Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Talking To Toddlers
My friends who have kids sometimes ask if the lessons I teach in my Persuasion classes also apply to little tykes. Can we apply classic rules of rhetoric to convince kids to do (or not do) things? Can we apply Cicero’s five canons of rhetoric to five-year-olds? Truth be told, I haven’t studied it in detail. But, as a father, and now grandfather, I do have some thoughts. I might even claim to have good ethos (in the Ciceronian sense). Here are some thoughts:
- Nobody likes to be talked down to — as a speaker or writer, you should never imply that you are smarter than your audience. If you want to degrade an opponent’s ethos, tell the audience that the opponent thinks he’s better than they are. (This technique is known as attributed belittlement). The same concept applies to kids — only it’s more literal. You’re taller than they are. Get down to their level. Speak to them face to face. They don’t like to be talked down to.
- Pathos trumps logos — we know that adults make decisions more based on emotion than on logic. Doubly true for kids. Start by recognizing, and validating, their emotions.
- Concession-and-shift — the best way to disagree is to begin by agreeing. If a kid is throwing a tantrum, start by conceding that she’s right. I call it the “ain’t it awful” maneuver. First you get down to their level and say something like, “I just hate it when my ice cream falls in the sand box and I don’t get to eat it. Ain’t it awful?” You may need to repeat it several times. Pretty soon, they’ll realize that you’re agreeing with them. Then (and only then) you can start talking about next steps.
- Decorum is the art of meeting expectations – what does your kid expect from you? If you don’t fulfill these expectations, you create cognitive dissonance. Your kid’s not sure he can trust what you’re saying. You can talk about anything but, first, you have to act like your kid expects you to act. You can change your kid’s expectations, but it takes time. Don’t try it in the middle of a meltdown.
- Social proof is incredibly important — how do you get a kid to eat broccoli? Not by logic. Not by lying — “You’ll grow up big and strong”. Put him with other kids who like broccoli. When another kid says, “Can I have your broccoli?”, your kid will say, “No, that’s mine!” By the way, as an adult, your value as social proof to a kid is approximately zero.
- Speak to their commonplaces — a commonplace is simply a shared belief. Conservative commonplaces tend to revolve around liberty. Liberal commonplaces tend to revolve around justice. Kids’ commonplaces tend to revolve around … well, you know your kid. What does she believe? Speak to that, not to what you believe. As Will Rogers said, “When you go fishing, you bait the hook with what the fish likes. Not with what you like.”
How To Save Democracy
Back off! I know rhetoric.
Most historians would agree that the arts and sciences of persuasion – also known as rhetoric – originated with the Greeks approximately 2,500 years ago. Why there? Why not the Egyptians or the Phoenicians or the Chinese? And why then? What was going on in Greece that necessitated new rules for communication?
The simple answer is a single word: democracy. The Greeks invented democracy. For the first time in the history of the world, people needed to persuade each other without force or violence. So the Greeks had to invent rhetoric.
Prior to democracy, people didn’t need to disagree in any organized way. We simply followed the leader. We agreed with the monarch. We converted to the emperor’s religion. We believed in the gods that the priests proclaimed. If we disagreed, we were ignored or banished or killed. Simple enough.
With the advent of democracy, public life grew messy. We could no longer say, “You will believe this because the emperor believes it.” Rather, we had to persuade. The basic argument was simple, “You should believe this because it provides advantages.” We needed rules and pointers for making such arguments successfully. Socrates and Aristotle (and many others) rose to the challenge and invented rhetoric.
Democracy, then, is about disagreement. We recognize that we will disagree. Indeed, we recognize that we should disagree. The trick is to disagree without anger or violence. We seek to persuade, not to subdue. In fact, here’s a simple test of how democratic a society is:
What proportion of the population agrees with the following statement?
“Of course, we’re going to disagree. But we’ve agreed to resolve our disagreements without violence.”
It seems like a simple test. But we overlook it at our peril. Societies that can’t pass this test (and many can’t) are forever doomed to civil strife, violence, disruption, and dysfunction.
The chief function of rhetoric is to teach us to argue without anger. The fundamental questions of rhetoric pervade both our public and private lives. How can I persuade someone to see a different perspective? How can I persuade someone to agree with me? How can we forge a common vision?
Up through the 19th century, educated people were well versed in rhetoric. All institutions of higher education taught the trivium, which consisted of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. Having mastered the trivium, students could progress to the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The trivium provided the platform upon which everything else rested.
In the 20th century, we saw the rise of mass communications, government sponsored propaganda, widespread public relations campaigns, and social media. Ironically, we also decided that we no longer needed to teach rhetoric. We considered it manipulative. To insult an idea, we called it “empty rhetoric”.
But rhetoric also helps us defend ourselves against mass manipulation, which flourished in the 20th century and continues to flourish today. (Indeed, in the 21st century, we seem to want to hone it to an even finer point). We sacrificed our defenses at the very moment that manipulation surged forward. Having no defenses, we became angrier and less tolerant.
What to do? The first step is to revive the arts of persuasion and critical thinking. Essentially, we need to revive the trivium. By doing so, we’ll be better able to argue without anger and to withstand the effects of mass manipulation. Reviving rhetoric won’t solve the world’s problems. But it will give us a tool to resolve problems – without violence and without anger.
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