Better late than never: The makeup blog

Due to something or other at the time, I didn't have a chance to comment on my reactions to reading Brennan's chapters 5 -7. So instead, I'll do it here. Brennan is, as always, difficult to read. Her ideas are interesting of course, but some of them seem are rather difficult to get a hold of. What I'm going to do now is wrestle with one of these that confused me, in textual form. Brennan argues that when you judge someone, you "simultaneously direct toward her that stream of negative affect" that cuts off the "feeling of kinship from her as a fellow living, suffering, joyful creature (118)." Brennan expands upon this by saying that this is done to objectify the other. Once you believe that the target to be judged lacks the vital qualities that you value, encouraging the projection of affects that you yourself reject. In other words, you say "these affects do not exist in me, but in her (119)" and at that point you are able to feel better about yourself while thinking of the other as inferior. This is of course projection as it has been long acknowledged, which occurs on both the personal and larger scales, which Brennan acknowledges. What I am unsure about here is the use of the word Judge and the breadth of the statement she is making here.

Brennan says that "when one judges, one is possessed by the affects (119)" she directly compares this with discerning, which is where one detaches from the affects to understand. Discernment, when in opposition to your judgment, "registers as a feeling (120)." I see this as making discernment a secondary characteristic, a backup plan to judgment, which is  an interesting way to place discernment. What this all implies then is that judgment is entirely affective - it is a skin reaction as other authors we read would say. It is precognitive, responding to the affects existing in the broader situation that you are partaking of. It is then mediated by your cognition and "intelligent reflection (120)" into a secondary position on the target, your discernment. If this mediation produces a similar result to the original affective impact, it reinforces it, if it disagrees it produces a dissenting feeling that may or may not be acted upon. Articulating this result "requires a vocabulary (120)" which is why we "defined feelings as sensations that have found a match in words(120)." Exploring and discovering the roots of this feeling is an even more complex endeavor that I won't go into here. Overall, this idea is a frustrating one due to its implications, and Brennan expands upon it during the chapter. A rational person typically does not want to believe the extent of the affective response is that powerful, but there is certainly plenty of evidence in our everyday lives to tell us that Brennan has a point. You just have to hope that the judge behind the courtroom bench is sufficiently capable of exploring his own feelings before he slams down the gavel... 

Final Project

http://www.wix.com/zoloat/pathos

Presentation: http://prezi.com/vlmdfcpayzbw/pathos-fina-presentation/

The Final Drop

The last few readings have left me pondering just how the “Rhetorical Situation” interacts with our day to day lives. What I mean by that is not whether or not it effects us as we go about our daily business, I don't think that can even be questioned at this point. Instead the question I thought most about was how everything around us is shaped by or shapes the rhetorical situations in which we discover ourselves. Bitzer's reading of the rhetorical situation has rhetoricians “answer an invitation to solve a problem” presented by “autonomous” exigencies (Edbauer, 6). They are located as “external conditions of material and social circumstances (Edbauer, 6).” Vatz's critique places exigencies as “created for audiences through the rhetor's work(Edbauer, 6).” These conceptions of the rhetorical situation are points, established by the circumstances or the rhetors. They are finite in the sense that they are created and have some type of limit in their scope of altering factors, even if that number is vast. They are, to take a cheap potshot at the title of the article, framed.

Craig Smith and Scott Lybarger expand the concept of situation by arguing that it “involves a plurality of exigencies and complex relations between the audience and a rhetorician's interest (Edbauer, 6),” but this is still a framed conception. While the previous theories may be points, this conception is a small network of points tied together into a situation. It is broader in scope, but still “framed.”

According to Edbauer, while those models of the rhetorical situation are informative, they “can also mask the fluidity of rhetoric(Edbauer, 20).” Instead we see the idea of “life as network(Edbauer, 10),” that is- life as an interconnected system with no finite limits. Rhetoric changes. It evolves, it amalgamates, it transforms and alters itself, spreading outwards. What Edbauer present us with is the rhetorical situation not as a point or a finite network, but as a drop falling into a pool of water.

The effects of a rhetoric “do not only exist in the elements of their situations, but also in the radius of their neighboring events (Edbauer, 20).” Through this they ripple outwards as a kind of butterfly effect. Situations alter situations, changing each other. In such a way everything is changed, and our daily lives and the rhetorical situations we encounter transform according to elements beyond our conception that we could never hope to understand the full extent of. But then the question I have to ask is, if there are no borders to a situation and you can never truly “understand” it because it extends so far in so many directions, how does this change the way we approach a discourse?

Final Project Proposal

Overview: In my final project I will examine 3 different types of propaganda that differ from the common perception of propaganda that is held by most of the general public. In this project I am using the definition of propaganda as something created to be targeted towards some specific group with the intent of inspiring a specific political action or opinion.

The 3 propaganda genres that I will examine are
1) The animated propaganda produced by Walt Disney during WWII. Example
2) Pro-America and patriotic images created in the wake of 9/11.
3) Amateur created propaganda created by player formed Alliances in EVE Online targeted towards their membership or enemy players in order to inspire or demoralize. Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 (the 3rd is a response video to the second)

The intention is to analyze these materials in the ways that they create their desired affects on the target audience through visuals, pacing, audio, text and tone among other elements. These pieces were (at least on a visible level) not created by trained propagandists or even  those in the employ of an agency that specifically creates propaganda pieces, so a primary part of the presentation will be discussing the less polished aspects of these propaganda pieces and how this effects their effectiveness.

