Don Juancho Panza

Don Juan and his side kick. That’s all I could think of at first when I saw Mr. Player and his poor lab rat strutting around Mexico sweeping girls of their feet. It was absurd, yet hysterically funny the way that Don Juan’s “friend” was constantly used as a shield against the raging women, and as mediator to avoid the punches and slaps that clearly Don Juan deserved. It reminded me of Candide and Cacambo: his temporary servant during his voyage to America. Cacambo was once again a facilitator between Candide and Lady  Cunégonde. Even if we head towards Spanish Literature we find the one and only Don Quijote and his partner Sancho Panza. This illiterate sidekick can only provide few things to his delusional master, but remains a faithful companion throughout the story. By the end of the play I guess you could say Don Juan had a pretty devoted companion as well, he could be the most comfortable chair any one has ever sat on, he could shape shift into a surf board, and he could withstand the pinches, shoves, and screams of obsessive women.

The play was set out brilliantly from the lights to the actors and the impeccable props. And let’s not forget the key part: it was HYSTERICAL. From the Mexican accents to the mocking remarks, we have to face the fact that it is all too familiar in our culture, “ay whisky para la foto, whisky que se me va a acabar el rollo.” The key factor that made the setting and the ambience look real was the secondary characters that always had a role in the background. Weather it was on the beach or in then wresting stadium, every corner of the stage was purposely made to match the Mexican culture. In the middle of the lifeguard scene (my favorite by far), the actors that were supposed to be enjoying the beach could have been frozen in time as the main scene carried on, but instead they had their own dialogue and skit that made it even more entreating for the audience. Also the way they used the space on the stage was perfect. They were fighting with wooden sticks in the theater chairs and running over Mr. Viscradi for God’s sake!

It's a Thug Story

It’s funny how most of us have all been through that horrific situation once or twice in our lifetimes. Still it seems hard to picture someone who goes beyond borders to write a book about the “thugs” in the Manchester United football club. Sure enough, I must confess that my experiences of feeling crushed to the bone, feeling my shoes crumbling under my feet, and feeling the hot humid air of everyone’s breaths embarrassingly takes place in the high school theater. 

This is the exact reason why I found this book so fascinating. The first thing I realized was that in situations, such as those Buford chose to be a part of, the “supporters were in the position to do anything they wanted” (14). It was such the organized chaos, and the petrifying numbers of people that even the local authorities were having trouble containing this destructive crowd. What’s more ironic is that this huge fan club is willing to do anything and chant as loud as possible in order to get everyone’s attention.  They have their own Star Spangled Banner. All of this energy is focused on one match. Just one match can create an entire business that runs on selling illegal tickets and makes profit off bets and alcohol. Just one match can turn a working family man into a lunatic who pees on the crowd and throws bottles at innocent civilians. But now picture this. Imagine if all of this energy, if all of this patriotism, spirit, and obsession were focused on an actual global peace cause. Imagine if the followers of Kony or the marches here in Bogota against the FARC were composed of people as devoted in body and mind to what they stand for. Mind-blowing.

Can’t wait to keep reading!! Meanwhile I’ll leave you with Taylor Swift’s recreation video called “Thug Story”. As soon as I saw the books title it reminded me of a song Taylor made with Hip-Hop artist T-Pain. Notice how the name Thug is expressed as a type of gangster/bad boy type of attitude and Taylor does a pretty good job considering her songs are always about a small town girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DFMbLKEjaI

Gandhi Steps Up

Now that we have seen what Churchill has said about Gandhi lets listen to what Gandhi has to say when he heads towards London in 1931. Let’s just say that after reading this speech I realized they didn’t like each other very much…..actually on second thought I think I’ll expand my vocabulary and say it was pure hatred! Obviously it’s not like they were cursing each other through the media, but instead they used our old friend the fallacy.

Ad Hominem

“That law then which governs all life is God.”

