> The rhetoric I have been discussing requires
> consistency between the speech and action (read experience). So its
> not "just" a commonplace. It becomes reality. Reality in the sense
> there is a measurable consistency between the actions of the parties
> in question and the "rhetoric."
> I want them to prove to me
> they are good by experiencing a consistency between their actions and
> language.
>
> I don't want a rhetoric (world view) that is based
> on blind faith or acceptance of a set of assumptions that may or may
> not be what I believe at all. I want to know from experience or as
> close as I can get that someone's rhetoric is consistent with their
> actions, that its not just based on assumptions, but experience.
So, Mike, are you arguing that "experience" is somehow a pure thing, what
we can look at to determine what a person "really" believes/is? But I
think that's too easy. We don't experience anything except through our
interpretations of it, and those interpretations will be influenced by
whatever ideologies are at work in us/through us. So, as a feminist, I
might interpret a friend's fight with her husband as "abuse" while she
might interpret is as "proof of his concern for her." Which "experience"
must match up with the rhetoric in order for it to be "good rhetoric"?
--Phyllis