Dr. Doug, you made me a gear-head. Success.

Well, well, well. Since our prompt was quite unassertive, and since Kaylee covered the bruising of Perelman’s text, I might just bud off my in-class write today as it links to believability, persuasion, etc. I need to start here because I have to admit the Perelman reading itself didn’t really shift the way I perceive the role of persuasion in rhetoric…it’s still there, it’s still tangential, it’s still not the most interesting part of rhetoric to me. My synthesis paper actually helped me figure out what I am most deeply intrigued by now within this study, which are the mechanisms behind how rhetoric “travels” or “situates” and where it is “located” or “locates” in the first place—is it embodied, is it felt, is it precognitive, is it only in our consciousness and is that an abstract or a material phenomenon, or both, neither?

So…Doug’s question today: “Is there a difference between what is believable and what should be believable?”

But what do you have to know before you can even decide do I or should I believe in something? Does believing or should-be-believing matter at all if we don’t have someone to believe with or to tell our belief to, judge our belief against, etc? In fact, these questions seem to be at the base of all my observations these days: “but how do others perceive what I am perceiving—I feel like my perception is so irrelevant.” That seems to be the more frustrating part for me…the part where I am constantly considering relational perspectives to mine. It seems simple to distinguish something should be believable to us individually, but what we really want is to have our beliefs believed by others, to find relation, to find a network of belief. But where does the rhetoric come from, where does it go, when does it linger long enough to become a belief, a network of belief, or not long enough to create a new critique of something, a new-non-belief, belief?

 I am currently experiencing this tug of war in my project for this class on Neurorhetorics—there is this push in the field of Rhet/Comp to hook up with cognitive neuroscience to make the field look more reputable and self-evident in its intellectual prowess. But some Compies really begrudge this move because it is giving in to a “making something believable according to society” when it should already be legitimate in its own right. But what is that own right? And what are the heuristic systems or mechanisms exclusive to sciences that’s simply cannot inform studies of Rhet and Comp…that is where I currently remain skeptical. I have heard the argument that Humanities already have sufficient heuristic systems to find and make meaning, but I think to say those systems are wholly separate from “scientific” heuristics is short-sighted…we use the scientific method every day in rhetoric: hypotheses based on precedent and observation, the experiment (e.g. social exchange), and a reflection data analysis and conclusion of the social exchange. And by definition, the scientific process has to be rhetorical because we made it, so why would we be so quick to cast aside help from the sciences? Why can’t rhetoric come from a scientific mechanism? Is there scientific mechanism that isn’t rhetorical?

Okay. I’m gonna stop now. Gotta leave something for the course project. J

"The once and future queen"

Whew. This one was a bit of a struggle. Maybe it's the fact that I've had a long, long day; maybe it's the fact that I'm very much over undergrad entirely and have come down with a severe case of senioritis. I'm not quite sure.

Maybe I just haven’t had enough coffee today, or maybe I’ve been out of the blog game too long... but Perelmen, for the majority of “The Realm of Rhetoric” seems to be overcomplicating an already overcomplicated idea and writing himself into circles. His writing style just seems a little excessive, overly ornate, with several sentences that run over six lines long.

But enough on style; Perlemen’s distillations of the most prominent philosophers actually seem quite accurate, besides being overgeneralized. These are all familiar names that we, as university writing majors, have come to know very well. As Perelmen says, Socrates seems to also suggest, at certain points, that the realm of rhetoric is exclusive to philosophers, to those in the “high ground” of thought and not the average person. Perelmen ponders Socrates rhetoric, wherein the rhetor must always strive towards some sort of truth to make his argument legitimate and something more than simply “the effects of language, the charm of the word, and a resort to flattery” (154). Both Socrates and Plato seem somewhat idealistic in their definitions of rhetoric.

Then, in comes Descartes with his response: “The attempt to elaborate a philosophy wherein all these would be either self-evident or compellingly demonstrated leads to the elimination of all forms of argumentation and to the rejection of rhetoric as an instrument of philosophy.” Mic drop.

