Ted Stolze: Resources of Hope, Logics of Struggle

Isn't "postmodernism" a new word for what used to be termed "rhetoric", in the traditional curriculum?

During our lifetimes "the left" has hobbled itself in part by modeling its practice on pedagogy. "If only we could teach people to be more rational." And so we surrendered contact with people's emotional nature to "the right", who manipulate emotion efficiently and ruthlessly, to evil purpose.

So that the question, in my excuse for a mind, is, How to reach people on pre-conscious, unconscious, and emotional levels, without being manipulative as are the right, and without fostering irrationality, as do the right?

This is the core of TT's glacially-paced Narratives project.

The danger of manipulativeness is on my mind lately. Rhetoric is not far from Sophistry, eh? When criticizing the narrative practices which we've labeled "incantatory", we're directing attention to that junction of rhetoric and sophistry. Where an "incantation" is merely one particular verbal maneuver for making a problem appear to disappear. The use of words to avoid a problem. When the problem being avoided is exactly the one that most needs solving.

I know people -- we know people -- who are Left Sophists. That's their specialization: find the phrase that makes the problem disappear.

In my opinon a healthy Left practice would seek the channel that runs between Scylla and Charybdis, where Scylla is right-wing-style manipulation of irrationality, and Charybdis is left-wing-style fetishization of rationality married to the pedagogical model.

Are we saying the same thing?

I wanted to share another thought about the intersection of reason with eloquence. Forgive me for struggling a little with how to phrase it.

The intersection of reason with eloquence is: words.

But, some words are easier or harder for people to hear.

This is one of the "effects" of ideology in concrete societies: ideologies determine not only the interpretations of words|narratives|discourses, but also their basic audibility.

Thought experiment. Activist walks into a bar anywhere in the U.S., says, "Howdy, I'm a Communist, let me buy you all a drink." What happens?

Second activist walks into the same bar, says, "Howdy, I believe people who work for a living should have their own political party, let me buy you all a drink." What happens?

In my opinion, those are two ways of saying the same thing. The different result directly reflects the history and effectivity of ideology in American society.

If this is at all reasonable, there's a first step to be undertaken by activists, which needs to take logical and practical priority over any discussion of reason versus emotion, eloquence versus whatever eloquence would be versus. Which is: identify and catalog and LEARN TO USE words|narratives|discourses which people are ABLE TO HEAR.

This is the crux of TT's "Narratives" project.

IMO it's one of the core indexes of the profound incompetence of the sectarian left.

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