Hey, just go make me a sandwich like a woman alright.

Oh....wait you're actually doing that ... Um a combo please.

Cathedrals and bazaars

"Just Read the Book Already"

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, by Maryanne Wolf, reviewed in Slate.com Aug 2018 By Laura Miller

[from the review] the brain’s neuroplasticity—that is, its tendency to reshape its circuitry to adapt to the tasks most often demanded of it

[from the book, quoted in the review]  “Many changes in our thinking owe as much to our biological reflex to attend to novel stimuli as to a culture that floods us with continuous stimuli with our collusion.”

Wolf’s goal, she insists, is not to bemoan the lost idylls of print reading, but to build “biliterate” brains in children who are “expert, flexible code-switchers,” with “parallel levels of fluency” in both

the skimming, “grasshopper” style of reading fostered by digital media and

the immersive, deep, reflective reading associated with print books.

She views online reading as if it mostly consists of news consumption, decrying the way the medium pressures writers to condense their work into snackable content and makes readers impatient with anything long and chewy. But “reading” doesn’t necessarily describe what many people are doing online anymore,

Wolf refers back to a famous story from Phaedrus, in which Socrates cautioned against literacy, arguing that knowledge is not fixed but the product of a dialogue between the speaker and listener—that the great weakness of a text is that you can’t ask it questions and make it justify its conclusions. Wolf uses the story to point out the futility of rejecting a powerful new communication technology like the book, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed that the internet more closely resembles Socrates’ ideal than the printed page does. Social media and comments sections are more like conversations than they are like books or print journalism. In her paeans to deep reading and its power to engender critical thinking, “wherein different possible interpretations of the text move back and forth, integrating background knowledge with empathy and inference with critical analysis,” Wolf argues that good readers learn to weigh their acquired knowledge against the text, testing it. But an internet in which serious ideas are presented and evaluated by writers and readers who debate them publicly and in good faith would be just as much a boon to critical thinking.

Why, Clay Shirky argued, couldn’t Carr recognize that the form of “literary reading” he lamented had had its day and was being replaced by something different but of even greater value because it is so much more democratic? The reason no one’s reading War and Peace is, Shirky asserted, because it’s “too long, and not so interesting.” Instead of

mourning the loss of the “cathedral” reading experience offered by a great 19th-century novel,

we should be adapting to the “bazaar” culture of the internet.

If the medium trains our supremely adaptable brains to work differently, well, maybe that’s because they need to work that way to take advantage of “the net’s native forms.”

Freed from what Shirky deplored as the “impoverished access” of the past, we were, he assured us, poised for “the greatest expansion of expressive capability the world has ever known.” In the dark days of 2018, all of us are fully aware of what it’s like to be bombarded with the expanded expressive capability of the internet. Forget War and Peace—nothing could be as uninteresting as 99 percent of the stuff people post online. The medium remains the message, and in the case of the wide-open internet, that means the medium is ever more cacophonous and indiscriminate, its democratic qualities as much a bug as a feature. One of the reasons that digital readers skim is not because of some quality inherent in screens, as Wolf seems to think, but because so much of what we find online is not worth our full attention.

The vested interests of our age, which, from all kinds of motives, desire to maintain traditional values or to get new values set up in their place, have constructed a wonderful machine, which we shall call the Great Stereopticon. It is the function of this machine to project selected pictures of life in the hope that what is seen will be imitated. All of us of the West who are within the long reach of technology are sitting in the audience. We are told the time to laugh and the time to cry, and signs are not wanting that the audience grows ever more responsive to its cues. A great point is sometimes made of the fact that modern man no longer sees above his head a revolving dome with fixed stars and glimpses of the primum mobile. True enough, but he sees something similar when he looks at his daily newspaper. He sees the events of the day refracted through a medium which colors them as effectively as the cosmology of the medieval scientist determined his view of the starry heavens. The newspaper is a man-made cosmos of the world of events around us at the time. For the average reader it is a construct with a set of significances which he no more thinks of examining than did his pious forebear of the thirteenth century— whom he pities for sitting in medieval darkness— think of questioning the cosmology. This modern man, too, lives under a dome, whose theoretical aspect has been made to harmonize with a materialistic conception of the world. And he employs its conjunctions and oppositions to explain the occurrences of his time with all the confidence of the now supplanted disciple of astrology. The Great Stereopticon, like most gadgets, has been progressively improved and added to until today it is a machine of three parts: the press, the motion picture, and the radio. Together they present a version of life quite as controlled as that taught by medieval religionists, though feeble in moral inspiration, as we shall see. It is now our object to look at the effects of each in turn. No one is prepared to understand the influence of journalism on the public mind until he appreciates the fact that the newspaper is a spawn of the machine. A mechanism itself, it has ever been closely linked with the kind of exploitation, financial and political, which accompanies industrialism. The press is the great scribe, possessed of that preponderance of means which technology always provides. The ease with which it multiplies stereotypes makes it the ideal servant of progress. It thrives on an endlessness of dissemination. Its progeny, like the frogs of Egypt, come up into our very kneading troughs. But, just because the mechanical victory of the press is so complete, we are likely to ignore the conditions on which its work proceeds. I serve notice, therefore, that we here approach a question of blasphemous nature, a question whose mere asking disturbs the deepest complacency of the age. And that is: Has the art of writing proved an unmixed blessing? The thought challenges so many assumptions that to consider it requires almost a fresh orientation in philosophy; but we must recall that it occurred to Plato, who answered the question in the negative. With him it concerned the issue of whether philosophy should be written down, and his conclusion was that philosophy exists best in discourse between persons, the truth leaping up between them “like a flame.” In explanation of this important point he makes Socrates relate a myth about the Egyptian god Theuth, a mighty inventor, who carried his inventions before King Thamus, desiring that they be made available to the people. Some of the inventions the King praised; but he stood firmly against that of writing, declaring that it could be only a means of propagating false knowledge and an encouragement to forgetfulness. Socrates adds the view that anyone who leaves writing behind on the supposition that it will be “intelligible or certain” or who believes that writing is better than knowledge present to the mind is badly mistaken. Now Plato was disturbed by written discourse because it has “no reticences or proprieties toward different classes of persons” and because, if an individual goes to it with a question in his mind, it “always gives one unvarying answer.” And we find him making in the seventh Epistle the extraordinary statement that “no intelligent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated, especially not into a form that is unalterable,— which must be the case with what is expressed in written symbols.” Obviously, here is a paradox, and the present writer is aware of risking another in a book which calls attention to the sin of writing. The answer to the problem seems to be that written discourse is under a limitation and that whether we wish to accept that limitation to secure other advantages must be decided after due reference to purposes and circumstances. In the Good Society it is quite possible that man will not be so dependent on the written word. In any case, for Plato, truth was a living thing, never wholly captured by men even in animated discourse and in its purest form, certainly, never brought to paper. In our day it would seem that a contrary presumption has grown up. The more firmly an utterance is stereotyped, the more likely it is to win credit. It is assumed that engines as expensive and as powerful as the modern printing press will naturally be placed in the hands of men of knowledge. Faith in the printed word has raised journalists to the rank of oracles; yet could there be a better description of them than these lines from the Phaedrus: “They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality”? If the realization of truth is the product of a meeting of minds, we may be skeptical of the physical ability of the mechanism to propagate it as long as that propagation is limited to the printing and distribution of stories which give “one unvarying answer.” And this circumstance brings up at once the question of the intention of the rulers of the press. There is much to indicate that modern publication wishes to minimize discussion. Despite many artful pretensions to the contrary, it does not want an exchange of views, save perhaps on academic matters. Instead, it encourages men to read in the hope that they will absorb. For one thing, there is the technique of display, with its implied evaluations. This does more of the average man’s thinking for him than he suspects. For another, there is the stereotyping of whole phrases. These are carefully chosen not to stimulate reflection but to evoke stock responses of approbation or disapprobation. Headlines and advertising teem with them, and we seem to approach a point at which failure to make the stock response is regarded as faintly treasonable, like refusal to salute the flag. Especially do the journals of mass circulation exploit the automatic response. So journalism becomes a monstrous discourse of Protagoras, which charms by hypnotizing and thwarts that participation without which one is not a thinking man. If our newspaper reader were trained to look for assumptions, if he were conscious of the rhetoric in lively reporting, we might not fear this product of the printer’s art; but that would be to grant that he is educated. As the modern world is organized, the ordinary reader seems to lose means of private judgment, and the decay of conversation has about destroyed the practice of dialectic. Consequently the habit of credulity grows. There is yet another circumstance which raises grave doubts about the contribution of journalism to the public weal. Newspapers are under strong pressure to distort in the interest of holding attention. I think we might well afford to overlook the pressure of advertisers upon news and editorial policy. This source of distortion has been fully described and is perhaps sufficiently discounted; but there is at work a far more insidious urge to exaggerate and to color beyond necessity. It is an inescapable fact that newspapers thrive on friction and conflict. One has only to survey the headlines of some popular journal, often presented symbolically in red, to note the kind of thing which is considered news. Behind the big story there nearly always lies a battle of some sort. Conflict, after all, is the essence of drama, and it is a truism that newspapers deliberately start and prolong quarrels; by allegation, by artful quotation, by the accentuation of unimportant differences, they create antagonism where none was felt to exist before. And this is profitable practically, for the opportunity to dramatize a fight is an opportunity for news. Journalism, on the whole, is glad to see a quarrel start and sorry to see it end. In the more sensational publications this spirit of passion and violence, manifested in a certain recklessness of diction, with vivid verbs and fortissimo adjectives, creeps into the very language. By the attention it gives their misdeeds it makes criminals heroic and politicians larger than life. I have felt that the way in which newspapers raked over every aspect of Adolf Hitler’s life and personality since the end of the war shows that they really have missed him; they now have no one to play anti-Christ against the bourgeois righteousness they represent.