Process: This project will rely heavily on video clips, text and images. As such I will have to select a multimedia platform that can present all three in a coherent, integrated format. I have not been able to narrow down which program I will use, as in my past experiences some have not been willing to cooperate on newer computers such as mine. I will attempt to use either the Sophie 2 eBook authoring platform, create a PDF containing embedded video and images, or attempt to create a website hosting all of the elements using an editor such as Wix.com

Presentation: I will create a very brief, summarized version of my project and use Prezi to lay out my visual aid. I will personally clip the propaganda videos down to short, easily demonstrable sections to illustrate the main points of my project along with a less than 5 minute spoken presentation.


Finish: I will complete the project and turn it in on my blog by May 5th.

Ahmed and the Terrorist.

Ahmed's discussion of the Terrorist and his place in the economy of fear is a particularly interesting section of the reading, but I actually think that it could be taken a step farther. The origins of 9/11 are complex and I wouldn't dare to try and discuss them comprehensively in a short blog post like this, but there are some peculiar similarities that I think we could examine.

Greatly simplifying things to an almost criminal degree, the explosion of modern Islamic Fundamentalism can be traced back to the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s. A religious social organization that had occasional militant leanings, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to bring the Qur'an and Islamic religious ideals into the modern era as the center of life for Muslims. In 1952 the Muslim Brotherhood supported the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser, a westernizer that sought to free Egypt from Imperialist influences secularize, and modernize the Middle East to compete with the rest of the world. One of Nasser's first movements was to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood, and then later crack down on it incredibly brutally.

One of the men that suffered under this was Sayyid Qutb. Qutb is an interesting and important case. Well educated, Qutb had spent several years visiting the United States which, in combination with Nasser's later policies, would form the foundation of the ideological background of Jihad. He termed the theory of “Modern Jahiliyya” the concept of modernity as New Barbarity(Sivan 23), and viewed modernity as an incompatibility with Islam that would destroy their culture and people. The horrendous tortures inflicted upon Muslim Brotherhood members at the hand of modern, westernized nationalists under Nasser provided a shining example for Qutb's work. Naturally, this concept did not belong solely to Qutb, but his experiences with the materialism, indulgence, and, in his mind, loose morals, of the early 1950s in America created a particular fear within him. He looked west and saw for Muslims a future of “unbridled individualism, dissolution, depravity” and moral and social decline(Sivan, 24). In order to throw off “Modern Jahiliyya” radical change was needed – a Jihad against modernity to “reestablish the Kingdom of God upon Earth(Sivan 25).” These ideas, which spent time maturing in Egyptian prison cells, would eventually be set free. While Qutb was put to death shortly after, his works spread profusely, particularly in Saudi Arabia and to a young man by the name of Osama bin Laden.

Long winded as that may have been, the point here is that the Terrorist who works to strike out at societies of “individual freedom, religious intolerance, democracy and the international flow of free commerce (Ahmed 128)” does so out of fear for consumption and spending destroying his own values. It is a curious mirror. For us the vision of 1950s USA is a wholesome memory of simpler times. For Qutb it was a vision of societal decay, decadence, and loose morals that would provide no future. His revulsion at this later became connected with the violence and secular nature of Nasser's government to create an incredibly strong affect.

Ahmed says that “fear's relationship to the potential disappearance of an object is more profound than simply a relationship to the object of fear (Ahmed 125).” For Qutb and later Bin Laden, it is not the west and its decadence that frightens them, it is the fear of their traditional values being swept away and “Modern Jahiliyya” holding dominion over Muslims as they saw in Nasser's reign. This creates the strong drive necessary for such horrible acts that, in turn seek to create opposite fears on the other side. One really has to marvel at how interconnected such economies of fear truly are.

Emmanuel Sivan. Radical Islam – Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Yale University Press: London.

Ummm....

I feel like I've already made this blog post... hmmm...

It never ceases to amaze me how remarkably thoughtless politics often are, considering that if anything should be based solely on rational thought, it should probably be politics. The issue of Massumi dealing with Reagan returns here along with some parallels to Gearge Bush Jr. Much like Massumi, Edbauer is not a fan, and the arguments presented here are similar to Massumi's presentation, although Bush's defects are of a slightly different nature. Instead of the jerks of Reagan, so filled with their infinite potential, we have Bush's incoherence. As Edbauer says, Bush's ability to move his audience is “not in spite of his incoherency, but because of it(32).” It creates a gap, an opening which we bombard with our own thoughts, filling the hole he presents us with whatever material we wish. This affective opening is exploited before our mind even has its say because “the body acts beyond the full control of our cognitive knowledge(26).”

The example is carried away from the Presidential podium when Edbauer gives the example of Pauline Hanson, who allegedly won popularity not through her arguments or ideologies, but through her ability to transmit an affect and evoke the sympathy from her audience. It is a tugging at the heartstrings gone horribly, horribly wrong, but presents us with an interesting variation. Reagan had his jerk. Bush had his incoherency. Hanson has her trembling. All of these politicians functioned according to their transmission of affect, according to Edbauer, and not so much on their actual ideas.

