January 10, 2012

nothing I ever say will convince you and I'll talk to you till I'm blue in the face but even if you say
okay Alyson, I agree with you
you probably won't because though my job is to convince you almost nobody is ever truly convinced
which makes me sad.

everyone is always arguing with each other, which means we're having an argument right now and we don't even realize it
you're probably saying
stfu Alyson and get on with the post
and I'll say
okay just this once
because I don't want to fight anymore.
let's not fight, okay?

everything I say to you will fade & become irrelevant
which is the worst for a writer because we like to trick ourselves that our words are Dickens in waiting, but rhetoric is limited to the language of the day and what I say now may not even make sense in 10, 20, 30 years
I'll be an old lady and whippersnappers won't care what any of us had to say about anything
kids these days.

everyone can do rhetoric
so why am I studying it?
to do it better than you?
can I?
who knows, it's all subjective
so I'll never know.
damn.

mostly I've learned rhetoric can't solve all of our problems
which comes back to nobody being convinced by anyone else
so we only use rhetoric when we know we can persuade other people
so am I persuading you, now?
or are you still mad at me from before?

---