Weaver, Richard M. (2013-11-04). Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition. University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

💕

A year ago today was the first time I saw a picture of Jaehwan and I so very clearly remember asking my friend who it was, because he’s got one of those faces that you just know will end up meaning a lot to you. I wanted to write this because I’m so full of happiness and blessings and I wanted to try to put it into words. I understand it is silly and almost vapid to write this about someone I’ve never met, so I’m sorry in advance! 

There’s a passage in Sirach that talks about encountering someone who is remembered as sweeter than honey, better to have than the honeycomb. The term honey appears endlessly in Abrahamic faiths, always concomitant to love. Aisha associates it with the prophet ﷺ, Jonathan associates it with David, the lovers of Solomon’s Song use it between one another. Within theology, honey is a homologue of love—and that’s why I’m honeyjaehwan!

What I find most beautiful about Jaehwan is, kind of as an extension of the honey expropriation, how effortlessly I locate him in contexts of archived love. He’s so easily a supply for any manifestation of love, and that has taught me not only how to appreciate texts in new ways, but also how to love more fully and whole-heartedly. Like, the more I quote the Psalms in reference to him, the more I truly and earnestly understand the love behind them. The more I put his name in the Song of Solomon, the more it fits in the Hebrew Bible. Looking at his face even makes Plato’s Phaedrus accessible—I can absolutely remember god when I look at him. The rhetoric of love and devotional aesthetic live in him in such beautiful and affecting ways and I’m genuinely so blessed to feel a love that is at once historically common and personally special.

I have worked for years to become someone who puts love into the world and who can accept love. I want so badly to be kind and good and compassionate, and that can get so unimaginably hard. To love someone as sweet and encouraging as Jaehwan, then, is the most beneficial thing in the world. I will never meet him, but to have someone to pour my heart into and to serve as a reminder of what I need to present the world with has made me the person I am today. In ancient near east theologies, everyone started as a ‘fledgling soul’, and only after you found some personal way to access the divine could you achieve your soul’s potential. As dumb as it is, Lee Jaehwan has been a perfect person to attach the fledgling soul to. I am working so so hard to become the person I know I can be and Jaehwan has become so helpful to this.

I have met so many lovely, beautiful, beloved individuals through him. So many angels who similarly love him and find goodness in themselves as a result of loving him. I have been so touched to make friends who love me and send me positive messages and encourage me. I don’t know what I did to deserve such important bonds but I am eternally grateful. By surrounding myself in a community which loves this man as much as I do, I’ve met so many individuals with such value and purpose. All of you play such a big role in my life and I’m glad to know you all. I am eternally grateful for all of you, and apologize for my inability to constantly affirm this fact. I really, genuinely, thoroughly love all of you.

I’m able to understand he’s just a human and luckily my love for him does not overwhelm my personal life. I still study relentlessly and date and go out and do a million things, but to be able to come home and think about him as a source of love and happiness is great—I hope you’re all able to strike this healthy balance. It’s so dangerously liminal to convey the fact that I love him so whole-heartedly without seeming detrimentally fawning. But it’s become so genuinely fun to love him!! There’s a trope in the Hebrew Bible of being “delighted in love” and that’s how I really feel!! I love him and will continue growing with him and all of you. I am so full of thanks and love, and I wish I had a more eloquent way to put all of this. Thank you all for loving him with me and forming a community that is so positive and fun. I cherish you all and wish I had words for my love!! But I never do so I just quote the Bible: מתוק לנפש ומרפא לעצם 💗💓💞💕

Random-access construction by robert pirsig

“The reason Phaedrus used slips rather than full-sized sheets of paper is that a card-catalog tray full of slips provides a more random access. When information is organized in small chunks that can be accessed and sequenced at random it becomes much more valuable than when you have to take it in serial form. It's better, for example to run a post office where the patrons have numbered boxes and can come in to access these boxes any time they please. It's worse to have them all come in at a certain time, stand in a queue and get their mail from Joe, who has to sort through everything alphabetically each time and who has rheumatism, is going to retire in a few years, and who doesn't care whether they like waiting or not. When any distribution is locked into a rigid sequential format it develops Joes that dictate what new changes will be allowed and what will not, and that rigidity is dead.

