Fake Quote Friday: Western Conference Finals, Eastern Hemisphere Summit Edition

“Who knows with that dude. He changes directions more than Chris Paul in the lane off a high screen and roll after a set play called during a timeout.” –Kim Jong Un

Satire Saturday: Man Dressed as American Revolution Soldier Shoots TV During Royal Wedding

Nathaniel Jackson, a 31 year old warehouse worker from Ooltewah, Tn was excited to watch the Royal Wedding. A history buff and enthusiastic war re-enactor, Jackson decided to wear his American Revolution outfit for the event. He had just worked a 12 hour shift and thought a few Red Bulls would be enough to keep him awake. Instead, he began dozing off. Unfortunately, he was holding his custom made, 18th century pistol often used for dueling. He was awakened when his gun–thankfully pointed at the tv–went off, shattering his new flatscreen. He plans to save up for a new television set and to continue re-enacting with his friends. #satiresaturday

 

Fox’s Game Ch. 12: The Chemist Changes His Mind and a Note on the Nature of Hindsight

Williamson County, Thompson Station

Williamson County is one of the ten richest counties in the nation, a haven for the homes of business people, athletes, musicians, and actors. Some of the homes are barely lived in, claimed as the primary residence for A-listers looking to get a break from California taxes. When most people, even Nashvillians, think of Williamson County, they think of Franklin, the historical Civil War town that houses expensive business and gated subdivisions.

But like New York city, Franklin is a small but loud part of a much bigger territory. Most of Williamson County is rural and quiet. And that peace—that remoteness—is what drew Kristoff Tulowitzki to the county. He is able to be isolated both physically and financially, which allows him to disappear amid the green trees of the county’s landscape and the green backs of the county’s economy.

His home looked the way one who has money but values privacy would look. The backyard led to several acres of wooded land, the front yard, nicely manicured, and the house itself a combination of rustic taste and modern style.

Robert and Julian sat at Kristoff’s dining room table waiting for their host to finish making crêpes. Robert flipped through a thick book on the coffee table titled Underground Organizations. His right hand moved rapidly left to right in a wide zig zag pattern. He spent only 10 seconds on a page before going to the next one. Julian stared at his cell phone, swiping his thumb upward, scrolling through his reading as quickly as Robert.

“Sorry to keep you waiting my good men, but no serious meeting can take place after dinner time without light snacks and a good drink.” Kristoff set his tray at the center of the table, the only spot not occupied by books and notebooks. “We are almost ready to start.”

Kristoff left the dining area and returned balancing three glasses between his palms and finger tips. He set a glass of water next to Robert and handed Julian one of the glasses of stout. He neatly stacked some of the books in order to clear room for his guests’ saucers. “There. Now we can properly talk. The right food and the right drink can comfort the body and stimulate the mind.”

He took a sip and continued. “First of all, I am glad to join your team.” Robert and Julian exchanged a look, unaware that they were any sort of team. “Second, you are free to borrow any books or materials of mine.”

“What changed your mind, Kristoff?” Julian asked.

“I realized that this was more than just a time-wasting game. Also, I concluded that I’ve spent my adult life studying these odd cases from the comfort of my home, and if I ever expected to turn my thought into action, I would have to do more than simply study. I was suspicious at the cookout, but I decided that suspicious was good. It meant that I may be involved in something real, something that could make a difference.”

“Well, we are glad to have your help,” Julian said.

Robert reached for a pastry. “So what’d you come up with regarding the tattoo?”

“The fact that I’d never seen the image distracted me. I finished my equations for the day. But I couldn’t quite shake the idea that I couldn’t recall coming across that figure. So once I got home, I called a friend in Washington, DC who could help me identify any meaning it might have. He said he’d call back. Two hours later he had a name: Knights of the Shadow. Apparently, they were an organization that formed during the late 16th century and were dedicated to the arts of memory, alchemy, and meditation.

“They believed they could train their memories to such an extent that they could pass knowledge between themselves without writing books and thus risk exposure to outsiders. Alchemy was emphasized, of course, so they could fund their plans, and meditation was so that they could utilize mind control.”

“Mind control?” Julian knew that the late Medieval period was a superstitious time. But studying to control people’s minds seemed outlandish even for that time.

Kristoff anticipated the objection. “It was to be a primitive form of hypnotism. You know how you can drive home and not really remember the drive? Well, driving is a dangerous and difficult activity. And they wanted to understand the mind state that could allow you to do dangerous and difficult activities without thinking. How could you get people to go on auto pilot and act without any conscious thought?”

Julian laughed, “Just come up with a pop dance song. People will stop what they’re doing and start doing the steps to the dance without thought of how to do the moves or how silly they look.”

“Dr. Daniels you joke, but that’s exactly what they were looking for. They were obsessed with harnessing the mind’s potential. They were aware of the subconscious centuries before Freud introduced it. They understood that if you could consciously control the subconscious of a person, then that person could be your slave and more importantly, they wouldn’t know it.”

