoccupied world now.  The difference is that there are so many more ways the world could end, whether climate change, or Ebola, or North Korea going rogue, or India and Pakistan deciding to fight to the end.  So that may be why we all feel so much worse than the mere facts would dictate.  Partly as a result, or perhaps just a simultaneous trend, we’ve separated into tribes that talk past each other – and that mutual incomprehension adds to the general sense of despair.

What can we do to improve this feeling in the air?  As speakers in the public sphere, I think we need to show what good listening looks like.  We need to show that we take seriously opposing points of view.  One reason why we’re all so angry and inclined to hurl things at our leaders and each other is that there is precious little dialogue and way too much monologue – and sheer distortion – in the world today.

The ancient Greeks derived a structure for a speech for precisely this occasion.  In rhetorical circles, it’s known as the “residues method.”  What you do is set out the issue first, in relatively brief terms, but including the relevant data.  Then, you discuss the alternate points of view – seriously, with respect – without mocking or distorting them.  Then, politely point out what you think are the flaws in that reasoning.  Once you’ve discussed the several possible points of view, and rejected them for cogent reasons, what’s left is your point of view – the residue of the argument.  Then you can say why that argument is, in your opinion, the best.