Postmodern discourse

Following are ten of its hallmarks, as Roberts describes on his blog:

• “persons and positions are ordinarily closely related,” with little insistence on keeping personal identity separate from the questions or issues under discussion;

• “sensitivity, inclusivity, and inoffensiveness are key values”;

• priority on “cooperation, collaboration, quietness, sedentariness, empathy, equality, non-competitiveness, conformity, a communal focus”;

• “seems lacking in rationality and ideological challenge,” in the eyes of proponents of modern discourse;

• tends to perceive the satire and criticism of modern discourse as “vicious and personal attack, driven by a hateful animus”;

• is oriented to ” the standard measures of grades, tests, and a closely defined curriculum”;

• lacking “means by which to negotiate or accommodate such intractable differences within its mode of conversation,” it will “typically resort to the most fiercely antagonistic, demonizing, and personal attacks upon the opposition”;

• “will typically try, not to answer opponents with better arguments, but to silence them completely as ‘hateful’, ‘intolerant’, ‘bigoted’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, etc.”;

• has a more feminine flavor, as opposed to the more masculine flavor of modern discourse;

• results in “stale monologues” and contexts that “seldom produce strong thought, but rather tend to become echo chambers.”