It pretty self-explanatory as to why this would be fallacy. First of all we are talking about a preeminent leader of Indian nationalism who inspired movements of non-violence basically through civil disobedience.  This claim is very controversial after all what proof does he have of God being the ruler of all existence? I could easily write a book arguing on the falsity of the claim. The importance of all this isn’t about God and the law, it’s about the fact that being the role model he was he had to believe in God. What arguments did he have to support his decision? By reading this speech I would say none that actually count, therefore as an audience I just can’t believe what he says right?

Red Herring

“ He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. “

I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel like he is throwing us off topic here! At first he is talking about God’s presence, which I have to point out is a pretty tough topic to argue even though  he seems to be rocking it thanks to the fallacies. Somehow he wraps his sentence up with “the supremacy of the moral law.” Well that escalated quickly! I don’t blame him I mean the basic idea is to “win” an argument, and in order to do this he probably felt he had to lead the attention away from the argument and to another topic.

If Gandhi Steps Down, Then He Shall Lose!

Common fallacy

“Why should these unpracticed, unproved, unrepresentative, self-chosen groups of Indian politicians disdain the immense possibilities offered within the limits of the Statutory Commission's report, and demand an immediate setting up of a United States of India, with themselves in control, and the British army at their orders?”

Just by reading this question it’s already more than obvious that more than two issues are merged into one. Churchill starts off with criticizing the groups of Indian politicians, and then he mentions the Statutory Commission’s report, followed by the setting up of a United States of India, and holy god he finally gets to his final issue about British Army orders! Is it just me or did he just throw in an entire essay in one question? This fallacy is very common, and by using a type of vocal diarrhea in this sentence Churchill is losing his point. What is he finally going to talk about? Which is more important? He does a big NO NO and therefore his proof is disconnected from his conclusion.

When he is referring to the politicians as unproved and unpracticed he is immediately implying that they will disdain the report no matter what happens. Churchill is pretty sneaky in this question because he wants to trick the respondent into admitting that these Indian politicians are absurd.

Straw man

“While any community, social or religious, endorses such practices and asserts itself resolved to keep sixty millions of fellow countrymen perpetually and eternally in a state of sub-human bondage, we cannot recognize their claim to the title-deeds of democracy.”

Awwwww was it to hard? What I think happened was that Churchill realized that if he was going to start talking about how communities live in a responsive environment, he may be faced with controversy from the audience. Instead, he looks towards an easier exit in this case the deeds of democracy and uses it to start a new topic. He was pretty smart in doing so because one thing is talking politically about democracy (something I’m sure he’s good at) and another thing is arguing about people relations and their role in society.

Slippery Slope

“If at the sacrifice of every British interest and of all the necessary safeguards and means of preserving peace and progress in India, you come to terms with Gandhi, Gandhi would at that self-same moment cease to count any more in the Indian situation.”

Well that escalated quickly! Churchill just took the sacrifice of British interests and all of a sudden he’s talking about Gandhi stepping out of the whole situation. I would say that’s a little extreme don’t you? This once again disconnected his whole purpose from his conclusion!

The Fallacy Project

We might not even realize it but as Gabriela Aldana said in her blog,” we use fallacies all the time, and many times we do so unintentionally.” I must say it is really sneaky when we decide to use a fallacy in most of our rhetorical arguments, but  the fact that my audience didn’t notice that there was absolutely no relationship between my choice and my proof is really not my fault. My error in reasoning may or may not be caught because it’s not that I am wrong about the facts, but rather my premise isn’t exactly the best support for my conclusion.  There are a bunch of different fallacies that we use every day in our arguments so I took out my favorite ones so together we can understand what a fallacy is exactly.

Hasty generalization

When we tend to make those risky generalizations about groups or samples of people or things we are stepping into a dangerous zone. Stereotypes are a perfect example of a hasty generalization such as saying “Math Club is for nerds” or “Colombians are drug dealers.”

Slippery slope

This happens when you defend your argument by claiming that a type of chain reaction will take place followed by a consequence, but there’s not enough evidence to make such assumption! For example, I might write in my Economy paper about the perks of not going to school,

“If students in the U.S are constantly dropping out of high school they will never get any stable jobs, If they don’t get good jobs they won’t be able to sustain their families, and they might as well end up working in McDonalds the rest of their lives before they realize stealing is an easy escape.”

