Category: Persuasive Appeal

On Free Speech: IV. Grounding Movement Control

Click here to read Pt. III Craft Displacement

IV. Grounding Movement Control

“I think what we’re learning is that, particularly when they get a choice, a lot of people decide to believe what’s more comfortable for them, even if it’s not the truth.”

– Ellis Cose

We’ve always lived with both truth and lies. Concern today, arising directly from how ubiquitous they are, truth and lies, is how competitive they are. And how rapidly they spread.

I’ve sometimes thought “social media” should be renamed social immediate… social’s a bit generous, I think, altruistic, but of course it’s media and immediate, sharing common etymology, that are more than just clever word-play.

On-line life began like any new relationship… a little mysterious, a little enchanted. Since those early days, we live so much of our lives on screens… how are we coping with the reach and pace of this on-line world, its arbitrary spread of content that people decide to believe, that “gives the illusion of consensual validation”? How are we affording ourselves “sufficient time to avert the evil consequences of noxious doctrine by argument and education”? How are we reckoning with the access and clout marshalled to special advantage by a privileged few? By how, I mean intentionally how?

These are hardly questions to be glossed over, especially when we use the very same lightspeed reach and pace for argument and education. We seem to be building the plane while learning to be the pilot while also issuing boarding passes and studying for our tower badge while flying. On top of all this, what the tower calls a landing strip some pilots believe is a mirage, if not flat-out deception.

It’s very difficult to say on what grounds something is hate speech and who should make that decision because some people find Zionism hate speech. Some people find Black Lives Matter hate speech. It’s easy to use the phrase ‘hate speech,’ but it means different things to different people, even people who think they know what it is when they see it.

Ellis Cose

By the way, if you’re thinking just now, “Yes, it’s awful how quickly lies spread,” well, it’s possible the liars are thinking the same thing. Maybe you’re now spotting the same problem as me… two wrongs don’t make a right, and yes, it’s a different way to think of the two wrongs, owned one each per ‘side’ – just to clarify, this would be both sets of ‘liars’ sharing responsibility to connect, or else clash. So yes, it’s a bit different, and it’s definitely no cause for censorious scorn or sanctimonious virtue-signalling – I mean, unless everyone wants the fighting to continue. And if that redoubles your indignation, well, very likely it’s doubled theirs, too, and here we all are, equal by at least one measure.

We all lay claim to weighty title-deeds; but as any physicist will tell you, weight is commonly misapprehended, and the question, really, is over whose voices bear sufficient persuasive mass to tamp the rest of us down within their gravity well, and whose would have us believe we’re defying gravity.

And here is the heart of Cose’s counsel: truth is not driving out lies.

“Pass me that screwdriver, will ya… huh? Alright, how about a hammer?”

As I say, it’s competing with them. Cose takes himself to be justified on the ‘side’ of truth – fair enough, we all have our convictions; for the record, I agree with him. In this post, however, I’m trying more clinically just to observe the conflict, which seems as protracted for a liar as for anyone since driving out lies with truth precludes no truth that any ‘side’ might wield. If that’s not a debate toward persuasion, it can still be a battle to the death.

Yes, “speech may be fought with speech,” but how effective is it when people’s beliefs on the same planet have become separate world ideologies? And when government, for the public, has no claim to control what somebody, in private, decides they want silenced, just who gets to say who gets to say? From having earlier considered the speaker, and the speech they profess, we’re now unquestionably trolling the realm of the audience.

And that audience has a setting, whether a venue or some medium, which itself is part of a larger culture, etc etc, blah blah blah… and if appreciating all this ‘in context’ seems obvious, then ask yourself why we still dispute free speech? To borrow an earlier phrase, it’s hard to blame the craft when it’s the artisan.

Free speech per se is a concept, and it’s one thing to aspire to values. But it’s quite another to assume them, and we don’t live in a Land of Should, where the statues talk and live among us, and concepts send us greeting cards embossed with dogma. As we’re now considering audience, we’re no longer considering only the person who speaks, or only their speech, or only the venue in which they speak. We’re also beyond one audience’s concerns, or one cultural setting, or even cultures colliding: free speech enacted is all of the above. Like loose strands in a weave, pulling one means the rest come with it. To do it any justice obliges us to consider free speech not in the immediacy of one person’s freedom but as an ongoing social gathering, or convergence. Free speech per se is one thing; free speech enacted is quite another.

Spot the regulatory influence: as we fly by Instrument Flight Rules or Visual Flight Rules, so we speak in the public sphere and the private sphere.

At issue is not free speech per se but our e-tech immediacy, so vastly more efficient than ever before, with a widespread audience to match.

At issue are the people in that audience, and their coping strategies: discernment, tolerance, critical thinking, an ability to hold in mind two contradictory ideas, or at least more than one comfortable idea.

At issue are ideology and the “immediate interests [that] exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful”… all the ‘should’ that wants to last and grow and protect and endure by carving a comfortable niche.

