On the front page of the current USA Today Weekend, wedged above the headline, a caption asks, “Which Adds will You be Talking About on Monday?” The question, of course, is related to the advertisement coup of the NFL Super Bowl, which is as much a hallowed tradition as the game itself. This “question,” or whatever you could call it, made me ask myself a few other questions, namely, “Who would be stupid enough to answer this question,” and “Why do these schmucks assume I’ll be talking to people about TV adds on Monday?”
Whenever I am asked ridiculous questions in advertisements, the type of questions that obviously weren’t intended by the agency to be answered with a logical reply, I can’t help but to become devilish and conceive to myself a sarcastic reply. "Hmmph…that’s a good question there, young feller. Adds…TV…I talk about TV adds all the time, sometimes even to my wife and kids over dinner. I like the Caveman adds, and the ones for the Snuggie blankets; I brought that one up to my boss. Goddamnit, I didn’t realize this would be so hard!"
I dislike to think that television adverting has an influence on my choices and thinking; it certainly didn’t influence my choice for presidential candidate, because I refused to vote for precisely that reason. Never in my life have I found an instance in which I thought advertising was practically necessary, at least, not for disseminating truth or expressing intelligent ideas ; in short, it's my assurance that all advertising, at its core, is calculated to manipulate people into a blustering, irrational, and predetermined conclusion, whether for the sake of stuffing their fat faces with Dorito's, purchasing healthcare from Montel Williams or Billt Mays, or to vote for "change you can believe in." For this reason, I try my best, each day, to ward off advertising “persuasion,” which I either avoid like the plague or, like the cynic I am, level as much derision and mockery at as I possible.
As for “pathos, logos, and ethos,” I am not the best judge of that, not only for the reason I just gave; as far as I am concerned, the general tendency of advertising is to aim square at the gut, bypassing reason or ethics altogether. So I suppose my answer would be “gut.” To take one example, while watching Headline News today, the newscaster, whoever it was, described as the show went to commercials what was coming up in the next segment: A new add has been circulating on television - an advertisement for vegetables - in which half naked women, crawling and writing in a dimly lit hallway, are caressing broccoli, apples, oranges, etc. You may be asking yourself, “What does that have to do with vegetables?”; my question is, “Where were the bananas and zucchini?” Advertising, as everyone knows, is not intended to sell things; it is merely there to concentrate capital, to make the TNT premiere of “Back to the Future” last beyond 3 hours, and to give an excuse to look at women.
That is all.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Rhetoric: Facts and Fiction
This afternoon, our Composition class discussed rhetoric, which Aristotle defined as “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” Interestingly, though they purported to agree with this view, my class described a much different definition of “persuasion,” one which I’d now like to expound upon and then refute.
First, I will begin to talk about Aristotle’s quote, which I think was grossly misrepresented in class - “the faculty” meant to represent human nature, and “any particular case” to imply all interactions an individual shared with other people.” To better understand Aristotle’s view, we would do well to put in context how Rhetoric was composed. The book was written during two period’s in Aristotle’s career: the first (367 to 347 BCE) while he was apprenticed to Plato, and the second period (335 to 322 BCE) after he had begun running his own academy, the Lyceum. The Rhetoric is made up of three books, but we may safely be concerned only with the first, which lays out the definition of rhetoric. When Aristotle writes about deliberate rhetoric, he is mainly concerned about how to raise discourse in political circles: war, law-making, economy, commerce. He advocated, specifically, that people not engage in rhetorical discourse about subjects they cannot control. "But the subjects of deliberation are clear, and these are whatever...are within our power. [As judges] we limit our consideration to the point of discovering what is possible or impossible for us to do." What does Aristotle mean to ascribe as “the subjects of deliberation”? He is referring to the “particular case” in which, once discovered, though not before (that, as he said, would rule out eligibility for rhetoric), one may safely begin to expose concepts to the light of reason and debate. [1] “Particular cases,” as Aristotle considers them, are in this book meant to refer to politics and speech-giving. Here, we come to the classroom discussion.
The tenor of the argument, I am glad to say, was cordial; there wasn’t as much disagreement as I would have liked; but that is beside my point, which is this: Before using the work of an important historical scholar, we would be well advised to read his work first. By that means, we would avoid looking silly afterwards.
The first premise the class put forward was: Human nature is self-evidently evil (selfish), and, as Aristotle said, people express this preternatural inclination by attempting to exert power over others in each and every situation that they come into contact. I won’t attempt to dispute Aristotle’s view on this matter, for the simple reason that he would have completely disagreed with it. To begin, Aristotle was not phrasing his definition of persuasion within the context of evil, but rather through goodness, luck, and happiness; when using persuasion, we must realize, he writes, that there is no concrete definition (“Human nature is self-evidently evil”) about human values. Aristotle argues that the people are capable of reaching a common understanding of what an ideal means. By accepting this premise, the public realizes that all ideas are evaluated by the human propensity for goodness ("On Rhetoric",I.4.1359b:4) and the goodness they observe in others. He did not say, as the class said, that people use their habit to evaluate the value of ideas through the goodness they see in others for selfish, evil reasons.
The second premise the class put forward is related to the first: (1) As Human nature is basically pathological, is oriented toward its own gratification, we can conclude that (2) all attempts at persuasion are motivated by selfish means; (3) As all persuasion is pathological, all communication persuasive, thus all communication and actions are rooted deep down in a nature that is selfish. Here, obviously, we have completely abandoned the subjects of rhetoric and Aristotle, so we may put those aside momentarily. On the first leg of the premise, “Human nature is basically pathological”: If I or anybody decided to build an argument about human nature on the foundation that it was good or evil, either attempt would end in miserable failure. The reason is because, by looking around us, we could find whatever form of behavior we like. That isn’t reasoning, but more along the line of cherry-picking. “All attempts at persuasion are motivated by selfish means”? I don’t agree, frankly, that all communication is persuasion. Persuasion, for me, implies an argument is in place; arguments have premises and a conclusion, and usually evidence to support their conclusions. In short, if I say “John F. Kennedy was the greatest president out country ever had” or “The table is red,” I am not making argumentative or persuasive statements. What I said were general statements, which life is filled with. I never said why I thought John F. Kennedy was the greatest president, and perhaps I don’t believe that statement; nor did I give an example of a red table – I don’t have an opinion about it, because the red table I’m thinking of doesn’t exist.
Finally, “All communication is rooted deep down in a faculty that is fundamentally selfish.” Obviously, this doesn’t comply with Aristotle’s idea of the human faculty, but never mind that. I will answer this by stating my own opinion of selfishness, which is that, I see no reason why all selfishness is necessarily bad. Here, our class employed what, from my point of view, was a very specious form of argument. The basis was: If you are slightly evil, your essence is evil. The only analogue I can think of to this reasoning is on Kirk Cameron’s “Way of the Master” program. “Way of the Master” is a Christian television program, aired on cable access, which deals with the subject of evangelism. On the show, Cameron does a segment in which he approaches common people on the streets and, catching them off guard, proceeds to humiliate them. He asks them inane questions, expecting the same predictable answers. For example: “Have you ever lied before? Yes? Then, by your own admission you are a liar. Ever stollen? Then that makes you a thief.” Notice, he doesn’t ask, “Have you ever given a present to somebody? Then that makes you generous.” Cameron fails to consider that life may present some instances in which lying may be virtuous or, in fact, that there are times in life where people don’t lie. In my opinion, the class made the same mistake but in this case, on the subject of evil.
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
First, I will begin to talk about Aristotle’s quote, which I think was grossly misrepresented in class - “the faculty” meant to represent human nature, and “any particular case” to imply all interactions an individual shared with other people.” To better understand Aristotle’s view, we would do well to put in context how Rhetoric was composed. The book was written during two period’s in Aristotle’s career: the first (367 to 347 BCE) while he was apprenticed to Plato, and the second period (335 to 322 BCE) after he had begun running his own academy, the Lyceum. The Rhetoric is made up of three books, but we may safely be concerned only with the first, which lays out the definition of rhetoric. When Aristotle writes about deliberate rhetoric, he is mainly concerned about how to raise discourse in political circles: war, law-making, economy, commerce. He advocated, specifically, that people not engage in rhetorical discourse about subjects they cannot control. "But the subjects of deliberation are clear, and these are whatever...are within our power. [As judges] we limit our consideration to the point of discovering what is possible or impossible for us to do." What does Aristotle mean to ascribe as “the subjects of deliberation”? He is referring to the “particular case” in which, once discovered, though not before (that, as he said, would rule out eligibility for rhetoric), one may safely begin to expose concepts to the light of reason and debate. [1] “Particular cases,” as Aristotle considers them, are in this book meant to refer to politics and speech-giving. Here, we come to the classroom discussion.
