Poetry and Power

Kenneth Burke gives this interesting insight in his Rhetoric of Motives:
"Man is moved to action for the sake of either real or apparent good; but desire depends on perception; perception in turn depends on the senses (which require images). Hence . . . we must admit that our actions depend greatly on the nature of this power" (80).

Think about that for a minute. What Kenneth Burke (paraphrasing Pico Della Mirandola) says is that we are moved to action not purely by abstract concepts of what is "good" but rather by beauty, by what we have experienced with our senses to be beautiful. We may have a sense that some idea, philosophy, religion, or ideology is better than another, but unless we can see beauty in it we will not be willing to sacrifice for it.

This is where poetry and power are related. Power can be seen as the ability to cause action or prevent action. Kenneth Burke defines poetry or the aesthetic as "literature designed for the express purpose of arousing emotions” (123), it is an articulation that works on the senses in a way that we perceive as beautiful. As such, it works as a foundation for what we perceive as good, which is the motivation for our actions. This is not to say that poets alone have this power. A day spent together as a family can be an aesthetic experience, as can holding the hand of a loved one, or seeing the trust and gratitude in the eyes of another human being. But poets (defined widely to include all producers of culture) have a power beyond the ordinary because, as John Dewey writes, “What is evoked is a substance so formed that it can enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own” (113).

Thus, behind every mass movement involving power there also has to be a certain beauty which can motivate people to action. Along with the rhetorical arguments there has to be an aesthetic argument which justifies the actions of the movement. Observe for example this clip from Triumph of the Will where the artistic talents of Leni Riefenstahl, Richard Wagner, and the former artisans and architects of Nuremberg unite to make an aesthetic argument for Nazism.

Having lived in Nuremberg myself I look with admiration and nostalgia at the beautiful city that was all but destroyed by the Allied bombing raids at the end of WWII. The dawn breaks, and we see the flags waiving from beautiful buildings, remnants of German greatness with Nuremberg as the city of the Emperor, highlighted by scenes of the castle fortress and the cathedral. The score from Wagner's "The Mastersingers from Nuremberg" (which is still one of his most famous and most performed pieces) beautifully underlines the vision of a city (and implicity a nation) waking up from the darkness into a new bright day. It is beautiful, and reminds me of what they show on Norwegian television on the 17th of May, which is our national holiday. Yet it then moves to outside the city where Party members and Hitler Youth are getting ready for the day's events. Gradually, the optimism and beauty of the morning is linked with growing power, unity, strength, and the will to subdue the world. Frank Capra said of the film that it "fired no gun, dropped no bombs. But as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal." Hitler praised the film as being an "incomparable glorification of the power and beauty of our Movement."

Triumph of the Will was not a documentary, as the one scene I showed above illustrates. It was a work of art, an aesthetic argument and justification for the National Socialist movement. It was filmed in 1934, right after Hitler and his party came to power, and Hitler personally asked Leni Riefenstahl to make it. It was a box office success in Germany, and it earned awards and nominations at large film festivals and showings in Berlin, Venice, and Paris, to name some. Frank Capra's Why We Fight was made explicitly as an American answer and counterstatement to it. Hardly any movie or moviemaker more clearly shows the ethical implications of works of art.

Yet it is not just overtly political movies that have this effect, and it is not all sinister that art works this way. I recently watched the movie version of Les Miserables, and I was left both emotionally touched and intellectually stimulated. Here, I realized, was an aesthetic argument for many facets that make up my world view. In the movie, it was made beautiful. The Christian compassion, grace, mercy, and redemption, added with courage and desires to change the world for the better, and the triumph of romantic and parental love against all odds, combined to create a powerful drama and a compelling "interpretation of life" as Kenneth Burke would put it. In a world that too often asks you to choose between the tyrannical and robotic justice of Javert and the relativistic lasciviousness, greed, and immorality of the Thènardiers, it showed that it is possible to be loving without indulging, and to have morals without being judgmental and narrow-minded. It is also a position that breaks down the binaries in American politics that have been set up by the extreme Left and extreme Right where justice and mercy, tolerance and morals are incompatible and at constant war.

Poets, as Percy Shelley wrote, are the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." They have a lot of power in creating the foundations of sentiment and feeling which define what is worth fighting for. This power can be used for good or bad, but it is important to recognize that it is there. Although an artist may intend to create art for art's sake, there is no art for art's sake when we look at the consequences it has, the sentiments it instills, the identifications and exclusions it encourages and discourages. Les Miserables is beautiful, but it is important to realize that artistically there is not that great of a gap between it and Triumph of the Will, as I show in this video.

Be careful when a piece of art calls for sacrifice and the laying down of lives for a greater cause. Such an admonition should be very carefully considered before it is accepted, if it is accepted at all.

In conclusion then, poetry is always related to power. Making something good or beautiful at the same time gives an implicit directive to seek, value, or defend it. As Burke describes in Counter-Statement, “[The work of art] can, by its function as name and definition, give simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity. It provides a terminology of thoughts, actions, emotions, attitudes for codifying a pattern of experience” (154).

Newtown, Gun Control, and the Importance of Kairos

On the 28th of March, President Obama assembled parents of the Newtown victims, along with ministers and policemen, to the East Room of the White House and made a passionate plea to the American people, trying to evoke the emotions the nation felt back in December after the Newtown shootings. Among other things, he said, "The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens, and we've moved on to other things -- that's not who we are. Less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we've forgotten."

"Don't get squishy because time has passed," he said.

But something has changed. Support for stricter gun control laws has dropped from 57% right after the shooting to 47% nationwide and from 78% to 66% among Democrats. The reply from many gun control advocates to the President's speech was, "Too little, too late." http://www.cantonrep.com/opinion/x766890477/Dana-Milbank-On-guns-too-little-too-late
Why does timing make a difference? Irrespective of which side you are on in the debate, this is a situation which shows the importance of a rhetorical principle called kairos.

The ancient Greeks had two main concepts of time: Kronos and Kairos. Kronos is the flow of time from one point to another, as you may recognize in words like "chronology." Kairos, on the other hand is "a concept based on the significance of the moment, the 'opportune moment' or proper time to act" (Hatch 39). It recognizes that in the midst of the flow of time there are decisive moments which have the potential to change the course of history, on a local or global level, such as your wedding day or the battle of Waterloo. "In archery, it (kairos) refers to an opening, or 'opportunity.' . . . Successful passage of a kairos requires . . . that the archer's arrow be fired not only accurately but with enough power for it to penetrate" (Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel 6).

Of course, this is not an unfamiliar concept. We often talk about it as being able to "strike while the iron is hot" or "seize the moment." Children often know intuitively that the right time to ask their parents for something is when they are in a particularly good mood. What we often don't recognize however, is that there is a life-cycle for every rhetorical situation, and there is a little opening of time and place where a little rhetorical action can make all the difference. Professor Hatch writes, "To argue effectively, you need to know how to craft a suitable response to the right people under the right circumstances. Knowing how to do this requires that you know something about how rhetorical situations change over time. Such situations are not static; they evolve" (46). A rhetorical situation goes through the stages of origin, maturity, deterioration, and disintegration.