At issue is our patience, and our willingness to distinguish nuance, and our susceptibility to emotion, as part or separate from reason – that’s on you and me both, and sorry for getting in your face about it, but while we’re on you, what exactly do you make of the speaker’s character? Because that’s no longer just you; that’s both you and the speaker. Cyclical, mutual, together. This is a joint effort.

I consider the nuances of free speech with the three rhetorical appeals and wonder at some error in the sonorous formula by which one person, like one appeal, is raised to matter above all else. In the so-called digital age, what lies between the echo chambers is less a public forum than the contested battleground of a fight that is less about some freely spoken topic than who shall freely speak. When I hear people invoke “free speech” as targeting anticipated outcomes or effects of speech rather than addressing the catalyst or cause of speech, I wonder if their judgment has already been passed. I wonder if the speaker’s credibility is simply ad hominem in waiting – it’s not always so, but I wonder at the possibility, at the sure traction we seek on the slippery slopes we grade.

I wonder if an entire audience has had its capacity assumed, in lieu of their involvement, by a few of its more vigilant assertive presumptive strident zealous clamorous… – by ideologues… – by a few of its members. In fairness, what one may call advocacy another might call oppression; just as what one may call disinterest, another might call complicity; or as differently educated, ignorant or uninformed. Yet no impasse need be permanent unless we’re willing – is it obstinacy that makes you so parochial, or integrity? When is refusal a sign of conviction, and when is it just being lazy?

We possess no freedom – neither active freedom to nor passive freedom from – that is not without corresponding cost; we live alongside others whose freedoms, like our own, ought not to be denied.

And we bear no right that does not oblige concomitant responsibility to others; apart from others, what stipulation of freedoms or rights is even necessary?

All well and good, but when are principled statements ever more than mere words? And if you say, “Rule of law…” I’ll reply, “… yes, and lawbreakers.” High statements about rights and freedoms are symbolic, nothing more. Respect for the rule of law is realised behaviour, enacted decisions, and real consequences; words, like statues and sculptures, only depict and describe. True, there’s yet to say “self-discipline,” “community,” and “education,” or how about “enforcement,” but free speech per se remains a concept, nothing more.

Free speech enacted is more complex. It’s not about the one who’s angered and vocal, it’s not about the one who’s squeamish and militant, it’s not about any one at all whom we might try to describe as a speaker or a listener – free speech is not about any one, but always at least two, and far more likely even more. Free speech, like every freedom and right we boast, demands as much give as take. If that balance is contextual, it’s also never only one person toeing its edge.

At last we’ve landed in a place to offer the trite-and-true “words matter”: indeed, words do matter, in a demonstrable, consequential, fundamental way. They matter, just like the people who use them – or rather because it is people who use them.

Grounded, or just playing it safe? Anyway, when the sky’s the limit, you know your limits.

Words matter because people matter, yet we protect and prize our free speech distinctly inside the public sphere versus outside. Prohibiting government from restricting our free speech, based on its content, is its own defining characteristic: it is based on past experience and, you might say, ought to speak for itself. In other words, protecting our speech, with some granted qualifications, from government interference was an intentional decision.

Curious that we might find similar…? intent in the private sphere, except here the intent seems…? to restrict free speech, and it arises among people who evidently privilege themselves…? as a kind of alternative government without prohibition. Quite apart from choosing to not listen to free speakers, such people proclaim a mandate on behalf of the rest of us to silence them. Who among us may justifiably enact this distinction? Whomever already does.

Click here to read the final post in this series on free speech: Part V. Bending Two Extremes.

The Rhetorical Which

Should we maximise our capabilities, based on our limits?

Or maximise our limits, based on our capabilities?

As to the basic message, here, I actually don’t see too much hair-splitting. Both are aimed at action constrained by circumstance. The difference, I think a lot of people would propose, is the optimism or pessimism found between the two phrases although, even saying that, I think we blend within ourselves attitudes from both.

As for me, I feel more given to the second phrase, maximising our limits based on our capabilities, for its seeming more empirical, more driven by circumstance. Let’s take stock of our resources, and get on with it. Limits that exist will obviously present themselves as obstacles or else, well, they wouldn’t exist. And not only can those limits be reached, maybe they can even be stretched or, if not overcome, at least managed. This then becomes the task, and thank goodness for capabilities – and there’s the blending. Even empiricists have that esoteric side.

In the first phrase, similarly, something must exist – capabilities – or else they wouldn’t exist! So they must be maximisible (a word I just invented) in a way that hasn’t yet been, well, maximised. The first phrase is all about potential, what could be, if we just find a way to maximise our capabilities. Fist pump, exclamation point. In the culture I’m most familiar with, I suspect people – at least initially – would consider this first phrase a kind of optimism.

Okay, maybe not, since its basis is limitation, and that hardly sounds all warm and cozy. Still… in the first phrase, limits are a mystery to be solved, a challenge to overcome, an adventure: you can do or be anything you want, if you just believe in things. Set some goals, too, obviously – you can’t just go through life living on hope alone. Maybe I’m giving myself away; remember, I feel more given to the second phrase.

