I Think I See The Light

Ever since we started reading Crosswhite, I've been scratching my head -- a lot.  Never mind his choice of dense language and arcane terminology, with precious few examples to help us visualize the application of his abstract ideas.  To me, far more dubious was his mission to bring the masses to a place of non-violence through a text that could challenge even the most erudite among his philosopher clique.  Then I came to Chapter 6, and I began, I think, to get a glimmer of the light Crosswhite sees, even if I question the need to pursue the ramification of every point and counter-point prior to arriving at this place.  

In Chapter 6 the author unravels his view of the problems with formal logic versus informal logic. In particular, he focuses on the issue of supposed “fallacies” that arise when using the latter, some of which can work to a writer’s advantage and almost none of which, according to Crosswhite, qualify as official fallacies of logic, since the writer is usually presenting an argument, not a formal logical proof.  He shows how even ambiguity is not a fallacy per se, but depends on the way the audience receives it.  The problem, he says, comes when a particular audience mistakes itself for the universal audience, at which point they have stepped over the line, into the zone of the “unreasonable.”  Though it’s taken him 181 pages to make this assertion, few could maintain that this isn't vital in a pursuit of settling disputes, and  no one could argue that it isn’t founded on solid reasoning.  Anyone who values reason would probably read this chapter and realize, “Yes, even I can be unreasonable."  This is a stinging indictment for every enlightened fool, every religion, every country that prides itself on having discovered “the way” for the rest of the planet.  

I wrote a couple weeks ago that I felt reason alone is incapable in waking people up to our own fallacious potential, an essential awareness for meeting another person in the middle.  Interestingly, through a rhetoric of reason, Crosswhite has arrived at that same point, at least on a theoretical basis.  
     While I still hold that the statesmen who govern us are inherently unreasonable (even the most reasonable are corrupted by the system simply to survive the system), and are therefore immune to any such reasonable remedies, in Crosswhite’s utopia, where even the jaded can be redeemed by reason -- a world we’d all prefer to live in, perhaps -- if anything he offers could change our world, this chapter is it.
     Of course, with money to be made all over the planet -- government and business in cahoots (by nefarious means or otherwise) -- and with a drowsy America unable to raise its sleepy head in objection (assuming they had an opinion), how many folks in Washington will take the reasonable path, even though they know, thanks to Crosswhite, that they're essentially despots foisting their ways on the defenseless?
     Continuing his utopian model for world peace, the author insists on a consistently idealistic means of diplomacy.  Argumentation, he says, depends not on our expectation of an interlocutor's having developed "a common human nature," but is essentially "a practice of hope" and a "desire to create," that is, build bridges.  Expect the worst, he says, and hope for the best. (186-87)  This is rich in wisdom, so far as a utopian model goes.  While, by and large, I embrace this myself, politically, this can lead to trouble.  In the real world, people tend to follow the notion of saving face, rather than turning the other cheek.  The classic situation is the new guy arriving in a prison; the only way to have any peace, it's said, is to confront the biggest, baddest opponent to establish your reputation or end up everyone's punk.  In global diplomacy, the same idea holds true.  After you get into Vietnam, you don't dare pull out for fear that the whole international community will consider you "weak."  How many lives have been lost because leaders couldn't risk looking like a "sissy"?

I would like to ask to what extent we can really adopt Crosswhite's notion that the writing class is "equally uncomfortable" for all participants when some have never really considered the "other," and some, especially minorities, have not only considered it, but may revel in it as a kind of vindication for marginalization.

The Bright Side of Battle

    Chapter 4 in Crosswhite’s The Rhetoric of Reason brings up a number of interesting points, only a few of which are the author’s primary thoughts.  Was I the only one who had a tough time with Crosswhite’s citing Hegel’s notion that, as a society, we need “the purifying experience of war” -- though not war itself, just intense conflict -- lest we lapse into corruption brought on by peace? (115)  I don’t question the aspect of war itself, which seems to be Crosswhite's bone of contention; rather, I question the idea that peace is corrupting and that conflict is the remedy. 
    Supposedly, Hegel’s idea is that war requires us to make sacrifices that fortify our spirits, without which corporations could usurp us.  First, who is he addressing?  Certainly not the wealthy, especially not the folks in the military-industrial complex, and nor their happy stockholders.  Who, then?  One would assume it’s the rank-and-file who actually stand to lose during a war: everyone else.  What kind of sacrifices do they make?  They tend to lose jobs, lose income, lose housing, lose entitlements.  For veterans, at best, they lose years away from loved ones; in combat, thousands die while the injured lose appendages, eyesight, mental and emotional capabilities and any hope of future livelihood, further encumbering themselves, their families or the state.  How does this sacrifice prevent social corruption?  Presumably, it wakes people up from the tendency to get fat and lazy, the tendency to take our freedoms for granted, the tendency to lower our defenses.
     By contrast, nations plunged into war presumably have the advantage of skirting the rot of corruption and steeling themselves, instead, against corrupt corporations.  This would suggest that Syria and Iraq, among others embroiled in battle, have the benefit of knowing who to trust and who not to trust.  Yet few really understand the causes or the culprits, though the mainstream media serve it up like the "blue ribbon special" on the daily menu.  For that matter, the US has been at war for some fourteen years, give or take, in Afghanistan and Iraq.  We’ve lost thousands of soldiers to a cause no one can name.  And, just when we thought there was a hope for peace, we’re marching back into the same bloody limbo.  All this, and barely a voice is raised to question or protest it.  Anyone aware of the corporate ownership of US media and its influence on bending journalism to its own agenda might have a hard time believing that, thanks to Hegel's "advantages" of war, we’ve avoided corporate domination.  Rather, one has to question whether war has stripped the scales of corruption from America’s eyes or added another layer.
    On a less strident note, I enjoyed Crosswhite’s endorsement of teachers’ “seeing things from the students’ points of view” in trying to help them develop claims and counter-claims. (130)  In my mind, the ideal classroom activity for this is debate, whereby students work together, focusing on their own arguments and anticipating the arguments of their interlocutors.  Still, in conferences and in written feedback, teachers also have the potential to play what Crosswhite calls “the ultimate audience-arbiter of the effectiveness of arguments. . .” (130)  Ideally, we can nurture a sense of real back-and-forthness, a dialectic where “(e)veryone has a chance to be taken equally seriously.” (120)  The question is, after we’ve studied for years and polished ourselves to become true professionals; after we’ve set ourselves up as the repositories of Compositional wisdom, to what extent can we keep our minds open to dialogue with students, to really hear their viewpoints, to possibly reconsider our own opinions, “to modify them, or take up new purposes altogether,” to quote Crosswhite. (122)