Saint Al
Friday, October 12, 2007 at 09:42AM 
Quote: “The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.” Al Gore
Figure of Speech: alloiosis (al-oy-OH-sis), the this-isn’t-that figure. From the Greek, meaning “difference.”
What do you give a politician who has everything? Al Gore gets a gold Nobel medal to display next to his Oscar — not to mention implied canonization as Patron Saint of the Earth. (He’ll share the prize with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ). Donning his figurative high priest’s robes, he uses an alloisis, a figure that redefines an issue, to claim that the unbalanced Earth is not political, it’s moral.
Sure, it’s not cricket to bequeath a toxic waste site to one’s progeny. But moral purity and $40 million will buy you a wind farm. In posing climate change as a “spiritual challenge,” Gore shuts off any debate that leads to practical choices. Values are inarguable; sermonic language reinforces values, it doesn’t change them. Dealing with the climate crisis requires the practical language of politics. It means sleeping with strange, smelly bedfellows.
Besides, as an NPR reporter noted this morning, whenever a politician says something isn’t political — it’s political.
Snappy Answer: “And I suppose you’re the guy to lead all of humanity.”
Reader Comments (24)
That being said, I've got to get around to listing general figures that apply to most situations. This hair-splitting stuff drives Figaro crazy. Even while he's the one splitting the hairs.
Fig.
I do love your demonstrative rhetoric, though.
Figaro has a beef only with the moral-issue thing. Politics, despite what politicians tell us, is not a bad thing.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
"And thus use your frog...Put your hook, I mean the arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills; and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg...and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him..."
Fig.
I do have to say that I prefer Al's sanctimony to W's - probably because I belong to his tribe. And I think if I ever won both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize, I'd be hard put to fit my head through your standard doorway.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Lisa
_________________
Dear Lisa,
I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis--a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.
My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
Thank you,
Al Gore
If the globe is indeed conscious, I hope it doesn't notice Figaro.
fig.
This is an interesting one -- but I think you're giving Al too much of a hard time. On this issue, or on any where predicting the consequences of an action are incomprehensible to ordinary people, deliberative rehetoric is impossible because the other side will simply say that you have your facts wrong, as has been the case in the global warming, evolution, and other scientific debates.
So, I would contend that for Al to have any traction some sort of apomnemonysis is necessary, some authority must be quoted. And it can't just be a few thousand scientists, because the climate ostriches have their own scientists and a lot of people distrust science anyway -- so it's necessary to invoke spirits or other version of God to have any credibility with the non-scientific public. Nicht wahr?
Values are inarguable; sermonic language
enforces values, it doesn't change them.
This is errant nonsense -- if values are 'inarguable', then how can they be enforced? And hasn't something that has been enforced been changed?
Perhaps it is safer to talk of one person's beliefs -- easy to change -- versus ideologies and social mores -- much tougher.
But to the extent that 'sermonic language' (why not just says sermons?) enforces one value, belief, whatever, it has necessarily weakened the opposing belief.
Demonstrative rhetoric doesn't change people's minds, Richard; it reinforces the values they already hold. Yes, you can weaken "opposing" values, though not all values have real opposition. (I personally don't believe in bestiality, and have rarely been tempted.) Nonetheless, weakening an opposing belief doesn't constitute changing one's mind.
I use "sermonic" as a synonym for "demonstrative." Not all sermonic language is a sermon. Reagan's Challenger disaster speech, for instance, was demonstrative, or sermonic. I didn't invent the definition, though I embrace it; you'll find it in Aristotle's Rhetoric. For more on the three kinds of rhetoric, see chapter 3 "Orphan Annie's Law," in "Thank You for Arguing."
Steve, invoking the spirits won't enhance carbon trading or alternative fuels. Figaro has a decidedly un-scientific mind, but you can still change it--with the deft use of deliberative argument. Without argument, on the other hand, you don't have a democracy. Only competing tribes.
End of sermon.
Fig.