Biggest Voice Wins

"Rhetor" from the Greek for "loud speaker"

Every village has its loudmouth. In the course of human society, that post had developed into the office of town crier--our erstwhile source of the latest news in the village and the hinterland. The Greeks recognized it was wiser to harness that vocal energy than to attempt to stifle it.

So the art of being the town loudmouth was polished under a set of instructions we know as "Rhetoric"--a set of organizing principles for those who wish to make their voice heard on any issue that may be relevant or at least interesting to the general public. The Greeks, being abundantly supplied with men who had learned to express their opinions skillfully, became the tutors of the Romans, who desired to more effectively impose their opinions on everyone around. Professional Roman loudmouths, such as Cicero, were called "Orators" (a phonological rebranding of the Greek term). Roman eloquence, taught as primarily a verbal set of principles for debate and justification, was taught as Oratory.

Presently, as Europe supplanted Rome, the techniques of rhetoric and oratory were expanded upon and expounded upon by the Church in the pursuit of homiletics, apologetics, syllogistic logic, forensics and further verbal and textual arts. One overarching rubric for these various disciplines was entitled "Propaganda"--that is, the yoking of one's highest verbal persuasion to the propagation of the Faith.


In the humanistic revolution that began with the Renaissance(sparked by the recovery of the original Greek and Latin authors out of obscurity through the efforts of Ramon Lull and others), the development of persuasive argumentation was unyoked from serving to spread the doctrines of the Church. Now those techniques were employed to serve Naturalistic Philosophies and to convince or at least cow opposing views into submission or suppression. A long list of -isms ensued: Monism, Fauvism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Nationalism, etc. Each adopted a series of developed doctrines in "the name of" its adopted dogmas.

As the means of propagation also increased, so did the spread of these schools also increase. With printing and widespread literacy, books--and the messages they embodied--became the common heritage of all. The printing press accelerated that movement. The telegraph electrified the promulgation of our messages across the world. Radio and telecommunications have sent our messages into interstellar space. And that original loudmouth art, rhetoric, is the unsung manager of most of what is shouted to the stars these days.

But who are today's loudest loudmouths? And what is being propagated by today's propaganda? Sadly, it seems, today the airwaves belong to the criers of snake oil, and the messages relate less to our salvation as a race than to the salving of "the heartbreak of Psoriasis," and to promising us respite from the dangers of bad breath.

I wonder sometimes what the inhabitants of that distant Andromedan galaxy are thinking about most of the messages our planet's loudest mouths are yelling at them from our little yellow star.