If the first phrase is optimism, the second could only be blunt, blanketing, clinical pessimism. But, like I said, I think we tend to blend, and I know I seldom feel satisfied with polarised options. So, even feeling more given to the second phrase, I won’t call myself a pessimist or even lean in that direction. And, yes, that means I won’t call myself an optimist either. Regardless, as I feel more given to the second phrase, I feel good about it for a couple reasons… relying on my capabilities means I have them and can use them, exclamation point, which means my limits can be pushed and stretched, if not overcome. Fist pump! In neither phrase is there any lack of opportunity. In fact, each leaves room for the other.

For me, optimism and pessimism aren’t found in phrasing. Sure, we can play with words and come up with ways to objectify our capabilities or our limits. We can arrange syntax a certain way and suggest some interpretations, as I’ve just been doing. But, like I said, the basic message in both phrases is simply action constrained by circumstance. Attitude, tone – these are traits, and traits we find in people. Words describe, and tools are helpful. But it’s people who do the living.

Life has got to be about the verb.

Gettin' Busy Livin'.png

The Three Appeals Must Be Measured

Have you seen this? This photo has been published via Twitter by The Humane League, an advocacy group who “[work] relentlessly to reduce animal suffering through grassroots education to change eating habits and corporate campaigns to reform farm animal treatment.” In broader respect, their aims relate to mine here on this blog – that is, to reach people by way of their decision-making in order to effect change in our (what I take to be cultural) behaviour. They post this photo on-line, where I’ve had it show up in my Facebook news feed after a friend “likes” it. Twice when it appeared, I posted my thoughts, which I share now for the third (and last) time.

The statement on the sign is clear enough, but what is the process behind enacting the words, specifically “we” and “use” and “leaves”? “We” who, which land owners, which legislators, in which jurisdictions, incentivized how, by whom, coordinated in what manner, measured by what instruments or methods, affirmed by which authorities… the list of questions goes on. The statement on the sign is clear enough, but the sought-for outcome seems way more complicated to achieve than simply eating less meat because Paul Rudd holds a sign.

How could any coordinated effort ever be done, any assurance that you not eating meat, and me not eating meat, and him, and her, and them, any of us… how could we ever know we were making an active difference versus just randomly taking turns not eating meat? On Mondays. Surely, if it were this easy… Meanwhile, the rest of the world who missed Paul Rudd’s signs and movies eats meat.

He ought, at the very least, to hold up a sign with instructions for organising or joining an effort to set aside land as a reserve. Wouldn’t it require financial incentives built in for whomever would otherwise use the land, i.e. to replace the revenue they were getting from this particular sort of agriculture? There’s one more word on the sign that is far too vague: “agriculture.” Specify… Wouldn’t changing the control of the resources, not the consumption, be a more directly effective approach? This ad seems to oversimplify, and that undermines whatever might be worthwhile about the issue.

But further, and maybe more troublesome, oversimplifying does little to flatter the ad’s proponents beyond portraying some collective feel-good wishing for a better world, which would seem to play right into the hands of anyone whom they’re disputing. Farms and land-use and pollution and economics and history are realities to be dealt with responsibly, that need intentional, incentivized discussion between however many various sides. Reality is life – decisions and consequences. If certain land-use can be proven ill-suited, or destructive, whatever the case, then approach with efforts on that basis, but don’t undermine the issue and waste valuable time and attention with fame-dropping. That must be very insulting to people who work hard and earn their livelihood farming, the very people who need to be engaged in the discussion.

It seems to me that employing (financially or colloquially) celebrity appeal as the method for touching an audience emotionally is most responsibly done when it’s also stabilized or held accountable by a detailed plan, like what roots do for plants, being a means of gathering water and nutrients as well as an anchored foundation. Emotions stirred up by reputation ought to be channelled or marshalled or else they could run rampant, and suddenly the whole message gets lost in the maelstrom – or maybe better to say, a new message takes hold. However, responsibility and effectiveness do not always converge.

This photo relies on [whomever]’s favour for a given actor – Paul Rudd, of all people, but it might have been anybody. So at least they chose a fairly peaceful, fun-loving actor and not someone more polarizing or controversial. Evidently, Paul Rudd consented to pose for this (or else hasn’t complained that he was photoshopped? …doesn’t matter, not the point), but in any case, The Humane League believed he’d appeal to the audience they sought. Doubtful they were seeking me! even though (a) I’ve always liked Paul Rudd’s acting and (b) I can sympathise with animal advocacy. But whomever they were seeking, they seem to rely upon the appeal of an actor to suffuse their ad with substance. And if I’m wrong on that point, if The Humane League can point to some ongoing program that addresses what I’ve raised, then this ad is not only a failure of wasted effort but unnecessarily provocative and irresponsible for what it might stir in spite of real programming.

The Humane League, professing that a “sense of purpose drives every action in our unrelenting march forward… ,” was not an organisation I ever knew prior to their ad showing up in my news feed. Despite their advocacy, they worry me – not about a march that’s unrelenting so much as a march that’s unchecked, which is why I bothered posting three times. I’m hoping to reach an audience, too, not with purpose merely sensed but more consequentially realised.