At the point of origin, most people don't know about the issue, or have not made up their minds about it yet. During this stage people look for information to understand the issue. This builds up until the point of maturity. This is where most of the decision makers are engaged, they know what is going on and what is in the balance, they are getting ready to make a decision. This is usually kairos, the opportune moment to strike, the opening the archer has been waiting for, a crack in the armor. A little action, a well-crafted argument at this point can make all the difference. After this, the rhetorical situation enters the stage of deterioration, although the decision may not have been made yet, opinions have congealed, the battle-lines have been drawn, and it is very hard to make the decision makers change their minds. As far as they are concerned, they are now adequately informed to make their decision. The final stage is disintegration. At this point, the process of change has become practically irreversible. Decisions have been made and put into action, and most people have moved on to other issues.

Newtown was such a rhetorical moment with the opportunity for change, or at least it was made to be such a moment by the coverage it received, the way it was presented, and the many public statements which were made in connection to it calling for greater restriction of access to firearms. Although gun control has been a hot topic for decades, the shootings at Newtown shook the nation and made many people reconsider their opinions on gun control. It presented the origin of a new situation, and nobody knew quite how it would be resolved. Searches on terms relevant to the debate skyrocketed, old studies and arguments were brought out from the archives, people were hungry for information, they were open to be persuaded. All news channels ran stories on gun control, gun sales, and all shootings after Newtown received more media attention than they would have received before.

It is hard to say when this situation came to maturity, but my estimate would be sometime in late January or early February. New York and Connecticut were able to pass tough gun control legislations during this time, and won praise for it from the media and most of the public in those states. However, President Obama chose to send Joe Biden off to conduct a study, which had obvious outcomes and served only to delay time and give Biden time to make a few more awkward remarks. As Dana Millibank writes in The Washington Post, "White House press secretary Jay Carney said there was no hurry. He predicted that 'in a few weeks or a few months,' the pain from Newtown will 'still be incredibly intense.' Not intense enough, apparently."

For better or for worse I, and most other analysts, believe the moment has gone. The rhetorical situation is already in the process of deterioration. Harry Reid has already cancelled a vote on a renewed "Assault Weapons Ban" by Senator Feinstein, and does not have the votes or push from public opinion now to pass any significant changes except perhaps the expanded background checks. Public opinion in general has reverted back to the old battle-lines on the issue and the old arguments, with the conservative ones summed up in this 7 minute "State of the Union" address by "Virtual President" Bill Whittle.

One of the arguments he makes is that every person killed because they did not have guns to defend themselves is "just as precious, just as important, and just as irreplaceable as those little children killed at Newtown." On April 1st Gene Healy of the Cato Institute gave his rebuttal to the president in his article "Shame On Us If Newtown Panic Leads to Unwise Gun Laws" where he writes, "Fear and loathing were appropriate reactions to the Newtown atrocity, but they make for a spectacularly lousy mindset for evaluating legislation. Given some of the destructive proposals Congress has entertained post-Newtown, it's good that we've got a little distance on the horror and can bring sober judgment to bear."
http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/gene-healy-shame-on-us-if-newtown-panic-leads-to-unwise-gun-laws/article/2525972/?page=1&referrer=http://t.co/9E1YdSk7eq

Fair enough, but these arguments could not have been made effectively right after Newtown. The lives of those 20 children in the moment felt more precious to us, more vulnerable, and more innocent than the many thousands of children that die each year in the US or the millions of children that die each year around the world. Whether or not that is fair or makes logical sense, it was true that it set the nation in a different state of mind. Now, it has become a small part of a much larger statistic of violent deaths at a young age. By this summer, the rhetorical situation will probably be in disintegration, and new crises and partisan battles will dominate the news coverage and attention. It may be that Obama and his allies can mount an effective push to bring the issue back to a state of maturity, but I doubt if anything but a new Newtown could do that. It's kind of like driving past a car wreck: you slow down for a while, realize that could have been you, drive a bit more defensively for a while, perhaps even below the speed limit. Then, 10 miles later, you are back to normal speed and level of attention. The moment has passed into memory.

And perhaps that's good. If every crash had a life-changing effect on us, we probably wouldn't dare to leave the house after a while. The point is that there are moments of kairos in each of our lives, and in the lives of each family community, and nation, and "those who understand the power of language to shape and respond to significant moments in time (kairos) can gain some power over their circumstances and expand their individual freedom and influence. They become agents--those who can act--rather than those who are acted upon" (Hatch 50-51). 

Victimage and the Rhetoric of Oppression

It seems like a paradox, but in rhetoric, there is no stronger position to have in a dispute on justice than the position of the weak and helpless.

According to the historical sources, rhetoric was invented by Corax and Tisias in Syracuse during its transition from tyranny to democracy. The tyrant had just been deposed, and rhetoric was brought in as a method to help mediate the property disputes that naturally followed with this transition. It got the reputation for "making the weaker case strong, and the stronger weak," a revolutionary turn of events for those days.

Part of the reason for this paradox is based on the idea of justice itself. There are many definitions for justice, but the main feeling we connect with it is that something has happened which disturbs the natural order and balance in nature or society. We feel "a disturbance in the force" if you will. An offence has been given, a wrong must be righted, a manifestation of hubris needs to bring the arrogant tyrant to his knees. Justice basically is our desire to see that balance restored. Since the restoration of balance will naturally favor the oppressed, the weak, or the injured party, it was quickly recognized that whoever could frame the debate in such a way as to situate themselves as victims would naturally have the upper hand in any dispute on justice.

Hitler was a master at this technique when he portrayed the plight of Germany to his own people. A lot of them believed, up until the very end, that the 2nd World War had been a defensive war, fought for the survival of Germany, not world dominion. Look at how he carefully draws the lines between the oppressors and the oppressed in his declaration of war against the United States before the Reichstag:

"Ever since my peace proposal of July 1940 was rejected, we have clearly realized that this struggle must be fought through to the end. We National Socialists are not at all surprised that the Anglo-American, Jewish, and capitalist world is united together with Bolshevism. In our own country we have always found them in the same community." See how the entire world is out to get Germany? Even racial groups that have had tensions and economic ideologies that are fundamentally opposed join forces against this poor, oppressed country.

"Allied with us are strong nations that have suffered the same misery and face the same enemies." This is presented as quite the emancipatory struggle against colonialists and world bullies. He even pulls in America's wealth to make this a class struggle: "The American President and his plutocrat clique have called us the 'have not' nations. That is correct! But the 'have nots' also want to live, and they will certainly make sure that what little they have to live on is not stolen from them by the 'haves.'" Rich America thinks its privileged position of economic power means that it can dictate to the weaker nations of the world to do its bidding, and now they even want to steal what little this poor nation has left. Sound familiar?

Even in as inconsequential contests as sports we naturally root for the underdog. This tendency becomes all the more dominant when real lives are at stake. There is nothing as rhetorically effective as showing the victimage of women and children. Why is that the case? Because they are already seen as the weaker parties in society, and therefore the power used against them seems ten times more oppressive, overbearing, and attrocious than violence against grown men. The weaker party in just about any conflict seizes our sympathies. This was the very argument made by so many statistics shared on Facebook and other social media during the last great confrontation between the Palestinians and Israelis.

The logic of this argument is not necessarily the most compelling. Just because more people die on one side doesn't make the other side right. Many more Germans died in WW2 than Americans, did that make them the right side? Would we feel the same way for the Israelis if the Palestinians were more successful in their efforts to kill Israelis? Logically, always favoring the weak would lead to an eternal war, where our sympathies would switch to the other side as soon as one side gets the upper hand. This kind of logic is brilliantly satirized by Monty Python in the character of the highwayman Dennis Moore.

Yet the persuasive appeal of the statistic above is undeniable. Like watching a small hometown team being beaten by the big city stars, it feels heavy-handed and almost screams of unfairness. To make matters worse, it shows the "advantage" in casualties increasingly going the way of the Israelis. Of course, one could make a similar statistic about the casualties of September 11th compared to Arabs, Afghans, or Iraqis killed since then in "retaliation" and make the same kind of argument. Or indeed, one could look at the casualties of just about every war America has participated in since its founding, and equate military success with them being the oppressors of every nation they won against in any war.

The rhetoric of the oppressed works in all facets of our society, since our sense of justice is manifest in every aspect of it. It is perhaps most clearly manifest in politics, where both Republicans and Democrats claim to be the defenders of the weak and the persecuted. It was a paradox commented on by many that the President was able to run against Romney as an underdog, despite his obvious advantage as an encumbent and holding the power of the presidency. Yet the single most effective email plea sent by the Obama campaign was titled "I will be outspent" (though he ended up with a considerable advantage in spending). Millions answered the call of the underdog president to give donations to the sum of over 46 million dollars in one single week. It is definitely active in the current Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage, where the proponents of same-sex marriage have painted their opponents into a corner by labelling them proponents of hate and bigotry and by very clearly seizing the position of the weak and oppressed who are the victims of hate and bigotry.

I am grateful for the rhetoric of oppression and its benefits. It is really a manifestation of the innate sense of justice and fairness that exists within human beings and should be manifest in every society. It is a safeguard of civil liberties, and gives the truly downtrodden and oppressed a voice and a certain amount of leverage which it can use against parties that may be more affluent, better connected, or in any way more powerful in any normal contest. But it is important to be aware that it is also a rhetorical strategy that can be used by anyone, as shown by the example of Hitler.

One of the effects of seeing yourself as the underdog is that it justifies using dirty tricks. If you see the game as already stacked against you, you may feel like bending the rules is justified. After all, who made the rules? The powerful, right? Such a logic has the potential to break down just about any rule of civility, law, or social contract that has ever been established. Hitler knew this. Right after describing Germany's desperate struggle for survival, he says, "During a time in which thousands of our best men, the fathers and sons of our people, have given their lives, anyone in the homeland who betrays the sacrifices on the front will forfeit his life." Pretty drastic, right? Yet, if seen from the perspective of someone in a desperate life and death struggle, not so much. It is the same logic that the hit show "Leverage" uses to justify its heroes in commiting all kinds of crimes in their service of the oppressed against the powerful. We applaud it, we love it when they take down the powerful, and we never imagine that the same tactics and justification could ever be used against us . . .

Budget Negotiations and the Rhetoric of Leverage

In his The Republic, Cicero considered highest "knowledge of those arts which can make us useful to the State; for I consider this the noblest function of wisdom, and the highest duty of virtue as well as the best proof of its possession" (57). Of greatest importance he saw arts which can answer the question "why, in one State, we have almost reached the point where there are two senates and two separate peoples" (55). In a new year which has already seen vicious political battles on taxes and sequestration, one may well ask the same question about the United States of America, wondering whether the name has become a contradiction in terms.

I will attempt to answer the question about the divisiveness in the country in a later post, but right now I would like to share some insights I have gained recently that have helped me make sense out of the somewhat comical display going on right now about the sequester. It is my hope that this may be knowledge useful to the citizens of any democratic state.

First of all, a lot of political pundits have been scratching their head recently about the odd goings-on in DC. In the first three months of the year Republicans have conceded to raise taxes on the wealthiest in America (which has confused and angered many conservative pundits), sequestration, which Obama claimed would never happen, has happened, and there have been more speeches given almost than during the height of the 2012 campaigns. Also, even The Washington Post have been perplexed at some of the distortions and half-truths floating around about the sequestration, as shown below



and there have been some interesting choices for where a .5% cut in the government's spending has been aimed (tours of The White House cancelled, etc). To make things more confusing, an internal government email sent within the USDA instructed a civil servant: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So . . . you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.” Pretty much instructing government officials to inflict damage in order to make sure the government's words are verified. To any rational human being, such behavior seems counter-intuitive, but after my Essentials of Negotiation class this semester, they actually make sense.

The book I read for the class was Gain the Edge: Negotiating to Get What You Want by Martin E. Latz. He was a negotiator for the Clinton administration, and he knew many of the people currently advising the Obama administration on their negotiation strategy, including Jack Lew who negotiated the sequester and is the current Secretary of the Treasury. According to Latz, "Leverage, above all else, will improve my ability to get what I want" (68). Leverage trumps fair and objective standards and all logic external to the negotiation itself. Leverage is the determining force that will make or break just about any deal for you.

There are two main elements which determine leverage in any given situation: Needs and BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). The party which needs a deal most and has a bad alternative to striking a deal will almost always get a worse deal if the other party is aware of this difference. And the awareness or perception is what makes leverage rhetorical. As Latz writes, leverage is not set in stone, it is fluid, "Leverage is not static. Everyone's level of need likely will change during the negotiation. At the least, one party's perception of its level of need may change. This changes its leverage" (75). So how are the different parties in the legislative and executive using and manipulating leverage to shape the current events?

First, the main parties in the negotiation are the President and the Senate Democrats versus the Republican House of Representatives. By controlling the Presidency and the Senate, the Democrats have control of the most powerful policy-making bodies of government. However, as the main guardians of public expenditure, the Republican House have the ability to control funding. So the Senate can legislate all they want, but without funding all their initiatives would pretty much vanish. The Presidency is another question entirely, because of the power of the executive orders, which therefore have been used extensively, but even this branch is vulnerable to the budget control of the House, The executive needs money to run its operations.

