April 4, 2011

Jarett Sanchez


lopo)
Learning the Trivium

website

A decent talk by Mortimer Adler at the National Press Club on the Great Books of the Western World

The Underground Grammarian Richard Mitchell
"Everyone here should become familiar with Mitchell's work. He's a top notch thinker which makes following his arguments fruitful, and he is actually funny as hell!"

C-Realm Podcast # 245 "Here's a juicy refutation (of sorts) of Zeitgeist – Moving Forward.
I think all Zeitgeist fans should consider the value of these arguments against Joseph and Fresco's TechnoUtopia."

Understanding Misunderstandings: How to do a rhetorical analysis by Trish Roberts-Miller


Rhetoric 101: A Primer for Rhetoric Students

tt = Tosco T.) "Discern persuasive elements in communication between parties" ...
Aren't we a little bit further than that yet, Jarett?

"To put it positively, ego-istic unfoldment and alter-istic development are expressible in an 'argument'-form, drawing on many points as many premises to clinch and close off with a single conclusion. In contrast, mutual thinking together does not argue but play with arguments, back and forth, brainstorming together, reciprocally provoking new ideas and standpoints, and having fun doing so. It is this process of playing with arguments, among others, that typifies thinking together. Such togetherness-thinking is a sort of music-making. Music is created by three parties, the composer, the performer(s), and the audience, mutually dependent. Composer, performer(s), and audience always act and behave in terms of the music and for nothing else. Lacking in either one, there would be no music."
Kuang-Ming Wu 1998: On the "Logic" of Togetherness – A Cultural Hermeneutic (p. 133)


Jarett) I'm not sure what you mean, Tosco.
tt) You'll find out, Jarett, no problem, because I think we will keep in touch with each other ...
It's harder to explain than to practice, you know, so I take a pass on this definition, alright? For now, at least.
Or let's say not before we are in agreement about that other definition :)


Jarett) This is what I was referring to:

"Discern persuasive elements in communication between parties" ...
Aren't we a little bit further than that yet, Jarett?

Perhaps you misunderstood the reason I posted that link. It's because many people are attracted to this critical thinking meme but aren't sure what to do about it.
Rhetoric puts you in direct contact with critical thinking skills.
I understand, I think, your intentions in posting the quote, let me rephrase. We're not seeking merely to find out if someone is persuading us, but rather to combine our arguments together to form a greater, cohesive understanding. That is something I completely am for, as evidenced by my podcast, The Next Step (world cafe, wisdom councils, etc). It just doesn't have anything to do with beginning to learn rhetoric.
Aristotle said rhetoric was the ability to detect persuasion in speech acts and for the most part, I agree.
Aristotelian rhetoric is where most people begin their learning of rhetoric, as it's a solid foundation, and then they learn about the many other schools of rhetorical thought and technique. Essentially, though, rhetoric boils down to analysis of a presentation as well as able composition of a presentation – usually for the ends of persuasion to lesser and greater degrees. Even right now as we chat back and forth on here, we are subtly attempting to persuade each other of the truth of our own ideas. Think about it if it's not immediately apparent to you.
Rhetoric is used almost every time a human being consciously speaks.
Even something like running late at the office and you have to catch an elevator whose doors are closing. If you merely mumble sarcastically to hold the door open, the people inside the elevator might not either hear you or even take you seriously. But if you exclaim that you need that door open and have the look of urgency on your face, they will react quickly. This is an example of the rhetorical canon of delivery.


tt) Perhaps I did, but I don't think so. And I'm glad you bring this up because it seems to be another great starting point for an online correspondence between us in which I would be very interested.
At this moment, I don't know anything about your podcast series or your writings, I'm just going with my intuition here. That alone let me rain on your parade a little bit, because I have this distinct feeling that the old-school thinking alone, you know the Aristotelian way of knowledge processing and knowledge transfer, couldn't be the ultimate key to the 9/11 Synchronicity treasure room, if you can guess what I'm up to with that.
I mean it helped a lot in times of the Renaissance and it also helps a lot today, with the new electronic communication environment nevertheless, it's no longer on the height of the time, in my opinion. And here is why.
"Discern the persuasive elements in communication between two parties" was taken from the Rhetoric 101 website, and to quote someone with "in contrast, mutual thinking together does not argue but play with arguments" as an answer to the notion that "rhetoric was the ability to detect persuasion in speech acts" doesn't match the topic of focus, I think. But it really is this "usually for the ends of persuasion to lesser or greater degrees" bit that could become our bone of contention, since it is one of the most fundamental questions that we need clarity about.

"Even right now as we chat back and forth on here, we are subtly attempting to persuade each other of the truth of our own ideas. Think about it if it's not immediately apparent to you."

True. I absolutely admit it. But you know what's also true?

The more I get used to what the job of a piety profiler possibly could be, the more I'm kind of losing that urge to convince others to share my feelings, my thoughts, my beliefs, and so on. Really. I really don't need it anymore, and I really don't want it anymore too. Because if you are going to develope a sense for your counterpart's entirety of processed knowledge, you know – you can also say: his horizon of perception (if there is one) – single arguments start to lose their weight, start to lose their importance for you. And finally I think you will come to a point where it sounds like a very good idea to keep every attempt (as well as every temptation) to persuade each other as subtle as possible, to literally put it into the background, to make it not apparent deliberately. You then focus more on an exchange of personality than that you know better and so forth. You try to develop understanding together with somebody instead against someone's particular world view or momentary mood or both.
There is, of course, a lot more to say about it, the bottom line though is to gain a better perspective, a higher perspective in the sense Richard Grove had stated that "the only war that has ever existed is the war on consciousness." And not only for you, but for you and your interlocutor – even it's a Jesuit :)

For example, I mainly comment on passages of text or excerpts of audio recording and video footage that give me occasion to explore some of the half-baked thoughts that I'm already carrying with me for a while. So I use these little correspondences and my comment journal not so much for arguing but rather to integrate information and to nail let's say parts of my unconscious down into conscious speech. In general, I think the cyberspace has at the individual as well as the community level a considerable if not big amount of psychedelic characteristics that could soften this frontier between the big unconscious and our little instruments of logical analysis and grasp to a yet unknown degree. The search for accuracy itself can be an enormous help in collecting one truth at a time (the more complex, the better, the more clear, the better), and why not trying to combine the philosophical with the psychedelic side of life ... Do you think I digress? Fact is, a career Jesuit studies philosophy first, theology second. *) And all theology in my eyes is basically the conquest of the supremacy of interpretation over the dreamworld and the romantic nature of the human soul with means of linguistics.

So although I appreciate your statement as being excellent, I mean it's colorful, it's clear (clear like the Crystal Lake?), but not sufficient, I'm afraid. Something seemed fishy and it does it now too. Maybe a little too much old-school, or not too old enough school, I don't know. However, as one of the biggest 9/11 Synchronicity questions, we have to consider why trivium-trained Rhodes Scholars and other Ivy League academics do form such a monolithic and ruthless body of corrupted and controlled intellectuality, so that we uninitiated, who were excluded from this elite education, are now left fighting their ethics and loyalties, right?

*) 03/07'11 An Unholy Alliance: "Be that as it may, the Libyan dictator donated to Farrakhan's Nation of Islam in 1984 a $5 million interest-free loan which was secured with the assistance of Wright, Obama's preacher at the time. The purpose was apparently to help create civil unrest, which Gadhafi knows (better than many Americans) is fomented by 'preachers' who pipe the dangerous Marxist message of 'Black Liberation Theology'. It is Marxism first, 'theology' second with this crowd."

The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk wrote in one of his widely ridiculous books ("Zorn und Zeit"): "Rhetorik – als Kunstlehre der Affektlenkung in politischen Ensembles – ist angewandte Thymotik." (Rhetoric – as aesthetics of steering affects in political ensembles – is applied thymotics.) See also: "The Blogora"


Jarett) Well the thing is that learning rhetoric puts you into contact directly with the old understandings of what rhetoric is. And no matter what, we're almost always trying to persuade in conversation. That does not mean we think we're better ... but rather that we're trying to attain understanding by presenting what we're already understanding. A truly educated person would then realize they could be quite wrong and so listens to what the other person has to say intently and openly. Aristotelian rhetoric is the most popular because Aristotle was a genius, but it doesn't mean he knew everything, either.
I'm into permaculture and all that, so I don't think every time you talk to someone you're directly trying to manipulate them into your belief system, that you should be just open to them and not looking for persuasion in their speech. But again, when applying rhetorical skills, identification of persuasion is a huge part of the game, although not the only. I personally think Aristotle's definition, as per those websites listed above, is incomplete or inadequate to explain all the varied ways in which rhetoric is used.
Isocrates is another great rhetorical teacher to look into.


tt) "The old understandings" – exactly!
Or let's say the traditional way of generating civility.
But all civility that we know of has a very strong military touch, and the reason why "war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means" can, in my opinion, be found behind this shimmering veneer of sensationalist conspiracy theory: which is the fact that, despite all this professional theatricality around apparent democratic proceedings, there is a pretty monolithic, very bureaucratic, quasi-monarchic structure in power inside this culture that makes politics a military instrument in the first place.
And belligerent persuasion-oriented rhetoric is the way this system operates,
okay?