Some of the slips were actually about this topic: random access and Quality. The two are closely related. Random access is at the essence of organic growth, in which cells, like post-office boxes, are relatively independent. Cities are based on random access. Democracies are founded on it. The free market system, free speech, and the growth of science are all based on it. A library is one of civilization's most powerful tools precisely because of its card-catalog trays. Without the Dewey Decimal System allowing the number of cards in the main catalog to grow or shrink at any point the whole library would soon grow stale and useless and die.

And so while those trays certainly didn't have much glamour they nevertheless had the hidden strength of a card catalog. They ensured that by keeping his head empty and keeping sequential formatting to a minimum, no fresh new unexplored ideas would be forgotten or shut out. There were no ideological Joes to kill an idea because it didn't fit into what he was already thinking.

Because he didn't pre-judge the fittingness of new ideas or try to put them in order but just let them flow in, these ideas sometimes came in so fat he couldn't write them down quickly enough. The subject matter, a whole metaphysics, was so enormous the flow had turned into an avalanche. The slips kept expanding in every direction so that the more he saw the more there was to see. It was like a Venturi effect which pulled ideas into it endlessly, on and on. He saw there were a million things to read, a million leads to follow...too much...too much...and not enough time in one life to get it all together. Snowed under.

....he spent most of his time submerged in chaos, knowing that the longer he put off setting into a fixed organization the more difficult it would become. But he felt sure that sooner or later some sort of a format would have to emerge and it would be a better one for his having waited.

Eventually this belief was justified. Periods started to appear when he just sat there for hours and no slips came in--and this, he saw, was at last the time for organizing. He was pleased to discover that the slips themselves made this organizing much easier. Instead of asking “Where does this metaphysics of the universe begin?” --which was a virtually impossible question--all he had to do was just hold up two slips and ask, “Which comes first?” This was easy and he always seemed to get an answer. Then he would take a third slip, compare it with the first one, and ask again, “Which comes first?” If the new slip came after the first one he compared it to the second. The he had a three-slip organization. He kept repeating this process with slip after slip.

Before long he noticed certain categories emerging. The earlier slips began to merge about a common topic and later slips about a different topic. When enough slips merged about a single topic so that he got a feeling it would be permanent he took an index card of the same size as the slips, attached a transparent index tab to it, wrote the name of the topic on a little cardboard insert that came with the tab, put it in the tab, and put the index card together with its related topic slips. The trays on the pilot berth now had about four or five hundred of these tabbed index cards.

At various times he’d tried all kinds of different things: colored plastic tabs to indicate subtopics and sub-subtopics; stars to indicate relative importance; slips split with a line to indicate both emotive and rational aspects of their subject; but all of these had increased rather than decreased confusion and he'd found it clearer to include their information elsewhere.

It was fascinating to watch this thing grow. No one that he knew had ever written a whole metaphysics before and there were no rules for doing it and no way of predicting how it would progress.

In addition to the topic categories, five other categories had emerged. Phaedrus felt they were of great importance:

The first was UNASSIMILATED. This contained new ideas that interrupted what he was doing. They came in on the spur of the moment while he was organizing the other slips or sailing or working on the boat or doing something else that didn't want to be disturbed. Normally your mind says to these ideas, "Go away, I'm busy," but that attitude is deadly to Quality. The UNASSIMILATED pile helped solve the problem. He just stuck the slips there on hold until he had the time and desire to get to them.

The next non-topical category was called PROGRAM. PROGRAM slips were instructions for what to do with the rest of the slips. They kept track of the forest while he was busy thinking about individual trees. With more than ten thousand trees that kept wanting to expand to one hundred thousand, the PROGRAM slips were absolutely necessary to keep from getting lost.

What made them so powerful was that they too were on slips, one slip for each instruction. This meant the PROGRAM slips were random access too and could be changed and resequenced as the need arose without any difficulty. He remembered reading that John Von Neumann, an inventor of the computer, had said the single thing that makes a computer so powerful is that the program is data and can be treated like any other data. That seemed a little obscure when Phaedrus had read it but now it was making sense.

The next slips were the CRIT slips. These were for days when he woke up in a foul mood and could find nothing but fault everywhere. He knew from experience that if he threw stuff away on these days he would regret it later, so instead he satisfied his anger by just describing all the stuff he wanted to destroy and the reasons for destroying it. The CRIT slips would then wait for days or sometimes months for a calmer period when he could make a more dispassionate judgement.

The next to the last group was the TOUGH category. This contained slips that seemed to say something of importance but didn't fit into any topic he could think of. It prevented getting stuck on some slip whose place might become obvious later on.

The final category was JUNK. These were slips that seemed of high value when he wrote them down but which now seemed awful. Sometimes it included duplicates of slips he had forgotten he'd written. These duplicates were thrown away but nothing else was discarded. He'd found over and over again that the junk pile is a working category. Most slips died there but some reincarnated, and some of these reincarnated slips were the most important ones he had.

Actually, these last two pliles, JUNK and TOUGH, were the piles that gave him the most concern. The whole thrust of the organizing effort was to have as few of these as possible. When they appeared he had to fight the tendency to slight them, shove them under the carpet, throw them out the window, belittle them, and forget them. These were the underdogs, the outsiders, the pariahs, the sinners of his system. But the reason he was so concerned about them was that he felt the quality and strength of his entire system of organization depended on how he treated them. If he treated the pariahs well he would have a good system. If he treated them badly he would have a weak one. They could not be allowed to destroy all efforts at organization but he couldn't allow himself to forget them either. They just stood there, accusing, and he had to listen.

The hundreds of topics had organized themselves into larger sections, the sections into chapters, and chapters into parts; so that what the slips had organized themselves into finally was the contents of a book; but it was a book whose organization was from the bottom up rather than from the top down. He hadn't started with a master idea and then selected in Joe-fashion only those slips that would fit. In this case, "Joe," the organizing principle, had been democratically elected by the slips themselves. The JUNK and TOUGH slips didn't participate in this election, and that created an underlying dissatisfaction. But he felt that you can't expect a perfect system of organization of anything. He'd kept the junk pile as small as possible without deliberately suppressing it and that was the most anyone could ask.”

Horoscope - Jan 14 2017

Aries Horoscope

(Mar 21 – Apr 19)

Although there are chores waiting for you today, you're ready to blow off your responsibilities and pursue a bit of overdue pleasure. Thankfully, the disparate pieces should fall into place pretty easily once you make your decision. There is no reason to hide your plans from anyone else, even if they don't agree with your choices. Follow your heart and not your head now, but stop long enough to see the intrinsic value in both your feelings and your thoughts.

Taurus Horoscope

(Apr 20 – May 20)

You're eager to swing into action in order to reestablish your emotional equilibrium today. You may feel like a candle in the wind if you lose your connection with the more practical side of the equation. Nevertheless, your life is more stable than you realize and your light has nearly no chance of being blown out by changing circumstances. Author Rikki Rogers wrote, "Strength doesn't come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn't."