Now we come to the Negotiation, and it has really only been one long negotiation with different stages. It started when the government expenditure exceeded their debt ceiling on May 16, 2011 requiring the Treasury to ask Congress to lift the debt ceiling. This was the first time the recently elected Republican Majority in the House had some real leverage on their side. President Obama urgently needed the increase (high need=loss of leverage) to avoid either government shutdown or massive cuts in government expenditure (bad BATNAs=low leverage). However, leverage is relative. Your leverage is only bad if the other party has little need and a good BATNA. What were the options for the House? They needed spending cuts to fulfill their promises to their electorate, but if the government defaults on its debt or there is a government shutdown the effects could be disastrous for the economy, and if the perception is that they are to blame then  it will also be bad for their reelection chances. Hence, Obama made it a priority to pin this on the House Republicans with a grand nationwide tour speaking against them and how they were "holding the nation hostage" (Biden went as far as to calling them "terrorists").

A deal with some reductions to future spending was finally reached on July 31st (reflecting the leverage advantage of the Republicans). Both parties took a blow in opinion polls, and the US lost its AAA credit rating with S&P. Everyone recognized that the deal was a half-measure, and it was a ticking bomb since a sequester (kind of working as a safety clause) was suggested by The White House and included in the deal as a mechanism to force agreement on spending and revenue before January 2013. By then, both were hoping the situation would be different. The Democrats hoped they would have taken back the House, and the Republicans hoped they would have taken back the Senate and/or Presidency.

Fast forward to January 2013, Obama has triumphed in the election and Republicans have gained no seats in either of the chambers. They decide to split the negotiations into two issues: taxes (fiscal cliff) and spending (sequestration), pushing the sequestration battle more than a month down the road. Now Obama holds the upper hand, since this is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The default is that the taxes for all Americans goes up. Republicans have promised not to raise taxes and need to keep them down for their constituencies (high need=bad leverage) and the alternative to a deal with President Obama is that the Bush tax cuts expire and everyone pays higher taxes (bad BATNA=bad leverage). The President also wants a deal, since increased taxes for everyone may harm his party in 2014, but the default of having taxes go back to pre-Bush levels is a very acceptable alternative for Democrats since it means more government revenue for social programs (good BATNA=strong leverage). Besides, the President can use the power of the presidency to blame the Republicans and turn it into a political victory. They strike a deal with increased taxes for those earning over 400,000 and reinstatement of the normal payroll tax for everyone, reflecting the President's superior leverage. Jack Lew is given credit by many media outlets for setting up the framework for this negotiation victory already in 2011. Republicans are reviled by their conservative constituencies and may will face hard reelections to the House.

But not so fast, what about the spending? With sequestration looming ahead, Obama needs a deal (high need=weak leverage) to avoid cuts in social programs and government spending (bad BATNA=weak leverage). The default will bring automatic cuts, which would be a defeat for his chosen policies. The original intention was that higher automatic cuts in defense spending would make the BATNA equally bad for the Republicans, but the Republicans have reevaluated their situation. With a Democratic Senate and President Obama still in office, this may be their only chance of getting any real spending cuts before Congressional elections in 2014. Traditionally, they dislike spending cuts in the military, but the newer generation of Congressmen from the 2010 elections do not share the same priorities. In any case, they are much more worried about debt than they are of a weak military in the immediate future. Thus, they have little need (low need=strong leverage) and they can live with spending cuts to military as long as other areas are cut too (good BATNA=strong leverage).

The White House soon realized that they could win the battle but lose the war, and so a rather frenzied media campaign was initiated to scare the electorate of the "catastrophical" results a 0.5% cut in federal spending could lead to. They calculated the worst possible results that could come from the cuts in strategic areas of government work and publicly decried the Republicans for holding Americans hostage and being irresponsible. Even The Washington Post found their claims overstated, and there was little impact with the Republicans. Obama knew that his only hope for a good deal was to destroy the BATNA for the Republicans, make the sequester so poisonous to the public that anyone and anything related with accepting it as an option would be tainted. Obama himself had promised in the 2012 debates that the sequester would not happen, and The White House had suggested to have it as part of the deal struck in 2011.

It didn't stick in the short term. Republicans would not settle for a deal that brought them less benefit than the sequester, and Obama saw that his leverage was too weak to get a good deal for his party. The deadline came . . . and went. Both parties walked away from the negotiation. No deal. The sequester set in. The market, in general, responded positively.

So where does that leave the parties? The President, having power over the executive, refused to accept powers voted for him by the House Republicans to give him flexibility to choose which specific programs to cut. Bad enough to have to cut spending without also having to explain to different constituencies why he didn't prioritize them. All he can do now is to pin this on Republicans, and make it hurt. He has all the reason in the world to make these cuts as visible and painful as possible, or at least as painful as he said they would be if only to save face. Thus, on the 8th of March they announced that they will be suspending the tuition assistance program for US troops, The White House cancels all tours, the USDA is told to make sure the cuts have the consequences which The White House projected. This is not just pouting, this is setting a rhetorical precedent for the future. If cuts do not equal pain then the public is more likely to accept the Republican mantra of "smaller government," proving implicitly "wow, if they could cut that much without us noticing I wonder how much more wasted money there is in there." If the cuts hurt, then the impression will be that government is already as small and ill funded as it can be, and "smaller government" will make people wince and make Republicans seem out of touch with reality. The Republicans, if they can get away with it, will have effectively gained at least one victory in one of their major political goals. It will all depend on whether the public believes the short term pain is less dangerous than the long term debt, like this clip argues

Of course, this is only an interlude until the next budget ceiling crisis looming when the US government runs out of money on May 19th 2013. So, plenty to look forward to :(

Classical Rhetoric and the 2012 Presidential Debates

Well, now that the election is over, a rhetorician can finally show his face in public again ;) It is nice to be able to comment on rhetorical ability and strategies again without someone suspecting that you are trying to tip the scales in favor of a candidate.What I thought I would do is to take some observations about rhetoric made by classical rhetoricians like Aristotle, Cicero, and Isocrates, and show you what they would say about the 2012 Presidential Debates, which had a greater impact on an election than any debates maybe since Kennedy vs. Nixon.

One of the first rhetorical elements which became evident as I was watching the first debate was the concept of stasis, which can be roughly translated in English to "stance." Whenever you want to make an argument, you can only really take 4 stances, or stages where you debate the issue: 1. fact, 2. definition, 3, quality, and 4. place, appropriateness or procedure. To show how this works, let's take an example of an argument: Mr. X is missing, and you have been charged with his murder. You are looking for a way to defend yourself against this allegation, so here are your options.

1. Fact. You can argue that we don't actually know that Mr. X is dead, and therefore we cannot prove it is a fact that a murder has even been committed! There is no body, no witness which saw that he died, it is not a proven fact that Mr. X has indeed died.

