Unable to compose the planned blog post on the role of rhetoric in politics, I now share with you some things I'm wondering about...
Was the 1990s America's "Golden Age"?
What will ultimately be remembered as more significant in the history of our country the 2000 election or the attack of 2001?
Are libraries better served by shushing conversations or encouraging them?
Should we spend our time learning lots of different things or absorbing one thing really deeply?
Why aren't evolutionist more confident that life can adapt successfully to a warmer earth?
Why did the Romans value rhetoric so much? What is the relationship between rhetoric and cynicism? Do we undervalue the rhetorical role of our elected officials? ...
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1 comment:
great questions. i'm only going to take a shot at two
> Why aren't evolutionist more confident that life can adapt successfully to a warmer earth?
It depends on how you define adapt. 'Life' will adapt in that many species will die out and over time new ones will evolve to fill empty niches. But (some) individual species will be unable to adapt because the changes are occurring so quickly (relative to geological and evolutionary timescales).
> Why did the Romans value rhetoric so much? What is the relationship between rhetoric and cynicism? Do we undervalue the rhetorical role of our elected officials?
I think a lot of this has to do with mass media & the culture it brings along with it. Even in the days before the civil war, people would listen for hours to hear lincoln & douglas debate. My suspicion is that with the advent of newspapers, then radio, then tv, and now the internet people's attention span is somehow compressed. Or maybe it's due to industrialization and the incessant pace-quickening of stopwatch engineering and the efficiency drive of capitalism.
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