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Persuasion, Communication, and Our Moral Obligations
What does ancient Greek rhetoric have to do with today? Perhaps we don’t recognize it with its official title, as it is more commonly referred to as the art of persuasion. Often, when we learn or reflect on history, we don’t look at it through a lens of communication. However, different forms of communication and their advancements over time have helped contribute to significant societal downfalls, which makes it worth paying attention to. In the early democratic cultures of Athens and Rome, citizens were afforded access to information and an open system of debate to prepare them for voting. But true to human nature, deceptive propaganda soon overwhelmed both cities,…
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Changing Things Up.
Being unemployed, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. It’s been hard to find the balance between thinking enough to process and not thinking too much. Too much is not so good. Mostly, I’ve been trying to determine how I can monetize all the things I do for free. Blogging. Facts from Farmers. Good Ol’ Girls Club. And there’s all this shit on the internet that tells you how you can make money from these things, but first you must click here, purchase this, download that. Bleh. It’s so uninspiring. Besides, apparently, I prefer to do things in the most challenging of ways. What dawned on me…
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Intent.
Last week, (or whenever it was), I wrote about our ability to learn from our mistakes. When we make a poor decision with no ill intent, it is simply a human error in judgment, and we move on with life. No harm, no foul. But what happens when there is harm? When there is foul? Why is intent sometimes looked at and not others? My thoughts on this were prompted a few days ago when a liberal friend of mine posted something about guns on her Facebook page. She essentially said that she doesn’t want to take away guns; she just wants people to get proper instruction and training, so…
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Mistakes.
The beauty of being human is that we have the ability to learn from our mistakes. In fact, I think learning from our mistakes helps build our character. We have a right to our opinions, and we have a right to change our minds. Humans. are. imperfect. We all make mistakes. Why is that we are so judgmental and misunderstanding when someone makes a mistake? We become critical and accusatory of others, completely ignoring the fact that we, ourselves, also make mistakes. In today’s media, (social and mainstream), we only see/hear/read snippets of stories. I can’t tell you all about food safety in a 30-minute video, let alone a 30 second video that may hold your attention. For you…