Gemini Horoscope

(May 21 – Jun 20)

You want to shout your plans from the rooftop today because you're anxious to make a point about how you want to live your life. You may think it's important to express your individuality and stand up to the authority of anyone who tries to limit your options. However, you could get carried away with your mission and overstate your cause. Unfortunately, people might not be so appreciative of your agenda unless you demonstrate your concern for their needs as well. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar."

Cancer Horoscope

(Jun 21 – Jul 22)

The same ideas that you weren't sure about a few days ago now appear to be the shiniest of stars beaming at you. Your confidence inspires others to respond enthusiastically when you share your plans, which in turn, validates your ambitious intentions. However, your current originality can overshadow your common sense. Don't trade in a practical plan for an ingenious one that won't work. Your success depends upon setting goals that are flexible and attainable.

Leo Horoscope

(Jul 23 – Aug 22)

It feels good to boldly state your needs without much of a filter today. Your plans may be outrageous but your flair for the dramatic makes even the craziest idea sound totally plausible to your audience. Happily, everyone seems to be applauding your efforts and you're not completely sure why. But don't waste energy trying to rationalize the behavior of others; you have too much to prove and the sooner you start the show, the sooner you'll be able to reap the rewards of your stellar performance.

Virgo Horoscope

(Aug 23 – Sep 22)

You might be riding a quiet wave of self-assurance now, but people won't likely see your positivity at first. You could go out of your way to hide a blooming relationship or minimize an infatuation with a person, place or idea because you don't want anyone spoiling it with their negativity. But your somber demeanor is confusing to others who can't understand what you're keeping to yourself. Greek philosopher Phaedrus wrote, "Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many."

Libra Horoscope

(Sep 23 – Oct 22)

Maintaining your place in the social pecking order is easier today than keeping the peace in a family relationship. Although your friends and associates offer enticing invitations now, your time is better spent patching up hurt feelings with someone close to you than filling your calendar with many diversions. But don't expect too much too fast; you might miss the most important part if you continue to rush through the day. Virginia Woolf wrote, "No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."

Scorpio Horoscope

(Oct 23 – Nov 21)

You're tired of putting your professional reputation on the line. You wish there was a way to engineer a retreat where you didn't have to face any responsibilities for a few days. Plan your great escape, whether it's a long vacation to an exotic location or a quick afternoon getaway to a local spa. But whatever you choose, it's essential to break your pattern and unplug for a while. Goethe wrote, "We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden."

Sagittarius Horoscope

(Nov 22 – Dec 21)

Walking on the sunny side of the street requires no extra effort today because the shade seems to magically disappear as you approach it. In fact, it feels like everything is coming up roses even in the middle of winter. Nevertheless, as Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote, "When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door." Even the most perfect situation can unravel quickly if no one is attending to the details. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Capricorn Horoscope

(Dec 22 – Jan 19)

Although you don't necessarily like it when anything or anyone gets in the way of your productivity, it's nearly impossible to compartmentalize your feelings today. Thankfully, you won't likely be overwhelmed now as waves of compassion open your heart to the plight of those less fortunate. Nevertheless, your current hypersensitivity requires some time management, especially if your to-do list continues to grow. Elbert Hubbard wrote, "Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive."

Aquarius Horoscope

(Jan 20 – Feb 18)

You might need to put some personal space between you and another individual today if it feels like you're losing control of your boundaries. You aren't confident that you're reading the current situation correctly, but you're not ready to handle someone else's state of perpetual greed. There's no point in trying to reason with those who won't listen. It's healthier to disengage from a toxic interaction and walk alone than to follow a crowd going in the wrong direction.

Pisces Horoscope

(Feb 19 – Mar 20)

You can't let down your guard today until you meet your obligations. Fortunately, you're blessed with an abundance of energy so don't procrastinate while the cosmos is working on your behalf. However, your fantasy life might be running on overdrive now, distracting you from your responsibilities. You could derive great inspiration from your imagination if you stay conscious enough to know the difference between dreams and reality. Believe it or not, cultivating your creativity and demonstrating your integrity can be done at the same time.

Source : Rick Levine

Read more about your horoscope here

How (and Why) to Know

In Leah's post on Nicomachean Ethics, she wrote about Aristotle's way of looking at goodness and happiness as the goals of human life, and did a great job connecting Book I with Phaedrus.  I also reread Nicomachean Ethics, but focused more on how Aristotle described the process of attaining happiness. This has been something I've thought about with many of our readings this semester- how can we actually use the philosophy in these classical works to achieve the abstract ideals we've spent so much time discussing? And in going back to Aristotle, it became clear to me that getting anything useful out of knowledge or out of ideas involves understanding the role that knowledge plays in our lives. Ultimately, it's often through philosophy's relationship to our values and our habits that we reap its benefits. In Book I, Aristotle states that, "the end of study is not knowledge but action (5)." What we know (even if it is only that we know nothing) affects our identity and therefore our destiny.

For this reason, we have to be careful with our methods of inquiry, because misinformation or abuse of the truth can prevent us from achieving happiness. So can misapplication of knowledge, or extrapolation from one situation to a universal. Aristotle writes that, "some principles we see by induction, some by perception, some by a kind of habituation, and others in other ways (13)", and that, "it is a mark of an educated person to look in each area for only that degree of accuracy that the nature of the subject permits. Accepting persuasive arguments from a mathematician is like demanding demonstrations from a rhetorician (5)." To avoid falling into such traps requires distinguishing between eternal truths and truths contingent on our own perspective. "While we should begin from things known," Aristotle says (agreeing with Plato), "they are known in two senses: known by us, and known without qualification (6)." It's important to differentiate, as Socrates didn't always do, between these separate ways of knowing because they are each useful only in their own limited way. In order to find happiness, we must navigate both objective and subjective truths, and learn when to rely on each. In this acknowledgement and utilization of the various forms and shades of knowledge, Aristotle's depiction of the philosophy of happy individuals is similar to many of the debate strategies we've worked on with the debate students.

Guide on What Is Fable

A fable is a type of story that uses animals as the main characters. In fables, animals can mimic human behavior. For example, they can communicate with each other with the languages ​​used by humans. The animal characters of the story can wear shirts and pants like humans.

They can also walk like humans, for example, the goat standing on the back leg of the story. The news written by Aesop are good examples of fable. Aesop is a Greek slave who would have existed in ancient Greece around 550 BC. Some claim that Aesop did not write the stories but that they were written by Phaedrus.

Aesop’s fable is a source of inspiration for the Western tradition of fables. Aesop fables is one of the largest collections of public domain fables with more than 665 stories to read. The first collection of Aesop fables dates back to the 4th century. Their stories have been rewritten and published by many other modern writers.

Many of the phrases that are used in everyday conversations, like acidic grapes, are actually taken from the fables written by Aesop. Besides Aesop, there are other popular ancient writers such as Babrius, Phaedrus and Abstemius. Modern fables writers include Rudyard Kiping, Beatrix Potter and Lewis Caroll.

