Gorgias boasts the he is a good
sophist and, in regard to his speeches
"may be as long as he pleases."
Likewise in Elder Bednar's talk the question is raised; are we really communicating? Through the use of quotations from the prophets, he boosts ethos and affirms his argument. We have more access to media than ever before, but we aren't using it to communicate anything of importance. We, like the sophists, might pride ourselves in the amount we can get to listen to us (i.e. our number of Facebook friends or instagram followers). And like the sophists, we might not be saying anything of importance. Bedinar exhorts us to use social media to spread a meaningful message to all within our electronic earshot.
That is so true. We all too often say so many things that contain nothing of substance. Yet, there is so much of value out there that if we, took Elder Bednar's counsel, we could make a huge difference. I agree that it is incredible important to have substance behind our message to make it useful communication. And I think we see great examples of that from both Elder Bednar and Socrates.
ReplyDeleteI like your opening statement: "... there is a difference between communication and communication". I agree with that statement and feel that it embodies a lot of what I had to say on Elder Bednars talk, about the "how" and "what" of the words he said during his talk.
ReplyDeleteIt is precisely because of this misunderstanding why most of my time on any social media site is spent scrolling instead of reading. So many people use social media as a means to publicly complain or draw attention to themselves. Elder Bednar's talk really made me re-evaluate my use of social media. Though I don't feel as if I am posting nonsense that would waste any reader's time, there is also more uplifting and purposeful things I can be posting to increase the sense of community and flow of meaningful information within my circle of friends. So clearly, Elder Bednar's use of rhetoric to persuade me to use social media for good was successful.
ReplyDeleteI loved it!! It's a funny thought to compare sophists with unimportant posts on social media but it's true that the content may contain nothing of importance. I like to think that there can be a happy medium if we pass along something that we do know and we say it effectively, because like we said in class "words have power."
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