Inflamatory Anonymity

I was thinking about the differences between how people talk anonymously and face-to-face, and why people can be willing to attack each other over a single comment on an online forum or Facebook. Many times I see people I know get worked up about a comment online, and angrily post back and forth with someone they don't know. The fact that the person posting is not face-to-face with the other person certainly gives a sense of being free from consequences. The flame wars and spitting of bile seems to escalate so quickly though. If you don't know the person you are angry at or being judgy towards, and your opinion of them is based on a comment on an online forum, what can be the reason for that? I wondered if another a reason for lowered inhibitions is the anonymity of the person being posted "at", lectured, cursed at, etc. If you can't see the person you are talking to and you don't know them, they can represent anyone you have pre-existing feelings towards. Just as you could imagine someone you are talking online with is your perfect match and soulmate, you could imagine they are the personification of evil. So once an online "entity" you are interacting with gets grouped in with the people you most hate and despise, then you have the right to direct all of your pent-up anger at them. Right?

Rhetorical Exploration 3: Existence vs. Logic

Intro to an interview with my friend Aaron talking about how strange it is to be anything: 

Rhetorical Exploration 3: Honesty as a Virtue

Interview with my friend Aaron discussing the merits of honesty in different scenarios: 

Rhetorical Exploration 3: Honesty vs. Kindness

Interview with my friend Aaron talking about the dilemma of whether to be honest to someone you care about and risk hurting them or to lie: 

Rhetorical Exploration 3: Law vs. Justice

Interview with my friend Aaron discussing the difficulty of retaining dignity and individuality when authority figures pressure you to conform: 

2-21-14 Class Sketches

Rhetorical Exploration #2

Rhetoric is used in everyday conversation, political statements, marketing of all kinds, and countless other ways. Although I can't provide evidence that Rhetoric is "essential to our existence" I recognize that rhetoric is used to persuade others and ourselves.

Burke outlined the necessity of "identification" in the use of rhetoric. To summarize what I took away from Burke's use of the term "identification", it means the persuader has to identify with the one being persuaded, and the one being persuaded has to identify with the persuader. So even if a speaker is known to be dishonest, the listener can still be persuaded if he or she decides that the speaker is being honest on a particular subject for some motive. The identification taking place on the listener's part is in the assessment of the speaker's motives, and that assessment might be accurate or not, as the listener's assessment is influenced by the speaker's use of persuasion.

Burke also discussed the use of "cunning" in identification. Cunning is used to consciously avoid examining unconscious motives: in other words, to willfully deceive ourselves. Burke's analysis of cunning brings to mind a lot of conversations on religion, and questions I have had about the reasons behind people's faith in religious systems. One of the worst reasons I have ever heard to believe in anything was something like "you can't know that God doesn't exist, so be a Christian and you are covered when you die". That was heavily paraphrased. But the implication was that you have to believe in something you don't believe in, due to a fear of death, eternity, etc. I have seen the use of common religious beliefs to shield "believers" from fears about death. One friend of mine baldly acknowledges this; he said that he chooses to believe in a God and afterlife because the idea of returning to the void when he dies terrifies him. To me that is the opposite of belief. But somehow that fear becomes hot-wired to the use of logic, and the true believer's conscious mind tells itself that it is simply inconceivable, that his or her religious belief is not true. The true believer is surrounded by evidence confirming his or her belief.