Rules Get in the Way

Finally we have landed on my favorite part of rhetoric: ethos. I use to just overlook the meaning and simply categorize it in a long complicated chain of emotions.Basically to fool your audience into mesmerizing upon your presence. Turns out thanks to Heinrichs, there are three argumentative tools in any situation that can make anything seem good and proper, and I mean anything. Clearly Bluto was in fact a knucklehead that lacked in every aspect of common leadership skills, in every aspect of emotional intelligence, and in every aspect of logistics when it comes to decision making. Who on earth would follow a guy who finally figured out that “when the goin’ gets tough…and the tough get goin!”(66). What the fudge is that even supposed to mean? Where exactly is tough going?

Anyhow, he needs a lesson on earning trust. The exact moment when practical wisdom steps in. It’s really not that complicated because once again it is clear that everything is complete and utter bullshlagen. The real secret is to lead your audience into thinking you know how to solve the problem at hand. According to author John Bradshaw in his book Reclaiming Virtue: Practical wisdom “is the ability to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.” We can take any historical moment when humanity is at its most vulnerable point such as dictatorships and even wars. This is where desperation takes over any emotion, when “leaders” (Pinochet is an example) take advantage of the situation and manipulate the people through phronesis as Aristotle might say.

Still I am not 100% convinced with Aristotle. Please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that my environment has become more complex, competitive, and specialized that the opportunity to persuade using practical wisdom is getting annoyingly hard! John Bradshaw believes that “unbending rules eliminates the importance of context in our decision making.” High five Bradshaw rules have become brick walls these days. Take for example curfew rules in boarding schools. Students have been seriously punished for getting late and I can vouch on it. This summer I went to Columbia’s summer program and we got on campus at 1 a.m. instead of the regular 10:00 curfew. All hell broke loose. No matter how much sense our explanation made the counselors had no choice but to follow whatever the rules said and punish us for three days. The locker system broke down in Six Flags, so how on earth were we supposed to control the situation!? How on earth are we supposed to “make the right decision on every occasion” (68) when rules and regulations cloud our sense of judgment by turning reason into a yes or no answer?