But I do have to wonder how widespread this is... and then I remembered something that had always particularly stood out to me. President Obama is a talented speaker, few will argue with that. He is fully capable of moving a crowd, and definitely lacks the jerks of Reagan or the incoherence of Bush. He does have, however, a bad habit of saying “Umm...” in his speeches. A lot. Umm is a peculiar word in our language. It doesn't really have a meaning – it's a space filler. It exists for the time when the speaker is working to think of what to say, but needs to say SOMETHING to fill the gap. The question here is, could we consider the Umm to function on the same level as the jerks and stumblings of the earlier politicians? Umm creates a space in the same way, an interjection for thought into the speech being made. Our reactions to affect are not conscious, they happen because the body simply functions that way and it cannot be helped. We have to remember how batted Obama has been in the wake of his actual election as those who massively inflated their expectations based on what they saw of his speeches later came crashing down.

The difference of course being that Obama is the opposite of incoherent – he is very much capable of expressing his position and the thought behind it in a coherent fashion. Yet I have to wonder if this is simply a flip to the other side of the coin, still affecting the audience, only now affecting the other half that was not moved by Bush's incoherence. Now they are offered gaps of a fundamentally different nature (in addition to the type reasoning being applied, which may adhere more to their standards), while those that previously responded well to Bush are unmoved. Essentially, are the people with square pegs now being offered square holes instead of round ones, while the people who had the round pegs no longer respond due to the square holes?

Prezi Final

Human society is a constantly changing entity, going through metamorphosis after metamorphosis. Yet one of the constants that has remained for well over the last 2500 years has been the reaction to the new, or the different. This kneejerk reaction to new, unusual or things undesirable to the maintenance of the status quo often takes the form not of an outright denial or open opposition, but instead with the charge that the thing in question is corrupting the youth. This presentation contains a number of, but certainly not all, the things that have at one time been considered corrupting influences upon the youth of society, arranged chronologically.

The first thing that the viewer should notice as they progress through the image is that the older items are not what we today would consider corrupting influences. These are things that are either accepted, appreciated as the foundations of our society, or even cherished. And there lies the crux of the argument presented in this presentation: as time passes, the things that are often charged as being responsible for corrupting our children gradually grow more accepted and eventually cease being controversial. These societal destroyers then become integrated cultural artifacts that in turn shape our future developments.

The Prezi begins with a painting of Socrates about to drink the hemlock in 399 B.C. after being sentenced to death for, as it so happens, corrupting the youth. The image of Socrates before his death holds a remarkable power. He is considered by many a foundation of western culture, a consummate philosopher. The death of Plato's teacher creates a significant amount of indignation and anger at the seemingly meaningless death of a great mind. Most importantly, our modern mind does not conceive of Socrates as a destructive influence, but rather a constructive one. The same could be said of the next image, that of Jesus. We do not think of Jesus as a corruptor of the youth, but by the Jews he was considered such. Now he is a central figure in major religions and a paragon of morality. The image of Jesus on the cross provokes many different reactions from people depending on their background, but generally it provokes a sadness, outrage or frustration.

Following this is an image of Mark Twain, considered one of America's most talented authors and a cornerstone of our early culture, but during his lifetime his writings, particularly Huckleberry Finn, were considered to have negative influences on youths. The painting itself gives off an air of respectability and a kind of pride in our history, giving an idea of how our society now regards this formerly destructive influence. Next comes a picture of a group of Germans, some wearing Nazi uniforms, preparing to burn books and various papers. Hitler and the Nazi party had decreed that many books were "un-German" and would corrupt their younger readers, and consequently had to be destroyed. The picture draws upon the entire gamut of reactions drawn out by Nazi imagery, and in particular the smile of the man in the middle seems deranged and fundamentally disturbing. This also further ties in with Twain, the author, and hopefully gives his inclusion more resonance.

After this the sequence changes to music, which has for much of the 20^th century been considered a strongly destructive influence in our culture by some. During the 1920s Jazz and other African American music was considered highly destructive by many due to its distinct difference from more traditional music and its promulgation during the economic upswing that also encouraged more extravagant and controversial. Skipping ahead, Elvis further threatened the traditional establishment and was hated by parents for bringing Africa American music and dance elements to youth. His performances were labeled obscene and his music often was not allowed to be played on the radio. These two different musicians, Elvis and Louis Armstrong, are now considered strong and hardly controversial cultural icons that many will draw firm affinity with and be able to appreciate their significance. Seeing such a seemingly harmless figure as Louis Armstrong among the corruptors of youth should be a shock, and while the image lacks an overall appeal of its own, he context in which it is placed should evoke surprise at his inclusion. The Elvis picture depicts the cultural icon being escorted by police, looking surprised. Seeing a figure that resonates in our society as much as Elvis under duress and in the context of a corrupter of the youth causes a frustration with the people who branded him as such in addition to feeling how silly the idea of something we now consider a classic being so controversial. The next picture originates from the South after the infamous "We're bigger than Jesus" comment by John Lennon. This was met with violence and record burning, and we see here a youth, encouraged by those around him, tossing an album on the fire. We see what is to us a classic piece of culture being tossed with a smile onto the pyre. It feels senseless and frustrating in the level of naivete and overreaction present to what we now consider very tame.

