About the Class

Introduction

This class is exploratory (propaedeuticFrom Wiki: "Propaedeutics or propedeutics (from Ancient Greek προπαίδευσις, propaídeusis 'preparatory education') is a historical term for an introductory course into an art or science. The etymology of propedeutics comprises the Latin prefix pro, meaning earlier, rudimentary, or in front of, and the Greek paideutikós, which means "pertaining to teaching". As implied by the etymology, propaedeutics may be defined more particularly as the knowledge necessary before, or for the learning of, a discipline, but not which is sufficient for proficiency. "link), a rough draft of what might eventually become a book.What do I mean by a rough draft? Not done to my satisfaction, but by that definition I've never finished anything I've written and why I prefer digital text to paper text. But I also mean everything from typos (I'm a ham-fisted, mildly dyslexic, typist whose first efforts at a sentence are sometimes almost hieroglyphic), punctuation errors, typography inconsistencies, needless repetitions, lacking or broken transitions, incomplete sections, over-written sections, things I thought made sense that don't quite, some that make a kind of sense I don't want them to, ambiguous expressions, missing references, unlinked links, broken links, half-baked ideas, weird examples. As well as imperfections you will notice that I'm not even vaguely aware of yet. Manuscripts need readers to help writers turn something promising into something that can keep its promises. So in a way, by draft I also mean that I'm looking for your feedback because I know this isn't fully ready for prime time, just like the final essay you write for this summer session won't be ready for prime time either. We're in this together. Granted I've been writing "rhetpow" for nearly 6 months now, on and off, and I started reading about it more than 10 years ago, in fits and starts, and I've got 30+ years experience writing stuff like this. I'm not suggesting your drafts should be like my drafts. We are different kinds of writers anyway, no doubt. I'm just saying writing well always takes more time than there is ever time enough to give it.

What do I mean by rough draft of a book? Two of the three books I've published started out as "lecture notes" like these that I developed over several class iterations with input from students. The biblography section is one of my notebooks, a learning strategy where I copy and paste potentially useful quotations that I can revisit, and which my website can bring randomly to my attention (e.g., Assignments) as well as Definitions of key terms that help me try to clarify my thinking by isolating a key word and then returning to it as ideas occur to me. A definition may become a section in a later draft. The first draft was offered in 2013. The bibliography, which has grown exponentially, is composed of books rarely seen on academic lists. They are, generally speaking, trade books in the self-help genre, intended for a popular audience and packaged for easy digestion. Even the comparatively ancient The Prince can be described in that way, although of course it frequently appears on academic reading lists.

The dark antagonistic / domineering
controlling
clandestine
covert
devious
disingenuous
frowned on
indirect
manipulative
side of persuasion refers to the practices rejected by the philosophical rhetorical tradition for being unethical. From Plato's injunction against pandering and flattery, false equivalances, bandwagon appeals, sarcasm, and threats of disaster (see Gorgias, Socrates' objections to Polus' arguments 466a - 480a) down to the present day, whenever philosophically inclined people have felt compelled to discuss rhetoric at all they have always provided red-flag warnings about using clandestine practices to unfairly capture other people's imaginations and convictions, of using craft and guile to control thoughts instead of using sound arguments and solid reasoning to fairly and openly secure knowing assent.

There is, however, something disingenuous (perhaps ironic) about Plato's injunction against cleverness and deceit. The Greek's primary hero was Odysseus "the cunning", whose versatility and powers of deception clearly suggest that the Greeks approved crafty behavior whenever the hero finds himself at (what he thinks is) an unfair disadvantage.

Consider also the following paean to Hermes:

Hermes, wise one, clever one, wit to find
your way through any venture, herald of great Zeus,
messenger of the gods, god of connection,
god of information, god of the spoken word,
persuasive one, deceptive one, sly and artful
god of schemes, with craft and guile you work your wiles,
your cunning as sharp as any sword and quicker
by far. In any land, in any age, your people
prosper; in any land, in any age, you
find a place; in any setting, you belong.
Hermes, who guides the traveler to safety,
who guards the threshold of the home, who joins with us
in celebration, who heads the banquet table,
Hermes, friend of humanity, I honor you.

