Years ago I was looking at the library of my dad’s wife and I noticed a book on rhetoric. I found myself asking, what, exactly, is rhetoric? I associated it with talking and writing but couldn’t say much beyond that.

Anyway, here’s a dictionary definition:

rhet·o·ric
ˈredərik/
noun
the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

Once I figured out what rhetoric is, I realized it’s something I do all the time. In my acid logic writings and at this blog I’m often writing opinions which I have some vague interest of convincing other people of.

But lately, I find myself wondering if it’s all bullshit, whether rhetoric is really a way of glossing over the fundamental lack of meaning to most things.

For example, I’m finishing up a piece for the next acid logic where I argue that the soundtracks of 1980s horror and sci-fi movies represented a certain dichotomy: they both embraced technology by using computer based tools and feared it as the sounds you get from synthesizers always have a certain coldness to them. I argue, with a few rhetorical flourishes, that this dichotomy was part of the spirit of times.

But is such a statement really true in any meaningful way? How would it be true? I guess if people of the era really sat around and took notice of this idea and used it to form other ideas it might be true, sort of. But something about these rhetorical arguments seems lacking. It feels like you could make any point about anything with the right rhetorical tools.

It seems like a lot of observation about the past, especially past culture, are made after the moment. They become true because the observation is made. But are they really true? Did they really describe thoughts and behaviors people were consciously or unconsciously thinking at the time? And who really cares?

I’ve started reading a book that’s been recommended to me in the past – The Four-Hour Workweek. It’s essentially a self help-book, one that promises to provide strategies the reader can use to generate free time. It has a bit of a P.T. Barnum flavor but makes a fair amount of sense and verbalizes a lot of my thoughts on the empty busyness of modern life, especially in the workplace.

I do find myself wondering why we (as a society and species) are so prone to being busy? Why do we feel the need to accomplish anything at all? (I’m not sure this is universal; I have heard of various primitive societies that don’t feel the urge to do more than what is needed.)

Evolutionary psychology would probably argue something like the following: we realize that our status is tied to our odds for reproduction and thus passing on our genes, so we seek to elevate our status by earning more and gaining credentials. And we live in an era of incredible opportunities for status improvement. We can work hard at the office and generate our income but in our off hours we can also become more skilled by learning another language, or playing in a band, or taking globe trotting vacations that can impress our fellows. I’m not devoid of this kind of obsessive working—currently I have a part time job, several musical projects, a web site, a passing hobby at drawing and an attempt to learn French going on. It does, at times, seem overwhelming and I find myself wondering why am I doing this? The conventional wisdom is something like, “To be a better person.” but what the fuck does that really mean? Why do I care about being a better person?

So I suspect there is something beneath the surface that pushes me, something wired into the psyche from years of man’s evolution.

A while back I was pontificating John Searle’s thought experiment, the Chinese Prisoner’s Dilemma. The nature of this thought experiment is detailed here, but since I hate it when people force me to follow links around I will quote the following description.

He proposes that you have a man locked in a Chinese prison cell. The man does not speak or read Chinese. Chinese characters are passed into his cell, and he draws from his own collection of Chinese characters to “answer.” He eventually gets pretty good at responding with the correct Chinese characters. (Theoretically this would take many lifetimes to learn but this is a thought experiment.) The guy is presumably thinking along the lines of, “whenever I get this character or character set, they seem to like it when I reply with this character or character set.” To the Chinese people on the outside, it seems like the guy in the prison cell understands the conversation but in reality he doesn’t. The prisoner recognizes the designs of the symbols, but not their meaning.

Basically Searle argues that real communication is the following process: An intelligent actor passes a communication to a second intelligent actor. That second actor comprehends the message and then develops an intelligent response which it passes to the first party.

That’s real communication (according to Searle.) Fake communication is what he argues computers or Chinese prisoners do. It’s something like: An intelligent actor passes a communication to a second actor. This second actor may or may not be intelligent. That second actor basically randomly passes back something it doesn’t really understand and the first actor has to make sense of it.

The conceit here is that us human—an intelligent lot—do a lot of real communication whereas computers, Chinese prisoners and other various idiots don’t.

But is it true we humans really communicate? I’ve always been a little bothered by this conceit because it seems like a lot of communication I engage in is sort of knee jerk. I don’t really sit and ruminate on what a person is saying to me and my answer appears out of nowhere and is out of my lips before I consider it. I’ll give an example:

Someone: How’s you doing to day, Wil?

