“I learned a long time ago, never to fight a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
George Bernard Shaw
Like many insightful quotes, this one has an important idea, but it’s really just one of its faces. If you take a step back, you will recognize the other side and then have been cornered with a fundamental decision of hard judgment, a tension that must be balanced and rebalanced in changing situations.
Let’s put aside a simple problem with the appointment first. Not all pigs can escape. Sometimes we are forced to fight pigs because they have power over us. For example, oppressed citizens have to fight the dictator even if he is a pig.
The problem I want to focus on here is the complexity of deciding who is a pig. If there was an objective test to determine who is a pig and who is not, we would know who to avoid. But there are none.
There are many ways to be a pig, including refusing to participate in a debate. For example, the dictator who oppresses his citizens is completely inaccessible to dialogue and accuses those who disagree with him of being a pig. It’s a pig, right?
Although I cannot find an objective test, I looked for a definition of pork. My best guess so far is that a pig is someone whose beliefs are reinforced by formulas against doubt.
Remember when you were a child you would fight someone who simply said, “I know you are, but what am I?” in response to each and every argument? “I know you are, but what am I?” It is a formula. It can be applied to any argument, it has nothing to do with the content and it deflects the doubts about oneself. In fact, like many formulas, it deflects self-doubt by imposing doubt on the opponent.
It’s “I know you are, but what am I?” A credible counterargument among children? We must distinguish two types of credibility: credibility for the self-empowerment and credibility for everyone else. The child who uses the “I know you are, but what am I?” The argument believes that you are winning regardless of whether your challenger does. Thinking he’s winning is the reason the pig likes it. It’s an added benefit if you can get others to side with you. The gangs of thugs are made up of people who use the same fortifications to deflect the same doubts about themselves.
“I know you are, but what am I?” it is not a credible reinforcement of adult arguments. To fortify ourselves against doubts, adults need more sophisticated formulas. We call the search for more sophisticated formulas “rhetoric.” Rhetoric is the accumulation of content-independent general-purpose formulas to make some arguments seem more credible and others less credible. Rhetoric can be used for many things, but one of its main uses is self-protection. Each of us has an in-house attorney, ready day or night to present a case in our defense.
Rhetoric is a magnificent discipline, which is best combined with its counterpart: critical thinking, the ability that allows us to take off the formulas and return to the content of the arguments.
Rhetoric evolves in tandem with critical thinking, but critical thinking can never keep up. Look at the ads from the 1940s and you will say, “Who could believe such weak arguments? Our critical thinking skills have caught up with the advertisements from the 1940s, but they are not up to par with today’s rhetoric. pigs and gangs of pigs today. armed with a full arsenal of sophisticated formulas to deflect all the doubts of all challengers. They get away with it because their arguments are credible to enough people. They make being a pig seem like fun and attracts many participants, they become squads of rhetorical thugs.
The sophistication comes mainly from the imitation of solid arguments. Sophisticated rhetoric is a body double for non-formulaic arguments. It has to be that way, otherwise they would not be convincing. Mimicry depends on ambiguity, the inability to distinguish the real from the false, and the more sophisticated our rhetoric becomes, the more difficult it is to distinguish solid arguments from formulated ones.
That is why there is no objective test to determine porcinosity. Sophisticated formulas run deep layers. For every attack there is a defense. Having multiple formulas gives the impression of a real interaction. With the “I know you are, but what am I” responses to every attack, there is obviously a formula. But adults can feign depth with ever-changing plots.
So how would you know who is defending themselves in terms of formulas?
You might think that you could tell by how persistent one’s position is, but that won’t work. I am receptive to arguments as to why killing your next door neighbor is always a good idea. I mean, I’ll listen. It might even mirror the argument to show that I heard it. But I can’t be convinced of that, and that’s not because I’m a pig, applying formulas to deflect the arguments.
You might think that you could distinguish a pig by how selfish his position is. But no, that won’t work either. I could listen carefully to the arguments why suicide is the right path for me, but they won’t convince me either, and again, it’s not because I’m a pig.
We are caught guessing who is a pig and who is not. Divination becomes much more successful if we think about it a bit.
Please think about this with me: What is your definition of pig? I think this is one of the most important questions of our age. I am in search of an objective definition, even if it cannot be turned into a reliable objective test. By objective I mean to think at a higher level than what we usually go for an answer to who is a pig: a pig is someone who does not listen to me or does not agree with me.
What I’m asking is what’s beyond someone you run into?