Finally we reach the two most controversial images: MTV's Beavis and Butthead and video games. Both have been heralded as damaging to youth and are still considered so by many, although MTV in its earlier iterations less so. The great irony of Beavis and Butthead being in that it was a satire of the corruption of youth. The image provokes its own kind of nostalgia, pleasure at past entertainment if applicable to the audience, and through the more cartoony nature seem less threatening.The video games picture is designed to feel ridiculous. No credible research has ever supported the claim, but here it is on national news. It is an ultimate example of the argument, a current example of the same knee jerk reactions present in the past images. The viewer should feel frustrated over how the media and society jump so quickly to latch on to these beliefs.

Overall, the presentation is designed to provoke the audience to think about our tendency to label things that are new or different as corruptors of the youth and be more hesitant to subscribe to that kind of ideology in the future. A kind of sympathy and an acceptability through association are created for the later, more controversial elements that are still producing controversy, hopefully allaying any hate or dislike of the elements that is present in order to create a more objective view. The overreactions to new things that we now consider classics and harmless are designed to cause an overall sense of the absurdity of lashing out at new things in this way, which will hopefully make viewers hesitate the next time they are invited to jump on a bandwagon to hate something that is new and "corrupting the youth." This is not the most emotional presentation, but it is my hope that in conjunction with logic the images are able to create an adequate emotional affect.

http://www.chronolect.com Accessed 3/29/2011
http://www.ushmm.org/ Accessed 3/29/2011
http://minaburrows.blogspot.com Accessed 3/29/2011
http://directv.gatemediavisual.com Accessed 4/4/2011
http://www.chronolect.com/ Accessed 4/4/2011
http://madamepickwickartblog.com/ Accessed 3/29/2011
http://www.helloagaingirls.com Accessed 3/29/2011

The Corruptors of Youth

The Reaganator

If Massumi is anything, he is not a fan of Ronald Regan. He spends the better part of 3 pages tearing into the man with some fairly harsh language, including "idiocy", "unqualified",  "incoherent" and many other similar terms. Whether these criticisms are valid or not is difficult to say, and beyond my own skills of analysis. If you presented such an opinion to a general audience it is very likely that their reaction not depend on any evidence, observations or even the way it was presented: it would depend more on the way that they viewed Reagan and reacted to his speeches (on the condition that the audience is old enough to remember Ronald Regan's speeches).

While for those who rely on body language Reagan might have appeared "functionally illiterate" and "hilariously inept"(40),  he "operationalized the virtual in modern politics"(41). This view of politics, and indeed this approach to politics in the first place, has had major impact on our modern world. The Presidential Actor has been a strong theme in the last decades. A character from a respectable, but usually not political, background, properly theatrical, with the correct opinions to cater to the crowd. Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Obama. It might be controversial to say, but the tradition possibly extends even farther back than Regan to JFK. These men may have their own individual pedigrees and qualifications, but their trait most marketed is not necessarily their political ability or ideas, but their ability to empathize with the public. Their message is secondary, what is important is their ability to be projected upon. Like TV screens or computer monitors, they display what the viewer wants to see, even if that has little to do with what they actually promise. A recent example of this would be the soaring expectations many had with Obama during his presidential run and the subsequent crash when people discovered that Obama was, in fact, not a wizard capable of making everything better overnight.

The ability for these politicians to receive these expectations and reflect them back to their audience is an art, and one practiced with varying skill by each of them with different degrees of consciousness. For Reagan, according to Massumi, it was the voice that drove home the package deal. Perhaps the same could be said for Obama's voice and, for some, his skin color. These features broadcast their affects just as strongly as any "empathy" or "emotive identification", leaving it to the audience to create their message. This is a style born of the image beamed into our homes, and while for Massumi Reagan might be the ultimate expression of this idea, I would possibly go back even farther to a more competent actor in a pivotal moment: JFK debating Nixon in the first televised Presidential debate. Nixon might have been the consummate politician, masterful at his job, but his ability to make that projection simply lacked compared to JFK. This victory is often attributed to appearance, but could it be possible that appearance has simply become a rationalizing justification to compensate for the fact that JFK was such a better actor than Reagan?

Incoherent Wanderings on Brennan

I'm not going to lie, I thought that the Brennan reading was painful and time consuming. Perhaps it's her fairly dry writing (sadly, Brennan herself died before finishing the editing, so I can forgive this), or her long reaching theories that seem do not always flow together, but I found my eyes straying every time they tried to stay on the page, darting around, looking for something else to do: which was not terribly difficult for them considering that I was reading the text in eBook format on my shiny new computer, custom built with my own hands.

Or maybe this mental wandering was the source of what Brennan calls an issue with "attentive energy(45)." Brennan connects our changing social structures with the "new maladies of the soul(45)" that have, while previously unknown, begun to manifest in significant quantities among our population. She speaks particularly of ADHD, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and characterizes them as either an absence of energy or an excess of it (45). These new developments are interesting to us as Brennan argues they are not the product of genes or biology, but of our culture and social constructions. This then creates an intriguing divide with Damassio's view of behavior, which brought forth no shortage of intimidating concepts of how our behaviors adhere to a more neurological view. Damasio's approach to intellect and emotions, particularly his view on their division and the ways that they function together, seems somewhat at odds with Brennan's view of a cultural cause in this disorder, and I had to pause and think for a second - is that really the cause?