The tenor of the argument, I am glad to say, was cordial; there wasn’t as much disagreement as I would have liked; but that is beside my point, which is this: Before using the work of an important historical scholar, we would be well advised to read his work first. By that means, we would avoid looking silly afterwards.
The first premise the class put forward was: Human nature is self-evidently evil (selfish), and, as Aristotle said, people express this preternatural inclination by attempting to exert power over others in each and every situation that they come into contact. I won’t attempt to dispute Aristotle’s view on this matter, for the simple reason that he would have completely disagreed with it. To begin, Aristotle was not phrasing his definition of persuasion within the context of evil, but rather through goodness, luck, and happiness; when using persuasion, we must realize, he writes, that there is no concrete definition (“Human nature is self-evidently evil”) about human values. Aristotle argues that the people are capable of reaching a common understanding of what an ideal means. By accepting this premise, the public realizes that all ideas are evaluated by the human propensity for goodness ("On Rhetoric",I.4.1359b:4) and the goodness they observe in others. He did not say, as the class said, that people use their habit to evaluate the value of ideas through the goodness they see in others for selfish, evil reasons.
The second premise the class put forward is related to the first: (1) As Human nature is basically pathological, is oriented toward its own gratification, we can conclude that (2) all attempts at persuasion are motivated by selfish means; (3) As all persuasion is pathological, all communication persuasive, thus all communication and actions are rooted deep down in a nature that is selfish. Here, obviously, we have completely abandoned the subjects of rhetoric and Aristotle, so we may put those aside momentarily. On the first leg of the premise, “Human nature is basically pathological”: If I or anybody decided to build an argument about human nature on the foundation that it was good or evil, either attempt would end in miserable failure. The reason is because, by looking around us, we could find whatever form of behavior we like. That isn’t reasoning, but more along the line of cherry-picking. “All attempts at persuasion are motivated by selfish means”? I don’t agree, frankly, that all communication is persuasion. Persuasion, for me, implies an argument is in place; arguments have premises and a conclusion, and usually evidence to support their conclusions. In short, if I say “John F. Kennedy was the greatest president out country ever had” or “The table is red,” I am not making argumentative or persuasive statements. What I said were general statements, which life is filled with. I never said why I thought John F. Kennedy was the greatest president, and perhaps I don’t believe that statement; nor did I give an example of a red table – I don’t have an opinion about it, because the red table I’m thinking of doesn’t exist.
Finally, “All communication is rooted deep down in a faculty that is fundamentally selfish.” Obviously, this doesn’t comply with Aristotle’s idea of the human faculty, but never mind that. I will answer this by stating my own opinion of selfishness, which is that, I see no reason why all selfishness is necessarily bad. Here, our class employed what, from my point of view, was a very specious form of argument. The basis was: If you are slightly evil, your essence is evil. The only analogue I can think of to this reasoning is on Kirk Cameron’s “Way of the Master” program. “Way of the Master” is a Christian television program, aired on cable access, which deals with the subject of evangelism. On the show, Cameron does a segment in which he approaches common people on the streets and, catching them off guard, proceeds to humiliate them. He asks them inane questions, expecting the same predictable answers. For example: “Have you ever lied before? Yes? Then, by your own admission you are a liar. Ever stollen? Then that makes you a thief.” Notice, he doesn’t ask, “Have you ever given a present to somebody? Then that makes you generous.” Cameron fails to consider that life may present some instances in which lying may be virtuous or, in fact, that there are times in life where people don’t lie. In my opinion, the class made the same mistake but in this case, on the subject of evil.