I’m not entirely sure when Perelmen’s own opinion of rhetoric begins and the famous philosophers’ ends. But, honestly, I am so tired that most of this sounds like gibberish to me…

For example, this is one sentence: “Having noted the theological background of the conception of science, both with Bacon and wish Descartes, and having underscored the paradoxical and hardly admissible aspect of the Cartesian imagination, which would subject all opinions to the same criterion of self-evidence as mathematical theses, we should point out that even Descartes had to trust opinions for his provisional morality.” Sixty words in one sentence.

The same idea could have been expressed in much simpler terms: “Considering science’s roots in theology and the perspectives of Bacon and Descartes, all opinions must be subjected to the scientific theory.” Done, in a third of the words, without much significance lost. The last clause is somewhat arbitrary, since provisional morality is always based upon speculation; Descartes makes it clear throughout his Meditations that he cannot truly be sure about his opinions on morality, which lies outside of the realm he determined to be his absolute truths.

I do, despite his wordiness, appreciate the author’s distinction between mathematical “truth” and self-evident “truth,” although we have encountered the same opinion numerous times in this class, written much more eloquently.

But then, he quickly loses me again in a tangle of musings about the reconciliation of different, seemingly opposing paradigms. As a grand finale, Perlemen provides us with perhaps the worst definition of rhetoric that has ever been written: "the once and future queen of the human sciences."

Let's just say this one wasn't as moving as some of the other readings for me.

Identity pt. II...Taken and Compromised?

After confronting the truth (although itself reframed throughout this course) that "rhetoric basically equals everything," it was comforting to return to familiar ideas of rhetoric as argument and persuasion, even amid Ramage’s lecture-style prose.

Like Megan, I agree that rhetoric functioning to persuade and argue is not inherently wrong. Ramage writes to the struggle of controlling our meaning:

"We are assaulted on a daily basis by various pitches for readymade identities, proffered by advertisers, employers, writers, and propagandists…And my capacity to resist, oppose, and entertain divergent beliefs—to understand my ways of talking about the world “in terms of” alternative ways of talking about the world—is a fundamental expression of my humanity" (p. 69-70).

At the same time Ramage converges rhetoric on persuasion and argument, he cannot avoid discussing its broader implications to humanity and ways of being. This unavoidable expansion of application reminds me of the three diagrams sketched on the class white-board. We often attempt to isolate or condense an idea, reducing it to digestible form. Which is great, because bite-sizes let us more easily comprehend. However, upon analyzing the neatly condensed idea we see that infinite connections and extrapolations are possible. Rhetoric will never be containable. Focusing on argument and persuasion is another lens, like square/groovy, and one likely to yield insight.

What matters most here? This stands out: “The act of writing can eventually render the agent a servant of her own act” (p. 77). Argument and persuasion have the potential to take great strides towards equality, freedom, peace, and all those good things. However, the force can corrupt; too easily we find ourselves in pointless arguments, enhancing our personal power rather than actually defending the point. As mentioned in class, values inherently underlie every argument. Although some would claim “objective” argumentation is best, losing sight of the values and reasons we defend makes us agents of argument, slaves to persuasion. Then again, excessive emotion in argumentation pushes away from seeing the reasons clearly. To argue effectively, we walk a line.

