Persuasion
Like many people, I've been mulling over Matt Miller's Saturday Op-Ed piece in the Times, "Is Persuasion Dead?" Well, it can't be, I thought; it must not be. And yet it's pretty clear that nobody wants to be persuaded just about now. We are all bursting with opinions about everything, including exactly what's important enough to warrant having an opinion about. Some time ago, I ran through the blog roster of an collaborative "intellectual" site, and every third blog seemed to have gone dead since the election. I know that I have stopped following such sites.
And yet this blog right in front of you is never, not for one second, not trying to persuade you of something. For starters, obviously, it's trying to interest you, trying to get you to keep reading. And I am usually attempting to persuade you that a book is worth reading, or that an orchestra's concerts are worth showing up for. It hasn't happened lately, but I am known to argue that watching television is bad for you, period. That's a toughie, not because anybody disagrees but because they don't do twelve-step for television yet. (Do they?) Finally, as one friend put it one night, I'm trying to get my philosophy across. This still confounds me, because I don't know what my philosophy is. But prenez garde: these entries of mine are designed to transmute your curiosity into susceptibility.
So I had to keep asking myself Mr Miller's question. If persuasion is dead, we're wasting our time here. Then, while I was out running errands yesterday, it occurred to me that beneath the swarm of recommendations that makes up the surface of these pages there lie one or two behemoths that might eventually swim into your mind. The first - if indeed there are two - is the vital importance of thinking with as much breadth and tranquility as you can command, and of doing this thinking (taking notes!) as often as possible. Someday, someone will decide that thinking in this way is a kind of meditation, but it seems far too busy and capricious for that. Reading, of course, counts. So does good talking to a good listener (someone who combines patience with an insistence upon making sense).
The second thing is probably just what's missing from the first: think about what? I have an agenda: I should like you to think about fixing a few of our largest institutions. The corporation for one. Our educational system, for another. These systems are so embedded in our lives from such an early stage - we are schooled as very small children, at a time when our quality of life is determined by our guardians' adaptability to corporate structures - that we really don't think about them. That they're both pimply with problems nobody doubts, but the pimples are symptoms, not causes. Both institutions need to be re-imagined from the ground up, retro-engineered to suit us. We need to question our belief in growth, or at least to think more about development instead. There is ample evidence that school systems and corporations become more toxic and less efficient as they get bigger, while at the same time concentrating more power in fewer hands. I am confident that we are heading into a long-tail economy in which small enterprises will flourish, relying on a few massive service providers who will handle paperwork and so on the way 1&1 hosts Web sites. Most of us will not come into direct contact with mass marketers. More of us will be CEOs. Wealth will naturally fall into more equitable distribution. Our only problem will be finding occupation for the sociopaths who occupy so many of today's corner offices.
(As for education, I've already sketched my scheme of breathtaking reform elsewhere, but I might as well plug it.)
Until you begin to think about these things, and to persuade your friends to do the same, things will only get worse. We'll go on racking up huge debts and running out of oil. There will be no reason for potential leaders to lead. Is persuasion dead? That's up to you.
Comments
Television. Bad for you? Hmmmmmm. I loathe 99% of it, only use it for weather and movies on cable, & SPORTS!!!!!!! How else to watch a captivating tennis match such as the one that adorned the sets last Sunday from Paris? Or the hapless Yankees. Or the Grand Slam golf tournaments. You are not a fan of sports--a gross understatement, and I agree that television has damaged the sports ethic, but it has been a great way for many people to watch events from all around the world.......... and I know I am a better person for having watched sports on tv!!!!!!!
Posted by: PPOQ | June 8, 2005 10:47 AM
Taking up some of your points:
"Nobody wants to be persuaded just about now." I'm not sure anyone ever wants to be persuaded exactly, especially away from a cherished opinion. It's a fear that fundamentalists thrive on like yeast consumes sugar, and fear of opposing opinions obviates discussion period. I've been thinking about this in relation to not just our most broken institutions, but the polarities present in all our predominant societal systems (politics, law, health, and so on). Guarding opinions has created ever greater distances and more vociferous defenses between camps. If one might be tempted to eschew camps, it becomes more and more difficult with the media playing the role of defining the issues we are to discuss. The topics are wrong! Here's the key: "...someone who combines patience with an insistence on making sense." If only! Indeed, I find real persuasion involves the art of creating openings or gateways in a conversation pursuant to such an exchange of ideas and views where one person talks and the other person listens, and then the other person talks and the first person listens. Once each is satisfied that their views have been heard and digested by the other -- likely with the help of requests for clarification and some kind of logic, even if it is subjective or internal logic and can be identified as such -- one can begin to pursue persuasion based on understanding and arguing the other's points. Like in a formal debate. (Gee, what a transformative idea!) Already, this is a tall order. It's easy to see how such exchanges are impossible in OpEd pieces, on TV news, on round table cable news shows, &c. There is NO listening, there are NO calls for elucidation, NO demand for logic and truthfulness and accountablility. Who could be persuaded under such conditions? So, we need to think more.
"Think about what?"
Exactly. If we are defensive or fragile about our opinions, we are awash in emotion during a discussion, precluding the "breadth and tranquility" that make for a considered exchange. Changing institutions, down-sizing the automobile industry, reforming education all threaten the status quo, the strap most fearful riders grasp with an iron fist. We've lost our resiliency to adapt to change; and we've lost sight of what's good for all in a wholesale cultural NIMBY-fit.
"...fixing our largest institutions" requires us to look at all the contributing factors to a problem, not just the most nefarious symptoms. Iron grips won't be released if it means falling down in the carooming subway car. Institutions are guarded as if by Dementors by those who experience them as oxygen itself. The way I'm thinking about and contributing to "the fix" is to reimagine and assist people as individuals and as members of mass culture in more enlightened pursuits, as opposed to the false security of constancy, trying to satisfy the masses and satisfying no one, and making money for money's sake. Like Geoffrey Canada attacking the school system endemically and on all points in Harlem, we can recreate systems from the inside out. I'd start with leaders who can get take off their boxing gloves long enough to reflect, shape, and articulate a different vision for living. Wealth isn't doing it. We have more wealth than any country on the planet, and we still have societal and personal toxicity coursing through our collective veins. Who might incite us to different personal and societal goals? What might that person be doing now? How might we communicate it? A great opportunity exists in the very nemesis we revile: the media. Including this very powerful and undertapped Internet with its more intelligent blogs. Forgive me as I ramble excitedly on your topic. And thank you for stimulating some (hopefully) good thinking this morning.
Posted by: Susan | June 8, 2005 11:22 AM
Susan, you raise a fearful possibility: that we Americans have lost our resilience. How could that have happened?
I quite agree that reform is a person-by-person matter, something that cannot be mediated by the media.
PPOQ, you are such a good sport.
Posted by: R J Keefe![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 8, 2005 11:31 AM