In Praise of Olympus: Prayers of Greek Gods

Hermes was powerful and duplicitous, a trickster, who was revered because he was a crafty influencer. It was customary to place a statue of Hermes (a Herm) at the boundaries between properties, at cross roads, and at the front entrance to homes -- the places where strangers might meet. The Greeks, I think, admired Hermes because at some level just beneath the surface of consciousness they approved of craft and guile and schemes. This is an example of a herm. These were ubiquitous in Greece and later in Rome. The wiki article does an excellent job explaining what Herms were and how they were used. It also explains how Herms were part of what might be the first recorded act of rhetorical vandalism. As the image in the footnote clearly indicates, Herm statues proudly display the fact that the Greeks were an androcentric (phallocentric) culture. Given androcentricity, it's not surprising that anything associate with women, anatomically and culturally, would be rejected as unbefitting a man. If the male virtues are out there for public display, then the female virtues are hidden from the world, and any woman who would openly argue with a man would be shunned and any many who clandesintinely tried to get his way would be similarly shunned.

And yet, if you were a man trapped in a cave by a one-eyed monster, no one would disapprove of you putting on a sheep's skin and crawling past your captor on all fours. Sometimes you have to do what needs to be done. Pretend to be a pig to eat a tiger, as the Chinese proverb advises without any gendered undertones. Just because you are weaker doesn't mean you can't succeed, as long as you don't let your ego (or anyone else's) get in the way of your ambition.

The Greeks also understood that rational debate was reserved for disputes among equals. Thucydides renders this fact transparent during his description of the end of the Melian war when he has the surrendering general say,

This can be read as an attempt to shame the conquerors into mercy, but if taken at face value it makes a stark statement about the rhetorical world. The powerful do what they want and the powerless do what they are told or suffer the consequences. Since the socially inferior weren't allowed to offer arguments (talk back) and likely had no experience with debate anyway, if they didn't want to obey and were unwilling to suffer in silence, their only other option was to dissemble, to use craft and guile to get their way.

To resort to craft and guile, however, was extremely risky for all but the lower social orders who were always at risk and had no other options anyway. "Real men" take what they want, and when they can't, their next best option is to subordinate their desires to self-discipline and self-denial, submission disguised as self-control. Do you remember the exchange between Calicles and Socrates, about the soul that leaks like a cracked jar? (Gorgias 493b). To legitimately seek power over others, Plato advises, requires one first have power over one's self (Phaedrus, 230A) and to acquire that power one needs to regularly engage in dialectic, to practice an epistemological method that systematically replaces tradition and popular opinion (doxa) with truth (orthodoxa, corrected opinion).

If you like to think emblematically, recall the exchange between Diogenes and Alexander the Great. (From Wiki:)
Alexander went in person to see him, and he found him lying in the sun. Diogenes raised himself up a little when he saw so many people coming towards him, and fixed his eyes upon Alexander. And when that monarch addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, "Yes," said Diogenes, "stand a little out of my sun." It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, "But truly, if I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes."

Diogenes was the first Cynic philosopher; he lived outdoors, begged for food, drank water in cupped hands from streams and fountains and took every opportunity to chastise others for vanity and hypocrisy and self-indulgence. He was homeless but considered himself a citizen of the world. He had nothing, in other words, but his wit and determination and the power (self-discipline) to resist the temptations of comfort, personal and social. Alexander, on the other hand, was king of the world: Extreme opposites on the same continuum; absolute power exerted over the world and absolute power exerted over the self. If you can't be Alexander, then you need to be Diogenes because if you choose to live somewhere in between those two poles, you are admitting your inferiority and you risk being rejected for appearing effeminate. Of course, few people are willing to choose an aesthetic existence, to live like a scavenging dog, as Diogenes' critics used to scoff. But not everyone can be an Alexander either.

So if an ambitious citizen male seeks power but isn't strong (rich, influential, charismatic, callous, arrogant, and shameless) enough to just take the reins, and he isn't able to openly debate because he lacks the skill or the social standing or because he can't make his ambition appear to serve the audience's best interests, then he should restrain his personal ambition and subordinate his will to those more powerful and therefor more eloquent than him.

