TOW #4 - How To Win Friends and Influence People (IRB)

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a book by Dale Carnegie, a writer and lecturer who focused a lot on self-help and social improvement. Many of his works focus around the idea that one can influence and change the behavior of others by changing your behavior towards them. That idea is very present in How to Win Friends and Influence People. One might even say that its one of the central pillars of the book so far. Well, I'm saying it. The book is a self-help book, but I feel like that title does both the book itself and its audience injustice. The book is accessible to literally anyone who wants to improve their social skills, be it for solely interpersonal reasons, or if they want to succeed more in the business world by networking better. The book has been a standard for improving social skills since the 30's, when it was released. Its advice has stayed relevant even until today. The book utilizes many, many many anecdotes from successful people supporting exactly why the strategies Carnegie suggests would work, which is a strong appeal to ethos. I feel like the book so far is sort of lacking in logos, but that makes sense. Social "science" is more abstract than any other science, and this book was written in the 30's, so some of the information about how the brain acts in social situations wasn't available, so an imbalance in Ethos and Logos is okay. Overall, I find that Carnegie has been achieving his purpose very effectively. His purpose is to help people to function better in social situations and to interact with people more effectively without any sort of malicious manipulation. He achieves this well, because I've been using some of the strategies he outlines in the book, and I feel like I've been overall better in social situations. It's a book that's gained popularity from the testimony of those who were affected by it, and I'm tossing my lot in with them.

TOW 3: Serial Experiments Lain: Weird (visual)

Serial Experiments Lain is a sci-fi TV show from the late 1990's. It is regarded for its artful direction. ambitious atmosphere, and a plot that is up for any sort of interpretation. It was produced by the now defunct Triangle Staff and directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, who has worked on over 29 different major projects over his career. This is the first episode of the series, so its purpose is to mainly set the scene and mood for the rest of the show. Considering that the first scene is the suicide of a middle-school aged girl, the audience is presumably a more mature group. Lain was produced in the era when Macintosh computers were just beginning to take over the world with their sleek, smooth designs, and their advanced capabilities. Lain focuses on that technological rush of the time, making the internet one of its main topics. As I mentioned earlier, the show begins with the suicide of a middle school girl. Shortly after this exposition, her classmates begin recieving emails from the girl who just committed suicide, saying that she left the corporeal world to become more present in The Wired, a construct that seems to be very similar to the then growing internet. It sets a dark, technological pretense over the episode, and gives the impression that the rest of the show is going to be this way. In scenes where Lain is traveling to and from school, be it by walking or on a train, there is always a faint electrical humming noise in the background, and power lines and cables are almost always overhead, adding to the technological theme of the show. The music in the show is very conservatively placed, and if there is music playing, it is very faint and ambient. Just like the music, dialogue and speech is kept to a very low threshold, usually being quiet and austere. All of the shadows in the show have a shifting red and black effect to them, as if to say that the shadows could be concealing anything. Many scenes involve several different angles of a room, following the same event in relatively quick succession, a direction choice by Nakamura that truly fleshes out the atmosphere of every scene. Very little plot advancement occurs in this episode, aside from Lain deciding to explore the idea of getting a computer and exploring the Wired that her dead classsmate spoke of. Instead, it uses its time to layer a dark, spacey environment in which every element is open for interpretation. Weird sets a great tone for the rest of Serial Experiments Lain.

TOW 2 - Team Ben: A Year as a Professional Gamer

Team Ben: A Year as a Professional Gamer is about Chris Fabiszak, or as he is known in the competitive gaming world, "Wife", and his experiences as a professional gamer. He was, and still is to an extent, a professional gamer, and this is his memoir as both one of the driving forces behind and a participant in the "golden age" of Super Smash Bros. Melee. The book is mostly aimed at members or potential members of the competitive Super Smash Brothers scene, but can also be appreciated and understood by those who aren't really a part of the competition. Wife's purpose in writing the book is to tell his story while giving readers a little more understanding of just how technical Smash is. He achieves this by using a mainly narrative tone and having didactic interludes with frame data about the game - describing what exactly happens in the game is it happens, frame by frame - one sixtieth of a second at a time. This frame data provides much to his argument that Melee is an extraordinarily technical game, giving a strong backdrop of Logos to his argument. He tells the story as if it were an annotated paper - all of his thoughts about the situations he was in are on the page in front of you, giving you a truly first-person look at competitive smash through his eyes. Everything is thoroughly described, and we can feel his mind racing when he's in a match, and his mind wandering into realms unknown when he fantasizes about what smash could become. All in all, it's a great book that puts into words Smash's deep complexity and the wonderful experiences that one can have at the many tournaments that are hosted worldwide. I know this because I have lived a lot of what he talks about, and I feel that he puts the thoughts and feelings of a Smash player on paper better than I ever could.

IRB Intro 1 - How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a book by Dale Carnegie, and it was written in the early 30's. However, one still hears about it and its effectiveness, and any book that maintains its power after 80+ years must be very well written. I've heard great things about it, and its topic is something that I've been trying to work on recently - interacting with others and motivating yourself. It seems like its going to be full of different rhetorical strategies for me to analyze, so I think that it'll be a great fit for this class.

