Bulletproofing Fundamentalism; the Master's Ninth Principle Talk
By
I have been studying Beyond Bullet Points, by Cliff Atkinson, a modern rhetoric text by the intellectual bulldog that Microsoft itself chose to save the reputation of one of their main moneymakers, PowerPoint. What happened was this: the default setup of PowerPoint all but forces speakers to use bullet points. That would be the equivalent of a novelist using a pre-draft outline for the final printed version of a novel. Nobody would read outlines of novels rather than novels because content would obscure form. As it is, the average PowerPoint presentation is ridden with point form raw data that frustrates and confuses audiences everywhere; they end up calling for Bill Gates' blood. Hence Beyond Bullet Points.
Atkinson is quite clear that the technique he uses is based on Aristotle. Unfortunately he points to the wrong work, the Poetics -- instead of the Rhetoric -- which indicates that he may not have done the research himself. Whoever his researcher is, though, he or she distills the method brilliantly, and seems very faithful to the Rhetoric, which is obscure, dense and totally unusable in the form that has been passed down to us. Believe me, Aristotle's style makes bullet points look clear and easy.
Anyway, as Atkinson points out, Aristotle's methods have been refined by screenwriters over the past century. They have become very clever at applying rapid visual cues to establish W5, who, what, where, when and why, in the first few seconds of a movie. Audiences expect the same high standard from speakers. So Atkinson shows how to tweak the default setup of PowerPoint to make it a help rather than a hindrance. Why the whole PowerPoint program has not been revamped around this schema I do not know -- maybe it is, in the new version for
What I thought I would do today, rather than regurgitating Atkinson's theory in a vacuum, would be to apply it to a living example. I chose what is indeed for Baha'is the ultimate example, an address by our perfect Exemplar. I chose a talk He gave in
I will go over the first paragraph or two of this second talk asking how the Master's method conforms to and indeed goes beyond the Aristotelian Beyond Bullet Points structure. These cover act one of the screenplay format Atkinson recommends. Act one's goal is emotional, to appeal to the feelings of the audience. Their question is: what are we doing here? Act two appeals to reason, how will we fulfill our reason for being here?, and the third and final act combines the two, emotion and reason, in a fulfilling resolution.
So, without further ado, here are the first couple of sentences of the St. James talk, Act one, scene one:
"Praise be to God! It is with a deep realization of happiness that I am present here this evening, for I am looking upon the faces of those who are earnest in their search for reality and who sincerely long to attain knowledge of truth."
Here, by starting off with "praised be God," the Master right away answers the first question of any story, the question always foremost in the mind of an audience, "Who?," "Who are you going to be talking about today?" "Who are we, in relation to that person?" Atkinson's scheme only discusses two possible who's, the first being the main protagonist, the audience, and the second, supporting character, being you, the speaker. Unlike Atkinson, here the first character mentioned is God, so God is the main protagonist, and the "activity" or qualification of God is, from our human viewpoint, is praise. Abdu'l-Baha, the "servant of the servants," makes it clear from the start that the audience is not the main protagonist but they are rather only supporting characters of the Supreme Protagonist.
Since the main character, then, is the Creator, the faces the Master is looking at are those of seekers after Him. His listeners are all on a special quest. This answers the next question that every movie, storyteller or speaker must deal with right away: where? "Where are we?" "What are we doing here?" We are knights in quest of ... of what? "What," then, is the next question. What is our holy grail? Truth and reality. God has set us on a quest to discover the reality of the situation. They are "earnest in their search for reality." Thus of the many possible types of story, the Master has chosen a plot line that Atkinson calls, "The Great Dream," whose summary is: "If we can only see our possibility, we can make it our reality."
Having in two sentences established who and what humans are in quest of, Abdu'l-Baha then goes on to the big question, why? Why are we here? This means specifying the implements that we as humans have at hand in our quest for reality.
"God has created man and endowed him with the power of reason whereby he may arrive at valid conclusions."
This sentence sets the audience up for the next two requirements of act one of any story, a crisis and a resolution. The crisis brings us down to the here and now, what we are doing sitting in these seats listening to this speaker. Specifically, He asks us, what happens if we humans do not seek out reality?
"Therefore, man must endeavor in all things to investigate the fundamental reality."
The resolution to the problem posed is to find "the fundamental reality." In other words, good fundamentalism, not the bad kind (which of course is concerned with unexamined dogma and has nothing to do with real fundamentals). If we were all good fundamentalists, if we paid attention to what we were made for, to investigate reality, there would be peace on earth and goodwill towards men.
The Master is assuming the distinctive human characteristic is our large brains. This fact gives rise to an implicit responsibility to use them. They are not pleasure centers or toys, they are tools. Tools for what? The mind is a logic machine given by God in order to be used, to be applied for our survival on earth. If we do not arrive at valid conclusions, or if we do not even bother to use our minds, we will have betrayed our quest, the purpose of our existence. That is the crisis, which he make plain in the next sentence -- act I, scene III in Atkinson's structure:
"If he does not independently investigate, he has failed to utilize the talent God has bestowed upon him."
How sincere as seekers we are, and how we use our logic to gain access to reality -- that is the criterion of success. How we use our God-given tools and talents will condition the reality we uncover; worse, as the parable of the talents teaches, failure to use a talent implies a betrayal of our Creator.
Thus, if it is true as He said at the start that the listeners are sincere, they will long to apply the tools of reason that God gave them to seek out the truth. This is the problem, and the audience here is on the edge of their seats, waiting to find out how to avoid this total existential failure. How will we resolve it? The next sentence sets up the Master's proposed solution, all the while relieving the tension by praising us for what we have accomplished in this mission so far.
"I am pleased with the American people because, as a rule, they are independent seekers of the truth; their minds are actively employed instead of remaining idle and unproductive. This is most praiseworthy."
This serves as act one, scene five, whose goal is to act as a turning point to act two, scene one. This next act will start of with the logical problem, what you could call the fundamental error of every so-called fundamentalist, the sticking point of everyone who rejects and persecutes a prophet of God, that is, the fatal error of believing that God, our main character, is lazy and not worried about change and progress. A `what, me worry’ God. That following scene I may look at next, in another place and on another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment