Taking an Interest

Sweet hat, Pericles.
Image from Wikimedia Commons,
uploaded by Jastrow.

My post today was inspired by an image macro my mentor posted on social media. I'm not sure of the provenance of the macro itself, and I hesitate to share it here without source citation, but the quote is attributed to Pericles (possibly erroneously), and his intellectual property happily now belongs to all of us:

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

I have been saying this, or something very like it, to my students for some time now. When I do, it's almost always in response to an apathetic response to an article they didn't want to read, or a discussion they don't want to have, because they "don't like politics."

Here's my confession: I don't like politics either.

I get it, politics sucks. It does. It's often confusing, it's frequently infuriating, and once you've got a handle on it, it changes. I'm not unsympathetic to a lack of interest in politics. But I'm not all that interested in math, myself, and I had to learn that too.

I came to a realization a while ago when one of my students excused not knowing who her representatives were by saying she "wasn't interested in politics," that neither am I, really. I don't enjoy reading political blogs, I'm not a fan of politicians in the way I'm a fan of footballers or rock stars. In a perfect world, I would never think about government budgets or fiscal policy or war or oppression or any of those things. None of this is a hobby for me. It's about survival.

When we don't "do politics" because it's boring, we can end up worse than bored. We can end up paying taxes for things we are fundamentally opposed to, and not paying taxes for things our communities need. We can end up giving up our rights to protect our safety, even when our safety isn't really in question. We can end up supporting the increased wealth of a very few, while the masses starve.

In short, we end up oppressed.

I'm not trying to tell anyone where their best interests lie, and I get that we might not agree on that. I understand that in asking people to get more involved with the political system, I am potentially asking people to work against my own best interests. But I feel like that's better than apathy. I feel like spirited debate between informed people of good will with differing worldviews is so much better than letting a few powerful people run roughshod over all of us.

I'm also not asking anyone to be interested in politics. I realize that we naturally take an interest in some things, and not in others. I'm just asking that we stop pretending that we have the luxury of not taking an interest in certain things even if we don't necessarily find them interesting.

  

A Two-Side Country

"Paraguay is a two-side country," my student said, to open his group's presentation on popular texts as cultural artifacts. Earlier in the week, we watched A Christmas Story, and I had lectured on the various ways that film functioned as an artifact of Midwestern US culture, the culture in which I was raised. For their group presentation, they were to discuss a popular text that illustrated their culture(s) in the same way.

My ears perked up. I wrote down "two-side country" in my notebook.

"There is a side that we want to show, and a side we do not," continued the group's spokesman, a young man who sits near the back and likes to surf on his tablet while I lecture. "Today we want to show you the both sides."

They began by showing me this: 


"This is Mercado 4," said the next young man in the group, whose turn it was to speak. 

"Mercado 4 here in town?" I interrupted him, even though I generally allow presentations free reign to go where students want to take them, because I knew this place, had stood there myself.

"Sí...I mean, yes."

"I've been there." My students' eyes got big, just for a second, but he recovered. 

"Not alone," he said, not a question.

"No, just me," I said, and he gave me the kind of look I imagine skydivers get a lot, that look that says "you're clearly insane, but I'll give you credit for chutzpah." 

"Did you get mugged?" I shook my head. "That was lucky," he said. 

I nodded, chastened, and the presentation went on. The group used 7 Cajas to illustrate some pretty hard truths about this country : corruption, crime, and the crippling poverty that leads people to do terrible things. I nodded as they spoke, and thought about the woman with a hunched back bigger than her head who I bought some cough drops from for less than fifty cents American, the dirty, naked, lost-looking children who sometimes wander the Plaza where I like to read during siesta time, the man who followed my parents and I for half a block pleading incoherently for alms, the only words I understood for sure being "please," and "rich American." 

Next, my students showed me this:


"We want to show you what is good here, so you will see both," said the final speaker of the group. The least fluent in English, he read from a prepared script. "We are working to be a cultural place, to improve the standing of women, and to make the poverty less for every person. We value art, and music, and beauty. The harp is our instrument, and we love to hear it because it is beautiful and it makes us proud of our home."