Fables have been around for thousands of years and many parents still read them as stories for children before bedtime. It flourished in the Middle Ages as well as other forms of literature. Marie de France is one of the first to collect a collection of fables in the twelfth century. Many of the stories he compiled have a heroic theme. Fables become popular when they are introduced to children’s literature in the nineteenth century.

In a fable, animals are used to highlight the weaknesses of human beings in order to put a point in the moral lesson. It is very rare to find human characters in a fable story. This news can be great for teaching young readers the lessons of life. Your child can reflect on the stories and understand why he or she should have good behavior.

The fables can be as short as one paragraph, making them easy to read during the limited free time you have, for example, having lunch at the office and waiting for the bus. Many of Aesop’s fables have illustrations by Walter Crane. Some have black and white illustrations. But the illustrations are not important because you can imagine the stories in your mind as you read them.

Because it is short, it is easy to read for young children who are just starting to learn to read. Another reason why the fable is a great time to read the story is because kids love to interact with animals and find them cute. Your children can learn different types of animals by reading stories.

If your child has no interest in reading many stories, you can start by reading the fables first. They will have more patience to read short stories that can lead to a good reading habit. After your child has read a story, you can ask him to tell you what he has read and tell the story. You can ask your child a series of questions to see how much he remembers and understands what he has read.

In conclusion, encouraging your child to read fables can offer many benefits. You can spend your time significantly by learning moral values ​​that will have a positive impact on your life later on. Many of the popular fables you read in your childhood are now in the public domain. If you search online, you can find them in the children’s literature sites.

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Guide on What Is Fable http://ift.tt/2yFHSpp

A trans soldier in the ancient Roman army?

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The Roman army at the Battle of Cannae. The painting depicts the death of Roman consul Paulus Aemilius. John Trumbull (The Athenaeum / Yale University Art Gallery), via Wikimedia Commons

In a series of recent tweets, Donald Trump proposed to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. This proposal would reverse the inclusive policies introduced during the Obama regime. Trump’s decision was, he claims, based on the burdensome medical costs and disruption that accommodating transgender people in the military has allegedly caused.

Trump’s tweets put me, as a classics scholar, in mind of a rather obscure fable thought to be written in early imperial Rome by one of the Emperor Augustus’ freed slaves, Phaedrus. In this tale, a barbarian is threatening the troops of the military leader, Pompey the Great. All are afraid to challenge this fierce opponent until a “cinaedus” steps forward to volunteer for combat.

Although foreign to us moderns, the cinaedus was a familiar figure to ancient Greeks and Romans, whose identity raised concerns about gender.

The cinaedus and the commander-in-chief

The cinaedus was frequently mentioned in classical sources due to his brazen effeminacy, untoward sexual behavior (most often a “shocking” desire to be anally penetrated by other men), and the ambiguous status of his genitalia.

This figure was first mentioned by Plato in the fourth century B.C., who says little more than that the cinaedus’ life was terrible, base and miserable. Other classical authors provide more detail.

Martial, a Roman poet writing in the first century A.D., for instance, describes a cinaedus’ dysfunctional penis as like a “soggy leather strap” in one epigram. In the same century, the Roman novelist Petronius has a cinaedus suggest that both he and his fellows have had their genitals removed.

In Phaedrus’ fable, the “cinaedus” is described as a soldier of great size but with a cracked voice and mincing walk. After pleading permission in a stereotypically lisping manner from Pompey, his commander-in-chief, the cinaedus steps into battle. He quickly severs the barbarian’s head and, with army agog, is summarily rewarded by Pompey.

What the cinaedus reveals about today

Hold Phaedrus’ fable up and some easy similarities stand out with the situation today. The cinaedus is comparable to a contemporary trans person in that their expression of gender does not match the norms that their society – whether ancient or modern – expects of their sex as assigned at birth.

Ancient Greek and Roman sources show a bias against gender-variant people parallel to Trump’s current-day attitudes.

Both the tweets and the fable display discomfort with the idea of gender-ambiguous fighters, regardless of any true situation on the ground. And while Trump professes exclusion of transgender people on grounds of financial cost and disruption, Phaedrus is a little more open about his motivations.

In Phaedrus’ fable, the cinaedus is untrustworthy. He is described as having stolen valuables from Pompey and then later swears on oath that he hasn’t. A clear connection is made between gender “deception” and treacherous behavior.

This, I believe, is the same unfounded gender panic that Trump is drawing on to appeal to his traditional support base.

A rally in Times Square after President Donald Trump’s announcement of a ban on transgender troops in the U.S. military. Frank Franklin II/AP Photo

Gender diversity

Such consistency in attitudes across millennia is rather depressing. Some points in redress, however, are worth considering.

There are notable differences between a cinaedus and a trans person. The cinaedus was thought of as male, albeit with questionable masculinity. He is only ever described as being effeminate, never as identifying with, or living as, the opposite gender.

In my own work, I use the term “gender diversity” to point out loose, but still meaningful, connections between the ancient cinaedus with both modern trans people and others included under the LGBTQI+ umbrella.

The wide variety of effeminate men, masculine women, eunuchs and intersex individuals mentioned in classical sources suggests a breadth of experiences was possible outside of traditional gender norms.

There is some evidence of female masculinity in antiquity. The mythical women warriors of Greek mythology, the Amazons, might actually have had some basis in historical fact. In his book “Postcolonial Amazons,” scholar of ancient Greek Walter Penrose demonstrates that warrior women were prevalent and highly valued both in Scythian and ancient Indian cultures.

And although classical scholars have debated whether any actual individual in antiquity ever embraced the stigma of being openly called a cinaedus, a series of tax receipts, letters and temple inscriptions from Greco-Roman Egypt do document men who were identified and notably identified themselves using this term.

Being trans and surviving adversity

The cinaedus has a long and persistent history. Being a topic of interest for writers from Plato in the fourth century B.C. through to Byzantine authors in the 11th century A.D., he is truly a survivor.

As gender studies scholar Jack Halberstam writes, trans people will likewise survive Trump’s exclusionary tactics. For, as Phaedrus’ little fable suggests, gender-diverse people have in all ages been capable of some mighty remarkable things.

Like the victorious soldier cinaedus, they can confound expectations and achieve results in some of the most extremely adverse situations.