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Few Thoughts on Good and Evil
What is Evil? Or if you are a modern American, what isn’t Evil? I was compelled to answer this question in my Composition course this past Tuesday and, not having expected to confront such a complicated issue, I thought that I looked absurd discussing it with the others students. But why? Like many people, the defining moment, the one which has trained my notion of how depraved and cruel people can be, was the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis; this was, of course, what several members of the class brought up to illustrate their points, from whatever perspective they represented, however convincingly they made their points. The Holocaust is, however, quite unique to the American imagination; there are more Holocaust museums in the United States, though it took place in Europe, than there are museums and memorials commemorating the mass murder of Native Americans (Columbus Day is still celebrated), the enslavement of countless African Americans, as well as the unjust “internment” of roughly 2 million Japanese, German, and Italian Americans during World War 2. While observing this startling phenomenon, of American citizens unwilling or unable to account for their countries’ crimes, I cannot help to ask myself: Why, on the one hand, can Americans be so indignant towards crimes committed by governments in other countries while remaining largely indifferent to its own historical atrocities? The answer is, in part: A lack of activism and community.
When I say, “largely indifferent to its own atrocities”, I am, of course, overdrawing my point. More conscious than they once were, Americans have made, in the instance of the Indian case, some sort of general recognition of that genocide. In the instance of Black Civil rights, there have also been made great strides; the election of an African American president will attest to that. In fact, just looking at the frontrunner candidates for a major party, a black man and a woman, ought to convince one of the strides that have been made in the United States in the past 40 years.
But how were those strides made? Was it a gift from an angel? Or did a bureaucrat decide one day “I think I’ll get rid of segregation for them”? No. The reason, which isn’t supposed to be discussed, incidentally, is because of the hard work of the mass activism that took place in the 1960s, in large part; people formed together in groups, began to develop ideas and determined what they thought and wanted to see done, and carried out plans to see those ideas come to fruition.
“But hasn't that lack of discipline, that wanton disregard for authority, led to the current breakdown in values”? Yes, without a doubt, there are many failures to point to around us. But I am not convinced, as I experience the political climate around me each day , that that is purely, or to even a small extent, the result of the activism in the 1960s.
First of all, we must acknowledge that the activism of the 1960s was, for the most part, crushed. There is a very rich record that we could look at which lays out in detail the White House’s anti-dissident agenda, both at home and abroad; the most shocking is the COINTEL (Counterintelligence) Program [1], perhaps the most dramatic attempts by the political class to crush free thought since the Palmer Raids [2] four decades earlier. My question is: Why did those movements require our representatives to crush them? Here, we come back to the problem of evil.
The activism of the 1960s, all progressive activism in fact, has a particular goal: Making people aware of oppression. The activist tells us: Oppression is not foisted on people, it is learned. For instance, a major pro-slavery intellectual, George Fitzhugh [3], made, to the comprehension of Americans in the late 1800s, many highly compelling arguments for slavery. He said to the Northerners, in essence, “We Southerners aren’t racist because, unlike you, we take care of our slaves. Where you have a system in which the capital is concentrated and people are forced to rent themselves to survive, we don’t dispose of them when we are through; Here, slaves aren’t debased or humiliated, they are treated with respect, fed, educated, allowed to live in peace.” Reading the record now, many workers took that argument quite seriously. Generally speaking, when people want to make arguments, they don’t try to simply snub people, but rather develop their idea along lines that would be generally agreeable to everyone else. That is what Fitzhugh did, that is what his counterparts in the North did, and the result may be that, if unchecked, a lot of oppression could be ingrained in people’s consciousness'. The activist, therefore, calls for a circumstance, or an arrangement, in which people can argue and be skeptical in as free a manner as possible or necessary, in other words, democracy.
The case of slavery in the United States is interesting, actually; If we were to ask the typical slave owner if what he thought he did was evil, it is my assurance that he would not; he would probably think, for the reasons that I enumerated above, that he was free of blame, that he regarded himself as good and obeyed the law. I can sense myself coming closer to a trap, so I must jump back: Because I am saying it appears obvious that values are incredibly variable and indistinct, seeming to come without in as many instances than from within, does not mean that I believe a person’s capacity for good or evil is just as changeable.