What seems different here? This: “In some cases, we may achieve (persuasion in argument) by weakening (another’s) identification with or adherence to an alternative set of attitudes and beliefs” (p. 102). I had not considered the fact that with every won argument (gain), there is inevitable loss of another line of reasoning, belief, value, etc. Like children in the backseat, buckling in a new one means a previously-sat child must move. I never considered what we compromise in argument. What we unknowingly surrender or abandon. It causes me to consider arguments I enter, especially with certain individuals whose intentions are generally…less than stellar. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

Becoming mindful of what we compromise or surrender simply by entering or engaging an argument, whether or not consensus is reached, is another perspective through which to understand rhetoric.  Ah, all these lenses through which we look…

Identity

I just spent much of my synthesis paper talking about how identity helps us create the rhetorical filter through which we view the world. Ramage brings up this idea for me, again, in chapter 3. I spoke heavily about how the decisions that we make have the capacity to change everything about our identity, and Ramage speaks to this as well. I feel that it is beyond true that our decisions shape us every bit as much as our appearance, upbringing, hometown, schooling, and everything that we are born into, "Absent a fixed order that assigns everything a value, meanwhile, we are free to construct and choose our identities; but with that freedom comes the necessity of evaluating and negotiating our options. Which means in turn that our beliefs, values, relationships, status, and all the things that matter most deeply to us are also subject to negotiation and evaluation" (70). I feel that because these sorts of things matter most to us, we are inherently shaped by them.

While we are shaped by these facets of our identities, more often than not we are inclined to identify with the majority. We often identify with the majority, even when it goes against our actual beliefs for fear of rejection. Here Ramage brings in rhetoric and its persuasive power. Society holds the belief that everyone should conform to the majority, and when people do not they are shunned for it. Ramage points out "when the dominant belief systems attempt either to ignore alternative belief systems or to coerce them into compliance with their own, they pay a very high price" (70). A divide gets created between the two opposing viewpoints and we need rhetoric to reconcile that divide. Rhetoric gives us a means of finding some middle ground between the two sides. Rhetoric allows people that stand on opposite shores of an issue some sort of way for agreement, "Truth for rhetoric is a public matter requiring agreement among people" (71). This makes me think of politics and how difficult it is for our House and Senate to agree on anything because the two different parties struggle to find some sort of agreement. If rhetoric were properly employed in politics, and both parties recognized that there are rights and wrongs on both sides and came to a compromise for the betterment of the whole country and not their singular party, then the divide between the two could be lessened. In the same way, this could help people reconcile differences between the things that people value and understanding each other. If rhetoric was properly employed in personal situations, we could more easily compromise and understand where other people are coming from. This would also reconcile the differences between the majority and minority beliefs and identities.

I know I focused mostly on the early part of Chapter 3 and sort of neglected the rest, but given that my mind has been captivated by identity for the majority of the last few weeks, it only seemed fitting to keep talking about it.

Also, I just remembered that I forgot to take a look at the prompt for the first post of the week, so I'm going to touch on that stuff right now! Sorry team! Okay, so rhetoric as a way of persuasion and argumentation. Well, in my mind, when I think of rhetoric as a way of arguing or persuading another party, my mind always goes back to politics and personal altercations. Often politics and personal altercations are driven by the fact that two people or parties see things in two opposite ways, and they can't make the other party understand where they are coming from. Both parties are set in their beliefs and intend to make the other party see things their way. When thinking about rhetoric as a way of persuasion rather than a way of looking at the world, seems to me as if we are saying the act of using rhetoric is persuading someone to see a point. I think I realized, in reading this that rhetoric is not just a way of looking at the world, but also a way of persuading and arguing. I feel like all semester I have spent my time ignoring the idea that rhetoric is persuasion because that sounds so simple and manipulative. Yet in ignoring that, I had to come to the realization (doing this reading) that I can't ignore that fact about rhetoric. Rhetoric isn't only a way of looking at the world, it is also a way of arguing and persuading--and that's not a bad thing!

We cannot do anything BUT believe.

• Kim wrote, “I don't believe when I have something "right"… because I know that it is never fully complete knowledge.”

• Allison said, “All the things I can say about sexual abuse – about rape—none of them are reasons. The words do not explain. Explanation almost drove me crazy, other people’s explanations and my own. Explanations, justifications, and theories.”

• Doug asked, “What shapes our identification with a given narrative, and how does believability emerge from such identification?”

I have to admit, I struggle writing on Allison’s piece. How can I do her story justice? My rhetorical analysis seems pointless in the face of ongoing sexual violence; my passionate advocacy side is ramped up. It’s hard to deconstruct a piece of text that, while I am analyzing it, continues to provoke empathy, outrage, and reveal a meaning greater than words.  Although I doubt any amount of analyzation could hinder her voice.

Allison’s identity emerges as she avoids concrete explanations and theoretical reasoning. She shrugs off the “fidelity comes from rational thinking” line of thought, and establishes her narrative with an alternative reasoning that would drive Aristotle mad. There are no facts and figures, not even a strict line of argument. Her narrative fidelity is established as she reveals experiences and emotions so raw, so awful, so poignant, that the reader is brought to their knees and cut to the heart. The reader cannot do anything but hang on her every word; truth like this is hard to make up.

Her knowledge does not need to be “complete” for it to be true. In fact, the believability of the piece comes from its fragmented perspective, not its facts. It offers no objective recount, no historical timeline of her childhood. It is a collection of dark sweaty nights, moments full of fear and ecstasy, interspersed with an exigency that can only be understood as the need to live. Moving through trauma, she recognizes that the “truth” is not one objectified story. Truth is not a psychological explanation for an act. Truth is not whether or not the legal system found him guilty. Truth is not every minute she remembers being shoved or hiding. Truth is the story she tells herself, the personal knowledge of who she will be. The narrative is believable, because her life is at stake.

There is little separation between audience and text, and the relatability is another driver of believability. Rarely does the narrative leave ground into the non-physical realm. Hedging every statement of reflection or revelation or epiphany is a concrete story or scene. We are constantly placed back into her scenes, living her reality, and the experience is hard to discount as non-believable. She’s telling herself the story as she tells it to us, and we desperately want her to believe herself, as she writes, “I will not wear that coat.”

The fidelity of the piece to “truth” also comes from its highly specialized nature. As the reader, we are alright with vagueness or unanswered questions, because Allison is not appealing to some higher understanding fueled by logic or reasoning. She is making her own truth—personal knowledge. The narrative is most true and relevant to her own self and life. We listen almost as bystanders, and the relative truth of the piece is based on how much its contents free her soul.

For a narrative to be powerful, see above. For a narrative to be speakable, we must tell ourselves the story enough that we believe it, breathe it, and live it, so that telling others is not a risk to its existence. We must have the ability to transfer a multi-dimensional story into language, and somehow preserve its depth and character.  For a narrative to be spoken: courage.

Project Proposal

Research Questions: How might advancing studies in Neurorhetorics enhance the credibility of felt sensation as a rhetorical heurstic to the invention process?

Significance: One of the more current moves in the field of Rhetoric is engaging interdisciplinary conversations with Cognitive Neurosciences for at least a dual purpose of: observing the rhetoric of scientific discourse and discovering what neuroscience can show us about the nature of rhetoric (Applebaum & Jack). The latter of these goals has been focused in several ways, including observing how rhetoric is a physically located phenomenon, which really just makes the empiricists and hyper-rationalists of our culture happy. One of the goals, then, of this interdisciplinary work is to raise the credibility of Rhetoric as a field in general, making it reminiscent of a hard science which receives higher attention in our culture anyway (Jeffrey Lehman Honnold). Besides the significance of raising the status of rhetoric and its various heuristic methods in the academy in general, this project is  significant to me personally as a composition instructor who would like to experiment with marginalized epistemologies and heuristics in our culture.  