Tom Sapsford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The Legacy of Robert Pirsig

When I was a child, I used to hear people speak about “Road Scholars.” I understood, even at such a tender age, that this was a compliment of the highest regard. That a “road scholar” was someone whom we were to respect but also someone that perhaps had traveled a different road in life, a harder road than the rest of us. As I was introduced to literature, I found examples of such “road scholars” like Jack Kerouac and Richard Brautigan and William S. Burroughs. And in my adolescent mind, I found the very contrary nature of each of these writers to be equally as laudable as their writing talents, and I decided that I, too, would become a Road Scholar. And as I settled upon this responsibility I had to acknowledge that the examples I could rattle off all seemed to be male. Where were the female Road Scholars? Where could I read the works of women who took life by the horns, took to the open road and charted the course of their journeys so that we could all live vicariously through them, and learn? Well, if I had to, I surmised – I could become the very first female Road Scholar. You can imagine the letdown I experienced when around the age of seventeen or eighteen I learned that there was no such thing as a “Road Scholar.” I had simply misheard the sobriquet “Rhodes Scholar” which was an American scholarship awardee attending Oxford. I guess it’s a good thing to be a Rhodes Scholar and certainly, people do seem to highly regard those who have worn such a mantle, but I was crushed at the realization. I hadn’t killed my darlings; I had simply woken one day to realize that they didn’t exist. Except that they did. To hell with Rhodes Scholars (I mean, I’m sure they’re all great and should be admired), I decided I was going to stick with my original interpretation. I was going to have my own wild journeys of life, I determined, and I was going to write about them. In May of 1995, I began what became a two and a half year road trip. I left Detroit, drove to Niagara Falls, camped in Northern New York, hit the coast of Maine, traveled back through to the heartland of America, visiting Ohio and Kentucky, stayed with family in Nashville, visited Graceland, New Orleans, the Missions of Old El Paso and made it to Scottsdale, Arizona on August 1st that summer, to visit with my grandfather. Eight months later, lost in my grief over my grandfather’s passing from liver cancer and uncertain of my place in this world, I went back on the road. I drove to San Diego to visit my sister, to Yosemite and the high desert of Nevada. I drove through Salt Lake City and southern Utah, the lower range of the Rockies, Nebraska, and Iowa, and back to Detroit. And over the next two years, I circumnavigated this continent a couple more times. I didn’t know where I belonged, except I knew that I belonged to America and I knew that the road called to me and I was determined to write my way through my meanderings.

Robert Pirsig with his son Chris in 1968 © William Morrow

I had been influenced by those road scholars, by those literary journeys for so long that I felt I was kin to those amazing writers. But the book that informed my road trip perhaps more than others was that of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Today, with the passing of the author Robert Pirsig, I reflect upon his story and how it interjected with my own life. Robert Pirsig was born in Minnesota in 1928, the son of a law school dean. Bright and precocious, Robert enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1943 to study biochemistry. But the young student was troubled by some things he witnessed in the academic culture, including distracting conflicts with hypotheses. His grades began to fail, and he flunked out. Robert spent the next ten to fifteen years flailing about – a stint in the U.S. Army, journalism classes at the University of Chicago. He even went back to the University of Minnesota to finish his chemistry degree. He married and had two sons, Chris and Theodore. He became a teacher of Creative Writing at Montana State University in Bozeman. While in Bozeman a personal and professional crisis overtook Pirsig. Already at odds with the staff for his renegade teaching style, Pirsig found himself having a conversation with the students in one of his classes about the notion of “Quality.” What is Quality? How can we define it? The question not only perplexed his students, it haunted the teacher. He found himself obsessed with the challenge and quite literally suffered a mental breakdown. Pirsig was hospitalized and treated with electroshock and other extreme treatments. The man that emerged from the hospital was a shell of his former self. He had significant memory loss and a complete personality transformation. But he turned to Zen Buddhism, a practice he had been dabbling at for a few years to make sense of himself and the new world he was inhabiting. Some years later he took his son Chris on a motorcycle road trip, along with two adult friends. They traveled from the Midwest toward Montana, the scene of his past. It is this trip that is the genesis of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” In “Zen,” the foursome deal with a variety of squalls – both meteorological and emotional. The storms hit the Plains, and the quartet hunker down. Sometimes they bicker and argue, although their fights are less about the topic at hand and more about how the protagonist of the story seems to view things differently than the other three. There is also the challenge of traveling with a sullen pre-teen boy. Along the way, Pirsig talks about a man named “Phaedrus” – a brilliant man that the protagonist recalls. You soon realize that Phaedrus is the narrator, some years before and Phaedrus is the author himself. The protagonist of the story remembers Phaedrus, before the breakdown and all that lead to it, but does not remember BEING him. But as they roar closer and closer to the University where he used to teach, signs that Phaedrus and Phaedrus’ illness are not only reappearing in the protagonist – they’re also showing up in his son Chris. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is a love story. It’s the story of a man wrestling with his former self over the very soul of his child. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s funny, and it’s thoughtful, and it’s wildly inventive. It’s quite literally the book that I have spent the most money on because every time I purchase a copy someone pops up in my life that has never read it. I have to loan my copy out knowing that they’re going to love this book as much as I do and I’ll never get it back, and I will have to run out and purchase another copy, and that’s perfectly okay with me. Pirsig wrote only one other book after “Zen” – another roman a clef called “Lila: An Inquiry Into Values.” In “Lila” the protagonist is divorced from his first wife and working as a ship captain. I read “Lila, ” but the details don’t remain with me the way that “Zen” does. I always understood, during my own journeys, that something deeper than “seeing the country” was at stake. For me, my road trips were about trying to control my destiny and opening myself up to the energy of different places. I wanted to see myself in the world around me and know that each day would have a permanent imprint upon my being if for no other reason than I captured each day, in words, in stories. For me, the exploration of “Quality” meant understanding the role that I played in determining the richness of my life. I don’t think I would have kept going back to the road, in times of trouble and uncertainty, had I not read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” at the tender age of twenty and understood that there was magic in the journey if you were brave enough to bare yourself to it. Robert Pirsig passed away on April 24th, in Maine, at the age of 88. But his life and his ideas and his journey will continue long after. He was preceded in death by his son Chris.

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from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The Legacy of Robert Pirsig

Visual Rhetoric and Social Media

It’s a new age. Life has a whole new rhythm and feel to it, and it is all credited to the advance in technology, which in turn has given rise to the field of digital and visual rhetoric. Gone are the days when oral speeches were the most meaningful way a message could be delivered. When at one time, the quality of a message could be determined by the arrangement, style, and delivery of it, today almost anything can pass as an important message just by the means of the medium that is delivered by. The desire to fit in has always been in a human’s nature, and the rise of social media not only provides a certain standard that one should fit into, but also encourages it. Oral speeches in ancient days were given by educated individuals who formed what they thought were non-refutable arguments worthy of hearing, and today digital and visual rhetoric allows educated individuals as well as less educated individuals to speak their mind. The effect of this on speech, rhetoric, and human culture has been profound in ways that are both positive and negative; however, it also highlights the absolute necessity for rhetoric of any kind and its permanence in society.