Maybe we're already about to discuss a new definition of rhetoric here that takes this completely new cybertronic communication environment into consideration. You said combining arguments had nothing to do with learning rhetoric. Why actually? Because we have to start with Aristotle and his preacher teacher collegues?
Are you, for instance, aware of the similarities in the habits of ancient Greek philosophers, Roman senators and Catholic cardinals? And not only with regard to boy's love ... Their educational principles are still the foundation of our modern "republican" "9/11" corporation civilization, and I'm simply thinking, in a political landscape, dialectically fragmented on purpose, and a public, managed by controlled controversies, it wouldn't be the most clever course of action to focus on the old-school approach of rhetoric, you know.

My imagination of "a truly educated person" is of course somebody who stands above all offers at the piety market and doesn't find it necessary to argue about certain single statements anymore, but rather with the whole spectrum of what gives a personality its identity by acknowledging that particular opinions are just expressions and part of it, you see?

A good exercise for getting a new sense for rhetoric under cyberspace conditions could possibly be to ask yourself on which occasions you feel pressured most into commenting someone else's comment(s) on the web. In my case, it's totally obvious that inspiration is the big prime mover of this reformation wave that's coming out of the computer networks, mutual inspiration at best.
So, in my eyes, if "essentially, though, rhetoric boils down to analysis of a presentation as well as able composition of a presentation – usually for the ends of persuasion to lesser and greater degrees," such kind of definition loses its attractiveness, to say the least, since persuasion is out-competed by inspiration.
In other words, I'm no longer interested in what you are convinced of, but what food for thought you can give me on the basis of "your pulsating ellipse of cohesive understanding" ... :)


Jarett) You're continuing your use of the Fallacy of Composition when you say: "this culture that makes politics a military instrument in the first place. And belligerent persuasion-oriented rhetoric is the way this system operates, okay?" Rhetoric is just as available to the middle class as it is the upper, although we have to work harder for it.
You choose to focus on the misuse of rhetoric, especially by invoking the use of war by states, and then label all rhetorics as evil. This is purely faulty logic in your argument, and in a place where openly questioning the logic of an argument is fair game!

"The old understandings" – exactly! Are you aware of what the old understandings of rhetoric are?
Here's a synopsis of some of the major threads, which is to say, not all schools of rhetoric were identical.
So right away you can understand persuasion in a perhaps more fuller context.
You're just talking about rhetoric like you know what it is in full. I do not have such knowledge, so I point to how rhetoric arose, was developed and was understood in the past, as well as in modern times where rhetoric is not solely focused upon influencing the public conversation.

"persuasion is out-competed by inspiration" I think your definition of persuasion is perhaps limited and can be expanded by actually studying rhetoric, as opposed to inviting me to look at your entire personality and to not bother thinking about your opinions.
It seems you become uncomfortable when your opinions are questioned.
I think that the most available means we have for evolving our relationships, both personal and public, is through conversation, questioning, listening, and being open to new understandings that can arise. Persuasion in this context is not about you being right, but about you being able to communicate whatever ideas it is you have in the best manner possible given your innate talents and time spent in practice of a method. Like the words rhetoric and propaganda, persuasion has many shades of meaning with the negative connotations being the most commonly used.

I also disagree with your definition of a "truly educated person" although I do not offer any complete definition myself. I think it's very silly for those of us so uneducated as we are to begin forming very strong opinions on that matter. In modern times we do not have many strong public examples, although Mortimer Adler certainly seems the most prominent in the field.
And also, what is the definition of "educated" in this conversation? That's a crucial term.

"and doesn't find it necessary to argue about certain single statements anymore, but rather with the whole spectrum of what gives a personality its identity by acknowledging that particular opinions are just expressions and part of it" So, if you have a neighbor whom is a really nice guy all around, but yet whom makes comments occasionally that Mexicans are a race of idiots, do you still hold to your practice of just looking at the whole of a person and resist all attempts to question certain single statements?
How do you judge which statements to question, then, if certain statements are off limits?

Essentially, it seems you are looking at, or rather, intuiting, some greater uses for rhetoric, but I think you're making the error of "throwing the baby out with the bath water."

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