Appeal to Authority

We tend to refer to sources of high authority in order to make our arguments sound more professional and therefore valid, but the truth is we are just trying to impress our audience with cool and famous names. We try to sound like experts, but instead we are committing the fallacy of appeal to authority.

“We should legalize drugs in all the states. Time magazine and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper have agreed publically it is the correct thing to do.”

In Gabriela Aldana’s video Harry Styles was trying to make a point about how it is to walk out on the streets being famous and all, but he got kind of nervous and just said, “London’s quite big.” LOL Gabriela is right I mean there was absolutely no relationship between the interviewers question and his answer.

Any way there are a billion (hyperboleJ) videos on YouTube and there are like twenty more examples of fallacies in chapter 15 and 16. I had a bad day so I won’t show all of them because I’m a fearless bastard. Any way I did take my time in finding the coolest video on fallacies because it’s like commercials and political campaigns that use fallacies to persuade and audience.

TIS EPIC ENJOY!

STRIKE 1, STRIKE, 2, AND YOU’RE OUT!

Now we are in the middle of our argumentative journey through the rich pages of Jay Heinrich that leak rhetoric all over your desk. No literally we are in the middle of the book all jokes aside. That blank page called “DEFENSE” IN BOLD AND CAPITAL LETTERS MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A DOOR YOU WISH YOU NEVER OPENED! Actually, it’s one of the best opportunities to walk out of an argument owning the place like a boss (my 9gag friends understand), and feeling good about it afterwards. In Chapter 15 the title says it all. I learned certain foul plays that can catch up to you when you’re gambling with logic. Let’s take the fallacy of power to introduce our weakness of appealing to authority.

Me: Well if the principle thinks “Pro-Kindness” is a great title, then we should put the rest aside.

Typical Wise-Face reply: Are you seriously going to go with it just because the principle likes it? Jesus! I mean have some personality and be original for once.

But wait a second? How can she attack me like that? After all the High School principle is the judge of our work and is probably going to like it just a little more if the title was previously approved. I guess we can go all Hurricane Sandy and mix everything up, but won’t we be risking our final grade?

Another cock-blocker in persuasion is when you start to argue the inarguable. You must really be struggling with your persuasive tequenique because if you start to get rough and abusive, that can lead to a point where your goals are clouded and your words don’t even make sense. Stick with the argument and “remains intent on real persuasion” (158). Looking back at previous lessons I’m sure I can point out other epic fails (once again up top for my 9gag buds) when it comes to persuasion.  In Andrea De La Torre’s blog, she points out that  in many arguments, when you don´t have anything more to say, you start to babble. According to Andrea, “Babbling can be easy to see when you are talking to close friends or to a small group of people, since their commonplace is more likely to be the same or similar.”

Bad Logic

How can you even use bad logic? Is it facts and statistics gone wrong? According to this book (my new holy bible), bad logic is used all the time by the one and only teen enemy: parents. I mean who hasn’t refused to eat their oatmeal when all of sudden children are starving in Africa, and how about the extreme loaded questions that are thrown at the American public during Election Day! And let’s not even get started with syllogisms.

Mayor Premise:  If Johnny is eating sweets every day, he is placing himself at risk for diabetes.

Minor premise:   Johnny does not eat sweats everyday

Conclusion:       Therefore Johnny is not placing himself at risk for
                              Diabetes

I know, I know duh its stupid that’s what we all say, but marketing company stake advantage of such obvious logistics and once set into a Venn diagram it all makes sense. The biggest circle represents Johnny eating sweets every day and placing himself at risk for Diabeties. Place the circle for him not eating sweets inside it, and then a dot for Johnny not placing himslef at risk for Diabeties.

In order to avoid the boredom, Aristotle edited the rhetorical logic into a neatly packed enthymeme. Basically what I does is it takes a commonplace (we learned what it was in my previous blogs) in the

Audience’s mind, and uses it to support a choice. By taking out the middle line and emphasizing on the “if-then” part, then we have a perfectly used example of logic. Let’s take his own reasoning to explain this.

