Indirect Vision: How Learning Not To Focus Can Help You Succeed

It's been over a month since all of Norway went into lockdown, meaning that I teach my classes and do my research from home (and defended my dissertation over Zoom!) while my wife and I at the same time are running a full-time homeschool and kindergarten. Luckily, we have a trampoline in our garden, so the kids get plenty of fun and exercise. Getting rather tired of jumping myself, I invented a game where I could lie down and throw soft balls at the kids, and they have to either dodge or hit them out of the way. My 7-year old son was getting pretty good at it, so I upped the game a bit. I would throw a slow looping ball towards his head (again, they were soft) and a fast-ball towards his stomach. He got frustrated because he could only focus on and knock one ball out of the way at a time, and then the other ball would hit him as they arrived at the same time. "I can't do this!" he cried, and then I gave him a lesson I had learned from juggling:
"You have to learn not to focus."

At first he was a bit puzzled, so I explained that he could look past me to the bench on the lawn. Soon, he was doing double-blocks like a ninja and felt like he had just unlocked a superhero skill, and he was right. Learning not to focus is a skill that is crucial to success in many arenas. I mean this both in a literal and metaphorical sense, and the skill is called indirect vision.

Indirect vision is defined as "vision resulting from rays of light falling upon peripheral parts of the retina" or "vision as it occurs outside the point of fixation." Simply put, it is all the visual input your eye gets and processes without focusing on an object. This is quite a significant amount. When you focus on something, your field of vision is about 5 degrees, whereas when you don't focus your field of vision is 200-220 degrees.



You can experience this yourself. Look straight ahead and have a person behind you move an object from behind you to in front of you. Alert them the moment you can detect movement, and tell them to stop. You will see that you detected the object already as it was about 90 degrees from the direction you were looking in. This is because our eyes are not just holes. The eye does actually extend out of the body (though not to such a mad extent as the house fly, which does have almost 360 degree vision but can't focus).

(Image from Paul Savage - https://www.flickr.com/photos/45202571@N00/60833726/)

This unfocused vision gives you less quality of perception, but much greater quantity. Indirect vision is excellent at (a) recognition of well-known structures and forms, (b) identification of similar forms and movements, and (c) delivery of sensations which form the background of detailed visual perception.

It is an ability that all humans have, but it is an elite skill to recognize, trust, and fully utilize the functions of this ability. This is especially true in elite sports where the athletes have to keep track of many moving parts at the same time. Here is a prominent example.

Football: Bruno Fernandes (Manchester United)
Since his arrival at Manchester United in January, Bruno Fernandes has been on fire. With him in the team, Manchester United have not lost a single game and have taken more points than anyone else in the Premier League except Liverpool. One of the key attributes about him that have been praised by pundits, teammates, and his manager is that he is "one or two steps ahead of everyone else." Bruno always seems to know what he should do with the ball before he gets it, and the key to that is that he frequently scans the football field. Just a glance over his shoulder, but he quickly perceives and processes the key threats and passing opportunities. How does he do this? By relying on indirect vision.

It was previously believed that it takes the eye about 100 milliseconds to detect an image, but new research from MIT has shown that your eyes can successfully detect and identify images in only 13 milliseconds, and that limit was only determined because it was impossible for the computer monitor in the experiment to shift the images shown to the research subjects quicker. This means the eye can process almost a shocking 77 images per second rather than the previously believed 10 images per second. The lead scientist theorized "one reason for the subjects’ better performance in this study may be that they were able to practice fast detection as the images were presented progressively faster, even though each image was unfamiliar" (Trafton). The images were also familiar shapes rather than abstract art.

This is how Bruno is able to pull off this impressive feat. Although indirect vision gives less quality, it is good at (a) recognition of well-known structures and forms and (b) identification of similar forms and movements. This is one reason why it is important for football players that the kits of the two teams are not too similar. Since they have to rely a lot on their indirect vision, they want to be able to just have to detect the right color to know if they can play the pass to them or need to avoid them. The best playmakers are able to detect patterns of play and movement in milliseconds and can make snap decisions about how to progress the ball up the field. Everybody has indirect vision, but the best players have learned to rely on it instinctively and can match the input with their tactical and experiential knowledge to create magic.

The same is true of elite performers in speed chess: they keep most of the chess board in their indirect vision and can accurately perceive and replicate the moves made by the opponent in milliseconds. Again, this is because the moves, the chess board, and the pieces are all familiar and they can tap into those trained patterns to process the data. For trained practitioners, indirect vision can tell them everything they need to know in order to act.

Learning Not To Focus Your Mind
This ability transfers to our mental patterns as well. It's a common misconception that our mind is a completely separate thing from our bodies. Rather, we think through our bodies. The senses and processes of our bodies gave our minds all the input they had to develop and learn the patterns of life. We express what our mind does based on what we can do with our bodies, showing the same relationship: We "digest" information, we "grasp" a concept, and we "wrestle" with a problem, describing actions of our stomach, hand, and muscles. This does not mean that the mind can be reduced to the body, but it shows that there is a strong relationship. This is especially true about our eyes and ability to see: the primary sense humans have had to rely upon for their survival. Our neural patterns mirror the input they receive from foveal or "central" vision and indirect vision.

We talk about "focus," which is a function of our eyes, and equate it with narrow and intense concentration, but we often disregard what happens when we are not focusing and devalue it with terms such as "unconcentrated," "unfocused," or "scatter-brained." A lot of time is spent on teaching people to "focus" and even to "hyperfocus," as exemplified in the video below.

It is not my intention here to disparage that work, but focusing A can often lead to the neglect of B, and I want to point out some of the things this focus on focus misses and why learning not to focus at times can be crucial to success. However, first I have to make it clear what I am describing and clear up one likely objection: not focusing is NOT the same thing as inattention or laziness, it's just a different kind of attention or work. Indirect vision is "focused," as it were, on a broader field of vision which may pick up less details but covers more ground.

I could expound more on this principle, but here are a few examples:

1. The Observer Effect and Early Childhood Development

You can't observe something or "focus" on something without changing it. According to quantum mechanics, even subatomic particles change their nature based on the focus of an observer. While that might just be a theoretical reality, this is definitely true in social science studies such as psychology, and it is also the case in parenting. Many parents are hyperfocused on their kids, making great sacrifices of time and money to make sure that all their needs are cared for and that they have no limits to their development. However, sometimes it is that very focus that can be one of the greatest impediments to their development.

Imagine there are two toddler's playing together. They are relating now to somebody at their own level, without large differences in size, power, or ability. As soon as an adult enters the picture, the dynamic between the toddlers sometimes changes almost instantly. A source of attention and adoration, a greater power, and the "bringer of food and changer of nappies" has now entered their universe.

The same is true of a child concentrating (focusing) individually on a task and hitting a barrier. On their own, a new part of their brain starts problem-solving, but with the focused attention of a parent the answer is only a cry for help away. It's like trying to learn maths with the answer sheet in front of you. 

I am not saying that parents don't have a responsibility to model appropriate behavior, help the children learn how to solve problems, or (most importantly) keep the child safe from too great physical danger. What I am trying to point out is that there is a need, place, and time for a different kind of attention: the quick look around the corner to make sure the toddler is alright as they stack bricks into towers and knock them down, looking out the window now and then as the kids and their friends learn how to play a new game together, allowing them spaces where parents do not intrude or interrupt except in cases of emergency. One good unsupervised act is worth twenty supervised ones, and the magic of unstructured play needs to be undisturbed from the too focused presence of parents. It's similar to "pulling up a flower to see how the roots are doing. Put another way, too many anxious openings of the oven door, and the cake falls instead of rising. Moreover, enforced change usually does not last, while productive enduring can ingrain permanent change" (Neal A. Maxwell, "Endure It Well").

2. Management and Micro-managing

When people without experience in leadership get promoted to leadership they are in danger of becoming micro-managers. They want to put in a lot of effort, and very often they think that effort has to come in the form of focused attention to each of the people they are supposed to be leading. While this can do some good in certain instances, very often these leaders tend to wear out themselves and the people they are supposed to lead by their excessive focus. Moreover, any gains in productivity are likely to disappear again as soon as the effort is reduced or another manager is brought in.

The more sustainable model is one who leads with indirect vision, recognizing patterns and keeping an eye on the processes going on, but also knows to step back and let a natural good dynamic develop, adding some encouragement here and some help there. This model is more like the farmer or gardner who keeps an overview of the processes going on but knows not to interfere too much in them.

3. General vs. Specific Knowledge

In academia, and the sciences in particular, specialization or hyperfocusing is the name of the game. It has come to the point where even different branches of physics or chemistry may have little understanding of the work that is going on in the other branches. Generalists are inherently suspicious, crossing from one discipline to another is seen as indicative of lack of depth or discipline, and a wide spread of publications is often punished in tenure or promotion reviews. Yet some very innovative insights have come from people who were able to cross the disciplinary boundaries, and this has often been the birthplace of new disciplines. John von Neumann started in mathematics but also became a foundational figure in game theory, nuclear physics, computer science, and international relations. Kenneth Burke felt uncomfortable with the rigidness of academic disciplines and therefore never completed a degree or stayed teaching at any academic institution for too long, and he has become an authority in communication, rhetoric and composition, literature, and many of the social sciences, influencing figures such as Goffmann, Francis Ferguson, Renè Girard, and many others.

I am usually skeptical of conferences with too broad topics, since these can often be predatory, but in the midst of this hyperspecialization there is an important place for conferences such as TED. Here, people from many walks of life meet together and listen short presentations of inspiring and interesting stories and projects prepared for a general audience. Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, describes how he at the first day of his first conference started out amused, then confused as there seemed to be no common thread to what they all were saying, and then his mind started to cross-polinate ideas from all these different areas into new and remarkable insights. He could only get to this point by taking in a "wide vision" of impressions and ideas without focusing too much on each individual one, and that brought him much more than any conference he had ever been to before. He became aware of "the interconnectedness of knowledge," even in an age of specialization.

Like my son, we often encounter situations where a lot of balls are coming towards us at the same time, and the best way to respond to these challenges long-term may be learning not to focus on each one of them too much, but keep our eyes on the bigger picture.

Publication Update: Internal Logic, Indexing, and Consummation

Hi everyone!

I generally write the blog posts at a reading level that requires some effort, but if you are up for a challenge there's more in-depth research from me available for free. I will post them below with links and brief descriptions.

Internal Logic: Persuasive Form and Hierarchy in Kenneth Burke

This is from a conference presentation I gave at the Internation Society for the Study of Argumentation at the University of Amsterdam, 2014. It mainly concerns how a text establishes its own form of logic and teaches the reader to think in its terms and according to its own logic. This logic operates by literary form rather than formal logic, and by arousing and fulfilling expectations it can make the reader/listener feel that because it is true to its form the argument it advances is also objectively true. (I apologize in advance for the spelling mistakes)


Indexing: Kenneth Burke's Critical Method

Web project/multimedia argument that helps to explain, illustrate, and train you in one of my favorite research methods. Some fancy animations and presentations help to make the tutorial less boring, and there's a full literature review and scholarly background for those who want to go deeper. This method can be used for a lot of things. It was Kenneth Burke's favorite method for textual/rhetorical analysis and helps one to find the logical structure of the text and the "ideology" the text presents. This was published in the KB Journal, spring 2017.


Consummation: Kenneth Burke's Third Creative Motive

My most read publication. If it wasn't obvious before, I use Kenneth Burke in a LOT of my research, basically because I see him as someone who is intellectually honest and actually gets a lot of things right. Here I am teasing out a theory he has about the aesthetic motivations that direct the development in areas like the natural sciences, art, music, and is a potential factor in both individual and group motivations. It centers around an aesthetic desire for order, consistency, and completion. Edward Teller, Robert Oppenheimer, Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, Espinoza, and Saint Anselm all make appearances here. Also published in the KB Journal, spring 2017.

That's it for now. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions or comments (or leave a comment below).

Arguments and the Structure of Reality: A Beginner's Guide to Perelman, Part III

Well, this is my penultimate (second to last) post on Perelman's system of argumentation. The remaining are "arguments based on the structure of reality" and "arguments to establish a structure of reality."

Arguments Based on the Structure of Reality

These are different from the quasi-logical arguments in the sense that these do not deal with essential patterns of thought, but rather they deal with habitual patterns of thought. Some of these patterns may just be conventions of Western society and may not always be in operation in other cultures. Perelman describes these patterns as follows: “As soon as elements of reality are associated with each other in a recognized connection, it is possible to use this connection as the basis for an argumentation which allows us to pass from what is accepted to what we wish to have accepted” (81). Essentially, you find structures of reality that are already there (already accepted) and then apply them to a specific situation. As Kenneth Burke points out, these structures may only be "natural" in the sense that a path made through a field is natural. Nevertheless, as soon as that structure or path has been made it is there as a structure that can be used to pass from A to B.

Perelman divides these structures into two groups: liasons of succession and liasons of coexistence.

Liasons of succession show a kind of linear progression on the same level (of the same kind), 

• whereas liasons of coexistence show relationships across different levels.

                                              

          










      As a matter of interest, these two structures may resemble the different structures of how men and women think. According to this psychologist, men think primarily in liasons of succession whereas women think primarily in liasons of coexistence.

     1. Liasons of succession (cause, effect, fact and consequence)

Perelman writes, “Having accepted the existence of correlations, natural laws, or the principle that the same causes produce the same effects, one is able to construct hypotheses within a given context and verify them with the appropriate inquiries” (82). In other words, as soon as we believe that we have identified a reliable mechanism or relationship between cause and effect, we can use that to make arguments about what causes what and what consequences a certain action would have. One of the most common uses of this is the pragmatic argument, which has become dominant in 21st century capitalism: "If it sells then it is a good product!"

-          The pragmatic argument = Evaluate a fact by its consequences

Perelman writes, “The pragmatic argument, which seems to reduce the value of a cause to that of its consequences, gives the impression that all values are of the same order. It is thus that the truth of an idea can, in pragmatism, only be judged by its effects, the failure of an enterprise or life likewise serving as a criterion of its irrationality or inauthenticity” (83). We call Steve Jobs a genius because he succeeded, but if he had failed then we may have called him a fool. One example of this argument can be seen below: 

A: This government program has been vindicated and has proven its worth beyond question. Through it, thousands have found employment, the deficit has been reduced, and valuable goods and services have been provided for the citizens of our country. (fact judged by consequences)

-          One can resist the pragmatic argument by questioning its application. A fact cannot always be evaluated by its consequences, and the post-hoc fallacy is an example of taking this too far (post hoc ergo propter hoc means "this followed that, therefore that caused this"). Correlation does not prove causation. As Perelman says, “How do we determine the indefinite chain of consequences that result from an action, and how are we to impute to a single cause the consequences that result most often from the concurrence of several events?” (83)

B: Just because some things happened at the same time does not mean that the one caused the other! Yes, people were hired during that time, but the economy in general had been recovering rapidly for several months before. The reduced deficit is a result of the economy rebounding, not this government program. As far as goods and services go, you have caused several food companies to lay off workers or go out of business because you provided for free what they sold and therefore destroyed their market.

One could use the same method against arguments that "Hitler led to the end of antisemitism, so we should thank him" or "pornography sells, so obviously it must be a good product," or "making drugs illegal has caused a lot of violence, therefore it is a bad idea to have drug laws." 

-          Means/end arguments of waste

Perelman writes that in this argument, “Means have only a relative value because they depend on the value accorded the end, which is considered to be independent” (85). This is a common thread in the "ends justify the means" argument, which is common in rationalizations of unethical behavior. However, on a smaller scale, we all do this: "I am sorry I yelled at you, but I was trying to save you from being hit by the truck!" Some common forms of the means/end argument are the arguments of waste, redundancy, and the decisive.  

Argument of waste: “The existence of an effective means allows us to realize a desire and gives the desire a stability sufficient to transform it into an end . . . To avoid wasting effort in attaining a certain end, a person will continue a project until it is completed . . . The action, which, under the circumstances, can attain its full bearing and should thus not be considered a waste, will thereby gain in value and this militates in favor of its being done” (87). This is a very prominent argument in science and technology, where the potential of a theory or technology provides an almost irresistible argument for pursuing it. The best pop-culture example of this may be Jurassic Park: "It is technically possible to make dinosaurs. Let's do it!"

Similar arguments are leading the development in bioengineering (after the discovery of the CRISPR gene editing technology) and robotics (despite warnings from Stephen Hawking and others about the potential dangers of autonomous warrior robots). 

It is a powerful argument because we as societies are addicted to "progress" and have seen how we have changed our societies and lifestyles by utilizing effective means to the fullest. We all use this kind of argument on a smaller scale. Here are some everyday examples:

“Your brother was never good at school, but how can you who have been blessed with such talent and intelligence not go to college?”

“Your mother and I have worked for twenty years to make it possible for you to go to school, so you better study and take this seriously.”

“How can we leave and give up now when we finally have a good chance to succeed?”

Device of Stages: This is a form of argumentation that leads a person through many intermediate stages from refusing an argument to accepting it. Perelman writes, “When the gap between the theses the audience accepts and those the speaker defends is too great to be overcome all at once, it is advisable to divide the difficulty and arrive at the same result gradually” (87). This of course is common to most education courses, where a student who cannot possibly understand or agree to an abstract or complex principle is gradually "indoctrinated" or learns the steps to do so. It can of course also be abused to make people gradually accept unethical behavior that they initially refuse since it goes against their principles. I think the quote on vice by Alexander Pope is very appropriate here:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

This "device of stages" is also found in the EU directives on the process of naturalization, where the goal is to make conservative societies gradually accept homosexuality by saturation and making it the norm rather than the exception. Sales people often use this "trick" to get people to buy what they don't want through gradual assent to smaller propositions leading up to the final assent to the sales proposition.

Here is an example:

A: I could never kill someone.

B: Ok, I can understand that, you seem like someone with a general good will for people, who would never willingly hurt anyone.

A: I am.

B: Are there some people you care more for than others, somebody that you really love?

A: Yes, of course. My little sister for example.

B: And I assume you would do and have done a lot for her?

A: Yes.

B: Would you be willing to make sacrifices in your life if it could help her? For example, would you donate your blood if she needed it for an operation?

A: Yes, of course.

B: Would you lie if it could save her life?

A: Yes, I would.

B: What if you two were home alone, and someone broke into your house planning to murder your sister? You had a gun and could only stop him by shooting him? Would you pull the trigger?

A: And that would be the only way?

B: Yes, the only way to save her would be to pull that trigger. You already said you would be willing to sacrifice a lot to help her. So what if you have to sacrifice your aversion to killing in order to save her life?

A: Then I guess I would.

B: So what you are saying is that you could conceivably kill someone.

A: I guess….

Argument of direction is a tool one can use to resist the device of stages: Perelman writes that “foreseeing or anticipating future developments, oppose the first step, fearing that it will lead to a ‘slippery slope’ that will allow no stopping and end in total capitulation” (88). 

Here is an example:

B: Would you be willing to make sacrifices in your life if it could help her?

A: Stop, I can see where you are trying to take this. You are going to set it up so I feel selfish for not killing someone because then I am not sacrificing enough for my sister. You know what? I am not going to go there. I refuse to ever kill someone, period. There is always another way out. Your hypothetical scenarios aren’t realistic.

Argument of infinite development: This argument, often used in politics and science, professes to consider each realization in the given field only as a stage in an indefinite progression, usually towards some neverending quest for a utopia. 

Here is an example from the 1937 movie The Shape of Things to Come by H.G.Wells:

“Rest enough for the individual perhaps. Too much and too soon and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on. Conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its whims and ways, and then all laws of mind and matter that restrain it. Then all the planets that are about it. And at last, out across the immensity of the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.”

2.       Liasons of Coexistence (Connects realities on unequal levels)

Act/Person relationship. Do the actions define character or does the character define the action? Whether or not we agree that this is a good argument (sometimes we call it the ad hominem argument) it is always a factor that a person takes with him or her. Aristotle referred to the credibility a person has as his or her ethos

-          
      Ethos: “Past acts contribute to the good or bad reputation of the agent. The good name a person enjoys becomes a form of capital embodied in his person, an asset it is legitimate to use in case of need.” Also, it is in the context formed by the person that people interpret all his acts, attributing to him an intention that conforms to the idea they have of him” (93). One use of this "capital" is the argument from authority. 

Argument from authority: This argument is of interest only in the absence of demonstrable proof. Common criteria for establishing authority today are competence, tradition, antiquity, and universality. When we hear of a new discovery we first ask whether the researcher has competence to make and recognize such a discovery, and we often reject findings that seem to be going against the tradition of science or the established scientific truths. For example, many have rejected the possibility of the EmDrive working because it goes against the law of the conservation of energy. 

Here is an example of the argument from authority, which would work in contexts that accept these authorities:

“As Mother Theresa said, 'If you judge people, you have no time to love them.' We should be so full of Christ’s love that we would not have mind or time to judge other people because of their weaknesses.”

The main question here is the connection between a person and the acts performed by the person. 

-          Techniques to prevent the act from coloring the person or the person from coloring the act are techniques of severance and techniques of restraint.

Restraint: Here one may interpose time, or mention exceptional circumstances, an unusual state of mind, social surroundings, etc. "This was back in his college days," or "this was at a time of national shock," or "that is how everyone he surrounded himself with thought about the issue in those days."

These categories are not exhaustive nor are they always applicable. Perelman writes that “the categories developed in the humanities . . . are constructions of the mind, tied to a distinction between what is essential and what is accessory, accidental, or negligible” (100). It is often said that they are more useful than true, which means that they do not claim universality. 

3.       Double Hierarchies: This is another liason of coexistence. In this argument, the relationship between two terms in one hierarchy are judged by another hierarchy. We often talk of how there is a constitution behind the Constitution or a structure of divine or moral law that directs and gives validity to common law. Many things in our language and in our societies depend on a second hierarchy to give it meaning and legitimacy. This is often used in poetry and fiction. 

For example:

“After the grey, cold, and naked buildings of the industrial district it was refreshing to see the rich colors of the Lake District with its abundance of life and beautiful scenery” (describes scenery in terms of the rich-poor social hierarchy)

“Oh, I know that everyone needs work, clothes, and food and such. But I wish we could talk about other things too, since man does not live by bread and water alone. The spirit or soul of man also needs nourishing you know” (needs discussed in terms of the body/soul hierarchy).

Here is a powerful example from The Great Debaters where James Farmer uses a double hierarchy of divine law/common law to argue that unjust law is no law at all. (6:49-10:00)

As mentioned before, all these arguments rely on habitual structures of the mind, but I believe a good argument could be made that they work so well because they make use of structures that have served us well individually in a lot of decisions that we have made.

PS: Can you figure out which argumentation method I just used?

What Is the Difference Between Rhetoric and Manipulation?

I think there is a clear practical case to be made for rhetoric: since it is becoming more interconnected the world depends increasingly on good communication, therefore anything that makes an individual communicate more clearly and persuasive is obviously a benefit to that person. But what is the ethical argument for rhetoric? Why would a person with high ideals and democratic sentiments (as I would like to think of myself) study such an art? This is one of the oldest questions in Western thought actually, so I do not expect to solve it in one blog post. But these are some thoughts I have on the subject:

The first problem in making that argument is definition. Rhetoric is often, though mistakenly, used to describe the deceptive practices of some politicians and salesmen, and Plato once accused it of being "flattery" with no intrinsic ethical value (though he is more positive about it in later dialogues). In other words, if rhetoric was a person, it would be seen as a scoundrel, a deceiver. So how do you defend a scoundrel? Well, you can't, because a scoundrel per definition is indefensible. What you do is show how that label or definition is misplaced, and that another definition is better. Rhetoric is concerned with persuasion, but what is mislabeled as rhetoric is really manipulation: "Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious and deceptive." Though a person who persuades and one who manipulates may have the same end in mind, the process is different (as I will show later in this post). The end does not justify any means in rhetoric, because, as most honored rhetoricians have observed, the means of influence can have implications which are more severe than the influencer ever dreamed of.

Of course, every definition depends upon some other definition. What does it mean that something is ethical? Rather than subscribing to a specific theory of ethics, Kantian or otherwise, I will work from a definition of ethical as something which promotes ends which are commonly held as good or favorable to individuals and society, and while doing so adheres to a common code of acceptable behavior.    

Plato argued in Gorgias that rhetoric is unethical because its end is power, which is not necessarily good for everyone, and it achieves this end through flattery, which is dishonest and prevents good judgment.

The immediate ends of rhetoric, according to Isocrates, are persuasion and judgment. How can persuasion, which is a method of power or influence, be ethical? Well, one may as well ask how any kind of power or influence can be ethical. We have to use methods of power and influence on each other, since that is the only way we can function as a society. People don't think the same way, and without a method of aligning thought, attitudes, and actions, even temporarily, any kind of communal living would be impossible. To have a society, people actually have to agree first that they are a part of a society. Therefore, though methods of power always have a sinister potential, persuasion should be evaluated in comparison to the alternatives for aligning thought.

I think a good starting place is this description from Bryan Garsten's Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment: "Persuasion in the strict sense identifies a way of influencing that is neither manipulation nor pandering. The speaker who manipulates his audience so as to bring them to a belief or action without their consent, as Kant thought orators moved men 'like machines,' has not persuaded but coerced. In contrast, the speaker who merely finds out where his audience itches and then scratches there, as Plato thought pandering Athenian orators did, has not managed to change his listener's minds at all. To truly persuade people is to induce them to change their own beliefs and desires in light of what has been said. Though we speak of 'being persuaded' in the passive voice, we recognize the difference between being persuaded and being indoctrinated or brainwashed; the difference lies in the active independence that is preserved when we are persuaded" (7). Persuasion is never complete when an orator has finished speaking. It includes a process of internal deliberation and evaluation which enlists all of our rational, emotional, and deliberative faculties. As Garsten goes on to write, "An orator does not coerce; he merely puts words into the air . . . mental digestion is a process over which we can exercise some control. We reject arguments that seem far-fetched or suspicious. Being persuaded is not the same as learning, but it is related. When someone sits back and decides, 'All right, you have persuaded me,' he is not merely describing something that has happened to him. In spite of the grammar, he is describing something he has done" (7).

Rhetoric is the art of "finding the available means of persuasion in any given situation" and since persuasive speech is not powerful enough to coerce and persuasion is not achieved through mere flattery, rhetoric cannot be reduced to pandering or manipulation. Rhetoric depends on individual judgment, and thus it respects agency. Manipulation, on the other hand, tries to make use of automatic responses, neurological pathways, and mental reflexes to change one's mind without detection. A perfect "victim" for a manipulator will never know what hit him. The mechanism of persuasion is much more overt, and it involves choice.

This appeal to judgment or agency may be one of the most democratic aspects of rhetoric, which may make it ethical in a society which values argument rather than force as a method of influence. As Kenneth Burke writes, "Persuasion involves choice, will; it is directed to a man only insofar as he is free" (50). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca elaborate this point: "The use of argumentation implies that one has renounced resorting to force alone, that value is attached to gaining the adherence of one's interlocutor by means of reasoned persuasion, and that one is not regarding him as an object, but appealing to his free judgment. Recourse to argumentation assumes the establishment of a community of minds, which, while it lasts, excludes the use of violence. To agree to discussion means readiness to see things from the viewpoint of the interlocutor, to restrict oneself to what he admits, and to give effect to one's own beliefs only to the extent that the person one is trying to persuade is willing to give his assent to them" (55). As Dupreel writes, "Every justification is essentially a moderating act, a step toward greater communion of heart and mind." From these statements, argumentation (which inevitably uses rhetoric) is ethical because it is a method of influence which is more equal and less destructive than the alternative (violence, as shown below).

So persuasion is better than coercion through violence, but I would go even further. This is messy territory where not all rhetoricians would agree with me, but it is my personal opinion: Rhetoric can teach us how to use more ethical ways of communicating and how to improve our judgment.

It is usually acknowledged that there are two parts of rhetoric: rhetorica utens (the use of persuasive resources) and rhetorica docens (the study of persuasive resources). From Aristotle onwards, there has always been a normative element to rhetorica docens. There is, to be reductive, "good" persuasion and "bad" persuasion, good rhetoric and bad rhetoric. The best grounding I can think of for this distinction is found in the ancient often unspoken connection between rhetoric and democracy. As Tacitus writes, rhetoric needs the liberty of democracy to flourish. It was a system of learning bred and developed as a tool for and product of democratic deliberation, and that spirit remained in its traditions, topics and exercises. Good rhetoric therefore respects the constraints of democratic deliberation and considers what impact both its form and content will have on future public deliberations and indeed the demos itself. This is where there is a real difference between Hitler and Martin Luther King, even though both of them were very effective orators. In my coursework I will study Hitler in order to know what to guard against and how to debunk similar rhetoric in our society today, but I will not teach my students to talk, write, or think like him. Bad rhetoric poisons the well of public deliberation and undermines the virtues which are essential for a democracy. It prepares the way for totalitarianism. Good rhetoric supports and adheres to the basic virtues of democratic deliberation, one of the main being that you actually listen to both sides in a dispute. This normative function of rhetoric is perhaps best examplified by Isocrates and Cicero. Isocrates uses much of his Antidosis to teach and remind his audience about the dynamics and norms for good deliberation. For example, he warns his jury, "Those states in which an occasional citizen is put to death without a trial we condemn as unfit to live in, yet are blind to the fact that we are in the same case when we do not hear with equal good will both sides of the contest." He is warning here that if we do not hear both sides willingly and as much as possible without prejudice, our democratic deliberations may be no better than the arbitrary decisions of tyrants. Paul Woodruff writes that the intellectuals behind Athenian democracy "cultivated rhetoric and good judgment for their power in sorting out the better uncertainties from weaker ones" (176). 

This brings us to how rhetoric leads to better judgment. Eugene Carver mentions three ways, from an Aristotelian perspective, in which rhetoric can teach, train, and improve our judgment.

1. By judging persuasive speeches we experience an argument as an argument. Often we consider what we are being told as simple fact and do not realize that we are being given arguments which need to be evaluated for validity and acceptability before they should be accepted or rejected.

2. We learn not to rely solely on antecedent opinions, or what is usually called "reputation." It becomes clearer to us that those former judgments were also the results of a form of deliberation, and it may be faulty. Things that today seem cut in stone were at one time fluid; they were deliberated and argued and there were dissenting arguments at the time which may have been valid and which may contain lessons and warnings for current problems. 

3. We learn that concerning persuasion on deliberative matters there are no experts. Nobody can know what the future will be like, and nobody can know for sure what a certain course of action will lead to in the future. As such, we have to make decisions based on educated guesses and conjecture, and sometimes a normal citizen can have valuable insights into uncertain choices gained from personal experience which the experts are blind to because of the nature of their expertise.

Isocrates adds that the process of finding a good argument is similar to the process of deliberation that leads to good judgment, and therefore is good training: "for the same arguments which we use in persuading others when we speak in public, we employ also when we deliberate in our own thoughts; and, while we call eloquent those who are able to speak before a crowd, we regard as sage those who most skillfully debate their problems in their own minds." Most of the decisions in our everyday life we have to make by applying our skill of judgment to contingent and uncertain situations. The best of course would be complete certainty, but, as Isocrates writes, "in the next resort I hold that man to be 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." In other words, as Woodruff claims, "Rhetoric has more to do with setting up the conditions for good judgment than with persuasion . . . By bringing out the best points on both sides, rhetoric serves the cause of good judgment" (185). 

Finally, I guess my ethical case for rhetoric is based on my personal experience of teaching, studying, practicing, and experiencing it. Rhetoric does not overwhelm judgment. Judgment is all it can appeal to if it seeks to have any kind of power. A rhetorician meets an audience where they stand, with their experiences, beliefs, prejudices, hopes, fears, and desires, and works within their language and values to invite them to consider or reconsider opinions, attitudes, or actions. Any leader concerned about the deficits of public judgment should encourage the teaching of rhetoric and make the experience of citizen life a course in deliberative democracy. That decentralizes persuasive power, making people more immune to demogoguery which will forever be a potential evil in human societies. In the end, democratic deliberation teaches us humility. Any rhetor, no matter how skilled or thorough, in the end has to defer to the audience and say, as Isocrates at the end of his Antidosis, "Being assured, therefore, that I am of this mind, and that I believe that whatever you decide will be for my good and to my advantage, let each one cast his vote as he pleases and is inclined."

You have read my arguments and you have compared them with your own experiences, knowledge, and feelings. What do you think?

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).

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.

The Framing of Experience

Did you ever see, hear, or read something that made you see the world differently? Something that made confusing experiences you had had before suddenly seem meaningful and as a small part of a larger play? How does that happen? How can something somebody else thought up and made make your life different? This is my partial answer. It may seem a bit heavy, but go through it and then apply it to the movie clip at the end, and I promise you will have an "Aha" experience yourself, similar to the one I had when I studied this.

In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke claimed that in a work of art is an interpretation of life, and “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 [work of art]” (176), but it was unclear to me exactly how this occurs and why a reader may even want to have their own understanding of life co-opted in such a manner. John Dewey’s work is very instructive in filling out this process. 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. 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 partially by completeness and intensity that we measure the meaning and importance of our experiences. 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. 

I invite you now to let yourself be overwhelmed by this piece of art that I have found. It starts slowly and takes about 8 minutes, but I promise you that the experience of life it gives you will be worth living. 

 Notice how that film was able to give you the experience of life and death, love and loss, separation and reunion in 8 short minutes? It was a complete experience, presenting as something completed what we experience as relatively chaotic and incomplete. It was not a representation of all aspects of life, but it was a selection of life. It was also an interpretation of life as seen through the seasons and through the prism of separation and reunion with loved ones. It used experiences we all have had of separation, aging, and maturing, to form an interpretation of life in which I think we can all find something that resonates with us. Who would you like to see on the other side of that sea of reeds? Who have you seen pass beyond the horizon with you anxiously waiting for their return? If you were in any way moved by what was presented here, then you have experienced what I was describing, and you were allowed for a moment to experience life more fully, intensely, and complete.