Good morning Jen,
When you are in a debate or a debative argument -- oral or written -- you have to imagine yourself in a 'heavyweight fight' or a 'martial arts fight'.
You are not looking for 'baby blows' -- you are looking for that one 'haymaker' -- or even better, a few of them, all lined up one after another, to put your opponent away.
Now if you are a good philosopher, you want the 'truth' and 'righteousness' on your side too. You don't want to be putting together a 'fake argument' that is going to lead your audience down a 'false trail'. These types of arguments, I call 'sophist' arguments -- full of smoke and mirrors, designed to deceive and manipulate and fool people; not enlighten them.
So when you are writing an argumentive essay, you want to ideally combine 'truth', 'righteousness', and 'rhetorical power punches' to win over your reading audience. You don't want to bore them with arguments that have little or no significance.
And you want to add some drama, entertainment, excitement, and immediacy to your essay. (This is the biggest problem with academic essays that have you nodding off to sleep before you are into the third paragraph.)
Once you grab your reading audience, you don't want to let them go. You want people thinking and talking about your essay when they've finished reading it.
You want to finish with a flourish.
You want to finish with that final haymaker.
You want your essay to be complete with thought and intellect, a superior power of reasoning, passion, truth, righteousness, idealism, and that final clout that makes people sit up and take notice of your essay.
There's no time or reader patience for 'pussy-footing' around your argument.
Bring it on hard, and bring it on home.
I also like a certain element of 'unpredictability' in my essays. You want to keep your reader guessing...'Where is he or she going to go next?' 'What is he or she going to say next?
In this respect, essay-writing has, for me, become at least partly, the replacement for the 'Gestalt Hotseat' that used to both scare me to death -- and excite me -- during the 1980s at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto. There is an element of Gestalt Therapy -- both in the bi-polarity negotiation and integration, and in a striving for a certain degree of direct contact and immediacy -- in each of the essays I write.
Stay away from predictability and routine. Give your audience something different. Something they didn't expect. Stay in the moment. Stay within yourself -- even as you are extending yourself, extending 'your self'. An essay should be a 'growth experience' both for you -- and your audience. An essay should reflect what is 'figural' for you in the moment, and reflect the 'leading edge' of your thought, feeling, passion -- and character-expansion.
Long after you are dead and gone,
You want your essay to still be standing in for you,
Still saying,
Jennifer Lynn Bain,
or David Gordon Bain,
was here.
-- dgb, Nov. 15th, 2008.
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(We will come back to a counter-argument below on the perceived and/or real positive effects of global warming shortly.)
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John said...
This election saw most Global Warming initiatives fail, for good reason. The principle reason is that most consumers, farmers, ranchers and foresters understand two things. First, global warming is good, not bad. Second, carbon in general and carbon dioxide in particular is good, not bad. Higher average temperatures together with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reduce crop failures and improve crop, grazing and forest production. Those two factors are the principal forces greening the planet and feeding all of us today. Liberal and eco-cults want to torpedo that winning combination. Why? Perhaps readers have some ideas here.
November 7, 2008 11:09 AM
