Can You Advocate Violence & Not Mean It?

Words have impact, especially on non-critical-thinking hordes & minions. People with aggressive tendencies (whether overt or just in their daydreams) are particularly susceptible. Rhetoric that borrows from the vocabulary of violence & war BREEDS thoughts of violence in these same hordes.

I often bring up how the words one chooses to convey or understand his world are from a vocabulary that aligns with how one thinks about his world.  If you believe that time comes in finite chunks and time you dedicate to yourself is holy, then giving up that time is “sacrifice.”  It’s a “frame,” a way of thinking.  Like a box.  If you’re thinking something is a war (your frame), you’ll refer to that thing in warlike terms.  And you can pass that frame along.

You cannot say “we don’t advocate violence” but imply armed conflict if you don’t get your way, blatantly say the opposition (the Left) is preparing for armed conflict against you (the Right), use images and frames of war and violence, and speak in terms of revolution.  If you do these things, you ARE advocating violence by framing your message (and, therefore, the solutions) in terms of violence.

Alien Rhetoric

I have not happened upon a formula that can be employed in argumentation (where persuasion is a primal motive) to influence my fellow arguer’s position or thinking process to a degree that has apparent instant and lasting effects. This is not really as important to me as being able to detect that I have reached my fellow in a meaningful and positive way. I’ve been pondering this more or less since forever, but not syllogistically or systematically. Not that this note will be syllogistic or systematic, but I hope the stream of thought will be refinable and productive toward uncovering the imagined formula. Imagined because I can conjure scenarios in my head about wonderful, edifying, fallacy-free exchanges of ideas (that don’t attack the other’s character); but these scenarios always rely on an assumed level of relatively balanced