[MD] Rhetoric

[Adrie Kintziger]

xe,partnumber=33950-SWA-h11(l)LEFT
or,33900-SWA-h11(r) right
other,sl-957-2 (r), sl-957-LH(left)
33950-sww-e10 m1, or 33900-sww-e010 m1, or, K2-lf-crv10 OEM-h2


2016-11-21 1:34 GMT+01:00 <mail at tuukkavirtaperko.net>:

> dmb,
>
> wow, considering all the crap that has been posted here lately, this one
> really stands out. This one actually qualifies as an opinion. Something I'm
> willing to discuss.
>
>
> Lainaus david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>:
>
> Hello, MOQers:
>>
>> I suppose everyone knows that people are suspicious of the emotional
>> language in "rhetoric" and consider "sophistry" to be a form of
>> manipulative deception. The conventional meaning isn't likely to  change
>> anytime soon and that's fine because there is empty speech  and there are
>> plenty of manipulative deceivers that deserve the  name. In telling the
>> story of philosophy Pirsig turns those meanings  upside down.
>>
>>
>> "Plato's hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger  struggle
>> in which the reality of the Good, represented by the  Sophists, and the
>> reality of the True, represented by the  dialecticians, were engaged in a
>> huge struggle for the future mind  of man." -- Robert Pirsig
>>
>>
>> As the story is usually told, rhetoric is too emotional to be  considered
>> serious about the truth. Our feelings have no bearing on  the truth, this
>> story goes, and clear thinking is about cool logic  and putting one's
>> passions aside. But, Pirsig says, this story  doesn't make as much sense as
>> it used to.
>>
>>
>> "It's been necessary since before the time of Socrates to reject the
>> passions, the emotions, in order to free the rational mind for an
>> understanding of nature's order which was as yet unknown. Now it's  time to
>> further an understanding of nature's order by reassimilating  those
>> passions which were originally fled from. The passions, the  emotions, the
>> affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of  nature's order too.
>> The central part." -- Robert Pirsig
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> If you're calling me unnatural, I agree. I trek and am familiar with
> nature, I feel it. But there are degrees of separation from nature.
> Consider the guy who designs the electronics inside your cell phone. He's
> pretty far detached from nature. But then again, consider an African with a
> cell phone. He possibly owns very few electronic devices. But many Africans
> do have a cell phone. I think the African with the cell phone is less
> detached from nature than the guys (and girls) who designed the electronics
> and coded the software inside.
>
> So, these nerds (Hell if Adrie doesn't accuse me of being a nerd. I could
> call him a flibbertigibbet but that would go nowhere.) change nature. They
> could some day create nature on different planet. I know, that doesn't
> interest anyone here, clearly. But they could still do it.
>
> The point is, technology can help us express our nature. And if technology
> gets good enough we will have more time to cultivate the delightful aspects
> of what does it mean to be a biological organism. Which is what you want.
> But you don't want to be part of the process if that requires you to change
> your thinking. You only want the result. And do you know why that makes me
> feel bad?
>
> It makes me feel bad because I have to do this because of who I am. I
> don't have enough social skills. If I try to do that "emotional
> intelligence" thing people do at my posts, which apparently means throwing
> poop at them like monkeys or staring at them like ducks, I end up doing
> something else than maximizing my potential.
>
> But the paradox in me maximizing my potential is in me doing things that
> don't make me happy. That don't mean living a full life. So, I'm always
> balancing between "you're going to break yourself that way" and "now you're
> just trying to drown the pain you feel all the time".
>
> The break myself part means that I don't eat, I don't have a social life,
> I get so serious and competitive I start feeling intimidated by people with
> good social skills... because I'm so serious I don't feel like I'm going to
> enlighten people like some guy in a robe. I feel like I'm going to KILL the
> ignorance in them like some guy driving a tank. So, obviously my natural
> instinct becomes to suspect that the emotionally intelligent people share
> this mindset even though they're just getting good vibes from helping
> people. I feel like they're punishing me for who I am because I can't
> behave up to their standards.
>
> But sometimes I get so sick of that. I'm really not inhumane enough.
> Because that serious and competitive attitude does make me sick. So then I
> try to feel. Live a life of feelings. And it's difficult because usually I
> really don't care. If I love someone, then I care. Otherwise I really don't
> care. I'm not sure what "universal love" means or whether it's attainable
> for me. Sometimes temporarily it may be.
>
> And you think I live this way because I think it's a good way to live a
> life. No, I don't think anybody should live like this unless they're good
> at what they do. If you do this but you're never going to be good at it,
> well, unless somebody pays you to do it anyway, or unless you do it just
> for fun, stop doing it. That's my advice to anyone.
>
> You don't need to teach me I'm hurting myself by living this kind of a
> life. I know it already. I'm not imposing a lifestyle on you! I'm only
> imposing the results of my pain-in-the-ass research on you. I could do
> something else. A lot of people would want me to draw cartoons. But nobody
> has ever told me a coherent acount of why I couldn't be extremely good at
> this. I think I'm better at this than anyone I know. Yup, another proof
> that I have no social skills. A suave person might have thought that of
> himself but wouldn't have said it.
>
>
>
>> At certain points in the re-telling and inversion of this old  slanderous
>> story Pirsig is downright angry about it. He finally  realizes that the
>> Platonic demand for passionless dialectic has the  effect of excluding
>> Quality, which is the whole thing for Pirsig.