For a free born ancient Athenian male, a person with default social prestige, to stoop to rhetoric was to acknowledge his inferiority and thus to demean himself. The rhetoricians, those who taught rhetoric in the shadow of Plato's injunction against rhetoric,A magnificent irony attends this injunction, one I can't help but think Plato loved. The word rhetoric did not exist until The Gorgias. Perhaps that means Socrates coined it, but at very least Plato was the first to publicize it and he did so in order to promote Socratic dialectic as the best form of instruction for civic-minded leaders. Rhetoric, in other words, is the result of dichotomizing education: rhetoric vs dialectic, sophistry vs philosophy, good vs evil. That subsequent "philosophers" failed to notice this bit of legerdemain evokes for me an exquisite sense of irony. Philosophy was born of a dark rhetorical technique, dividing in two in order to promote one half at the expense of the other half. And those who came to call themselves philosophers failed to notice or at least acknowledge the rhetorical trick. Why? Confirmation bias and loyalty to a naive realism. Our heroes are good. Our villains are bad. I am right. You are a sophist. End of analysis. were thus careful to warn against transgressing expectations of propriety (Gk. to prepone). Specifically they warned against being effeminate, of using style as though it were makeup, of plucking the beard of one's arguments, of bending over instead of standing face to face. We could easily spend a semester tracing the warnings against effeminacy running throughout the rhetorical tradition and we could supplement that reading list with hand-wringing articles and speeches about the emasculation of contemporary men. We can readily point to China's recent censorship of "girly men" in cinema and their injunction against video games -- go outside and bloody each other's noses -- but there are similar rhetorical acts being performed in Brazil and Africa and pretty much anywhere the thought that men somehow aren't allowed to be men any more can garner press and thus perhaps capture votes. You might want to read Manly Writing: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Rise of Composition. Miriam Brody, SIUP, 1993.

So, officially at least, "real men" take what they want and deny themselves whatever they can't carry off. Negotiations, debates, happen only when an action requires assent, and assent is only required of equals. This unspoken rule is enforced by the belief that only people of citizen status possess "reason." Women, foreigners, slaves, anyone who isn't a male Athenian citizen, simply can't reason as indicated by how they speak, their accent, their grammar, their halting demeanor, their bashful comportment, their barbarirms, their effeminacy, and all of the other gate-keeping signs that can be used to discount anything such an outsider might say. Disagreements among acknowledged friends can be rationally resolved but all other disagreements have to be settled by displays of dominance, to keep the unruly in their place and to reinforce the myth of ligitimate power. To have to steal what ought to be rightfully yours, to resort to rhetoric, in other words, is emasculating. Socrates, it's worth remembering, preferred death to rhetoric. He could have told his "peers" what they wanted to hear, begged for their mercy, promised to do better, but he chose instead to berate them for their stupidity and demand they pay him the tribute his superiority demanded, and when they handed down the verdict he must have known they would, he calmly (and dramatically, rhetorically?) committed suicide. So while the rhetorical tradition has always known about the kinds of things the weak might do to strengthen their position, or the ambitious might use to achieve a level of power their actual worth should preclude, as it descended from Plato it stopped teaching those tactics openly (ironic) because to do so would be to arm people perceived as inferior and openly acknowledge that rhetorical training is beneath the dignity of "real" men. This is also why it was customary to open any speech with protestations of duress and claims of rhetorical innocence. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, my enemies, enemies of the truth, of the state, have forced me to protest. Pity me, my fellow citizens, the shame their corruption and greed force me to parade before you now, though I would rather carry it silently to my grave, were I to do so my children too would be wrongly shamed and that is an injustice I will not silently endure. My fellow citizens, we must not fail in our duty to protect those who in their hour of need require, demand, deserve justice ...

And yet, rhetoric is also known as the art of proving opposites. So if someone training with a philosophical rhetorician is warned not to flatter an audience, they are thereby indirectly advised to flatter an audience when circumstances require it. Aristotle devotes an entire section of his On Rhetoric to friendliness. This other rhetoric, which is also the rhetoric of the other, has been embraced by many writers and teachers over the years, though few called what they offered rhetoric. The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist,"
Charles Baudelaire.

To use the word rhetoric is to accept the false dilemma created by Plato's dichotomizing of education into rhetoric on the left hand and philosophy on the right, of arguing in favor of rhetoric which everyone knows is flattery and lies or acknowledging the epistemological superiority of dialectic. It's just better not to use the word rhetoric unless you are addressing people who have read Plato and Aristotle and Cicero and Quintilian, and so on. This is why I didn't use the word rhetoric in the title of Persuasion: History, Theory, and Practice. I admitted as such in the introduction and I went on to try to convince youngsters they should reinvent themselves as rhetors. I wish now it had occurred to me then to use the expression "thought leaders." But I am so hopelessly enmeshed in rhetorical lore that nothing short of an intervention will get me to abandon it. I am not Machiavelli; I am Olaf glad and big. This class is about that rhetoric, the dark side of persuasion. Cambell and Crist assert that, "In psychology, dark tends to describe antagonism." (The New Science of Narcissism, p. 98). Antagonism, from the Greek antagonizesthai, to struggle against, is a willingness to buck a trend, defy authority, argue with superiors, pick fights with strangers, to dominate the conversation and thus prove your superiority. (See antagonist in the Online Etymology Dictionary) Dark rhetoric is about doing whatever it takes to get what you want; the darkest rhetors don't need to be acknowledged winners, they just need to dominate.