2. Definition. But what if his body has been found? It makes no sense to deny that it is a fact that he has died, but is it murder? It could be an accident, and as such would not be murder but manslaughter. Perhaps it was actually suicide, and you just happened to be close by. Perhaps he was reaching for his gun, and you just got to yours first, so it was self-defense and not murder.

3. Quality. If it has been established that Mr. X did die, that you were the one who killed him, and it does in fact fit the definition of murder, then the next level is quality. How serious, important, good, or bad is it that Mr. X was murdered? Perhaps Mr. X was a horrible man, with the blood of many innocent people on his conscience? Was Mr. X in fact Hitler? Was the situation one where his death could prevent the death of many other people? Perhaps he was abusive, and you just couldn't take it anymore? This is one where some of the most interesting court room dramas plays out, since the law generally states that anyone who murders shall die or at least be severely punished, but human reality is more complicated than that. This is where the "insanity" or "temporary insanity" plea often comes in.

4. Place, appropriateness, or procedure. The former stases (plural of stasis) all argue within the same context or parastasis, but this one seeks to reframe and resituate the entire argument, to recast it in a new light if you will. This can be something as simple as a technicality (mistrial, wrong procedure, etc.) or something which moves the entire argument to another sphere. One example could be, "Yes, Mr. X was murdered, I murdered him, it was a terrible thing that he was murdered, but I have diplomatic immunity and as such cannot be convicted by this court." It could also be that Mr.X was a terrorist, and as such his death was a casualty of war and not punishable in criminal court. In fact, it is not even a crime. Perhaps you are guilty, but the procedure and punishment the prosecutor has asked for does not fit the crime (Cruel and Unusual Punishment).

Let's now see an example from the First Presidential Debate. The issue is Dodd-Frank, the Financial Regulation law which was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Obama.

Obama defines his argument with the rhetorical question "does anyone think we got into this mess because there was too much regulation of Wall Street?" By so doing he sets his stance (or stasis) on 3. Quality. His argument is "Regulation was urgent, necessary, and a good thing for America." Fact could argue whether or not he signed it, and it is well settled that he did, Definition could be what Dodd-Frank is, and one could say "a government take-over of the financial industry" vs. "government oversight of a reckless industry." However, Romney seeks to reset the argument. Rather than arguing against regulation, which was clearly what Obama expected, Romney takes his stance on 4. place, appropriateness, procedure: He argues that regulation is essential and needed, but that the procedure applied by Obama was flawed and not appropriate to address the issue. Suddenly, the issue is no longer regulation is good vs. regulation is bad. Rather the issue becomes whether Dodd-Frank was the right kind of regulation to address the challenges revealed by the economic meltdown. This of course is a different question altogether, and it clearly takes Obama by surprise.

Romney's approach to Obama's arguments by shifting the stasis of the argument is a common thread throughout the debate, and it is one of the reasons why Romney won that debate quite decisively. As Otto Alvin Loeb Dieter writes in "Stasis," "To mistake, or misjudge the category of the stasis might seriously jeopardize a representation from the beginning." Obama argued points Romney already had conceded, and so it was Romney who was able to make the points and take the stance that stuck. The Obama campaign later painted his comments (such as "regulation is essential for a marketplace") as a fundamental shift to the middle by Romney, and sought to paint him as a flip-flopper, but actually Romney was only echoing the stance he takes in his book, No Apology, which came out in 2009. Obama was expecting to meet the same talking points he had heard in the Republican Primary, but instead he met a more nuanced and pragmatic approach from Romney.

This debate reset the race to one which, if it hadn't been for hurricane Sandy, may have made Mitt Romney the next president of the United States. Almost overnight, the carefully cultivated advantage Obama had held since June in the polls slipped away.

OK, that's all for this blog post. More to come later! 

"Seeking Light for Ourselves in the Darkness": Isocrates' Evolutionary Philosophy of Knowledge

What does it mean to be a man or woman of principle? Most would agree that it means one lives ones life after a set of beliefs which operate as an anchor to make sure that one does not simply follow that which is convenient, popular, or easy at any given time. Yet being a person of principle is not the same as being rigid or being unable to take uncertain conditions into consideration. Most of the decisions we have to take in our everyday lives involve a greater or lesser degree of uncertainty as to what the outcomes will be. How then, can we make a decision when we don't have all the data? This is where two of the great thinkers of the ancient world offered radically different approaches: Plato advocated that we search for the transcendent true principles by the method of dialectic, whereas Isocrates recommended that we conjecture to find the best course of action by the method of rhetoric.

In his Antidosis, Isocrates claims that the ability of speech is the basis of human superiority over animals: “we are inferior to many in swiftness and in strength . . . but because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other . . . not only have we escaped the life of the wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts . . . there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish” (75). Notice that he writes about the development of man through speech as a progressive history with words such as “escaped,” “come together,” “founded cities,” “made laws” and “invented arts,” showing clearly that the construct of human civilization was not a finished building, but was rather a product of laying brick by brick over many  years. In the same way, Isocrates sees the development of the human mind as a work in progress facilitated by speech, “With this faculty we both contend against others on matters which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which are unknown” (75). Rather than Plato’s immortal soul which merely seeks to remember what it already knows (Phaedrus 66), we here see a universe of uncertainty, where man seeks illumination for himself through speech in the midst of the great unknown. It is in these divergent ideas of the world we must situate the writings of Plato and Isocrates if we are to understand why they espouse such different views on rhetoric and philosophy. For Plato, philosophy is a process of uncovering universal truth which is accessible in a transparent universe; for Isocrates, it is a process of conjecture and good judgment which is the best man can hope to achieve in a world when we have to act in the present without any real knowledge about the future.

Isocrates knows that his assumptions about the world are the foundations of his argument, therefore he sets out to establish these early on in Against the Sophists, “For I think it is manifest to all that foreknowledge of future events is not vouchsafed to our human nature, but that we are so far removed from this prescience that Homer . . . has pictured even the gods at times debating among themselves about the future” (72; Jaeger 129). In such an environment it seems clear that mankind cannot demand perfect knowledge or perfect definitions. Rather, mankind have to make do with what they have, gradually improving the construct from a tent, to a hut, to a house. Indeed, Isocrates even argues that our ideas about social values were not established prior to language, but rather established by language: “For this it is which has laid down laws concerning things just and unjust, and things honourable and base:  and if it were not for these ordinances we should not be able to live with one another. It is by this also that we confute the bad and extol the good” (Antidosis 75). The conclusion therefore becomes obvious: Since man cannot know about the future, the man is wise “who is able by his powers of conjecture to arrive generally at the best course, and I hold that man to be a philosopher who occupies himself with the studies from which he will most quickly gain that kind of insight” (77). Bereft of truth, all man can hope for is the development of character and judgment. In consequence, this becomes the focus of Isocrates’ educational project, with rhetoric as the natural center of the practical arts. As Jaeger states, "he has made a virtue of necessity" (137). Isocrates, unlike the speechwriters, was not lacking a transcendent ideal for his philosophy. He found it in Panhellenism, which could only be brought to pass through unity and cohesion, making this the aim of his rhetoric (Jaeger 126).