After all, there is always the possibility that ADHD, FMS and the like were not recorded en masse earlier due to simply being confused for other maladies or ignored altogether. The way in which we treat and raise our children, for example, is vastly different from how they were treated in the past for most of our population. The very concept of children as a blessing and them being a reward of themselves is a relatively new creation that recent (very controversial) studies have proclaimed a coping method for the exorbitant cost of raising a child, where in the past having a child meant a larger labor pool. Similar arguments could be made for CFS and FMS as well, so is it possible for Brennan to have the right effect, but the wrong cause?

On a broader view of the issue, are Brennan's views of energy shaping disorders compatible with the position of Damasio?

Written Pathetic Appeal

LINK
My claim in this argument is in favor of the use of principles present in video games in order to encourage new and revised methods of learning in the classroom. This was perhaps not the most emotionally charged subject, but I feel that I was able to use pathos and logos together to create a strong argument. My intention was to appeal to the desire of readers for an efficient, effective educational system, their own experiences in classrooms, the dislike of mass produced, one size fits all approaches to shaping people. For those who have played video games to any extent I have tried to include principles that are thought provoking but at the same time recognizable. I attempted to create a respectable, knowledgeable and impartial ethos in order to give credibility to myself even to those who may think the entire concept preposterous.

I wanted to evoke feelings of frustration at the ineffective methods of teaching, the excitement of problem solving during a game, and a hope for a better way of learning. My end goal is to have the audience become at least amiable towards the concept of game principles in the classroom by making them seem credible and worthwhile as a supplement to more traditional methods that contain some flaws. By drawing the connection between a flawed system and a promising, rational, and hopefully exciting new approach, I want readers to begin to think of ways in which these principles could be applied and look favorably towards the creation of new, alternative approaches to teaching using these gaming principles.

Survival of the Rhetorical...est

including human culture, rhetoric is a powerful force for the survival and well-being of the individual,the family, and the social group as these exist at any given moment.

 This quote from Kennedy stands out to me as indicating the scalability of rhetoric in human society. Our interpretations of what Rhetoric is are innumerable: ask any student, or even ask any teacher, and you'll probably get a different answer. Broader theories that these interpretations fall into exist, and have no shortage of labels which are tangential to the point I'm going after here. What strikes me particularly is how broad the spectrum of what we call "rhetoric" is both in what it contains - for instance, many would argue that something as minute as the smell of a woman's perfume or the angle at which one's glasses rest upon one's nose, and by the same token many argue that rhetoric's domain is the lofty political speech that changes the fate of nations - and in who performs it. Kennedy argues that many animals have their own types of rhetorics, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, we could argue that entire nations present their own rhetorical arguments.

a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status 

 Merriam Webster Online Dictionary

 Of course, a nation is not a thinking being in the way an animal or a human is. It is an amalgam, composed of a broad variety of people. They are not always multicultural or even united, but a nation presents its own kind of rhetoric as a medley of those within it. It might seem common sense that the stances and positions of a state originate from within the government or official ruling bodies, but is this the case? Let's take a look at an extreme example, our own nation, the United States of America. Without a doubt, our government plays a major role in creating the image we present to the world, whether as individuals we approve of it or not. Yet if you consider the construction that is the "Image of the United States", a cornucopia of factors pile in. We export culture, technology, finance, technical skills and even our own stereotypes to the entire world daily. We present ourselves in particular ways, some good, some bad, for all to see, and around that we create a mythos of what America is. The simplest manifestations of this mythos, for all countries, not just ours, is in stereotypes, both positive and negative. I won't go into them here, but surely when you think of certain countries specific traits and values comes to mind.

This goes beyond simple impressions as well. The rhetoric of nations centers first and foremost on their continued prosperity and survival. The most basic image that a nation can project through its policies, people, structures and actions is that of Strength. Authoritarian governments, strong armies, vast wealth, strong defenses and power projection are all evidence that countries present for the argument that they are strong. It is this image of strength that is often more effective than large numbers of soldiers. For example, look at Switzerland. As Europe blazed around them during WW2, they were left alone in a position of neutrality. Why? The Swiss have always been militaristic, their citizens were motivated, their natural defenses strong and the reward for conquering them would be little. Like an animal bristling against a predator, they present an argument as a nation that it is in no way worth it to attack them. Like Kennedy says, "Stripped to
its bare minimum, rhetoric is a defense mechanism(10)." These rhetorics exist to ensure the longevity and prosperity of the state, while those unable to present these rhetorics fall. Viewing this as the only factor in the fall of a nation is of course dramatically oversimplifying, but it may not be too much of a stretch to view history as a kind of "Survival of the Rhetorical" on a wider scale than Kennedy discusses.