TOW 1 - How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

Paul Roberts was an author who focused on English as a topic, approaching it with a very serious viewpoint. His helpful writings gave some ideas to approach writing as an art, not a task. This is made apparent by his writing in How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, a passionate guide in writing. The piece puts forth a situation, being given a prompt and the instructions to write 500 words about it. He then goes on to explain some of the things that people do in order to extend their writing when given a word count, and says that these extensions will only get you a poor grade. After this is an elaborated list of things one can do to avoid saying nothing in 500 words. With the example of a college student preceding the majority of the piece, this is written for students, in order to help them be more effective and engaging with their writing, and to keep them from wasting their words. The author uses several subtle but effective rhetorical devices in order to make his writing a more effective means of communication to his audience. The first we see is immediate, right off of the bat, putting the reader into a position that would make it easier for them to understand the author's points, a position that, given the intended audience, would probably have been experienced several times by said audience. This immersion helps readers better see from the author's perspective. Another rhetorical device that the author uses well is alternating humorous and didactic tones. This means that the author weaves together humorous writing that both keeps readers interested and makes them open to suggestion, and didactic writing, which takes on a more sage, authoritative tone that makes people feel like their being taught, and puts them in a mindset to remember what they're being told. Overall, it's a very effective and useful piece of writing, and I know I'll be using this throughout the year.

John Muir - Stickeen

     John Muir was primarily a naturalist, one who spent a lot of time in nature and with animals. He published many of his accounts of several expeditions and explorations through nature, and has lots of experience with animals and all things having to do with the wilderness.

     John Muir’s Stickeen is an essay about his adventures through a harsh Alaskan glacier, named the Brady Glacier, and its terrain with a dog named Stickeen as his companion. The story takes place in 1880. They go through a fairly perilous experience together, with one helping the other along the way. Both Muir and Stickeen are both changed after their experience together. That brings me to Muir’s purpose – although most of the essay is spent describing the events that took place on the Brady Glacier, I find that the most important part of the essay comes from one of the last lines, “Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip, instead of holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me constantly in sight, and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however tempting, from any hand but mine.” Muir’s message is that tragedies and difficult situations can bring two souls together. This message was probably intended for other naturists and animal lovers like Muir himself, considering that almost all of his work was published in naturist’s publications. Muir uses a huge amount of description and figurative language to put you in his position and make you understand exactly what he was experiencing, all to make you better understand the ordeal, and in turn better understand what it was that brought Muir and Stickeen closer together.

Muir's story of Stickeen and how hardships can bring people together reminded me a lot of rescue efforts following natural disasters, and how it brings people together against a common enemy that is found in the form of a tragedy.

Image from nyc.gov

William James - The Moral Equivalent of War

William James was a philosopher and psychologist who lived from 1842 to 1910. He was the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. In his time, he was widely known to be the “Father of American Psychology”.

     William James’ The Moral Equivalent of War is a rumination about how James thinks that society should reform itself into one where everybody is enlisted into an army, but not one that fights other armies. He suggests a mandatory army that fights against what he calls nature – more specifically, the concept of everything that mankind struggles against. James wrote this essay to express his opinion and philosophy for what he believed would be close to an ideal society in which nobody fought each other, but banded together to fight common enemies in the forms of any challenge that any man faced. He uses the idea of an army to fight an enemy who does not feel pain.

This essay was originally a speech he gave at Stanford, so it is most likely intended for students and intellectuals, people who could appreciate the depth of his philosophical ruminations and possibly ask questions that would either allow him to go further into the reasoning of his opinion, or perhaps even make him revise it.James makes great use of theoretical discussion, putting forth ideas for what may happen as opposed to actual tests which would be impossible to do. The very basis of most philosophical discussion is theoretical discourse, so theory is very effective at getting his ideas across. I think that James does a good job expressing his ideas and theories. He’s very clear and straightforward in his explanations, particularly about how his proposed army would not really be an army at all, and how “nature” is not just natural events, but any challenge that mankind faces.

     This essay came from someone who lived through the Civil War and remembers its horrors. James published this in a time when he was older than most people, and he saw World War I coming, and knew it would be waged by people who hadn’t seen war before. The essay comes off a bit like an elder giving an apprentice advice.

Just like this album cover, William James suggests a Fragile Army - One that doesn't fight with weapons, but just by working together to a common cause.

Cover credited to the Polyphonic Spree.

Mark Twain - Corn Pone Opinions

Owen Reilly

Great American Essay Blog Posts

Mark Twain's Corn Pone Opinions is an essay that deals with the topic of most people having an opinion that is shaped by the majoirty of people around them. The driving quote behind the essay is, “You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.”

Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, was an author and journalist who lived from 1835 to 1910. He has written over 500 literary manuscripts, 30 published books, and countless letters and other writing works.

The story is a fairly humorous writing that also contains a great deal of social commentary and opinions. It begins with an anecdote about him and his friend, a slave who remain unnamed. He speaks about how this slave was a wonderful speaker, and how one of his speeches has stayed with Twain throughout his life: “You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.” This means that most men get their opinions from the people surrounding him and his environment.

Twain wrote this essay in order to point out a comical inconsistency between the definition of opinion, meaning an individual thought, and the fact that most people’s opinions are not their own, but gathered from the people around them.

Twain’s intended audience was probably a group of people that enjoyed social commentary and comedy with a serious message behind it, so Corn Pone Opinions, although never published during his lifetime, was probably intended for readers of a magazine, or other more select literary pieces.

Twain uses anecdotes and examples as supporting evidence along with humor to help bring his point across to readers. Anecdotes and examples make it easier for readers to understand and see from his viewpoint by putting them in a place he was once standing, while humor helps to lighten the story and make readers more receptive to his opinion.

With all of the examples and logical ideas Twain puts forth in this essay, I think he gets across to potential readers very well. He uses several rhetorical devices to great effect, and he makes a sound argument for his point that most people’s opinions are, on the surface, from everyone around them.


                                        The common man, according to Mark Twain
                                   From Wikipedia user Jack Hynes, in the public domain.