Comments on: Persuasion

By: Meban

Meban — Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:22:20 +0000

Niccceee pagee

By: chutney

chutney — Mon, 12 May 2003 16:07:04 +0000

However I am not sure that irhetoric in political life is concerned to shift me from one ideological house to anaother.

Perhaps I didn’t lay enough emphasis on “the vision thing.” For something to be truly persuasive, it needs to carry itself within a broader vision that is more “filling” than the alternative. Absent that, I completely agree with you.

By: Gary Sauer-Thompson

Gary Sauer-Thompson — Mon, 12 May 2003 01:50:02 +0000

Chutney
I am sympathetic to your embrace of Rorty’s argument—-it is a classical claim of the rhetorical tradition that Rorty has shifted from and practices. To be persuasive an argument must appeal to the emotions , hence we need ornament. to shift our emotions. Rhetoric is the very stuff of politics.

However I am not sure that irhetoric in political life is concerned to shift me from one ideological house to anaother. It is to persuade me to adopt one course of action as opposed to another—-to take the path of public funding of health as distinct from private health insurance.

As for your ideological house its more an historical overlay of different styleseg. the neocons are both conservatives and liberals. It is quite common to be a hard-edged market liberal and a moral/culturall/political conservative.

To me that is deeply contradictory since the market keeps on undermining tradition but those who live in this house (eg. The Howard Government & the Bush Administration) are quite comfortable.

By: meika

meika — Fri, 02 May 2003 17:14:34 +0000

faculty?

i like the word faculty

but i am a bit originary, i afraid, and a bit choosey–>

body is the metaphor of choice,

(and to think that friends say i live in my head!!)

who owns the body owns the style of production,

and that means you bubba!

By: chutney

chutney — Thu, 01 May 2003 20:54:33 +0000

Hmmm… Perhaps the body is the faculty of choice? Or perhaps the body is that part of us seeking refuge in ideology?

Lumber, eh? Now we’re getting into who owns the means of production–of ideology. Don’t know what to think about that one…

By: meika

meika — Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:43:14 +0000

need ta put da body in dere somewheres

iddy iddy iddy

wheres the lumber now?

By: chutney

chutney — Tue, 29 Apr 2003 19:16:52 +0000

Because of my work with developmental theory, I can't agree that personal ideology is mostly stable. I would agree, though, that personal ideology within any particular developmental stage can be quite stable, no matter how many crises are experienced. But more often than not, a transition into a more developed stage is triggered by just such a crisis (or a handful of them), even though many crises don't have this effect. The stabilty you describe is particularly characteristic of the individuative-reflective stage, which can appear as early as late adolescence. The individuative-reflective stage revolves around the individual sorting out their own personal ideology for their own purposes. The synthetic-conventional stage--which appears first in early adolescence and revolves around choosing and conforming to a peer group--can also be very stable, so long as the peer group is stable. I agree with your points about the extra-individual stability of contructs like race and class. To keep with my analogy, perhaps these are the public infrastructure around which any ideology is built and upon which it depends. You can still build off the grid, but who'd want to, even if the trash pick-up is unreliable? (An important assessment instrument for assessing your own developmental stage will be going public in a couple weeks or so. I took the beta last week and found it quite revealing.)

By: Mark W. Anderson

Mark W. Anderson — Tue, 29 Apr 2003 18:14:45 +0000

chutney:

Excellent piece, well written and structured after my own heart – with analogy galore.

A quick idea, though – I would be a little less willing to ascribe situational flexibility to ideological foundations than you suggest. The means in which to analyze and understand the notions of “ideology” are many, and line the entire arc of how ideologies are in fact created. For example, the notions of class and race often and regularly transcend external shocks, both good and bad, as do the insertion of religious tenents into the equation. But while the creation of a “political ideology” can be viewed as situational, particularly in a culture in which the ideas of diversity and mobility are celebrated if not necessarily institutionally supported, I would argue that the core aspects of a personally-chosen ideology can – and should – not be flexible, but, in fact, should be considered somewhat inflexible. If my ideology is that handgun distribution is innapropriate for a free society, for example (or the reverse), aging, moving up (or down) a class, or experiencing personal tragedy should not change that notion if it was ever truly held – otherwise, it was never an ideology in the first pace, but simply a temporary, situational value I might have ascribed to in an effort to justify a place in my own personal history (which, I would argue, in an unrelated moment, is the core problem with political discourse in America today).

So, in short, I think “ideology” is, once embraced, more personally universal and less transitory than your piece might suggest, (because a number of other examples could be identified), even though you make an extremely important and valid point over the social development aspect of the phenomenon.

Good work.

Mark

By: chutney

chutney — Mon, 28 Apr 2003 21:02:17 +0000

My apologies to subscribers who got a double email (with a weird message at the bottom of the second). I guess that’s what happens when you try to update two blogs at the same time.