If the thought of studying dirty rhetoric, the intellectual equivalents of sly winks, perfumed promises, cloaked daggers, and spiked drinks scandalizes you, If on the other hand you are rubbing your hands with glee and bwahahaing, be careful what you wish for. consider this advice from Thick Face, Black Heart:

Here is Oscar Wilde saying something similar:

Conventional morality, and therefore conventional rhetoric, serves the status quo, which is fine as long as you benefit from the status quo. But well-behaved people never make history and most people have to act from a subordinate position at least some if not all of the time. If you are granted equal status, you can offer evidence and arguments, maybe even strike a nerve or jerk a tear, but only to make sure the voters properly understand the issue and vote as so as to preserve the status quo.

If you don't have equal status, or permission to speak freely, and are unwilling to subordinate your will to the will of those who have or wish to assert power over you, then you can use what you learn here to get your way despite your audience's inclinations or what some people might even call their better judgement.

If the thought of using left-handed rhetorical tactics still offends you, consider the advice offered here as self-defense. What you learn here might keep you safe from silver-tongued predators, con artists, cult leaders, politicians, propagandists, and, well, anyone whose objectives require the unwitting suspension of other people's disbelief.

Course Objectives

To enhance student rhetorical literacy by drawing attention to the kinds of effective rhetorical techniques dismissed as invalid because unethical. These manipulative techniques are used by everyone to some extent but employed constantly by the most dangerous kinds of people, con artists and cult leaders, psycho/sexual predators, and politicians, and especially by those accusing others of being unreasonable.

Learning Outcomes

• knowledge of how people can hack cognitive biases to mislead and exploit other people but also how we use them to lead ourselves into exploitation
• how reification constructs social realities, enabling ideas to have real world consequences
• the ways identity can be overwritten, doubt sown, and sanity questioned
• how scarcity, prestige, social pressure, limited knowledge, and fear of missing out are exploited to make people make bad decisions
• how to create a parlance that separates [differentiates but also isolates] its speakers from the wider community
• how to manipulate emotions
• how to use trance states, exhaustion, and tedium to alter perception and break down resistance (are you still reading?)
• how propaganda distorts perception and leads people to draw new conclusions from old evidence
• how con artists ply their trade
• how cults are created
• how cult leaders ensnare their congregants
• how corporations protect themselves from public opinion
• how conspiracy theories are created and exploited
• how politicians use honorable expressions to hide dishonorable ambitions

Attendance

This class is asynchronous. Attendance is irrelevant. However, there is an assignment due every week and failure to keep up may have seriously negative implications on your final grade because of the amount of reading and writing required. Fall behind and you won't catch up.

Final Exam

There is no final examination.

Other Policies

According to the GSU Student Handbook

Your professor expects you to:

• Be informed about instructors' policies, which are presented in the course syllabus, as well as the policies of the Georgia State University on-campus Student Handbook.
• Attend all classes, except when emergencies arise. If health and weather allow, your instructor will be present and on time for every scheduled class meeting. You should be, too.
• Be an active participant in class, taking notes and asking appropriate questions. Your involvement will benefit you and your classmates.
• Treat the instructor and fellow students with courtesy. Refrain from any behaviors that may distract others. You expect to be treated with tolerance and respect and to enjoy a learning environment free of unnecessary distractions. Your classmates deserve the same.
• Cultivate effective study strategies. Being an effective student is not instinctive. Use your study time wisely, seek help from the instructor when you need it, and avail yourself of resources provided by the university.
• Study course material routinely after each meeting. Stick to a regular study schedule and avoid cramming. Submit finished assignments on time and do not postpone working on them.
• Accept the challenge of collegiate studying, thinking, and learning. Anticipate that the level and quantity of work in some courses will exceed your prior experiences. If you have significant responsibilities besides your studies, such as work and family, set realistic academic goals and schedules for yourself. Select an academic load whose work demands do not exceed your available time and energy.
• Let no temptation cause you to surrender your integrity.

• Student code of conduct
• Academic honesty policy
• Disability services

About Motivation

This section is intended as a brief on motivation theory in general rather than as an effort to motivate you to do well in this class. Ultimately motivation comes from within, so if you want to do well, you will need to self-motivate. From a rhetorical perspective, if you need to motivate long-term behavioral change, in yourself or someone else, the information below will prove useful.

If you are going to succeed at learning something that takes time and effort to learn (the guitar, long distance running, Go or Chess, rhetoric or philosophy or a second or third language), where time is measured either in months of intense effort or years of sustained, high-level effort, you need 7 things: Desire, conviction, persistence, opportunity, sacrifice, a coach, and a plan.

1) Desire: you have to want it. Typically desire comes from identity and identification. If you think you were born to run marathons or read Homer in the original, success will be a more natural path because you will be affirming your identity by pursuing your goal. You will practice for hours on your own because doing so makes you feel more yourself than anything else does. In addition to feeling like a butterfly at larval stage, you need to have a vivid image of what kind of butterfly you desire to become. You need to identify with someone who already is: a hero, a mentor, a close family member. If you have no role model, you won't have a clear sense of how to be what it is you want to become, and thus your learning will lack focus down range. So get a role model. If you don't know one personally, imagine you do while you look around for a real one. Your imaginary role model might be a famous person who you want to meet and maybe even compete with some day.

2) Sacrifice: If you have a casual interest in something and you meet with immediate success, you may imagine you are "naturally" good at it and since being good at something is pleasant, you will likely continue, thinking that you have found your way to be. Early success, however, can be misleading. When you don't understand how something is done it looks easier than it is. Novices often confuse luck with skill and mistake a success for talent. The transition from novice to expert takes a long time, even for the gifted. Inevitably joy becomes work. Performance plateaus exist. Once you cease to improve, once you experience your first loss or setback, you have to decide whether to embrace the pain and frustration and the fear of failure or cut your losses and move on. You are more likely to embrace the pain if you can't imagine alternative ways of being. Thus, oddly enough, a lack of imagination, a one-track mind, can be crucial to success. But tunnel vision doesn't guarantee success. For every success there are many couldbes and wannabes toiling forever on the precipice. I think this existential dilemma, should I stay or should I go, is why so many people are content with good enough. To become great so often means giving up too much while risking getting nothing in return.

3) Conviction: you have to want to succeed, but you also have to believe you can succeed. Identity is critical here as well. If your identity is wrapped up in the pursuit of success, and your identity isn't fragile, you will focus intensely and test yourself without fear or hesitation because you fervently believe you will succeed in the end. A role model who seems to have come from circumstances like your own helps. "They did it; so can I." This is (partially) why entering the family business is a time honored form of education. And why poverty is so often inherited.

4) Persistence: for every person who succeeds at something difficult there are many who showed equal promise and desire who failed. You have to overcome performance plateaus, adversity, boredom, and compelling distractions. Don't confuse smart with quick. Learn to embrace tedium, frustration. Learn to question each apparent accomplishment and then raise the bar. Never settle. Never rest. Keep putting yourself out there. Fall, get up, fall again.

5) Opportunity: Among those who don't succeed are also the merely unlucky. Luck plays a far greater role in success than we care to believe. It isn't enough to be good; you need the opportunity to show someone whose attention matters how good you might get given the necessary resources and support. As someone once said, "no one remembers your name just for working hard."

6) A plan: low initial bar, measurable outcomes, near-term incremental goals on an unbounded path. If you wake up one day and your jeans don't fit and you say, I'm going to get fit, chances are you won't because the goal is vague (what's fit really mean?) and you don't have a plan (what do you do to get fit?). Even if you set a specific goal, lose 5 pounds, you still need a plan, a path to the goal. You will succeed if as you suck in your tummy and pull at your jeans you say, "Today I'm going to walk up three flights of stairs." If you do, and the next day you say, "I'm going to make a healthy low-call lunch and eat that instead of going out," and you also walk up three flights of stairs, you are on your way. Fewer calories, a few more flights, day by day. Drop a few pounds; get a bit stronger (5 flights of stairs). Once your jeans fit, set a new measurable goal that will help keep your jeans fitting.

7) A coach: timely, vivid feedback. A good coach won't let you fail but won't let you luxuriate in success either. He or she will always be encouraging and correcting you. Eventually you may internalize a restlessness, a deeply felt need for continual improvement. For high achievers, good is never good enough. Happy high achievers are inspired by that drive. Miserable high achievers are plagued by it. Focus on the process of improvement and let the outcome be what it will be.

Take aways

• Question your identity: what kind of butterfly does your caterpillar become?
• Set specific, measurable, obtainable goals: set the first bar low, but raise it quickly, always just almost out of reach; don't accept limits; don't treat setbacks as existential threats.
• Get an idol, an image of the perfection you seek (likely a person, but perhaps a specific performance, or even a thing)
• Get a coach / mentor
• Learn to focus intensely and fearlessly over longer and longer periods of time
• Abandon FOMO: you have one goal; nothing else matters

Disclaimer

This syllabus represents only a plan. Deviations may be necessary.