It is important to address first and foremost, the shift that even allowed digital rhetoric to exist. Digital rhetoric is a development from written rhetoric, which arose from the development of oral rhetoric. Walter Ong, a Jesuit rhetorician from St. Louis, studied the movement from an oral culture to that of a print culture. When people think of a word, it is almost impossible to say the word without immediately thinking of what the world looks like or how it is spelled, so much so that “we cannot separate if from ourselves or ever recognize its presence and influence” (Ong 4). This is a glimpse into how much written language and rhetoric has had an impact on even the way that humans think. In this sense, it is difficult to imagine how people thought before thoughts and ideas could be recorded. He states, “The oral word as such distresses literates because sound is evanescent… it can operate with exquisite skill in the world of sounds, events, evanecsenses” (Ong). Ong emphasizes the impact of the temporariness of oral speech and how it takes much more work to sustain culture and keep alive the accumulation of knowledge through oral means only, “other wise these truths will escape, and culture will be back on square one, where it started before the ancestors got the truths from their ancestors” (Ong 12). There is no question that this method takes up a certain time and strength that people today lack because of the luxury of the written word. Not only that, but expanding on knowledge and exploring new concepts was difficult because so much energy was concentrated on remembering what was already known (Ong 12). Essentially, oral rhetoric limits humans to memorizing and containing, rather than analyzing or breaking down ideas or theories. It is also interesting to note that the invention of “writing falsifies,” meaning it “makes all of a word appear present at once,” when in actuality, once the word is spoken it is no longer occurring anymore, and disappears from existence (Ong 24). In the Phaedrus, Socrates expresses that writing is simply a tool that one can use to manipulate and is therefore, inhumane. He argues that attempting to establish what is in the mind in the physical world as writing is deceptive (Plato). Socrates, according to Plato, thought that writing “destroys memory,” and “weakens the mind” (Ong 28). Although some aspects of the current culture was lost due to the advance in the written language, it seems that the world has improved immensely from the advance that led to written language. These improvements make the loss of this precious practice of storing information in the mind worth it. In order to reach the full potential of human oral thought, writing is required so that the work and thoughts may be expounded upon. Though it may seem like writing reduced the need or importance of oral speech, it actually “enhanced it, making it possible to organize the ‘principles’ or constituents of oratory… to achieve its various specific effects” (Ong 9). When people think of and process words, they think in a language that they can see physically, as well as in their minds. Ong states, “literacy is regarded as so unquestionably normative… that the deviancy of illiteracy tends to be thought of as lack of a simple mechanical skill” (Ong 13). The written language was developed so that humans could reach their full potential and place ideas into an existence that one can physically hold on to. In this way, the desire to remember and record things so that they would not be forgotten was born and would only continue to grow throughout the years.

Humans are somewhat obsessed with remembering the past. Throughout history the need to remember and record events in peoples fleeting lives only increased and today, it takes form in a phenomenon that has developed into something called social media. Walter Ong stated that, “computer “languages” resemble human languages in some ways but are forever totally unlike human languages in that they do not grow out of the unconscious but directly out of consciousness.” In regards to the invention of computers, philosophers like Socrates and Plato would indeed consider it an obstruction to true thinking. Computers do not have the ability to fight back or answer questions in an unconscious way. As Roland Barthes states, “to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more that the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text” (Westlake 26). Words are thus, “frozen, and in a sense dead,�� which actually works for the sole purpose of remembering, however this would imply that because the words cannot be changed, they must be worthy of being permanent (Ong 31). One thing is certain, “whether for good or bad, electronic technology will have long-range effects on the nature of writing” (Halpern and Ligget 3). At one point, this could have been a positive thing, because then it only allowed well-formulated thoughts and rhetoric that have been reviewed and edited countless times to reach the masses. Although it once took an immense amount of time and effort to get a published work to reach a wide audience, today the social popularity of a post can happen in a matter of hours and even minutes. Not only this, but greater value has been placed on what once took a simple click of the “enter” button on one’s keyboard, than something that required several years to consider worthy to publicize. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Snapchat allow people to publish anything to their heart’s desire, regardless of whether it is intelligible or worth reading.

Facebook in particular, organizes information and posts depending on chronology and popularity with no regard for the level of quality in a post. The Facebook News Feed functions so that “the meaningful updates get posted and discarded with the same amount of attention as the mundane” (Goodwiller 3). In this sense, an update on ISIS could directly follow a friend’s update on the health of her pet gerbil. At one point in time, oral rhetoric was the only practice available and so its content was attended to with great care. Aristotle’s five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery were taken into serious consideration. This in comparison to how any information is ready at the click of a button today changes how people view rhetoric and also how they think. One of the main defining features of Facebook is the ability to “like” something, which signifies approval. It is a wordless way of stating your presence and acknowledgement of a given post rather than actually commenting on something that would usually require composing a sentence in one’s head. Goodwiller states that this is preferable over, “engaging in a dialogue with the author and other commentators in the comments section” (Goodwiller 7). The question lies in whether this is an effect of laziness or whether social media has caused our culture to have a simple indicating symbol replace what would normally require composing thoughts into rhetoric. The practice of writing things out, or organizing one’s thoughts to come to a conclusion is slowly being rejected, thus producing one’s own thoughts and realizations has become more rare. Regardless of what the answer to the question is, it shows that “we privilege consumption over production, just as the larger culture privileges the consuming class over the producing class” (Westbrook 461). Humans are able to analyze and understand a piece of rhetoric, but they do little to produce anything out of what they are given other than reciting a response. Social media sites like Facebook, are examples of both an incredible influx of consuming and producing. Because it allows anyone from anywhere in the world to post what they wish, there is little to no filter and it is up to the audience to determine what they deem worthy of their time. Content absorption is sacrificed for the gain of superficially consuming or “liking” more information and posts. In an effort to keep up with this constant feed of information, the audience has less and less time to spend on each post they see. Social media adjusts to the decreasing attention spans that it feeds and works even more to keep the attention of the audience. Facebook utilizes the concept of “hashtags” and “hypertexts,” knowing that this is what will cause the audience to absorb, consume, and buy what they want them to. This has nurtured in our generation a culture in which “rapid scanning or skimming of material on screen has become a frequent activity” (Dyson and Haselgrove 210). It is more likely that the less words a post has, the more likely people will be to read it, consider it and proceed to act upon it. Thus it makes sense that visual images would draw more people in, as reading takes time that people no longer seem to have. However, there are limits to visual rhetoric, as well as new possibilities it offers that written and oral classical rhetoric cannot.

When comparing how online social networks and classical rhetoric work, the main difference is that social networks “allow for the inclusion of multiple text variants… which widen their expressive potential and support discourse to achieve their persuasive aim. Thus, with a short message one may say a lot” (Berlanga, Garcia, and Victoria 129). This brings in the question of how Aristotle’s five canons of rhetoric fits into visual and digital rhetoric. Compared to oral speech, there are standards of visual rhetoric that oral speech is not capable of meeting and vice versa, as “certain elements of…. performance are absent in computer-mediated interaction (visual cues such as clothing and facial expression and aural cues such as tone), they are replaced in chat and on websites by more “staged” elements such as font, photographs, music, and graphics” (Westlake 30). Because humans are aware of the importance of facial expressions and tones to deliver a message, communication through media gives rise to the creation of “emojis,” which are small pictures that one can type into a chat to aid a sentence that could be understood in different ways. Despite this rather smooth adjustment to modern culture, arrangement, style, delivery, invention, and memory remain critical aspects of a well-rounded speech and essential to eloquent rhetoric. In fact, aspects of this can be seen in social networking sites today because “rarely do the users just share their life… it is with the aim of prompting certain responses… with a certain degree of persuasion” (Berlanga, Garcia, and Victoria 130). The five canons then prove to be useful in our fast-paced society. However, the use of visual rhetoric has the ability and advantage, in a sense, to invoke an audience’s reaction without the use of words. In the modern day, this tends to attract more people because the current generation revolves around instant gratification. Because visual and digital rhetoric tends to catch the audiences’ attention more effectively, the amount of written rhetoric is reduced and this lack of written production is encouraged as “visual rhetoric is being defined repeatedly as a frame of analysis for looking and interpreting, but not often enough for producing” (Westbrook 461). Social media robs the individual of being required to say something to be heard, which in turn, can actually make written rhetoric that much more meaningful. Thus, through the production of visual rhetoric, Facebook makes it easier for the mundane to be heard and makes it harder to stand out as a good writer or rhetorician.

