Thinking Critically@ Leadership Institute @ Allen Temple Feb. 1, 2021 Lecture

 

 I am teaching 4 classes, three at the College of Alameda, another class starts later this month, another next month. Two of these classes are Freshman Comp. We are using a book called Let's Talk: A Pocket Rhetoric by Andrea Lunsford. 

What I like about the book is putting persuasion at the center of the discourse on writing that starts with a chapter on listening. If the goal is mutual understanding and common ground (something we will look at in Chapter 4 in WLTC) then what Wayne Booth, a noted scholar and critic, calls "deep listening" is where we start (Lunsford 12). 

If "rhetoric is an 'ethical art' (based on good intentions), rhetoric can also be used for unethical purposes (with bad or evil intent)" -- as Trump and Nixon and here in CA Reagan, Schwarzenegger have done.  We need to understand rhetoric to communicate our own ethical messages and to be able to recognize and resist that others attempt to use against us (Lunsford 14).

Once again we define rhetoric as the practice of ethical communication. 

A practice one should consider cultivating is listening for understanding, before forming a conclusion about a topic discussed-- listen closely before saying what you think. Have you ever noticed how the power differential influences the outcome in a situation when the person with decision making power speaks first and when those assembled know the one with that hat does not really care what others think. 

There is an authenticity present in the decision to listen to enter a discourse prepared to keep one's mind open and listen without judgement. When we get to be a certain age, we know a few things, yet when speaking to youth who think they know best-- it is often hard to withhold judgement even after listening you realize the person is making a mistake and when the person is not hearing you. 

What do you do in these circumstances? 

We really do not know what a person thinks until they can state it. I guess this excludes those among us who can read minds, but even so, until the person says what is on her or his mind, the perspective is not certain. 

We all have a point of view on a given topic and often each point of few is perfect from the context we see it whether this is historically or the proximate position where we stand in relationship to it. Are we a participant or a bystander? How do we know what we know if true? Did someone we trust tell us or is it trending on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram?