Sun, 01/04/2007 - 02:00 | by admin
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Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle, apparently, laid the groundwork for modern public communication: Rhetoric that will change behavior.
Manipulation of the Masses could be another way of looking at it! The great orators of history have always been able to get a response from “the people”. Churchill’s speeches held the British people firm against the Nazi war machine while, just on the other side of the English Channel (La Manche, if you are French), Adolf Hitler’s extraordinary oratory moved people to great atrocities and, foolishly, to attack Russia. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was using radio to lead Americans into the New Deal.
Presumably, Alexander the Great was a magnificent communicator as, by 323 BC when he died aged 33, he was in control of half the known world and had only horsemen to convey his communications over enormous distances. Gandhi was another model of communication, preaching peaceful resistance and frustrating the British attempt to hang on to India - the jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown. JFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and then Nelson Mandela - the power of communication through silence and moral superiority.
Today, we are attacked on all sides by communications so powerful and so frequent that there is no respite from the need to try and interpret messages, be they of a political, commercial or moral nature. The problem is that the power of communication has absolutely no correlation to the quality of what is on offer!!
Just look at the on-going saga of the Transantiago Mass (Mess?) Transport System. The populace of Greater Santiago has been drowned in communications about the merits of this “Great Improvement”, yet the product, or organization of the product, has been pretty dismal. Much political rhetoric, but little political or commercial capacity for delivering results. Even the face that launched a thousand buses and spokesperson for Transantiago, one of Chile’s best-loved soccer players, has had to run for cover.
We face a Quality-Quantity conundrum. We most definitely suffer from over-communication and, as information does not necessarily provide knowledge and most certainly does not produce wisdom, something needs to change. A good friend of mine has not purchased a newspaper in 40 years; his view is that if something of importance takes place he will be told - he will be informed.
Now that the means to attack my limited brain cells have reached an unbearable level I have made a simple decision: take my friend’s advice and cut myself off from all the electronic means of getting at me. Thus: no cell phone, no more e-mails, no chat; the TV has been sold, newspaper subscription cancelled, radio tuned only to classical music, etc., etc. (but I will secretly read bUSiness CHILE).
There was a time when the art of communication (and it was an art form) was based on listening to the elders - those wise men and women who, from personal experience and the stories and legends handed down from generation to generation, both informed and educated the younger generations. This does still happen in some African and Arab cultures, Tibet and Nepal and the remaining nomadic tribes of Mongolia and the high steppes of Asia. However, even during my short lifetime, the moment and joy of storytelling has all but disappeared. Is there still a place for the “bedtime story”?
Well, here’s the bottom line. I will no longer know anything unless you tell me. That will make for much more electrifying rhetoric as I will be tremendously interested in what you, the Elders, have to say - even if, as is usually the case, you have absolutely no idea what you are trying to communicate. I shall learn to be a great listener.
I remain, in communication isolation, mute but willing to listen,
Santiago Eneldo
(Wisdom, advice & rhetoric to be imparted upon meeting or left for me at AmCham).
E-mail cancelled...
Death by Communication
By By Santiago EneldoPrintSend to friend
Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle, apparently, laid the groundwork for modern public communication: Rhetoric that will change behavior.
Manipulation of the Masses could be another way of looking at it! The great orators of history have always been able to get a response from “the people”. Churchill’s speeches held the British people firm against the Nazi war machine while, just on the other side of the English Channel (La Manche, if you are French), Adolf Hitler’s extraordinary oratory moved people to great atrocities and, foolishly, to attack Russia. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was using radio to lead Americans into the New Deal.
Presumably, Alexander the Great was a magnificent communicator as, by 323 BC when he died aged 33, he was in control of half the known world and had only horsemen to convey his communications over enormous distances. Gandhi was another model of communication, preaching peaceful resistance and frustrating the British attempt to hang on to India - the jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown. JFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and then Nelson Mandela - the power of communication through silence and moral superiority.
Today, we are attacked on all sides by communications so powerful and so frequent that there is no respite from the need to try and interpret messages, be they of a political, commercial or moral nature. The problem is that the power of communication has absolutely no correlation to the quality of what is on offer!!
Just look at the on-going saga of the Transantiago Mass (Mess?) Transport System. The populace of Greater Santiago has been drowned in communications about the merits of this “Great Improvement”, yet the product, or organization of the product, has been pretty dismal. Much political rhetoric, but little political or commercial capacity for delivering results. Even the face that launched a thousand buses and spokesperson for Transantiago, one of Chile’s best-loved soccer players, has had to run for cover.
We face a Quality-Quantity conundrum. We most definitely suffer from over-communication and, as information does not necessarily provide knowledge and most certainly does not produce wisdom, something needs to change. A good friend of mine has not purchased a newspaper in 40 years; his view is that if something of importance takes place he will be told - he will be informed.
Now that the means to attack my limited brain cells have reached an unbearable level I have made a simple decision: take my friend’s advice and cut myself off from all the electronic means of getting at me. Thus: no cell phone, no more e-mails, no chat; the TV has been sold, newspaper subscription cancelled, radio tuned only to classical music, etc., etc. (but I will secretly read bUSiness CHILE).
There was a time when the art of communication (and it was an art form) was based on listening to the elders - those wise men and women who, from personal experience and the stories and legends handed down from generation to generation, both informed and educated the younger generations. This does still happen in some African and Arab cultures, Tibet and Nepal and the remaining nomadic tribes of Mongolia and the high steppes of Asia. However, even during my short lifetime, the moment and joy of storytelling has all but disappeared. Is there still a place for the “bedtime story”?
Well, here’s the bottom line. I will no longer know anything unless you tell me. That will make for much more electrifying rhetoric as I will be tremendously interested in what you, the Elders, have to say - even if, as is usually the case, you have absolutely no idea what you are trying to communicate. I shall learn to be a great listener.
I remain, in communication isolation, mute but willing to listen,
Santiago Eneldo
(Wisdom, advice & rhetoric to be imparted upon meeting or left for me at AmCham).
E-mail cancelled... 
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