Methods: I intend to first of all do research in this budding field, and because resources are limited on the rhetorical sides of things, this process of finding literature specifically within the field will take some digging. I also intend to move outside of the field to find research within cognitive neuroscience that seems relevant to rhetorical and composition studies, and more specifically, embodied knowledge as an epistemology and heuristic (Like I found this SWEET book on Mirror Neurons, Honnold mentions in his Rhet/Comp thesis for USF...). I am also plotting to find people at the 4C's conference who are advancing studies in feminist rhetorics, embodied knowledge, or interdisciplinary approaches to the field's knowledge; I will try to ask them questions after their panes, if possible). In my own research network forum at C's, I am thinking about how I might ask questions to my panel about implications that will help me in furthering this line of research (since it is obviously connected to my professional paper). Finally, I also plan to use my synthesis paper to talk about what I see as "left out" in the discussions we have had in class thus far, in light of the places I see rhetoric moving toward now (and how these trajectories weren't used as insight into the field a while ago...hmmm, what implications will that search create for me?).


Jordynn Jack & L. Gregory Appelbaum (2010): “This is Your Brain on Rhetoric”: Research Directions for Neurorhetorics, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 40:5, 411-437

Honnold, Jeffrey L., "Toward a Working Theory of Neurorhetorics" (2012).Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4077

Project Proposal

Question: Why is it that rhetoric is not introduced to students until they have entered the university setting? Why is rhetoric excluded from the curriculum dictated by current secondary school pedagogy?

Interest: Pedagogy, as it is today, doesn't introduce the idea of rhetoric until students have begun taking their first writing class at the university level. Even for those students who are enrolled in their high school A.P. or I.B. programs, there is no introduction of rhetoric into the curriculum. To me, it seems odd that something as huge and fundamental to human thought as rhetoric is not something that is brought to the attention of students until they enter the university setting. I wonder why, as an A.P. English student who was supposedly doing college-level work, I had never heard the word rhetoric before I walked into one of my writing classes at MSU.

I am curious what would happen if we tried to introduce rhetoric earlier? Could students, at ages younger than 18 comprehend rhetoric? At what point do we suppose adolescent brains have developed to a point where they can wrap their minds around something so theoretical? (That's not the word I want to use right now but it's the only one I can come up with . . . Words are hard.) And if they're brain development suggests that students younger than 18 can understand things that are metaphysical, then what is holding us back from including rhetoric in the high school classroom (or at the very least the A.P. and I.B. high school classrooms). Would we have to reconsider the way in which we teach English? Would we have to stop taking the "classical" approach to teaching writing and literature in favor of a "rhetorical" approach? What has driven us to the point where we don't value rhetoric in primary and secondary public education? Ideally, I'd like to take a look at the common cores and try and pinpoint the reasoning behind excluding rhetoric from them, as I feel it is fundamental to begin introducing such a topic earlier in education than college.

Method: Hmmmm. A whole lot of reading, I would say. This is probably going to be me reading mounds upon mounds of research on brain development, the common cores, classical and rhetorical approaches, and the value of rhetoric (do we really think it is nothing more than a load of persuasive tom-foolery?). Someone out there somewhere, I am sure has some insight that I can pull from and I am hoping that I will be lucky enough to stumble across that insight. I have yet to decide how exactly I intend to compile it and present it all, but I think the beauty of these projects is that they tend to take shape on their own once I've done enough research. So we shall see.

Curiousity Hasn't Killed This Kitty...Yet.

What do I believe in these days?

Everything, and nothing at all. 

Which is mostly an ontological problem if all we can know is what we know, and that will not and cannot ever be "everything."

For one, I have become conditioned to think authenticity, especially as it relates to the narratives we tell ourselves to survive, is a dirty word--an unforgivable sin if you dare say it in front of some professors of English studies. Why, though? Even if there isn't such thing as inauthenticity, which I do actually agree with (at least via human perception), can there not at least be a continuum of more or less authentic stories? I think we have to say no, but in a way that seems limiting because it creates an absolute truth. Maybe there is a difference between the authenticity of all the stories humans can possibly conceive of, and the story of the universe that precedes and follows mankind in general. A story without human perception. But wait, that doesn't work because "story" is just a human construct. 