Aced the Test; Don't know the Material

An interesting point in Damasio's Descarte's Error that really stood out for me was the fact that no matter what tests those with acknowledged issues in their brain functions simply sailed right through. For Elliot in particular, he even demonstrated having a "superior intellect" that showed abilities that were "superior or average (Damasio,41)." Damasio further elaborates on this when he points out that "patients with marked abnormalities of social behavior can perform normally on many and even most intelligence tests (Damasio, 41)."

So what does this mean to us? Obviously it means that intelligence tests aren't designed to divine who has "marked abnormalities of social behavior," but in a more broad sense, this hole in the concept of "intelligence" has some implications on us.

As a society, we love tests. The IQ test tells us how smart we are, we take standardized tests such as the TAAS or TAKS to show our abilities and progress as children, we take examinations like the SAT to get into higher education, we grill ourselves with exam after exam in University to show our mastery of the subjects and get a final letter grade. We love to play the numbers game. Here is your result: Good job! You got 90%! You have an IQ of 110! These answers are concrete, we can put them in perspective and feel good about ourselves. It's fast, solid feedback. And it even takes part in our social interactions. He has a high IQ, he is so smart! He scored high on test, he's really good at this (or conversely, he's a nerd, let's stay away from him).

http://inksnow.blogspot.com/

Of course, there's a bit of a problem with this. Standardized testing has always been a fickle creature, and it's easy to understand why. The original IQ test originated in 1905 with Alfred Binet and has been in use in some form or other ever since. The test has proven invaluable in identifying children of special needs and practical military testing, so don't think that I am simply hating it for the sake of hating it, and many other standardized tests fall to the same problems. These problem lie in that Intelligence tests such as Binet's IQ test examine very specific cognitive skills and are incredibly dependent on proper administration. Often what is really being tested is the environment in which the one being examined was raised or the ways of thinking that have been imparted to them. I'm going to steal an example here.

How are a pair of scissors and a copper pan alike?

One point answer:  They are both household utensils.
Two point answer:  They are both made of metal.

Why is the second worth more than the first? Which doesn't belong:  clam, pig, oven, rose.
The correct answer is the oven, because the rest are living things.
But a child may say rose, since the others relate to making dinner.
Or the clam, since clams live in the water, and the rest live on land.

 -Dr. C. George Boeree
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/intelligence.html


 Examples of this type of subjective view of Intelligence can often be traced back to last 19th Century, early 20th Century New Imperialist thought patterns. In seeking a justification for taking "stewardship" over less developed regions of the world, and acknowledging the now rapidly expanding concepts of Darwinian conflict theory (or in many cases, Social Darwinism) and the concept of Genetics, many Imperialist nations put great effort into satisfying themselves that they had the right to rule and "guide" these areas because they were simply of superior genetic stock. Scientific testing of this was widespread and generally came back with what we could consider comical results but were often taken very seriously. For example, Craniometry used the shape of the head to establish details such as intelligence and character. Coincidentally, the cranial shape coinciding with the highest intelligence and best character was found among Europeans.

Testing is not inherently evil, but the extent to which we use it to judge ourselves and others is problematic. There are far too many variables, far too many problems that can arise, and most importantly far too many different types of intelligence in existence. We all know the people who excel at any piece of schoolwork but possess no "street smarts" or even "common sense" (I'd consider myself among them if I was better at the schoolwork part). Many kinds of intelligence that exist are nearly impossible to nail down, and examinations can have extreme difficulty catching defined but elusive "flaws" that we may posses as exhibited by our friend Elliot. So the question is, what is the value of testing in your life? How does it affect the way in which you look at yourself? And if these values were to suddenly be revealed as irrelevant, how would your perception of yourself change?

Special Snowflake Syndrome

An item that really caught my eye in this reading was the exploration of the concept of the public as "the greatest sophists (Smith-Hyde 446)" and the often negative view we see in writing about the public in general. Many terms are assigned to the group conscious, from  "the public" to "the herd" to simply "they(Smith-Hyde 446)." We often assign to this group consciousness an almost zombie-like type of conformism, but usually with some pretty words to spruce things up. It is in conformism that they so called evil of the mass consciousness lies. As people pool together in larger numbers and subsume themselves to the group, there is often an observed tendency to simply follow the crowd, cease critical thinking and obey the common opinions held by the mass. This is argued in the reading to not be entirely true or a bad thing, and I would agree with that. The problem that sprung to mind most to me when reading this was not some concept of how groups are bad and we should all attempt to be our own unique snowflakes obeying only ourselves, but the eagerness of people to condemn the other, as lacking their own conscious thoughts and instead being simply content to obey the group will.

I am not saying that this does not happen. Certainly there are probably plenty of people out there completely willing to simply go with the flow, to obey the will of the mass and chase after only with "the herd" wants. It is an amusing phenomenon how we often attribute group motivations to individuals simply by virtue of where they are or how they are acting. How do you know what they are actually thinking? For the rhetor, it is particularly crucial to not be caught up in viewing others, as simple conformist drones, easily controlled by public opinions and beliefs. We have to be very careful in understanding the differences in the "mass" and the individual, and most importantly understand the similarities between "us" and "them." After much incoherent rambling, I think that concept is the most important part of this blog post. Attributing to yourself unique motivations or thought processes is a recipe for making mistakes when dealing with others, because they are (usually) every bit as conscious and motivated as you are, even if it is not readily apparent. This knowledge should ideally help in considering just how to appeal to others.