With this framework, it also becomes clear why sophists and so-called philosophers are worthy of censure (Isocrates mixed the terms, but for clarity I will use Plato's nomenclature): Philosophers seek that which they cannot gain, and therefore they waste the time and talents of their students on hair-splitting, “they pretend to have knowledge of the future but are incapable either of saying anything pertinent or of giving any counsel regarding the present” (73). Sophists, on the other hand, “have no interest whatever in the truth” (73), and as such end up completely without morals or character, subjected to the moment rather than any transcendent ideal, as well as being poor teachers without rigor in their teachings.

If, on the other hand, we believe like Plato that absolute universal truths are attainable, it makes sense that we should first seek out this foundation before we start to construct our lives. Thus, just as a doctor must know how the body works before he starts an operation, so we must know the nature of virtue, beauty, and that which is good before we can know how we should live our lives. Plato sees the philosopher as someone building a house who first digs down to the solid bedrock in order to have a solid foundation, Isocrates sees him as a person on a thin raft of principles which is floating over the liquid foundation of speech, and out of driftwood and other sparse materials this man must try to construct a boat. Jaeger mentions that most unlike the alphabet are "the fluid and manifold situations of human life" (134), which is the realm of rhetoric.

Here is one example of how the complexity of human interactions and human relationships makes knowledge more fluid: 

These two perspectives may be reflected in their divergent views on the good life. Plato’s Socrates observes the world with curiosity, yet with what sometimes seems like a calm detachment. Isocrates criticizes this “isolation” and claims that “men who want to do some good in the world must banish utterly from their interests all vain speculations and activities which have no bearing on our lives” (76). The philosophy of Isocrates is situated in the politics of everyday life, whereas the philosophy of Plato is situated in the eternal idea-world, where everyday life is an unpleasant and unreal intrusion on the purer things of the soul. 

In the end, Plato became the father of western philosophy, whereas Isocrates became the father of western education. I believe both approaches have their place in the world we live in. We have to learn how to think and search to find true answers, but when we still end up with an incomplete understanding we need to be able to work with what we have. After all, whoever found a way to gather reliable data about the future?

The Defining Moment

One of the most famous debunkings of rhetoric is found in Plato's Gorgias, and it is one philosophers like to ask me about. However, as I hope to show you, Plato doesn't debunk rhetoric in this dialogue, he simply chastices Gorgias and his followers for how they use rhetoric. But in order to win the debate, Plato uses tricks of definition, where he pretty much sets up artificial boundaries for what an art is and makes sure to place rhetoric firmly on the outside of it. Here's an example of how you can do this: "You claim to be a Christian. Christians generally believe in x, y, and z. You do not believe in z, therefore you are not a Christian but a heretic." The one who pushes for a definition obviously here has the greater power. In politics this same power-play can be seen when a Republican is accused of being a RINO (Republican in name only) which is very hard to refute since the one who makes the accusation also has the power to define what it means to be a "true Republican." The same power of definition is used by the left to label someone as "racist," "out of touch" or "Wall Street puppet."Here is an example of someone who definitely wants that power.

Socrates displays the rhetorical power of definition as he consistently challenges the explanations made by Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles about rhetoric until the definition is narrow and yet ambiguous enough for him to attack and discredit what Gorgias is practicing. Socrates sets some of the conditions for this victory early on, as he asks Gorgias to give brief answers, thereby of a necessity forcing oversimplified explanations to some complex questions. But the main condition for Socrates winning is that he is able to compare the work of the rhetorician to the arts of production, such as doctor, money-maker, and trainer, thereby forcing Gorgias to situate rhetoric within a category where it does not belong. This is then easily refutable, allowing Socrates to define rhetoric according to his preferences.

            The key passage which decides this outcome is on page 90, where Socrates challenges rhetoric by comparing it to medicine, training, and money-making and asks, “what is this thing that you say is the greatest good for men, and that you claim to produce?” Gorgias answers, “the ability to persuade” (91) and, when challenged further, that it is “the kind of persuasion . . . which you find in the law courts and in any public gatherings . . . and it deals with what is just and unjust” (92). After a few more questions, Socrates sums this point up: “Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief . . . in the matter of right and wrong” (92). Rhetoric must now 1. Produce the guaranteed outcome of persuasion like a sculptor produces a sculpture, and 2. Deal specifically with the subject matter of justice. These few lines have set the main tendencies in motion that will bring this dialogue to its now almost inevitable conclusion. The strongest defense Gorgias can muster comes on page 93 where he claims that rhetoric is a “neutral” art such as “boxing, wrestling, or fighting in armor,” and as such merely increases faculties innate in humans which can be used for good or evil. However, Gorgias has already undermined this point by claiming to produce persuasion about what is just or unjust. This clearly has ethical implications, which Socrates pursues until Gorgias submits that someone who produces persuasion about what is just or unjust first needs to know about the subject matter and be a just man himself. This then leads to the absurd conclusion that no unjust man could ever become a rhetorician or do rhetoric. 

 

Rhetoric as a producer of persuasion concerning justice is the most essential definition which Socrates is able to use in his favor. If rhetoric is able to produce persuasion about just and unjust, then this can be censured since it would seem to overrule judgment. Consequently, this definition is the first thing Aristotle refutes in his Rhetoric. Instead of accepting Socrates’ idea that all arts must only deal with one specific subject matter, Aristotle compares rhetoric with the art of dialectic: “Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic. For both treat of such things as are in a way common for all to grasp and belong to no delimited science” (66). Rhetoric and dialectic are both general arts practiced by all people to some degree, and they can be improved by instruction and practice although they are used in many areas towards many separate outcomes. He also rejects the notion that all arts must produce something and that rhetoric is the production of persuasion: “Its function is not persuasion. It is rather the detection of the persuasive aspects of each matter and this is in line with all other skills” (69-70). In the same way, probably referring back to Gorgias, he claims medicine is not the ability to produce health but rather the art of knowing what may help someone feel better and what may not, and administer accordingly.

As the argument stands, without the help of Aristotle, Gorgias can no longer argue the case that rhetoric is a neutral art which simply increases abilities. Polus and Callicles go on to defend rhetoric by appealing to the power it brings as something inherently good for individuals, but none of these are difficult to refute on ethical grounds. Because rhetoric was defined as persuasion about what is just or unjust, Socrates correctly points out that this is really the realm of justice, and that in claiming to be about justice, without the knowledge of it, rhetoric is an impostor with form but without sound content. Thus, the only use Socrates initially assigns to it is that of flattery: tempting men to give in to the basest parts of their nature and seeking more to please than to edify.

                 

However, Socrates seems to imply later on that it is the contemporary use rather than the nature of rhetoric which he has most distain for. He says man should “be the first accuser either of himself or of his relations, and [should] employ his rhetoric for the purpose of so exposing their iniquities that they may be relieved of that greatest evil, injustice” (109), and repeats the point at the end: “Rhetoric is to be used for this purpose always, of pointing to what is just” (138). In essence he agrees that rhetoric is neutral and can be used for either good or evil. 

So remember, the next time you hear someone being called something: "Who defined what that term means in this context?" and "What case could be made for this person not fitting into that category if 1. you look at other actions they have taken or 2. if you could make a different definition." Be aware of the defining moment. 

The Aesthetic Situation

Why do we need art? Every human society abounds with stories, images, sayings, and music. Some are passed down through the ages; others are created seemingly spontaneously in any community. There will be funny incidences which are retold to those who did not witness the event; seemingly inexplicable behaviors of some which people will try to explain; and happy moments of summer, which people will recall during a dreary winter. The list goes on. Such a universal phenomenon indicates the existence of some sustained and recurring question or need to which it is the answer. This is similar to what Lloyd Bitzer refers to as an “exigency.” In “The Rhetorical Situation,” Bitzer describes an exigency as “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (6). I contend that we need art because of the universal exigency caused by living in the midst of uncertainty.

As human beings we live in uncertainty just as fish live in water. The amount of what we can really know and understand from everything that happens to us and our surroundings is actually very limited, and yet we still need to make decisions every day based on this limited information. This situation calls forth different exigencies. We want some explanation of the complexity around us and how we should interact with the world based on that explanation. The situation is well described by John Dewey in Art as Experience:

Order cannot but be admirable in a world constantly threatened with disorder—in a world where living creatures can go on living only by taking advantage of whatever order exists about them, incorporating it into themselves. In a world like ours, every living creature that attains sensibility welcomes order with a response of harmonious feeling whenever it finds a congruous order about it. (13)

          These exigencies are answered by the aesthetic and rhetorical abilities we have by virtue of our ability to use symbols. Art orders experience into what Kenneth Burke calls “a pattern of experience” or “an interpretation of life.” As he describes in Counter-Statement, “[The work of art] can, by its function as name and definition, give simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity. It provides a terminology of thoughts, actions, emotions, attitudes for codifying a pattern of experience” (154). Rhetoric traditionally negotiates uncertainty, but the aesthetic replaces uncertainty with an interpretation of life; a pattern by which one can sort and select the complexity of reality. Kenneth Burke and John Dewey help us to understand the process by which we as humans organize experience, and how art replicates this organized pattern. John Dewey fills in more of the process, and Kenneth Burke provides us a vocabulary by which we can detect and analyze the structure of experience in art and in our own lives.

Living with Uncertainty and Aesthetic Response

          In Art as Experience, John Dewey explains why the situation of uncertainty nurtures the aesthetic reflexes of mankind, and why both ignorance and complete knowledge make aesthetic experience impossible:

There are two sorts of possible worlds in which esthetic experience would not occur. In a world of mere flux, change would not be cumulative; it would not move towards a close. Stability and rest would have no being. Equally is it true, however, that a world that is finished, ended, would have no traits of suspense and crisis, and would offer no opportunity for resolution. Where everything is already complete, there is no fulfillment. (16)

For Dewey, aesthetic experience comes when, after struggles and conflict a being reaches “a stable, even though moving, equilibrium” (13), and this can only happen in a world that lends itself at least somewhat to interpretation which establishes some structure and rules. To have an aesthetic experience one has to be able to see a pattern in what one observes, which is what makes change “cumulative” and moves it towards a “close.” There also has to be some uncertainty concerning the outcome to allow for suspense and crisis which can be resolved. The aesthetic does not exist in ignorance (constant flux with no pattern emerging) or in complete knowledge (no change, thus no conflict or fulfillment/resolution), but in the realms of uncertainty the aesthetic fulfills a need for purpose and structure to a world which lends itself to explanations, but usually ones that are incomplete.

          At its very core the aesthetic is an embodiment of man’s search for order, and it is a natural response to the situation of general uncertainty in which mankind finds itself in life. John Dewey and Kenneth Burke give similar explanations about how mankind adjusts to its surrounding and establishes some form of order. Dewey writes, “The first great consideration is that life goes on in an environment; not merely in it, but because of it, through interaction with it,” and that mankind, in order to live, “must adjust itself [to it], by accommodation and defense, but also by conquest” (12). The experience of living inevitably challenges our adjustment to our environment and threatens our equilibrium or temporary sense of order and predictability. This creates a gap which we must then try to bridge somehow. Dewey describes the process as follows, “If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism, with those of the conditions under which it lives” (13). The organism loses equilibrium by a disruption, and regains it through conflict and finer adjustment to the environment. The final equilibrium is not simply a return to the first. Through the process, the organism has changed and now is able to encompass elements of greater complexity within its new equilibrium. This could describe the basic structure of almost any story. These experiences of life are “akin to the esthetic” (14) and their conditions become “the material out of which he [man] forms purposes” (14).

            Because these experiences of disruption of equilibrium, conflict, and resolution (or the gaining of a new equilibrium) are so common in human experience, they become a pattern by which we interpret the meaning of the world. I believe this is one of the reasons why experiences are only acknowledged as meaningful in our lives when they fit into this pattern, with a beginning, middle (conflict), and end (resolution). Experiences which fit this pattern become what Dewey calls “an experience” rather than just experience:

We have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences . . . a situation . . . is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience. (36-37)

Only such experiences have formative power and become part of our understanding of life. Our understanding of life is formed by the cumulative power of many such complete experiences. These experiences may function both as disruptions of our equilibrium and as tools in the construction of our new equilibrium, but only complete experiences which have their “individualizing quality and self-sufficiency” are likely to have such formative power over us.

            I had my own experience with the power of an experience last summer. I was visiting my brother-in-law in the DC area together with my family. Before we left to go back home, my wife persuaded me to take a visit by myself to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As a Norwegian I subscribed to a general European distrust and dislike of America, and especially of its foreign policy. The museum in general had little impact upon me, until I went to a section called Americans at War. In this exhibit there was a small theater where they were showing a movie about the Americans who had died on battlefields all over the earth the last 100 years. The movie was brief and simply showed graves of American soldiers in graveyards all over the globe with some quotes from Abraham Lincoln and other presidents and poets. I initially engaged this movie with my perception about the world and the role America had played in it. By the time the movie had ended I was in a conflict within myself. I started questioning some of the assumptions underlying my understanding of the world. The film had resonated with me, and the emotional response I had was that of gratitude and a certain shame for the ingratitude I had formerly shown. I was experiencing the disruption of a part of my equilibrium. Sitting in the subway on the way back my mind was racing to reconcile what I knew and thought before with what I had just experienced. Finally my mind settled on a new understanding. My former understanding saw American foreign policy as arrogant, selfish, and often a great threat to the world. The film presented a reality where American soldiers had given their lives all around the world as a bulwark and defense against all manner of menacing forces, even though they didn’t have to get involved. The concrete example of the thousands of graves had a strong emotional impact. By the time I had reached my brother-in-law’s house, I had decided on a synthesis of the two realities. I decided that even though the US had made mistakes and had at times been arrogant, there were thousands of Americans who had given their lives and been willing to risk their lives in the fight against the Axis powers and the Soviet Union, and tamed the ambitions of many a ruthless ruler around the world. I thought about what my world and my life would be like today without that sacrifice, and that in turn filled me with gratitude for what these thousands of people had given. That was my new equilibrium, where the experience both caused it by functioning as a disruption and at the end helped determine the state of the new equilibrium.