Everything I know, is a construct of my reality, so I believe it. Even the parts that feel artificial, plastic, fake, whatever you want to call it. If it exists in my consciousness, then it is authentic, it is something to be believed. But my perception is sorely limited to the contingency of my subjectivities, even if these subjectivities are constantly growing, shifting, and bending to make room for new narratives about myself. They would change even if I said: "Hey! You stop that, stop right there. I like this narrative." Nope. Not in my control. Not in my power. But I will believe the shifting is happening anyway. I think to deny such belief of the obvious is to cross over into insanity, which is also undefinable to me. But for the sake of this post, I will say it is something like never having your own self-awareness align with other's perceptions of you. I like Kaylee's point how she thinks it's incredible that we ever find consensus about anything at all. I totally agree in bewilderment that a thing like love, a la Corder, can be so strong it causes us to make room for another perception we will never fully understand as another inhabits it. 

But all this is also why I don't really "believe" anything at all anymore. I don't believe when I have something "right," be it intellectual, social, environmental knowledge, etc., because I know that it is never fully complete knowledge. So I don't ever say I know anything for sure anymore. It just seems so arrogant to me for anyone to claim there are things they know FOR SURE (and no, that is not a diss to Allison--I don't know why a man would rape 5-yr-old either). I think all we can do is be curious and live to stand corrected in the realities we construct as more accurate or complete narratives seem to tumble wildly or slide gracefully into our lives. There is nothing wrong with existence being paradoxical,the way I see it. Just makes it more complex, more entwined, more interesting.

I still think the chaos is beautiful.

A thread to hold onto

I’m not sure if it’s my turn to post or not, but I’m leaving the country before dawn tomorrow for three weeks, so I figured I’d better get my thoughts out there while I still have Internet access.

We’re reaaaally getting into the thick of things with this week’s prompt. I often wonder how we as human beings, with all of our different memories, life experiences, opinions, personal narratives and brain chemicals can understand one another at all, can reconcile our divergent lives and perceptions-- maybe we never really do.

Are we anything more than a manifestation of our experiences, a collection of stories reflected in a receptacle of nerves, bones and flesh?

Even standing two feet to one side can skew someone’s perspective; how do larger concepts like race, sex, financial status, success and happiness alter and shape our worldview, our self-image, and our view of others? The last several readings have described how rhetoric fits into this tangled web—this is where it really seems to click for me (although I’m not sure if I can explain it well).

Rhetoric (I believe, and the recent articles seem to corroborate) is, in a way, how we reconcile our personal "human experience," how we explain and account for the divergence between our unique and often vastly dissimilar perspectives. “Rhetoric is the entwinement” of different planes of existence as the prompt says—I like that notion. It gives us a common thread to hang onto in this outrageously perplexing and multifarious state of existence.

The reason I’ll be gone for the upcoming three weeks is because I’ll be traveling to Zawiya Ahansal, a remote village in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco to teach English and French to young school children and mountain guides. In the time leading up to this trip, I’ve researched and read deeply and extensively about Moroccan history and culture; specifically, material relating to the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) tribe who are the primary inhabitants of the rural and mountainous regions.

Like virtually any culture, the Amazigh emphasize storytelling—but unlike other cultures who have become industrialized, technologized and modernized, they still rely heavily on storytelling. The language of the Amazigh, Tamazight, is an oral language, rarely transcribed and quickly disappearing. For the Amazigh, stories are the heart of life; they entertain, they help pass down history, they help keep families together, they help designate identity and solve problems. Families and friends often spend hours telling stories by candlelight into the waning hours of the night, both truthful and fantastical stories. But although these cultural narratives help shape Amazigh identity, they remain silenced and untold. And if these stories disappear forever, a large part of the Amazigh culture will disappear with them.

I would say that we are all, to a certain extent, a product of narratives, of stories. Stories we tell ourselves (if you identify as a timely person, you’re more likely to be on time; if you identify as shy then you’ll be less likely to feel comfortable interacting with others); stories others tell us culturally and on an interpersonal basis (these stories come from race, class, stereotypes).