Edit: Oh hey I read and blogged the wrong reading. WELP

Visual Anaylsis

This image originates as a 1945 World War II propaganda poster produced in America. As such, it has a fairly particular audience consisting of the civilians and potential soldiers in America at the time. During this period there was an incredibly active propaganda culture that produced thousands of artifacts promoting everything from enlisting to growing your own vegetables to help win the war. The audience would have been inundated with these images and accustomed to more typical depictions of the enemy. This poster seems to take this demonization and increase it several degrees.

The artwork here is designed to evoke a variety of intensely negative emotions. It is heavily loaded with imagery to an extent that it almost takes one's breath away. Fitting for a propaganda poster, the most vivid emotions that the poster produces are hate and fear. Our eyes are drawn to the leering face of Hitler, darkly shaded and wrinkled as he gazes past a scene of destruction. Wreathed in the flames of a burning city, he stares at us dispassionately, inhumanly. Not caring about the destruction he has caused, and instead looking towards the viewer, coming to destroy their lives and everything they hold dear. He is a figure of imminent threat and doom which makes him all the more frightening, and his direct gaze gives an uneasiness as he looks to his next target to destroy. Around him is a tragedy that anyone in the target audience would find despicable. To the side, a church burns. The flame and smoke contributes to Hitler's fiery aura as the Christian morality so dear to most of 1945 America goes up in flames. In the very foreground, a wounded child is crying as a woman, presumably his mother, lies stabbed in the heart. The child is sitting in a pool of blood, gripping the dead woman's hand futilely. A sign saying “God Bless Our Home” lies discarded on a pile of rubble next to the woman's corpse. The message is clear: God no longer has a place here, this is now the land of Hitler.To the side, a man with a noose around his neck lies dead. If the man is the child's father, which is left up to interpretation, then this is the scene of a whole family utterly destroyed by Hitler. All of these elements are assembled to cause the viewer to hate the one responsible for committing these atrocities, and at the same time fear that they will happen to themselves. At the same time, the crying child elicits from us a sense of pity for his loss and abject horror toward what is happening around him.We feel compassion for him, and worry about whether he will survive and live on in such a hellish environment butchered by war with no parents left to care for him. 

“THIS IS THE ENEMY” is emblazoned at the top of the poster, further labeling Hitler as the target of the negative emotions produced by the imagery below. The hate and fear produced ties into a clear line of reasoning. This is the enemy, he is responsible for these horrors. We must take revenge on him for doing such horrible things and to prevent them from happening to ourselves. How do we do that? The other pieces of propaganda that would have been very familiar to the audience provides the answer: join the army and fight, conserve resources for the war effort, buy war bonds, grow your own food. Contribute everything that you can contribute to defeat this monstrous villain.

The poster asks you to believe that these atrocities really are happening. That religion and good values are being put to flame, families are being destroyed, children are crying and cities are being ravaged. It then tells you to connect these occurrences with a face, that of Hitler, branding him as the one responsible for them. If you accept this interpretation of the poster, there is then little alternative but to hate and fear Hitler as a monstrous criminal and do everything that you can to defeat him as soon as possible.

The image has several aspects that would appeal to different groups on different levels. For example, those that are religious would be heavily effected by the sight of the burning church in the background. Another group that would be particularly interested in this poster would be those who value the family and the home due to the three figures that could possibly compose a family and the “God Bless Our Home” sign that is lying to the side. This imagery of a broken, butchered family would be particularly vivid to them. On a similar note, those with children would be particularly struck by the crying child as they might connect him with their own child being placed in such a situation. On a broader scale, the vast injustices and evil presented here would appeal to the quick temper of youths who could be easily stirred up to do something rash after seeing scenes of destruction, death and American values being crushed, such as joining the military. The elderly, who fear to lose what they have for lack of time to regain it, might also be moved by the scene of destruction if they accepted the threat as urgent enough to effect them, or out of fear for their children.

If anything can be said about this poster, it is that it is an intense piece of visual rhetoric almost on an overbearing scale. The vividness and graphic depictions serve almost as a blunt object that the artist uses to beat the audience into feeling the emotions he intends, but the weight of that object alone makes this piece particularly remarkable.

Aristotle and Makin' Babies

There is something deep in the American consciousness that revolts against the concept of “the well born man” as Aristotle puts it (II.15.20). This of course is almost humorously ironic when you look at it in the perspective of how deep and prominent our prejudices were in the past and, regretfully, still are in many cases, but is a serious issue to consider when examining Aristotle's ideas of character. When looking at these concepts, however, we must keep in mind that the very idea of all men (and women) being equal is an incredibly new one. We only have to look at the philosophy of Imperialism that gripped the western world hardly even a century ago to see just how deep rooted the idea of ancestry and race superiority were. Aristotle, writing well over two millenniums ago, naturally has a drastically different outlook from our modern perspective.