Robert sat silently slowly sipping on his water. “So was Giordano Bruno the leader of this organization?”

“Yes. One of them,” Kristoff said. “He was the intellectual force behind it. But the leader was another man, Giuseppe Laurencio. He could more easily get others behind his causes, he was more of a natural leader whereas Bruno was more of an individual artist. He’s the one who chose the symbol and wrote many of the ideas. There were two other men involved, Francisco Costino and Raphael Renetti, minor players compared to Bruno and Laurencio but worth mentioning.”

“Fascinating but how does all this tie into Harvel?” Robert asked.

“Here’s how: the organization never really went anywhere. No one wants to join a start up that has a high chance of failure, especially one that’s essentially talking about undermining the Church. It’s one thing if you already have the tools, but if you’re talking about developing the tools over time, who wants to sign up for that?

“Anyway, the four men essentially wrote elaborate letters to each other using their books. But it never got out of the planning stages. Eventually, Bruno, like Jesus’s apostles, decided to write down his ideas after realizing that his plans might not materialize in his lifetime. That’s where we get The Book of Shadows. It’s a culmination of their research. And the memory wheel was a way to decode and learn their teachings.

“Over the centuries, the book pops up, going in and out of fashion. And like followers of a religious sect, some would take it as a life treatise meant to be followed literally, while others saw it as a helpful life guide, in this case a memory text. The more serious Knights of the Shadow would wear a wheel as a symbol of their loyalty.

“Anyway, the organization has changed over time. It’s less about memory, alchemy, and mind control. Yet it still possesses the initial spirit of wanting to control information, control minds, and control its funding. It’s possible Harvel was a member. Now, was he acting on his own or as part of the organization? That’s what we need to figure out.”

“If he acted alone, then the implications aren’t nearly as serious. What do you think it means if he’s part of a larger group?” Julian asked.

“It could mean that AquaCorp is some sort of target. Or maybe it’s a warm up for something larger like how terrorist cells will set off a car bomb almost as a practice run for a larger act. Or it could be a distraction from what they really want. Acts like this have several moving variables that can’t be understood until we’re studying them.”

Robert stroked his beard as Kristoff spoke. “You mean we can’t understand anything until we’re looking at it in hindsight?”

“Exactly.”

The three men sat in silence at the implications that their meeting tonight could, at the least prevent another death.

Robert sipped his water and cleared his throat. “So Kristoff, how can we learn more about these variables?”

“Well, we can develop an algorithm for several different scenarios. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a start. And by tracing the movement of the Knights of the Shadow, we can maybe find out where Harvel would have likely come into contact with them.”

Julian took one last gulp of his porter and set it down. “And the missing pieces start to fall into place.”

Kristoff finished his as well. “This is fun. Dr. Daniels, Dr. McDonough and I will research the Knights. If there’s evidence of their actions over the past few centuries, we can dig it up. It’s your job to get us the algorithms.”

“First off, if we’re gonna be a team, just call me Julian. Second, I know how to spell algorithm. That’s just about it.”

“I know. This means we need someone who knows math. Robert successfully recruited me. You’re a rhetorician. If I’m not mistaken, good rhetoric can influence the mind as much as anything the Knights of the Shadow or anyone else has thought up. Let’s see if you can persuade Dr. Morell to join our team. She understands algorithms as well as anyone we know.”

Julian picked up his glass hoping to get one last drop out of it. He knew it’d be difficult to convince her to hear him out for a conversation let alone join their team. He also knew that you don’t become part of the faculty at one of the country’s elite universities if you shied away from challenges. He smiled at his friends and said, “let’s see what I can do.”

Week 5 Post from My History of Rhetoric Course: Thomas Hobbes Edition

First off, let’s acknowledge that at the end of the first paragraph on page 255 of Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Skinner accidentally says “yolo.”

Now, with that out of the way, I have to say I agree and disagree with Hobbes. If you accept his definition of rhetoric as the art of sacrificing wisdom for eloquence, then I agree we shouldn’t do that. But I can’t cosign on how he only defines rhetoric in that way. Here’s the problem with Hobbes (and apparently, it seems, the Ramists as a whole): they assume that anyone you converse with are at the same level intellectually that you are. Anyone who’s taught knows that the further away you get from pure academic discourse, the more necessary eloquence is to both keep novices interested and to help them understand. When I first began teaching, I often supplemented information with entertainment, not because I wanted to deceive but because I hadn’t quite yet developed the cache of knowledge I now have. Also, it was a way of keeping the class’ attention as opposed to just dismissing early or giving them a time-eating writing exercise. It’s okay to entertain, as long as you remember you’re a teacher, not an entertainer.

