Rhetoric

No post yesterday due to my exam today. Its one for project oriented work and communication. Very interesting topics in some aspects and very not in others. I will spare you the details, but I will comment on the idea of teaching communicative and specifically rhetorical skills.

Obviously our educational institutions strive to make us successful in our future endavours as that would in turn mean that they have succeeded in their task to steel us for our goals. But what I dislike specifically about rhetoric is that it is simply a tool that allows any master of it to do disasterous things. Politicians are a great example.

So what I think is, and I did voice this concern for my professor but he brushed me off with some excuse about differing disciplines, that along with a rhetorical course should always follow a course on how to determine the primary value of ones objective. I know this will seem foreign to most people, but why would you not want to self-evaluate and analyse your reasoning behind your argumentation while analysing your argumentation anyway. Its like the goal makes the initiation immune to scrutinisation. Which is fairly unnerving to say the least.

We already deal with the fall out of this problem, in that the people responsible for your take on the world used their rhetorical power to change a world view that was once different, and in many cases we have no evidence to support the reasoning behind this.

Rhetorical training basically makes you a salesman outside of just selling and buying. You start being able to shift not commerce but thoughts and ideas. Hitler did this.

The sollution is not to disregard the field of rhetoric, for it certainly has a lot to teach us. Specifically it can teach you how to locate these "sales pitches" you often hear from people who want to sell you ideas. Or as it should be called, take your own ideas and substitute them with new ones, making you think that they are better.
And this does not mean that you should always stick to your initial assumptions and disregard new information. Obviously that would be foolish. Bush did this.

The sollution could be to take a more scientific approach to personal development though. Giving students a chance to analyse their current paths, where they might lead them and what the alternatives could be. 

Self improvement should be social improvement.