This may give us something of a pass from having to classify the hero of our story as a bigot or any other such term that is entirely pointless to label a dead man with, but does form a curious position in his argument on character. It is from lineage that Aristotle argues man takes some of the shape of his character. A “good birth implies ancestral distinction (II.15.19)” but not necessarily being born from nobility or wealth, as to Aristotle most of the well-born “are poor creatures(II.15.24). This is a very nuanced stance that Aristotle is taking. While he is arguing that lineage and birth are important parts of developing character, he breaks from the traditional position of connecting good birth to only those who are wealthy or of distinguished noble stock. This is very progressive of Aristotle, but at the same time problematic as it leaves open the question of just what does it mean to come “of a fine stock(II.15.24).” As ambiguous as it may be, this concept of birth and ancestry playing a role in the shaping of character, according to Aristotle making them become more ambitious, is not something I personally support.

While this could certainly be interpreted as a kind of proto-genetics, I would instead argue that these character traits are born not from breeding, but rather from the environments in which the products of this “fine stock” are raised. It is the same for Aristotle's further arguments in the chapter, of generations having a “varying yield(II.15.26)” in which occasional bursts of exceptional men are produced and then later subside, as Aristotle rightly puts it, when “decadence sets in(II.15.28).” This decay is not the product of their birth, but the environments in which they are raised and the expectations placed upon them by those around them.

These arguments against Aristotle's positions may seem painfully simple or common sense, but like I said earlier, we have the benefit of nearly 2500 years of science and psychology on our side, shaping our own positions on the subject. And finally, we have to be careful not to be terribly overbearing with the sheer amount of our smugness and self righteousness when looking at a concept that is, through no fault of the author, now “outdated.”

Aristotle and the Irrational Beast

It is a horse that has been beaten to death a million times. Few statements are more grilled into us from our childhood than the simple statement "Hating others is bad." We should all just get along, right? Unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple. Hatred and Enmity are basic human emotions that exist in any society. Naturally then, they become factors in Rhetoric. Without a doubt to actively stir up hatred for others is what we call "Bad Rhetoric" and in general simply a foul way to do things. Yet an understanding of what hatred is is an essential tool in both avoiding becoming a "Bad Rhetor" yourself and in understanding much of the strife before us.

Where anger is born of offenses against us, hatred can be born of simply what we perceive their character to be (II.5.1382a.4). That hatred can be born from perception rather than a slight or any actual offenses makes hatred by nature a far more dangerous beast than anger. Hatred functions from our interpretations of an out group rather than what may necessarily be the realities, making it fundamentally an irrational animal. It has no need for fact or reality, and instead feeds upon itself. Hatred can paint a broad swathe. Rather than just individuals, hatred can be "directed also against classes(II.5.1382a.6)." In this it can then feast upon one of the most plentiful sources of irrational characterization: stereotypes. Stereotypes by their nature exist for virtually any group, and it takes no particular finesse to draw them forth from even those who consider themselves unbiased, so deeply are they rooted into our culture and environment (although obviously we have no desire to speak of them).

Beyond that, where anger will fade with time, hatred will not (II.5.1382a.7). It can simply simmer under the surface, possibly for generations, embedding itself deeper and deeper into those it inhabits, becoming simply a fact of life for them that they hate X. Once firmly affixed, this enmity becomes even more difficult to remove. Negotiation becomes nigh impossible, as the ultimate goal of those carrying the hatred shifts and becomes that the other party should "cease to exist (II.5.1382a.16)." It is only through long terms of careful tending that this irrational creature can be pried free of whatever is in its clutches.

The rhetoric of Hatred is a low hanging fruit, as it is no difficult task to release the wild beast that is people's own fears of others. Understanding the nature of the creature is an important step in making sure that you do not accidentally release it yourself or allow it to get its claws into you.

Enargeia

Thanksgiving Day. The sun beat down, surprisingly hot for the time of year as Highway 71 stretched onward into the distance. An old blue car crested the overpass and began to slow to turn. Four lanes of road, but no turn lane. The car came to a stop with its five passengers, each ready to arrive at the restaurant that was now less than a football field away. In the front a balding man in his fifties sits in the driver's seat, his eyes covered by sunglasses, watching a car coming the other direction. Beside him is a young child, idly looking out the window at the green cedar trees lining the road. In the back three others, an elderly couple and a woman the same age as the driver are making small talk. As the three chat the thought of looking behind them never passes their mind. If they had, they might have seen the green truck crest the overpass. The road is four lanes, but the truck stays in the left, barreling down the road far above the speed limit. Before him the old blue car begins to turn, signal flashing as the truck closes. There is no high pitched squeal of brakes. No warning. The green truck slams into the car at full speed with a sickening crunch. The blue car screams under the impact, its passengers hurled forward. The driver's airbag explodes in his face, cushioning him. The others are not so lucky. To his right the child is caught by the seatbelt, gripping him tightly, crushing in on his chest as he gasps. The elderly woman sitting in the middle of the back seat flies forward, her head slamming into the dashboard of the car as the seatbelt fails to restrain her. A crimson burst marks where her forehead struck. Her husband beside her slams forward into the back of the passenger seat. Both are knocked unconscious. The woman behind the driver suffers the worst. The very shape of the car has been destroyed by the blow, the door no longer an exit but a prison as it crushes inwards. The deformed metal squeezes in on her. Behind, the man driving the truck gets out and runs toward the car, frantically pulling to open the driver side door.

Let the Incoherence Commence