Rhetoric: our final homelessness

The Greeks emphased the learning of rhetoric … Its importance for public life is obvious.   That the troops should be pulled out of Iraq is eloquently argued by one party; that they should stay is equally eloquently argued by another.  A bewildering situation.  The question arises if there is, or was, not some other position - prior to its tragedy - some other stance that should have been taken initially in order to forgo the need for this eloquence; so that in the end, what we are listening to, the arguments, these are just laments about spilt milk.  The decisive moment has long since passed.

It reminds me of the argument about God; if he does, if he does not, exist.  Equal quantities of eloquence are expended on both sides in order to ‘try and decide the case’.  One can’t help wondering if the decisive moment doesn’t stand elsewhere, somewhere far different.  Dawkins: “I am arguing from fact …”  But is he?  There is something peculiar about his constant advocacy.  As if his own arguments don’t really satisfy him, as if he doesn’t really feel at home with them, and they just increase his thirst, what they are intended to quench.  We get lost in rhetoric.  Brilliant, dazzling, persuasive - but somehow empty at the same time.  So: the reasonable.

Tags: Dawkins, God, Homelessness, Rhetoric