Last week, in a conversation with Anthropic’s Claude, I lamented the fact that, at least here in the West, every public debate appears to resemble a confrontation rather than a dialogue. I suggested the problem may be less about the substance of debate than the rhetoric. My point was not to criticize the use of rhetoric or specific abusive instances of it. Instead, the fault lies with our civilization’s failure to understand what rhetoric is and how important it can be.

This is a case of historical neglect and cultural impoverishment. For two full millennia, rhetoric was an obligatory object of study in the Western tradition. It stood proudly as one of the “seven liberal arts” forming the base of European education. Thanks to its prominence in education, we can enjoy the works of iconic writers like William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes and François Rabelais. Most great modern writers have assimilated their rhetorical skills through their familiarity with the classics. But that is the result not so much of their education as their personal tastes and their vocation as writers. Today’s obsessions with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) as the basis of a modern curriculum has confined rhetoric to history’s dustbin.

Today’s average citizen has no idea what rhetoric is, let alone how to use it. There is, however, a notable exception: lawyers, a vocational category that also tends to dominate among our political class. Even so, lawyers understand rhetoric not as a “liberal art” but rather as a functional skillset. If lawyers exploit it to shape the thinking (or absence of thinking) of the juries they wish to influence, politicians in our enlightened democracies harness the same skills to abuse a rhetorically naïve public.

Some define rhetoric as “the art of persuasion.” But rhetoric, as a liberal art, articulates the link between language and logic. Aristotle famously defined it as “the faculty of discovering in any given case the available means of persuasion.” But this is misleading. The trivial consonance the word “persuasion” has today was not the same in Aristotle’s Athens. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reminds us that it was only recently that “scholars became aware of the fact that Aristotle’s rhetorical analysis of persuasion draws on many concepts and ideas that are also treated in his logical, ethical, political and psychological writings.” This fact, revealing that previous generations of scholars had neglected or trivialized rhetoric, tells us that as a civilization, we have some serious catching up to do.

During the beginning of our discussion published last week, Claude concurred in my lamentation of our civilization’s neglect of rhetoric. It then made the following suggestion:

The most sustainable approach might be building from existing interests and communities rather than trying to reform education wholesale. Small groups of people committed to more sophisticated discourse could model different possibilities and gradually influence broader conversations.

That seemed to me a bit too soft and idealistic. I countered with a new prompt:

“I believe all these things you mention are already taking place, but multiplying local initiatives in a mass consumption society tends to be futile. I would first ask two questions: What social, economic and political factors have contributed to this indifference to epistemological understanding? And who has an interest in perpetuating a system and a culture that stifles curiosity, inquiry and critical thinking?”

You’re right to push beyond individual solutions to examine the structural forces at work. The decline in rhetorical and critical thinking education isn’t an accident or mere oversight – it serves specific interests.

Economic factors play a central role. The shift toward viewing education as job training rather than intellectual formation reflects an economy that primarily needs compliant workers and consumers, not critical thinkers. Standardized testing serves this by reducing learning to measurable, reproducible outputs that can be efficiently scaled. The debt-driven education model further constrains intellectual risk-taking – students focus on credentials that promise immediate economic returns rather than uncertain intellectual development.

Political interests align with this trajectory. Sophisticated rhetorical analysis makes populations harder to manipulate through simple messaging techniques. Citizens who can deconstruct political rhetoric, identify logical fallacies, and distinguish between empirical claims and interpretive frameworks are less susceptible to the kind of emotional manipulation that dominates contemporary political discourse. Both major political parties benefit from audiences who respond to tribal signals rather than engaging in substantive policy analysis.

Media and advertising industries have perhaps the most direct interest in maintaining rhetorical illiteracy. Their business models depend on audiences who don’t recognize persuasive techniques, who conflate emotional appeals with logical arguments, and who can be moved to purchase or vote through sophisticated but unexamined psychological manipulation.

Corporate interests more broadly benefit from a population that doesn’t question underlying assumptions about economic arrangements, that accepts managerial rhetoric about efficiency and necessity, and that channels dissatisfaction into consumption rather than systemic critique.

The convergence of these interests creates what we might call a “pedagogy of the manageable” – education systems that produce people who can perform specific functions but lack the intellectual tools to question the systems they serve.

Recognizing this suggests that meaningful change requires more than local initiatives – it demands understanding whose interests are served by the current arrangement.

