There are many types of obvious rhetoric that we experience every day: flyers, television advertisements, emails, and so many others. You could almost point out everything you come across and say it is a form of rhetoric, or you could just plain state that every inanimate object frankly is rhetorical. This claim would be pretty drastic, but has been thought and talked about by many people (especially the smarty pants, like scientists). Relating to this, a word I bet you’ve never heard is panpsychism, explained by Wikipedia as “More of a family of theses in psychology than any one, unanimously supported thesis. Some say it is the view that all parts of matter have a mental aspect, or that it is related to the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind.” So… what does this have to do with rhetoric? Well, if we think about what we know about rhetoric, and the fact that it’s all about trying to persuade the reader or viewer to do something, then we can say that inanimate objects in general are there to persuade us to do something. Referring back to panpsychism, if one object has a mental aspect, then there must be mental aspects and communication between all objects, right? For example, lets say a boy, Tom, decides to go to the “gym”. Let’s pretend he does not own a TV, computer, telephone, or radio, and cannot read. Therefore, we can exclude all types of rhetorical advertisements and things with the exception the “gym”: an inanimate brick building. The building certainly did not call him up and persuade him to come to the gym (which wouldn’t have worked anyway, because as you know Tom does not have a phone). But something about the “gym” attracted him to come; let’s pretend it was the treadmill. Tom loves to run on the treadmill (another inanimate object). So of course he goes to the gym, runs, and afterwards is compelled to quench his thirst with a big glass of water. He did not ask to be thirsty, of course, but his body was attracted to the water just the same. After Tom drank the water, he plopped down on his couch. Just like his arrival at the brick gym, his exercise on the treadmill, and his desire for water, his unconscious decision to sit on the couch are all elements of his journey that I doubt were specifically directed to him. But to what degree did Tom make these decisions freely? Did his thirst shape his desire to sit or was just simply a convenience? Maybe his desire caused by the thirst is the case, but it is not over determining.
A man writes the quote that the inner experience of an entity “may, or may not, involve consciousness; it may, or may not, involve judgment. But in any case, it will involve aversion, or adversion, that is to say, decision. And this decision is, in its own right, the psychism that is essential to every last thing in the universe, from God to most trivial puffof existence in far-off empty space. Decision is the way that an atom, or any other thing in the world, ‘is feeling about itself’.”
So, the next time you’re driving and come across an inanimate obstacle such as a speed bump, pause for a second and think: how is such an object attracting a reaction?
It's definitely interesting to think that an inanimate object can cause a certain reaction in a person based solely on its design. For something like a chair, there was a manufacturer who wanted to market the chair in some way and designed it accordingly. A desk chair is very different from a bar stool or a recliner. All are designed to elicit some response or specific use from a person.
ReplyDeleteNatural objects do this, too. Many plants have evolved to attract particular pollinators, for example, or to taste bad and thus keep from being eaten. And while it is outside the box to think of this as rhetorical, you can definitely make a case for seeing it that way.