Some stories we are born into and others we create.

Final Research Project: Cross-cultural rhetorical analysis

Research question:

How does cultural identity and perception influence the rhetoric of logic? How do different cultures (French, American, Moroccan) overlap and diverge in their definitions of logic, and what factors cause such divergence?

Focus quote:

“We pick up a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." – Robert Pirsig

Method:

Last year, I studied abroad in Grenoble, France for just over five months, and have read many prominent French classical rhetoricians such as Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and Descartes. Tomorrow, I will be leaving for Zawiya Ahansal, a collection of rural villages in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and will be spending three weeks there teaching school children and mountain guides. Our group . For my final project, I will compare and contrast how cultural perspectives, belief systems and worldview can affect the rhetoric of logic. This topic intrigues me because I find the development of cultures both separately and in conjunction with one another is endlessly fascinating.

I will use the synthesis paper to begin my inquiry into the subject, and will likely focus on the way cultural influences alter perception, comprehension and the flow of logic for the Amazigh people of Aggudim and Amzeray. I’m guessing that I will write this paper in a more narrative fashion, relying upon quotes from Pirsig, Nye and Grassi to corroborate my points. In the final project, I’ll look into cultural differences in logic and decision making and how these are passed down and changed throughout generations.

Project Proposal: Non-Verbal Methods of Knowing and Rationalism's Constraint on Creativity

Question: How does language limit knowledge making, and what are the consequences of rational thinking on creativity? Inside my brain they connect. I will attempt to verbalize it.

The Interest: Education is dominated by language. We read textbooks, we write essays, we perform written tests, we workshop other writing, we take written notes. Language in education is ubiquitous.  So much, we take its place as the primary tool by which to learn as a given. Would education change if classrooms were reorganized to integrate discussion, team presentations, films, and other modes of information sharing and creating? I ask this question because I wonder to what extent reading comprehension determines success in college. To be honest, I often hypothesize that students with 4.0s mostly have high reading-comprehension aptitude. But what about conceptual thinking? The ability to track visual images? Spatial reasoning? How is it that language has come to dominate the education market as the dominant method by which to learn?

Language mirrors logic in the way it is organized hierarchically, terms objects, and restricts observations to specific perspectives. In the same stride that language takes to assist us in communication, it also restricts and contains our ideas to the ways we can express them. Pirsig’s “Mu” response demonstrates language’s lacking, and how the words we speak affect the way we approach a situation.

This should be interesting to you, if you have ever considered yourself stupid. It should be interesting if you have ever desperately wanted to communicate something, but couldn’t find the words. If you have difficulty finding your creative flow. If school often pushes you to the brink of meltdown. If you answered “n/a” to all those questions…well, I find you rather boring, and suggest you stop reading. If you answered yes to any, then you should definitely leave me a comment saying why.

I drew a picture once. It was a giant bubble over a stick-figure’s head that contained “all the knowledge ever.” But what they understood and could express was only a small trickle that could escape through the valve of language. Language filtered all of knowledge making, because if we couldn’t express something, then how could it be real? The only knowledge that was accessible was what we had been able to verbalize—but a fragment.

Jump back to rational thinking. This hierarchical, locked-step, prescribed thinking is taught as a way to think and know. How can this NOT contain creativity and expression? How can boxes ever assist individuals in imagination, innovation, and creation than free association thinking? What about hyper-rationalism interferes with the creative process? Language and logic proportion knowledge. It is but one way to understand, and unfortunately dominates the market. What are non-verbal ways of knowing and learning?

Interested?

The Investigation: This area needs development. Ken Robinson’s TED talks are a great start, in understanding this issue. I also hope to find correlations between high school SAT/GED reading comprehension scores, to see if there is a correlation with post-secondary success.