When observing people, we see they have many ostensible traits, ones that lead us to conclude that they have a moral faculty; what that faculty is, however, is a complete mystery. What we look at may indicate things, but the possibilities are so varied and complicated, no definitive conclusions could be made now about the idea of something like a human moral faculty. On the one hand, there is cruelty, sadism, genocide, sexual abuse; by the same token, there is kindness, mutual support, respect for human rights, mass democratic movements. My contention is that if people are ever to begin to discover the moral faculty, they must by necessity develop a mutual arrangement, one which would maximize the opportunities and incentives for healthy human behavior. I’m speaking, of course, about democracy.
1. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids
3 http://reactor-core.org/cannibals-all.html
When I say, “largely indifferent to its own atrocities”, I am, of course, overdrawing my point. More conscious than they once were, Americans have made, in the instance of the Indian case, some sort of general recognition of that genocide. In the instance of Black Civil rights, there have also been made great strides; the election of an African American president will attest to that. In fact, just looking at the frontrunner candidates for a major party, a black man and a woman, ought to convince one of the strides that have been made in the United States in the past 40 years.
But how were those strides made? Was it a gift from an angel? Or did a bureaucrat decide one day “I think I’ll get rid of segregation for them”? No. The reason, which isn’t supposed to be discussed, incidentally, is because of the hard work of the mass activism that took place in the 1960s, in large part; people formed together in groups, began to develop ideas and determined what they thought and wanted to see done, and carried out plans to see those ideas come to fruition.
“But hasn't that lack of discipline, that wanton disregard for authority, led to the current breakdown in values”? Yes, without a doubt, there are many failures to point to around us. But I am not convinced, as I experience the political climate around me each day , that that is purely, or to even a small extent, the result of the activism in the 1960s.
First of all, we must acknowledge that the activism of the 1960s was, for the most part, crushed. There is a very rich record that we could look at which lays out in detail the White House’s anti-dissident agenda, both at home and abroad; the most shocking is the COINTEL (Counterintelligence) Program [1], perhaps the most dramatic attempts by the political class to crush free thought since the Palmer Raids [2] four decades earlier. My question is: Why did those movements require our representatives to crush them? Here, we come back to the problem of evil.
The activism of the 1960s, all progressive activism in fact, has a particular goal: Making people aware of oppression. The activist tells us: Oppression is not foisted on people, it is learned. For instance, a major pro-slavery intellectual, George Fitzhugh [3], made, to the comprehension of Americans in the late 1800s, many highly compelling arguments for slavery. He said to the Northerners, in essence, “We Southerners aren’t racist because, unlike you, we take care of our slaves. Where you have a system in which the capital is concentrated and people are forced to rent themselves to survive, we don’t dispose of them when we are through; Here, slaves aren’t debased or humiliated, they are treated with respect, fed, educated, allowed to live in peace.” Reading the record now, many workers took that argument quite seriously. Generally speaking, when people want to make arguments, they don’t try to simply snub people, but rather develop their idea along lines that would be generally agreeable to everyone else. That is what Fitzhugh did, that is what his counterparts in the North did, and the result may be that, if unchecked, a lot of oppression could be ingrained in people’s consciousness'. The activist, therefore, calls for a circumstance, or an arrangement, in which people can argue and be skeptical in as free a manner as possible or necessary, in other words, democracy.
The case of slavery in the United States is interesting, actually; If we were to ask the typical slave owner if what he thought he did was evil, it is my assurance that he would not; he would probably think, for the reasons that I enumerated above, that he was free of blame, that he regarded himself as good and obeyed the law. I can sense myself coming closer to a trap, so I must jump back: Because I am saying it appears obvious that values are incredibly variable and indistinct, seeming to come without in as many instances than from within, does not mean that I believe a person’s capacity for good or evil is just as changeable.
When observing people, we see they have many ostensible traits, ones that lead us to conclude that they have a moral faculty; what that faculty is, however, is a complete mystery. What we look at may indicate things, but the possibilities are so varied and complicated, no definitive conclusions could be made now about the idea of something like a human moral faculty. On the one hand, there is cruelty, sadism, genocide, sexual abuse; by the same token, there is kindness, mutual support, respect for human rights, mass democratic movements. My contention is that if people are ever to begin to discover the moral faculty, they must by necessity develop a mutual arrangement, one which would maximize the opportunities and incentives for healthy human behavior. I’m speaking, of course, about democracy.
1. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raids
3 http://reactor-core.org/cannibals-all.html
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