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By Benjamin Kellogg, DCI Fellow<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n This post is a \u201cmeta\u201d post. What is this blog? Is this a place where deliberation about particular subjects happens? Or is it a place for a second-order deliberation; that is, for deliberation about <\/em>deliberation? So far, it\u2019s turned out to be a mixture of both: some Fellows post about particular issues in the contemporary American political climate, while others write about how deliberative practice itself, as engaged in by the DCI, has improved their lives.<\/p>\n But there would be a deep irony in our deliberations about deliberative practice if we didn\u2019t try to take a variety of different perspectives on the subject. So, I\u2019m going to talk about deliberation by emphasizing its limits as a way of coming to a humble conception of what it is we\u2019re doing, which I think can help us have a deeper appreciation for it and maybe even make us better deliberators.<\/p>\n What exactly are the limits of deliberation? This very website\u2019s FAQ states in its answer to the question \u201cwhy (deliberation) now?\u201d that \u201ca climate of tribalism is undemocratic and dysfunctional. If we hope to heal our civic malaise, we must learn to listen and respond constructively to those outside our own cultural groups. Deliberation allows us to do so.\u201d Notice that we only say deliberation allows <\/em>us to heal from the undemocratic tribalism of contemporary political discourse.<\/p>\n Deliberation is not, however, something that has the power to break down the many factors contributing to contemporary pseudo-democracy and build genuinely participatory democracy all by itself. So, it\u2019s necessary but insufficient, just as the answer to the first question in the FAQ states: \u201cDeliberation does not occur in a vacuum \u2026 Deliberation is a necessary but insufficient component of citizenship<\/em>, and should be connected to and may co-exist with other citizen actions, from voting and organizing to protesting and advocating\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n Deliberation\u2019s being \u201cnecessary but insufficient\u201d is all very well and good as an answer, but it doesn\u2019t give us much of an intuitive, impactful picture of our exact limits as an organization. Let\u2019s try to think through some specifics to get a better image: how far might we realistically see the effects of our program extending? Well, we can make ourselves and our small community: 1) genuinely more open-minded and better at listening to others\u2019 views; 2) more persuasive in conversations with those with whom we disagree; 3) better at managing disagreement in our personal lives between family members, coworkers, etc.; 4) more knowledgeable and reflective about current issues, and so on.<\/p>\n While it may contribute to their effectiveness, deliberation cannot, however, do <\/em>the other movements that are necessary. Deliberation cannot supply the additional acts of citizenship that are necessary for the salvaging, or the creation, of democracy. We DCI Fellows can be active citizens to the full extent that we are able, but we are individuals, and DCI is an individual organization, on an individual campus, whose cultural reach is far from universal. Even if we do literally all we can, there remains the sense that we reach a point where hoping <\/em>that others will take up the cause of deliberative citizenship \u2013 and citizenship more generally \u2013 is the limit that we\u2019ve reached. Indeed, despite all our efforts, American democracy could very well be unsalvageable. We might imagine ourselves supplying a necessary medicine for a dying patient just a little bit too late, getting there just in time to see their final tragic moments.<\/p>\n And if that were the case (even as we hope that it is not), what a ripe topic for deliberation it would be! It wouldn\u2019t make deliberative citizenship be \u201cin vain\u201d \u2013 quite the opposite. We shouldn\u2019t be disappointed with deliberative efforts because they didn\u2019t save democracy, because feeling so would mean that we had inappropriate expectations of deliberation. Instead, we should appreciate that we who did all that was in our power to exercise our deliberative duties as citizens responding to the situation in the best way we could.<\/p>\n My image of citizenship here is perhaps a somber one, but it also a stoic one \u2013 I do not expect that I can change the external facts outside my control, only that I can control my response to them, my exercise of the duties on the citizen\u2019s shoulders. If contemporary political discourse is to deteriorate further despite our efforts to the contrary, then we should face that possibility as yet another object of deliberative consideration. In fact, I think this view exercises the deliberative disposition of humility, in that through it we can appreciate<\/em> our limitations. Facing the fact of our relative powerlessness before the tides of unpredictable social change should prepare us emotionally for the reality of what it is we\u2019re doing \u2013 and make us better deliberators in the process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Benjamin Kellogg, DCI Fellow This post is a \u201cmeta\u201d post. What is this blog? Is this a place where deliberation about particular subjects happens? Or is it a place for a second-order deliberation; that is, for deliberation about deliberation? So far, it\u2019s turned out to be a mixture of both: some Fellows post about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":2043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-blogposts","category-fellows","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg","rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog-180x180.jpeg",180,180,true],"medium":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog-265x300.jpeg",265,300,true],"large":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog.jpeg",904,1024,false],"mini-thumbnail":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog-75x75.jpeg",75,75,true],"team-member":["https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Ben-Blog-600x600.jpeg",600,600,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Ben Kellogg","author_link":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/author\/benkellogg\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Blog Posts<\/a> Fellow Posts<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"By Benjamin Kellogg, DCI Fellow This post is a \u201cmeta\u201d post. What is this blog? Is this a place where deliberation about particular subjects happens? Or is it a place for a second-order deliberation; that is, for deliberation about deliberation? So far, it\u2019s turned out to be a mixture of both: some Fellows post about…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2044,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2042\/revisions\/2044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deliberativecitizenship.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}