I thought about the openness of the people here, the beauty of the architecture, and the way even a simple meal here seems to nourish your body and soul. I thought about the harpist who played in my hotel restaurant one night at dinner, how he seemed to be performing a magic trick and making music all at once, and how pleased he was when my parents bought a CD from him. I could see why, in spite of so many terrible realities, a person could be proud to be from here.

"So you see," said the first speaker, "we are a two-side country." 

Burke, Breadwinners, and the "Rock of Certainty"

We've all heard this narrative on the "news" channel of our choice: "America is too polarized, they refuse to work with us, we are going to Hell in a handbasket, and it's all their fault." Depending on which flavor of media you prefer, you'll have inserted different values for "they" and "us," but the story is in general the same. And you know what? It's kinda true. Depending on where you're standing, either they are standing in the way of progress, or we are standing up for tradition. Or both, all at once. Or...something. It's disorienting to the point of becoming nonsensical, and maybe that's the part that really makes sense. As with nearly everything else humans do and say, this one can be explained using rhetorical theory (you knew I was gonna go there, right?).

He also looked like my grandpa.

Enter Kenneth Burke. Burke was a rhetorician who was interested in...well...pretty much everything. The ways people use symbolic language to communicate and persuade, the ways dramatic and narrative conventions can be mapped onto persuasive speech, the ways things change, and the ways things stay the same. Of interest to me, today, is a wee little section in his book Permanence and Change, in which he discusses a phenomenon he describes as "The Rock of Certainty."

Pathos, Puppies, Panzer Tanks

Here's the scene: It's late at night, and you can't sleep. You sit on the couch all bleary-eyed and cranky, pick up the remote, and start channel surfing. You settle on something light, something that doesn't tax your intellectual or emotional capabilities too much (after all, you are tired), maybe an old John Hughes movie or a little Adult Swim. Suddenly, right when you are at your least able to deal with it, it happens.

Aristotle, Ethos, and Tiger Woods

Ethos in Action

Here's the thing. If you're still here after reading my last blog post on Aristotle, there has to be a reason for that. Maybe (I hope)  you found value in what I had to say. Maybe you felt an emotional attachment to the material (even if it was just giggling at pictures of Doctor Who). Or maybe you felt like you got a sense of me as a person, and you decided you wanted to hear more. From that person. The "me" of the blogosphere.

Ta-da! You've just defined ethos.

Ethos is one of Aristotle's basic rhetorical categories, and any argument that hinges on the character of the speaker is using it. Aristotle puts it like this: "We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is..." In other words, we believe good men because they are good, not because they are experts. And this gets really interesting in modern culture. Consider, for example, the curious case of Tiger Woods.

Refusing to Choose

Beware! I bring you terrifying news! Are you ready? Are you? OK. Here goes. When teachers aren't being teachers, they do other things. 


I know. I'm sorry. Shocking. 


It's easy to be sarcastic on this subject. At least, it is for me. For Judy Buranich, though, this is not funny at all. Because Judy Buranich is, like me, a teacher and a writer. She's a significantly more successful writer than I am, at that. And that might have been the problem. Because Ms Buranich is a writer of romance novels. And that apparently makes her fair game for the morality police.

Ms Buranich

Repelled by Man

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.  ~William Ralph Inge

Today I saw something so horrible that I almost don't want to talk about it. But I think I need to. I think everyone needs to. As much as I hate the religious overtones of the word, today I saw something evil. I saw members of my species viciously attacking another member of my species, and for what? Was there a cause being advanced? Were the attackers taking justified revenge or moving to protect themselves? Was the victim threatening anyone? No. The only cause here was stupid, festering, ignorant hate. And that's as close to a working definition of evil as someone with my upbringing and religious background can find.

I'm going to give you a minute to watch the video. And then as long as you need to process it. I am still  processing it. If you feel so moved, please sign the petition. When you're ready, read on after the jump.

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