Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

red concave bar 1

Phrases Ready for Retirement

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , ,

 These mental cheats sacrifice accuracy for the rhetorical advantage of certainty.  And that’s more than we should accept.

It’s not unusual to catch someone’s thought in mid-flight that deserves an arrow that will bring it back down to earth.  Habits and overuse make it easy to overlook vapid phrases that pretend to pass as insights. In complex times like these they tend to do violence to the Truth, which needs much more context and detail.

Here’s a short list of some common offenders.

“It’s a simple as that.” 

We know when we say it or hear it that we’ve probably uttered a useless overstatement.  But its declarative certainty is attractive, and maybe a good way to foreclose debate.  But humans have grown smarter over the years about the complexities of living and interacting with others.  Einstein famously noted that “as our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”  More knowledge makes us aware of a bigger spectrum of unknowns.  We are wiser by grasping the limitations of simple nostrums.

When someone issues this phrase it’s usually a hammer blow for subtlety. Imagine the phrase tacked on to these common thoughts:  People aren’t trying if their marriages don’t work. . .  Teens are obsessive about sex. . .  New Yorkers are pushy. . .  World War II was started by Germany . . . , and so on.  None of  these claims have earned the right to be worded as unequivocal.  We may not know everything these days, but we should know that the actions of humans and organizations are rarely explained with one dimensional understandings.

“This isn’t rocket science.” 

I’m guilty of saying this.  But, in fact, the task of accounting for human action is arguably harder than working with the predictable usually effects found in the physical sciences.  To be sure, we are right to be impressed with scientific achievements.  Many of us were stunned to see the three SpaceX booster rockets that went into space recently and then returned to land feet first on the launch pads where they started.  Wow.  (Here’s the clip, if you missed it.)  But the laws of physics and the behavior of machines usually make it possible to produce results that can be replicated.

Put another way, the sciences are assisted by unequivocal baselines.  And that makes events more orderly.  But try accounting for where a cat will light after circling a room, or why your Uncle Mort insists that raw celery is the world’s best food. In these realms we are talking about nearly infinite causes that may never be known.

“I remember it like it was yesterday.”  

In all likelihood, you probably don’t.  We’ve learned a lot about the natural fallibility of memory.  We may indeed “see” distant events or feelings with what seems like pristine clarity.  But memory research has advanced to a stage where it is sensible to call into question those things about which we remain all too certain.  For example, there is increasing evidence that eyewitness accounts in trials and routine police work are more inaccurate than we used to expect.  Or try this test: visit your old grade school, or a neighborhood  that was home several decades ago.  Putting aside various improvements, some features that seemed so vivid will probably be different than you may recall. The house I lived in as a pre-teen now looks so much smaller than what I remember.  And what happened to what I remember as a spacious back yard?  The question to my siblings is always “How did we all manage to fit?”

“What’s the story?”  

Cable news hosts are fond of turning to a fellow journalist on camera to ask this obvious question.  They are surely right to ask it.  But if postmodernism has taught us anything, it is to look for broader and multiple narratives.  The problem with the question as worded is its singular form.  Human events should  lead us to expect stories and alternate narratives.  Almost any complex human action is likely to produce different versions about was actually going on.  Facts and features of narratives almost always spring from selected elements, different perspectives, and points of view we are predisposed to confirm.

All of these phrases are mental cheats. They sacrifice accuracy for the rhetorical advantage of certainty.  And that’s more than we should accept.

finger pointing 2

Jeremiads

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , , , ,

We don’t need Professor Harold Hill to tell us there are troubles right here in River City.  Indeed, the existence of a pool hall seems to be the least of them.

One of the oldest and most recognizable rhetorical forms is the jeremiad, which is a warning or a call to action for others to change their ways. Jeremiads are a popular form of public rhetoric, seen and heard in news columns, religious tracts, documentaries and political speeches. And then there is your insufferable Aunt Tilly. The best we can do is suffer through her endless admonitions. Jeremiads typically describe a whole cluster of problematic habits or behaviors, which I suppose can be seen as a sign our abilities to imagine the world as it might be.

In short notice any of us can emit a jeremiad.  For some reason it can feel good to tell others they are on their way to one of the circles of hell.  The form is named after the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah who condemned idolatry, corrupt priests, and those who would sell themselves as “false prophets.” Sin travels hand-in-hand with the cautionary warnings of proselytizers.  And so it is with their secular counterparts who thrive on doomsday warnings that others seem unable to heed.  My best childhood memory of church was the booming voice of J. Carlton Babbs reminding his Methodist flock how very near we were to the precipice.

Jeremiah                             Wikipedia.org

If this all sounds a bit self-righteous, it surely is.  But jeremiads also provide the necessary churn to prod the rest of us to consider the consequences of our actions. We don’t need the reminders of Professor Harold Hill to tell us there are indeed troubles right here in River City.  Others are eager to pitch in to feed our natural meliorism.

The young have an aversion to jeremiads as much as the old are compelled to issue them.

Those of us with an abundance of judgments about how the social order should work are eager to tell others what they are doing wrong.  For reasons not clear to me, this rhetorical gene seems to especially thrive in men. Freely sharing opinions is a masculine trait.  We can cite the Puritans in early America.  But we could just as easily point to many of our contemporaries who take to jeremiads like fish to water.  We usually think of older evangelicals that have any number of warnings to offer to their straying flocks.  But think, too, of a broad tradition in liberal politics, well represented by Bernie Sanders or the iconoclastic writer, Chris Hedges, both of whom describe current economic, foreign policy and healthcare policies that will lead the nation to ruin.  As befits their unsettling nature, the best jeremiads give us no comfort because we know that they are probably justified.

Even this blog indulges in its share of fire and brimstone religious tracts. The constant complaint here that distraction is the communication malady of our age represents a difference in kind, but not in form.

The young have an aversion to jeremiads as much as the old are compelled to issue them. Cautions on behavioral and lifestyle choices receive a chilly reception from teenage audiences who have often been inoculated against hearing yet more advice.  Some interesting recent research suggests that even peer-to-peer appeals for such basic forms of self preservation such as lowering the volume levels of headphones typically fall on those ostensibly damaged ears.  Newer members of the human race are not all that interested in hearing how older generations became sadder but wiser. It is probably some mysterious generational thing.  But it is also an understandable impulse that the young would like to make their own mistakes.