Assuming he uses “eloquence” as a general term for entertaining, I can say that nowadays, I rarely sacrifice knowledge for eloquence, but I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without going through what I went through before. Rhetoric is about process more so than result. Hobbes translates Aristotle as saying “the end of Rhetorique is victory which consists in having gotten beleefe” (Art of Rhetorique 41). I think that’s misleading because if you contextualize Aristotle’s words, he’s talking about a scenario when you have “infallible truthes” (41). I admit that rhetoric as Hobbes presents it has more value when speaking than with writing because if you’re interested enough to pick up a book or article on a subject, eloquence may not be as important as the information. But as we know, even if you love to read and you’re lucky enough to have a job that entails a great deal of reading, you find yourself having to read things that you have little interest in as much or even more so than that which you do enjoy. In that instance, eloquence can add flavor to an otherwise bland bit of information, like putting salt and pepper on grits.

Moving back to Skinner, he discusses Sir Philip Sidney’s comparison of elocutio to “Courtisanlike painted affection,” going on to say that Sidney’s criticism “attacks […] excessive verbal finery” (274). This is where moderation comes into place. Too much makeup and you can look like Jan Crouch, the woman from TBN. But the right amount can accentuate one’s beauty, not obscure it like when Jennifer Anniston or Jada Pinkett Smith appear on the Tonight Show. Criticizing eloquence as being “separated from a proper knowledge of things” reminds me a great deal of the #nomakeup campaign (279). But here’s the thing: if you’re posting a picture of yourself without makeup, but it’s clear you’ve taken great care in making yourself look as good as possible with camera filters and multiple angle shots, choosing the best one and you accompany the picture with a grandiose announcement about how you’re not wearing makeup, then it becomes a self-serving mechanism every bit as much as posting a picture of yourself with makeup. The only difference is that you’re in denial in the picture without makeup. To those who look closely at your actions, you become just as transparent as the annoying guy who would post under the #nomakeup pic, “I think you look even more beautiful without makeup.”

When Hobbes translates Aristotle, he does the equivalent of what he accuses rhetoricians of doing, which is distorting information in order to serve his own ends, making Aristotle’s words “appear to be more or less than indeed they are” (De Cive 123). I’m not talking about omitting examples that he feels are unnecessary or even rearranging certain sections because it’d be easier for his audience to follow. Those are editorial decisions that must get made. But when I read footnotes saying that “Hobbes has greatly condensed […] and omitted […] where Aristotle distinguishes between rhetoric and dialectic and stresses the moral purpose that makes rhetoric an art,” that makes me question his ethos (A Briefe of the Art of Rhetoric 40). I know he’s smart and thoughtful, but is he honest? Speaking of the footnotes, I found them much more interesting and helpful than Hobbes’ discussion. I think that’s because some of Aristotle’s ideas are outdated, significant in their primacy but a relic of a bygone era. Of course, I don’t blame Hobbes for this, but I think it’s worth pointing out.

I agree (like a good rhetorician) with some of Hobbes’ assertions. His discussion about the problem of redefining terms has merit that we can still see today. The difference between generous and prodigal are a matter of the assumption from which you begin your reasoning. I don’t find his discussion on religion too off-putting like when he references the story of Solomon in saying “[g]ive therefore unto thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and evil” (De Cive 129). It’s easy to think of judging in a negative sense, coupling it with hypocrisy and bullying. Yet in extreme circumstances, we need to judge. For instance, if someone’s a pedophile, I’m keeping children away from him and turning him into the police. That’s an obvious example, but I think it’s important to have prudence or sapientia, especially in civic matters. With some people, religious faith—balanced with thoughtful ideas about politics and human affairs—can help with this. I disagree with Hobbes at how one can arrive at sapientia or how it looks, but I think one should have it, even more so if he or she is running a government.

In the same vein, Skinner asserts that Hobbes believes “practitioners of rhetoric not only fail to join wisdom with eloquence; they almost invariably bring it about that the one is disiungitur or sundered from the other” (284). He has a point, which is why some people are great speakers but terrible writers—the tricks they use in a public setting like talking fast or turning an intellectual discussion into a battle of wills can’t be used. But the other side is that so much of our wisdom literature is, not poetic prose based on proofs—but poetry, eloquent, figurative writing that is not necessarily ratiocentric. That’s not just a Western thing, that’s everywhere. And it’s not relegated to mythic stories. Solomon’s Proverbs, Rumi’s verses, all have what Hobbes hates. It’s possible that I’m falling into an ergo propter hoc fallacy by assuming that he would assume these examples of wisdom literature are actually wise. But based on some of his allusions, I don’t think I am.

This is a good time to include my weekly post on memory. Skinner talks about Hobbes’ view of sapientia, staing that “[t]his has its origins in sense and is shaped by the operations of memory, experience being ‘nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed with what consequents’” (259). Hobbes contrasts sapience—fact of the future—with the “wisdom” of the past. There always will be a tension between the “prudence” of history, which is cultivated through making sense of memory and the “genius” of the future, which is cultivated by questioning established knowledge in order to bring forth social and scientific breakthroughs. Like so much of our gothic and science fiction literature have taught us, we need both.