[MD] Rhetoric

Adrie Kintziger parser666 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 21 02:11:00 PST 2016


disregard!


2016-11-21 10:20 GMT+01:00 Adrie Kintziger <parser666 at gmail.com>:

> 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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