| | I recently taught a course on the art of persuasion, and was able to discuss many wonderful examples from past and present.
After having just today commented favorably on the Glenn Beck programs on Hayek and on Atlas as good examples of successful persuasion (hard evidence: the instant, steep rise up the Amazon bestseller lists of "The Road to Serfdom", of "Atlas Shrugged", and of the two other books Beck discussed on the same show), I read David Kelley's latest with a sense of frustration and dismay.
Let me try to analyze why: The main reason, even if it were in a more accessible and less academic style, is I doubt it will persuade any non-Objectivist about anything. It is very long-winded and unnecessarily detailed even as an epistemological analysis of the alleged vagueness of the term 'environment'. But more importantly, that premise is completely false.
Kelley says: "“The environment” likewise has a floating content of images and feelings, incapable of coherent definition." But every one of you or of the general public reading this piece knows very clearly what is meant if you are asked "Are you in favor of protecting the environment?"
It's not like you were asked if you are in favor of transcendental harmonics. Environmental issues are "are negative aspects of human activity on the biophysical environment...Major current environmental issues may include climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource depletion" [wikipedia]
That's hardly something incapable of definition. Imagine Kelley going on a tv show and, when asked if he's worried about those four environmental issues, seeming like an evasive person from another planet and saying let's spend ten minutes of the two minutes I'm getting on this program trying to struggle honing our definitions.
There -are- topics where you can't get anywhere without precise definition because they are ambiguous or because people don't really know what they mean. Environmentalism, after decades of discussion and being on every news channel, is not one of them.
(A final, minor, problem with the piece is that, at 1260 words, it's too long for an op ed or to be published in almost any newspaper. So who is the audience it is aimed at? Hardcore Objectivists only?)
Kelley is capable of writing much, much better stuff than this.
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