This is a similar movie, though not quite as powerful:

 

             Kenneth Burke’s explanation is very similar to that of John Dewey, but Burke has a special focus on literature and on methods of analysis. Kenneth Burke does also address the idea of universal experiences and patterns, such as arousing and fulfilling expectations and the climactic nature of many of our physical experiences, which highlights useful points that Dewey does not address, but I want to focus on Burke’s theory of individuation and how individual patterns of experience are formed. I do this because Burke was not only interested in the formation but also the criticism of patterns of experience, and I believe he developed a helpful method to uncover these in all language usage.

In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke explains that every person forms a “pattern of experience” which is based on their adjustment to their environment or situation: “Any such specific environmental condition calls forth and stresses certain of the universal experiences as being more relevant to it, with a slighting of those less relevant. Such selections are ‘patterns of experience’” (151). This ‘pattern of experience’ influences how each person engages with the world, and traces of it will be found in the terminology this person uses. In “The Philosophy of Literary Form,” Burke writes, “The ‘symbolism’ of a word consists in the fact that no one quite uses the word in its mere dictionary sense. And the overtones of a usage are revealed ‘by the company it keeps’ in the utterances of a given speaker or writer” (35). Every person connects words with each other in a different way in their personal vocabulary, because we don’t have the same emotional connections to all terms. John Dewey describes this process for experience, but it is just as applicable to vocabulary: “Emotion is the moving and cementing force. It selects what is congruous and dyes what is selected with its color, thereby giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar” (44). This “emotional connective” endows terms with their meaning based on the other words that they are connected with. In Burke’s explanation then, patterns of experience are created by selections and connections which come from the adjustment of an organism to its environment. These connections (what Kenneth Burke would call equations) work together to form an interpretation of how the world works and how the separate elements in the world are connected (158-159).

How Art Imitates Structured Experience

Both John Dewey and Kenneth Burke saw art as an artificially structured experience which may be even better than our own structures of experience. Kenneth Burke’s writing is rather cautionary on this subject. The artist is an expert in their own pattern of experience, and as such they know how to make it convincing to the reader. Burke writes, “By thoroughness he [the author] should be able to overwhelm his reader to accept his interpretations. For a pattern of experience is an interpretation of life” (176). The reader may resist at first, but he is now in the world created by the rules of the author and operating by the author’s logic:

The thoroughness of the artist’s attack can ‘wear down’ the reader until he accepts the artist’s interpretation, the pattern of experience underlying the Symbol. He may, when the book is finished, return to his own contrary patterns of experience (but during the reading the evidence has been rigorously selected, it ‘points’ as steadily in one direction as the contentions of a debater). (176-177)

The structured experience can be transmitted so thoroughly that everything in it connects and supports everything else, and so the direction the author takes the reader is at once logical (according to the internal logic in the text) and aesthetically appealing. The work of art contains its own equations and internal structure, and this structure imitates the idiosyncratic vocabulary of an articulated pattern of experience. In this way, the thoroughness of the artist’s vocabulary can co-opt the reader’s own pattern of experience.

In Art as Experience, John Dewey writes about the experience of art: “What is evoked is a substance so formed that it can enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own” (113). The work of art “enters” into the experience of the audience by making them participants in the experience. For example, rather than conveying the information of tragedy, the work of art evokes emotions of pity and fear by taking the audience through a tragic aesthetic reality. The appeal for the audience is that they can have “more intense and more fully rounded out experiences” because of how the artist invites a complete experience rather than the disordered bits and pieces of events which occur in normal life. As Dewey goes on to write, “That is what it is to have form. It marks a way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it most readily and effectively becomes material for the construction of adequate experience on the part of those less gifted than the original creator” (113-114). This is exactly why the artist can overwhelm the reader with his pattern of experience, because the artist can form experienced matter more completely than the reader himself, and thus gives him a more intense experience than what he could form by himself. It is implied that the more complete and intense an experience is, the more convincing and, I would claim, formative it will be. It is, as mentioned earlier an experience. It is partially by completeness and intensity that we measure the meaning and importance of our experiences because these can be found in true experiences that stand out in our lives as meaningful.

Thus, it may be through experiencing the art someone else has made that we define our

lives or frame our experiences. This is what happens in different degrees whenever one is effectively influenced by a work of art. As Burke writes, “[The work of art] can, by its function as name and definition, give simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity. It provides a terminology of thoughts, actions, emotions, attitudes for codifying a pattern of experience” (154). The work of art can do the work of structuring experiences for us. Although Kenneth Burke warned about the potential subversive effects this could have, he also said this simply is the way we learn most things about the world. As he writes in “Art as a Rough Draft of Life,” “For our sense of reality is shaped largely not by our own immediate sensory experience, but by what others tell us, in theologies, philosophies, textbooks, stories, poems, dramas, news, gossip, and the like” (158), and he goes on to recommend this as a method of learning: “In these days of much uncertainty, when each of us individually can experiment but somewhat, by ranging through the field of the arts in general we can personally consider many more possibilities than we could otherwise” (162).

            As humans we respond to the complexity and uncertainty around us by constructing structured experiences which become the foundations of our generalizations about the world or our interpretations of life. These are of necessity imperfect, but they are an attempt to capture the complexity of the world into a structure that makes sense and is unified. As Kenneth Burke writes, “We might get the truest slant on ourselves by thinking of our lives as a first drafts, as hastily organized essays that we never have a chance to revise” (161). As Dewey mentions, these structured experiences are formed by processes of disruption and reunion by synthesis which recur in different ways throughout our lives. They also connect different elements of life in a complex structure of interrelated terms and concepts which work together to form a complete, as Burke pointed out. Art is an attempt to imitate these structures in such a way that we can experience the pattern of experience it embodies without having to experience it in real life. There is a risk of accepting this new pattern of experience without question, and the human state of uncertainty may make this especially alluring. However, if we see art as other drafts of life, attempts to account for the complexity around us, then we can use it to test and revise the rough draft we have for life. By doing this, we may be able to improve our understanding of life, and by implication, improve our way of living.