I will have to examine how we “be” creative. That question alone could dominate the discussion. I intend to work neuroscience into my paper—the manner in which different cortexes of the brain process information, and note that the spatial relationship area is opposite the language-expressing area. That is, we understand relationships (which according to Pirsig are the source of all knowledge) with a different hemisphere of our mind than we formulate words. Isn’t that interesting? Already there is a physical block between understanding and language. As children, we learn through images. We learn through associations and stories.  Toddler books are dominated by shape, texture, finger puppets-- hardly any words. Analyzing the differences between early childhood learning material and the text-heavy materials of postsecondary education may prove helpful. Children get toys that make music, books that pop out, puzzles to rearrange. This multi-modal learning is needed as children, but language becomes the principle learning mechanism, and all others are downgraded as non-essentials.

My mother’s spatial reasoning skills are squat. She’s smart, but she can’t visualize rearranging furniture or conceptualize directions. She does fine though, because she writes like a pro, and that is how the world runs. But what knowledge does she miss out on, because this aspect of her comprehension was never pushed to develop further?

That is all I have for now. I need more concrete research methods, though. Ideas?

We are stories

Am I first post-er? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm just going to go with it and say that I am! I think we might have gotten ourselves out of order, but it's no trouble!

So one thing that comes to mind when discussing identities, stories, and narratives is something that we brought up back in the very beginning of the semester. Doug said, "I am a lot of different people, and most of them I didn't choose to be." I think this is the spark that I am going to go off of for this post. To me, this seems to be pivotal. The people we are today are affected by everything that has happened to us previous to today. We can no easier change the things that have happened to us and where they have directed us than we can change the color of our skin. Every facet of our self is made up of many things beyond our own control. We do not decide our parentage, our skin color, the year in which we are born, the financial setting into which we are born, the place we live (until we are older, that is). There are so many things that we cannot change or control, and yet they are every bit as much of a part of who we have become as the things we did choose--if we played sports, if we played instruments, if we went to college, where we went to college, what we choose to study, which social groups we place ourselves in. The person that we become is inevitably a product of the stories of the past that brought us to this place.

Although we are these creatures, that in them tell a thousand different tales, how do we articulate this? I feel that anyone has the capacity to tell a story, but only some have the capability of doing it well. Now, I don't wish to say that a well-written story is always a believable one. A story could be 100% true, and feel entirely falsified--as if the human mind cannot wrap around the disgusting reality that someone has been through. Readers, people, do not like to view the world through a dirty lens. We do not like to see the ugliness in this world, yet it is there, lurking in the depths of some of the most cheerful and optimistic people. We often wonder how such a person could hide something so dark and disturbing, and what has kept them afloat. These people could write the most horrifying and real story about what has happened to them, and it would be difficult to believe that such a person could come out alive from such an experience. The story can be eloquently and beautifully composed, and we might have a difficult time acknowledging its truth. I think what makes it feel true, and real, is the balance of good and bad. Sometimes it seems that playing into the cliches is the only way to make something--especially something dark--believable, and in truth, life does often follow them. 

I think what makes a story believable to us, and one that we can identify with is one that speaks to a part of who we are. Either it is a story that we can see coming to fruition in reality, or one that we have experienced ourselves, or even one we can simply empathize with. A story that is true, and has the capability of striking some facet of who we are is one we will be more inclined to believe.

It seems to me that we are stories. We are narratives. We are more than just “this thing the world sees” (451). We are everything that happens to us. We are everything that we do. We are every passion that we have. We are every thought we think, every word we speak. We are the cumulative of everything that has ever happened, is happening, and will happen in our lives. We are narratives. We are hypertext. The idea that humans are narratives, that humans are hypertext is beautiful and intriguing. The idea that each story we tell is backed by another story—all of it truth to us—is wild and wonderful. 

Allison places us before a wall covered in words. She touches a word, a brick falls away, and behind that brick is another. The new brick holds another word, that word tells another story. At the end of it all, we are all the many stories that build the novel of our lives.