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man – The enthymeme would skip the obvious line

Therefore, Socrates is mortal

There we go! Suddenly it’s not all that bad right? Another useful figure is the paralipsis. What it does is it mentions something by saying you’re not going to mention it. It may sound once again plain old stupid, but you will be surprised by how much we use it in our daily lives.

• I surely need not remind you to get your Christmas shopping done early (Now you are actually reminding him!!).
• I need not mention that everything should be done within the deadline.

I don't have to remind you that it is really urgent, right?

 This video is the perfect example of how commercials use enthymemes in order to get a clear message across. The commercial starts off with a simple argument about an extremely annoying brat who wants candy at a supermarket. His dad refuses and the kid just goes shananigans! At the end a simple text is displayed saying “Use Condoms”. It’s no surprise this video was banned because it really makes it seem as if kids were just sent from hell to ruin your life. Apart from that it uses a commonplace, in this case the belief or value that people should use condoms to avoid pregnancies and diseases.

Get Off Your High Horse

Socrates believed speech towered over thoughts and actions, so why not use this philosophical point of view in our daily arguments?

The first thing you must understand is that entering a new art of persuasion requires you to get off your high horse. By that I mean you will put your audience first. In other words, give them what they value most, and by the end you will have hypnotized them into believing your choice is the advantageous one. Watch and learn.

Me: Jules hurry upstairs I need help fixing the TV! You are the only person in this whole house that can work this thing! 

Jules: I have no idea how it works call someone else I don’t have time.

Me: please it’s the premiere of the walking dead in 5 minutes!

 Jules runs up the stairs, flies over the couch and is fixing it in no time.

Sneaky me! As you can see in order to manipulate his actions I started with something me audience (in this case Jules) believed in or wanted really badly: The Walking Dead.

Sure, I could have told him I had to watch the presidential debate for my English class so I could come prepared to class, but what does he care about my grades in English class? Is it going to be useful for him in his state of short term satisfaction? I think not. 

Still there might be an issue when you use this kind of persuasion technique. Babbling is the brick wall that keeps you from changing their point of view, and sure enough one of the symptoms of this incurable disease is the tendency to repeat the same rationale over and over. Houston we have a problem. Yes this is what we call an unpersuadable audience.

Me: Jules it’s way better to take the highway and then cross the bridge so you can get to the gym.

Jules: No we always take this route it’s the fastest way! 

Me: But the newspaper said there was going to be traffic jam!

Jules:  I don’t care we always take this route it’s the fastest!

 Now that’s a bummer, but it’s not over because persuading on my own terms is finally here! Chapter 12 has introduced to me an easy escape to the type of arguments that somehow get you cornered in a wall with no escape. The persuasive strategy of definition is what will allow you to stack everything in you favor. We have a pyramid of choices that will sooner or later give you a final win.

1.      Facts

When you’re in the middle of a heated conversation, your top priority is to seem smarter and wiser than your opponent. This is why we have facts. They can not only completely turn a conversation to your favor, but they make it really hard for someone to answer back to you. After all, facts are facts. Still, there may be that awkward moment when you don’t really know much about the natural habitat of sea lions, and your argument about claiming to do the project with no help suddenly seems hanging by a thread. NO need to worry help is on the way!

2.      Redefine terms

The teacher may be accusing you of being irresponsible by leaving all the work up to your classmates (as many of us tend to do), but why should you accept the fact that she is labeling you based on first impression. Don’t give up so quickly because you can redefine this term in your favor.

You: If “irresponsible” means staying afterschool in the EVL for an entire week, and interviewing my uncle who happens to work at the aquarium in Cartagena, then yeah sure I’m as irresponsible as can be. Go ahead and just praise the rest of the group without giving credit to an underachiever.

3.      Claim the discussion is irrelevant

If you still find yourself loosing points after all the strategies, then you have no choice but to claim the discussion is irrelevant

You: I really don’t know where this is coming from Mr. Sinisgali, I mean we already presented to the class and they seem to have got the message. Sea lions are an endangered species and that’s what this whole assignment was about, therefore I believe my grade should reflect that.