This post owes inspiration to Coleman’s excellent post of a a few days ago. I recommend you read it in full:
I should point out that I don’t make it a policy to get mad on the internet. In fact, I’ve long operated by the precept that the Internet is Fake because it’s entirely voluntary, therefore losing your cool is like tilting at imaginary windmill. Or like running in the Special Olympics.
But just because I don’t emulate a man’s approach doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a point. This is the other failing of internet discourse, the unwillingness to hear people. Internet discourse is too public, too performative, for us to treat it as anything other than a game. We win if we get the last word, or force the other to block, or build a ratio. Something.
Actually, nothing. But we know that. That’s why we do it. We don’t care about the truth; we care about winning and losing. We care about winning and losing because winning feels good and losing hurts. Eternal verities have nothing to do with it.
So what is the point that Coleman is making? One entirely in line with ancient understandings of rhetoric. Observe:
Who's speaking matters. Let's not play games as if credibility isn't a thing. The same people talking about how men shouldn't comment on abortion because they don't give birth are the ones talking about how we should go to war when they're not going be the ones killing and dying. We absolutely should look at the person saying it.
Whatever point your making came from you. Well, who are you? I'm not interested in this one dimensional thinking where the words matter but not the one saying them. That ain't real life. Bad people use good ideas to do horrible things all the time. So personal attacks are absolutely an option on the table.
According to Aristotle, effective public speaking is a product of three skill sets: Logos (consistency in statements), Ethos (public credibility), and Pathos (emotional appeal). And if he had to choose one to focus in on, he’d go with Ethos. Far more important than the ability perform verbal mathematics is the power of being listened to, of having the ear of your audience. You do not achieve this with a constant stream of “ThIs aNd ThErEfORe ThIs, I’m SmArTeR tHaN yOu!”
Notice how I defined Logic above: consistency. If you start from A, does B follow? Is A even true in the first place? That’s it. That’s all it has ever been. Anyone can take that and make nonsense seem truth, as long as it moves predictably.
Take the Declaration of Independence, with its “self-evident” truths:
All men are created equal
Men have inviolable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
Men make governments to protect their rights
Each of these statements, far from being self-evident, are questionable at best. Taking them apart would require very little effort. But who cares? We built an entire political culture on them. They resonate so deeply in our collective unconscious (is that even a thing? who cares? sounds good, don’t it?) that we’re still referring solemnly to it 200 years later, extrapolating it to argue things Thomas Jefferson couldn’t have conceived. The man took a century of political philosophy and turned them into a sacred text so simple a moron could understand it. As far as rhetorical performances go, the Declaration of Independence is in a class by itself. Every American political thinker works in the house Jefferson built.
Emotion resonates, credibility persuades. These things work. Truth is a multifaceted complexity, and you can’t trap it all in words and consistent statements. Yes, the universe is governed my an internal logic. Words, however, are only representations of the universe. They are slippery and they shift with use. People know this. That’s why it’s only one leg of the rhetorical stool.
Now, each leg has its downside. Relying only on Ethos turns all arguments into appeals to authority, and preclude the possibility of doing your own thinking. Relying only on Pathos creates obvious negative feedback loops. But each of them are also necessary, indeed required at certain junctures. Human perception is limited, hence, we have many ways to the Real. Some of them will be uncomfortable; ye’d best get cozy with them.