Me: Fine, and you?

I say this no matter how I’m feeling, unless it’s obvious that I’m not doing well. (If my entrails are hanging out of my stomach, for example.) I just have a canned response when someone asks me that question. Pretty much as we understand computers do.

How about this dialogue?

Someone: Are you going to work today?

Me: I am.

This might require a bit more comprehension on my part. I need to think about whether I’m working and give a response.

But “going to work” can really mean several things. One is “are you traveling to work?” Another is “are you going to perform the act of work?” Do I always understand what the person is asking when I answer that question? Not really. Sometimes context fills it in; if I’m on a bus I might presume that they mean “are you traveling to work” (though I could be wrong.)

So my point is here’s an example of communication where I don’t fully understand the question. I only have partial comprehension. And that’s not full communication.

Maybe it’s to much to ask that we have fully understood communication with every bit of dialogue. But I’m wondering if the fact that we don’t points to another possibility: that we really communicate in a more automatic way than we think, much as we presume computers do. Maybe we’re all Chinese prisoners.

There’s one idea of late that’s really had a profound effect on my thinking. Unfortunately it’s hard to put into words. (In fact, as you shall see, that is the idea.) Basically it’s the notion that our mental concepts of things are not really things the way real physical things are.

For example, I’m looking at a chair right now. The chair exists in the sense that it is made up of physical matter that exists (barring exotic theories like the universe is a hologram.) But the chair doesn’t really exist as a chair. The idea that this collection of matter exists primarily as a tool for humans (and cats) to sit on* is an unreal idea; it’s a concept of the human mind applied to this collection of matter. If all life on the planet ended, the matter we call this chair might continue but its meaning, its concept, would not.

* Chairs are also good for swinging about in a drunken rage.

But what if we apply this idea (that things and their semantic descriptions are different) to people? Let’s take Elvis. People talk about Elvis the performer and might say he did such and such on some particular date. But people also talk about a more ethereal Elvis—more of a concept of Elvis. The conceptual Elvis is an entity linking various disparate concepts like the South, Hollywood, Rock music, Sexual playfulness (the hips shaking and all that), icon worship and on and on. Some people have a more negative view and link Elvis to White appropriation of Black music and maybe some kind of sexism. But this conceptual Elvis is really quite different from Elvis the guy. Elvis the guy was essentially a collection of matter (e.g. the molecules that made up his body) and perhaps also a consciousness though we still have trouble really defining what that is.

But my real point here is that, like Elvis, we all have conceptual and real versions of ourselves. Other people interact with us and build their conceptualization of us off of those interactions, but also off what other people say about us (true or not) and the various stereotypes (true or not) they apply to us, whether we remind them of their dad, and a whole host of other factors. I’m reminded of the ending of the Michael Douglas film “Falling Down” where Douglas’s character, after shooting up parts of L.A. (in his mind, righteously) finds himself saying, “I’m the bad guy?” He realizes that his concept of himself and everyone else’s concept of himself don’t match up.

To make things more complex, we seem to build our conceptualization of us off these external factors. We think “Everyone says I’m a liar therefore I am.” Or, “I belong to (some particular stereotype) therefore I must act in this or that manner.” Or, “My dad was a violent drunk therefore I must be.” It turns into some infinite feedback loop—you think you’re X and thus behave like X and everyone sees you as X and you become more set in the pattern of X etc.

But in the end, you’re really just some molecules.

I’ve been noticing lately how often people’s statements, especially moral statements, really seem to be more about themselves than the topic at hand. “Well I find racism repugnant!” … that sort of thing. The point seldom is to convince others of a viewpoint, but to stake out one’s moral high ground.

I’ve been reading a short book called “Crimes Against Logic” written by a London based philosopher and towards the end he captures this problem nicely.

The idea that sincerity may substitute for reason is founded on an egocentric attitude toward belief: that what I believe is all about me, not about reality. What matters is not that the position I favor will have the best or intended effects, or that the problems I worry about are real or grave, but only that I hold my position from the right sentiments, that I am good.

So how does one avoid this? The trick is to take yourself out of the statement. Say, “racism is bad,” and then explain (the objective) reasons why. But it’s trickier ground requiring heavier thought.