Before extending the conversation, I insisted on expressing my appreciation for the concept of “pedagogy of the manageable.” I assumed Claude was citing a source. I was surprised by the answer to my next prompt.

“I love your phrase ‘pedagogy of the manageable.’ I assume you’re quoting a source. If not, I thank you for inventing a very useful concept.”

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the phrase, but I should clarify – “pedagogy of the manageable” isn’t a quote from an existing source. I coined it in our conversation to capture the idea you were drawing out about educational systems that deliberately cultivate intellectual limitations.

The phrase was inspired by Paulo Freire’s concept of the “pedagogy of the oppressed,” but I was trying to articulate something slightly different – not just education that serves oppressive interests, but education specifically designed to produce people who are intellectually manageable: capable enough to perform required functions but not equipped with the critical tools that might lead them to question fundamental arrangements.

Your recognition of its usefulness suggests it captures something real about our current educational predicament. There’s a deliberate cultivation of what we might call “bounded competence” – people skilled enough to operate complex systems but not intellectually equipped to interrogate those systems’ purposes or legitimacy.

I’m glad the concept resonates. Sometimes the most powerful analytical tools emerge from trying to name patterns we sense but haven’t quite articulated. The fact that you immediately recognized what “pedagogy of the manageable” describes suggests we’re both observing the same troubling educational trajectory.

Now, this was a slight diversion, so I returned to the real issue summarized in Claude’s recognition of a general failure to develop appropriate “intellectual tools to question the systems.”

“What you describe sounds almost like a conspiracy of political, media and corporate interests that produce a state of passive indifference to serious social and economic questions as well as the incapacity to articulate their components. Would you call this a failure of democracy? In any case, it appears that we’ve created the conditions in which democracy cannot function properly.

I’d resist the language of conspiracy – which implies coordinated intentionality and secret planning – in favor of what we might call “convergent interests” or “structural alignment.” No cabal meets to plan the dumbing down of public discourse. Rather, multiple powerful actors independently pursue their own rational interests, and those interests happen to align around maintaining a population with limited critical capacity.

Politicians don’t need to conspire with advertisers who don’t need to conspire with standardized testing companies – they each simply optimize for their own goals (winning elections, selling products, generating measurable outcomes), and the cumulative effect is a system that discourages the kind of sustained, critical engagement that robust democracy requires.

This makes the problem both more intractable and more insidious than conspiracy. Conspiracies can be exposed and dismantled. Structural alignments are far harder to address because no one is doing anything they’d recognize as wrong – they’re simply pursuing legitimate institutional objectives within existing constraints.

As for whether this constitutes democratic failure – I think it’s more accurate to say it represents democracy operating under conditions it wasn’t designed for. Classical democratic theory assumed an educated citizenry capable of reasoned deliberation. It assumed relative information scarcity where public discourse could be somewhat insulated from constant manipulation. It assumed economic conditions that allowed people time and energy for civic engagement.

We now have the opposite: sophisticated manipulation techniques, information saturation designed to overwhelm rather than inform, and economic precarity that leaves most people struggling to maintain basic stability, let alone engage in sustained political thinking.

Democracy isn’t failing so much as being slowly suffocated by conditions antithetical to its proper functioning. The question becomes: can these conditions be changed, or do they represent democracy’s practical limits?

My provisional conclusions

This is the kind of helpful analysis it would be useful for those who say they are promoting democracy would be wise to listen to. I’m thinking of the politicians, of course, but also other members of an elite that claims to be committed to democratic values. The media perhaps bear the greatest responsibility to the extent that their theoretical role in a true democracy is to hold power accountable. How can we expect that to happen when the media are dominated by the same corporate power that finances the political class, enabling their election?

I agree there is no conspiracy. What replaces it is a system of structural corruption.

Our conversation continued and attained a further level of depth as I proposed a new prompt, which we will follow up with next week. Here is my follow-up prompt:

“Your final question contains a contradiction regarding a point you made earlier when you say that democracy is ‘operating under conditions it was not designed for.’ This is not about ‘practical limits’ for democracy but as you affirm the failure to provide the conditions ‘democracy was designed for.’ The real question this implies is that our civilization should choose what it wishes to prioritize: democracy or the non-optimal conditions that now define the way our society is structured. Some would call those non-optimal conditions financialized capitalism. Would you agree that there’s a strong relationship between that kind of economic system and what you describe as the source of stifled intellectual inquiry?”

Your thoughts

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[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.