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> It did before Gödel's incompeleteness theories. But after them it became
> baloney that the Platonic demand for passionless dialectic would
> necessarily exclude Quality. The theorems, although dialectical by nature,
> had the rhetorical side-effect of proving the existence of Quality. The
> formal systems with the most Quality are more widely used (except by people
> like me who develop alternative analytic systems they suppose to have
> Quality in the future).
>
>
>
>>
>> "Phædrus' mind races on and on and then on further, seeing now at last a
>> kind of evil thing, an evil deeply entrenched in himself, which pretends to
>> try and understand love and beauty and truth and wisdom but whose real
>> purpose is never to understand them, whose real purpose is always to usurp
>> them and enthrone itself. Dialectic - the usurper. That is what he sees.
>> The parvenu, muscling in on all that is Good and seeking to contain it and
>> control it."
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
>
> What'cha gonna do if you don't got the emotional intelligence for being
> one of the cool guys? Of course the cool guys know Quality. Most of them
> knew all about it after they became rock stars. And the nerds will be
> forever bitter for not becoming one of the rock stars.
>
> Of course it goes both ways. Finnish reporter Seppo Heikinheimo committed
> suicide after sending his memoirs to a publisher. They were titled "The
> Memoirs of a 'Mätämuna'". It's hard to translate "Mätämuna". Literally, it
> means a rotten egg, but since the Finnish word "muna" can mean both "egg"
> and "testicle", also darker interpretations are possible. In any case
> Heikinheimo used this word of himself because he didn't understand
> mathematics. My high school maths teacher told this story. He'd read all
> about it from the memoirs. He always spoke of Heikinheimo in an
> appreciating tone.
>
> And why would someone want to control something? Generally? Well, because
> if he doesn't control it it could hurt him! Who wouldn't like to know more
> people they can trust...
>
>
>
>> And he's feeling triumphant about this discovery because it turns  out
>> that the Sophists weren't demagogues, hucksters, or confidence  men. They
>> were teaching Quality and they were teaching it the same  way he had been
>> teaching it to his student in Montana.
>>
>>
>> "Lightning hits! Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were
>> teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine 'virtue.' But areté.
>> Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before
>> form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been
>> absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality,
>> and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric."
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Yeah, I've occasionally been one of the cool guys, too. Still am. But I
> don't know much about what to do with that. It looks like I probably should
> be one of the guys who makes things for people who actually need them
> because they have a life. If you were one of those laborers, would you
> never feel envious? Maybe, if you wouldn't know how good the living feel.
> But they can feel really good. And once you know that, you realize you're
> on a space mission because even though you can understand what these
> emotionally intelligent people have accomplished in life, you realize
> that's not what your life is gonna be. And you search and search for a way
> to change that, but you can't find any. And if you just keep searching too
> long you start feeling like: "Now I'm not going to even achieve that nerdy
> shit I could've made work had I just given up about life soon enough!"
>
>
>
>> And this re-telling of ancient history is part of the book's central
>> project, which is a root expansion of rationality. The criticisms of
>> rationality that he offers almost always involve the problem of  objective
>> truth. Value-free science has got to go, he says.  Attitudes of objectivity
>> make our thinking stiff and narrow and  entail a denigration of
>> subjectivity so that Quality is JUST what  you like, is JUST your opinion
>> or assessment of some thing or other.  But this is part of that same old
>> slander against the Sophists and  rhetoricians, Pirsig says, and our form
>> of rationality would  actually be vastly improved by putting Quality at the
>> cutting edge  of all experience and all thought. Quality is right there at
>> the  very roots of our thinking and by including Quality our thinking is
>> broadened and deepened and enriched by the inclusion of the  emotional and
>> aesthetic quality that pervades our thought regardless  of whether we
>> acknowledge it or not. You gotta have a feel for the  work, he says, and
>> that's not just about fixing motorcycles. It's  about everything. All the
>> time.
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Yeah, well, where did I get all these ideas? Quality. I actually followed
> Pirsig's advice. I've never completed a course in the University although I
> passed the entrance exam. Anonymous professionals and experts trained me
> for free. The rest I made on my own. And I chose what to do according to
> whether it's a Quality choice.
>
>
>
>> For Pirsig, "rhetoric" simply means excellence in thought and  speech.
>> Rhetoric is truer than objective truth because it includes  the heart as
>> well the head, so to speak. To talk truthfully will  mean that the claim is
>> supported by evidence and its expression  logically sound, just as before,
>> but that's no longer good enough.  Speaking truthfully also means that you
>> care about the truth, have  feelings about that truth and maybe your
>> expression shows the power  or the beauty of that truth. To move or
>> persuade another is not a  sinister manipulation or a deception. It's a
>> good thing and we  should love it somebody does it right.
>>
>>
>
> Tuukka:
> Rhetoric truth and objective truth - I wouldn't compare their
> truthfulness. There are hucksters and cheaters. They got the rhetoric but
> they don't give the objective truth. Rhetorical truth isn't categorically
> better or worse than objective truth.
>
>
> Thanks for saving my day anyway,
> Tuk
>
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