Heliotropic Humans?
I’ve recently learned about heliotropism, at topic that’s growing on me. Heliotropism refers to a plant’s directional growth in response to sunlight. Sunflowers provide excellent examples of heliotropism because they slowly track the location of the sun across the sky during the day, and then during the night turn back, or reset, to where the sun will rise in the morning. I would like to argue that humans also practice a form of heliotropism in our daily lives.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion through dialogue as a way of appealing to someone’s emotions and logic as a means of informing or motivating people. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, recognized and made speeches on three divisions of rhetoric: Forensic (past), epideictic (present), and deliberative (future). In one way or another we follow Aristotle’s speeches in our everyday lives. Aristotle’s speeches reside mainly in the legal and political arena, along with formal settings where individuals attempt to persuade each other to take the right course of action. Political speeches, for example, are popular to listen to because we the people wish to be informed regarding the promise’s politicians are making and how they will keep them should they be elected. Lawyers in a court room make convincing arguments in an attempt to win over a jury for their clients benefit.
Examples of rhetoric are littered throughout our everyday lives as we are daily confronted with decisions to make. We perform mental gymnastics through political propaganda, ads for a variety of items, as we deal with religious rhetoric to political rhetoric to simple rhetoric to persuade our actions. How we deal with the information gleaned from these speeches determines how successful these acts of persuasion we encounter become to us.
If we think about it, our mind is like a courtroom and we practice rhetoric in our everyday lives to persuade our decisions. Voices of ourselves and outside influences persuade our decisions. Whether we realize it or not, we use rhetoric throughout our everyday lives to determine what ideas we follow. We are constantly confronted by rhetoric in our lives. If our lives can be equated to a courtroom, then we are the judge, jury, and executioner deciding what rhetoric we subscribe to.
Our minds are like a courtroom, and within our brains we hold the positions of judge, jury, and executioner. As we intake all the acts of persuasion we are bombarded with throughout the day, no matter how convincing it is, we are the only ones who get to make decisions on whether or not we are successfully persuaded. When I say the court room is my mind, I mean that I filter the information that I hear to decide if the source of persuasion is credible. To decide if the deal is too good to be true, if something is worth my time, if I should vote for the republican or democrat candidate, if I should vote for a bill to be made into a law, if I should let the gym ads I see on my phone convince me not to eat a second donut. Decisions will be made by me as various forms of persuasion are either successful or unsuccessful in my mental courtroom.
Becoming better acquainted with rhetoric teaches you the skills to assess information to think critically about what you hear and knowing how to use the tools of rhetoric can not only improve how you communicate but can help you persuade more people to agree with your perspective. In this way Aristotle’s ancient speeches may better your everyday life.
Why do I think that humans practice a form of heliotropism? Well, humans are very plant like. We often grow roots in an idea and follow the “sun” of our own choosing. Some people are plant like in the way of growing their roots in an idea and never changing or growing, only looking to one “sun” to turn their face to throughout the day. While others, thinkers who participate in rhetoric in their everyday lives become “suns” to others, persuading them with rhetorical speeches. At the end of the day, we are heliotropic humans, we are the sunflower and the sun is whatever argument has persuaded us the most.
By Madeline Blunt
Citation: Muckelbauer, John. Rhetoric, through Everyday Things, by Scot Barnett and Casey Andrew Boyle, The University of Alabama Press, 2017, pp. 30–41.
Picture Credit: Hurdle, Jon. “How to See Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ in 5 Museums at Once? Facebook.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/arts/design/van-gogh-sunflowers-facebook-museums-on-three-continents.html.