Facebook has become such an influential means of communication that if one doesn’t have a Facebook profile, they are often considered to be isolated. “The generations of people older than current college students [are known] as the ‘silent’ generation,” because they do not share the same reliability on Facebook as the current generation does (Westlake 31). No more do people live in “quiet desperation,” rather “people now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation” (Westlake 31). Communication is different now in that, “interaction participants are no longer required to share the same reference frame or the sociocultural paradigm, as required in traditional models” (Berlanga 129). Any thing that is publicly posted has the ability to reach an audience that one would never physically interact with. Furthermore, people can interact with each other without ever actually uttering nor ever typing a single word. Facebook operates in a way that allows people to be present and have a voice without necessarily being required to say anything. Ethos and social standing was generally determined through a person’s credibility, rhetoric, and words, but in the social media world, it is established through the amount of “likes” or “shares” that one has on a photo or post. No matter how much people may seem to deny it, the amount of ethos someone has is linked to how many friends one has on social media. Goodwiller states that, “a person’s ethos on Facebook relies on… who they are friends with, what they did over the weekend… and who they quote… the building blocks upon which their Facebook reputation is constructed” (Goodwiller 6). This desired “reputation” causes a never-ending chain of “friending” more people on Facebook so that one can get more friends, more likes, and more ethical grounds on which they have authority and acceptance as a voice to be heard. Though this can be a result of complete superficiality, if “the relationship one maintains or has established in the real world, still remains in the virtual world,” there is a consistency there that offers the same feeling of permanence that written rhetoric does (Berlanga, Garcia, and Victoria 134). This might offer some comfort and can be true, but only if there is consistent communication and interaction between the Facebook friends in person as well. Exchanging writing and rhetoric must be pursued in the relationship if it is stay personally ethical and communicative. Unfortunately, the label of being “friends” on Facebook can be lost as easily as it can be gained, with the simple click of a button. This instability bolsters the need to be noticed and heard in social media and as a result the “hashtag” was invented. A hashtag is made up of the pound symbol and a tag, in which whatever word is attached to the tag links to a community of other pictures or posts that have that same hashtag. It is not uncommon to see hashtags such as, #follow4follow, #like4like, or any word that has to do with the picture that was just posted. What this indicates is the almost chronic-like need for this generation to have the attention and approval of the world. In terms of rhetoric, less attention is paid to persuasion, because all the convincing that one needs, is the idea that if they #follow4follow, they will satisfy their desire to establish ethos and be admired without producing the rhetoric that is normally required to do so. Ethos is gained when one has more followers than his or her friend, or when that particular picture has more likes. It has gotten to the point where if one is truly desperate they can purchase followers with moeny to make their profile look more “credible”. However the standards on which this ethos is established is based on the system of social media and technology, which can easily be controlled by its users according to their preferences. As a result, a profile of superficiality is what people in the social media world use to judge another person’s character. Surprisingly (or not), this leads to a false base on which to build rhetoric upon. Thus, a majority of the rhetoric that arises from Facebook, if judged by that only and not the real person is based on false grounds. Another key element of social media, or technology in generally is how easily things can be deleted and recovered from its memory, which helps to aid an online reputation. Speaking from personal experience, I always found it amusing how some people tend to post new profile pictures with the caption, “temp,” implying that the photo they currently posted (usually a “selfie”) was only temporary and would be replaced soon with a real photo, as opposed to this fake “temp” one. There’s this idea that a person has to caption something as temporary when in actuality, everything on facebook is temporary given that one can change whatever they like on their profile at any time. This “selfie” and caption combination represents this human’s longing to perhaps test the waters, see if their picture will be “liked” by many people and only decide to keep it if it is approved by the masses. In this sense, people are able to build an image of themselves that they feel will give them acceptance and a superficial love from the masses without feeling the consequences of rejection of doing something that people would not approve of. By using this casual word, “temp,” the person is using a short and sweet rhetoric style that suggests innocence and lack of narcissism. That “selfie” that was just posted does not reflect narcissim, one might think, because it’s only temporary. However, so is everything else on Facebook, so what does that rhetoric truly imply? When it comes to rhetoric, the ability to be “empty, sly, and insincere,” is even more encouraged, as people tend to present less of their true personality and instead present more of who they think other people would want them to be, much less who they desire to be (Meltzoff 30). This access to endless temporariness and “second chances” that Facebook offers greatly contrasts how painstaking it might have been to erase even one’s handwriting before the invention of the computer. This has nurtured an attitude that is not afraid to make mistakes. However, this also adds a certain pressure of perfection as it eliminates the excuse of lack of resources to succeed. This generation’s obsession with being noticed and with being remembered for good things increases with the rise in technology. Because “Facebook is a medium in which the events of a night can be both told and completely erased with the click of a button,” it makes it harder to grasp onto permanence of any sort (Goodwiller 4). When any issue is over, the amount that people talk about it is less and less and eventually, it dies. The same can be said for anything that occurs on social media. In this sense, electronic rhetoric and oral rhetoric have something in common that written rhetoric does not have. Electronic rhetoric has this ephemeral nature that has the ability to disappear through lack of stability or through a human’s control, just like the oral word does. Rhetoric has undergone a series of shifts from oral, to written, to visual on social media sites and through it all it has shed light on the fact that not all improvements lead to human progress in ethics. However, it is important to acknowledge the fact that rhetoric has greatly contributed to our shifts in perspective on how we see each other and the world. Social media encourages the desire to be remembered and offers the capability to erase just as easily what people do not want to be remembered. The question here lies in what the subject chooses to use social media for and the ways in which they live out their decision. What I personally observe to be the most common result is that people use both, and the creation of this alternate identity is produced. People record and post everything that they want to remember, while also freely deleting anything that gives them a bad reputation or is not to their liking. Here, the power truly lies in rhetoric. With the constant flood of information and the decreasing attention spans of this generation, it is up the rhetorician to produce something that stands out even brighter for the public to notice. Rhetoric fights the modern world, but also adjusts to it and gives everyone the opportunity to try their hand at what they observe to be the best form of persuasiveness. For some, the five canons of rhetoric serves as a stable option, while for others, visual rhetoric is a more effective way of appealing to the masses. Regardless, it is apparent that no matter how many shifts rhetoric goes through, its impact on human life and relationships in this world renders it a permanent necessity.