“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms”
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
Examples
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
The story "Lime Pickle," referring to a spicy Indian condiment that makes the tongue dance with exotic pleasure, focuses on the conflict between a sweet, innocent young couple and debauched father whose introduction of the lime pickle becomes a metaphor for lost innocence. As we read, the narrator's girlfriend, upon realizing her father is an adulterous fop without morals, clings to her boyfriend in horror while watching her fond notions of family innocence "dissolve in some corrosive solution before her eyes." Of course, the lime pickle, that spicy, piquant temptress, is the corrosive Dionysian force that dissolves the nesting instinct that provides family stability. A lime pickle may be a tiny condiment, but beware of its powers, for as we say in Mexico, "Chiquito pero picoso."
Review the 4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase. Use the templates:
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Verbs in Signal Phrases
According to . . . (very common)
Ha Jin writes . . . (very common)
Panbin laments . . .
Dan rages . . .
Dan seethes . . .
Signal Phrase Templates
In the words of researchers Redelmeier and Tibshirani, “…”
As Matt Sundeen has noted, “…”
Patti Pena, mother of a child killed by a driver distracted by a cell phone, points out that “…”
“…” writes Christine Haughney, “…”
“…” claims wireless spokesperson Annette Jacobs.
Radio hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer a persuasive counterargument: “…”
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Essay One for 150 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Same Option Reworded:
Does JG make a convincing case that ritualized violence enhances masculinity, manhood, and male social bonding?
Sample Thesis Against JG
While JG makes the strong case for male aggression needing social capital through ritualized violence, his argument that these ritualized honor codes are the cure for unhappy males collapses when we consider he is too narrowly focused on the "Bro Code," he makes a one-size-fits-all "cure" for depressed men, he makes the error of trying to make his own personal journey a universal principle for all men, and he encourages dangerous gender stereotypes.
Sample Defense of JG
While JG's personal journey cannot be a universal application for most men and while at times his gender analysis veers into dangerous gender stereotype territory, his overall thesis about men needing to channel their aggression through honor codes is well supported and firmly positioned in his convincing research and analysis of biology, anthropology, history, and popular culture.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Sample Thesis That Agrees with Steve Almond
While some types of ritualized violence can contribute to men's sense of honor and social capital, the big business of NFL is a moral abomination evidenced by the NFL's pattern of misogynistic behavior, the NFL's financial exploitation of its players, the game's bloodlust appeal, and the game's high risk of shortening life, and inflicting PTSD and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
Sample Refutation of Steve Almond
Steve Almond's shrill and alarmist rebuke of the NFL is based on several fallacies including his failure to recognize that adults can decide what is acceptable risk, his exaggeration of the NFL's so-called misogyny, his refusal to acknowledge that the NFL provides high pay to men who otherwise could not enjoy such a high salary, and his dismissal of the NFL's healthy job creation.
One. What is one of the central controversies of the book?
Here lies the debate in Gottschall’s book. A lot of sociologists, such as Allan G. Johnson, criticize the biology model of gender differences, arguing that the biology model is false and born out of the need to service patriarchy, a male-dominated society. Critics such as Johnson argue that gender differences and gender roles are social constructions.
Gottschall would disagree. He argues that masculinity, the need to fight and to pump up in the gym, is a biological need in order to obtain power. If we don’t obtain this power, he argues, we get pushed around.
At one point, Gottschall (JG) argues with “the poet” about masculinity. He says to the poet: “Can you name a single society in world history where physical strength wasn’t part of the masculine ideal?”
He continues: “We didn’t invent masculinity. It’s not a cultural thing. It’s not even a people thing. Watch an alpha chimp or a silverback gorilla strut around. They’re macho!”
And then ironically, JG and the poet had a “masculine ritual” of arguing back and forth to see who’s right rather than come to a mutual understanding, a point JG makes to prove his argument.
JG argues all males seek masculine power: “The big get their way, while the small give way.” This is the Law of the Jungle. To call this law a product of socialization or cultural patriarchy or media brainwashing is too ignore the evidence.
Two. How is prison a microcosm of society at large?
JG writes: “As in prison, strength equals respect in its most basic dimension: when you are strong, guys don’t f*** with you. . . . Bullies and criminals aren’t looking to test themselves in fair fights. So young men bulk up on the weights for many reasons. They want to look good. They may want to improve in sports. But they are also building up an arsenal of deterrence. Muscle is a bold advertisement: I am not a rabbit. I am not food.”
Three. What school of thought disagrees with JG’s argument that masculinity is biological?
We read that “For about a half a century academic thinking about gender has been guided by the theory of the ‘sex/gender system.’”
Sex is biological, but gender is learned, according to this theory. In other words, there is a strong dividing line between sex and gender.
As we read: “But gender—all of the attributes we typically describe as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’—is purely cultural. We all emerge into the world as genderless blobs that parents, media, and teachers torture into culturally appropriate shapes. The act of taking the soggy mass of human raw material and mashing it into a rigid gender mold has been called ‘boying’ and ‘girling.”
JG rejects the above notion, mainly because science shows that males are more hardwired than females in two ways: “competitive and violent behavior.”
You can talk to parents, and they will tell you boy toddlers are more aggressive than female toddlers, for example.
Much of JG’s book is a rejection of the sex/gender dichotomy. He writes: “the basic masculine and feminine traits—male more competitive and aggressive, females more peaceable and nurturing—extend across diverse animal species. Over the past few decades biologists have determined that masculinity and femininity are rooted in something very simple: how fast the two sexes can reproduce. . . .”
Men are in competition with other men for reproductive success, and this competition starts early.
We read: “This competition to attract mates and defeat rivals is what Darwin called sexual selection. And in males the suite of features shaped by generations of consistent high-risk, high-reward competition for mates is what we call masculinity. As Darwin indicated, these features consist of being bigger, stronger, more bellicose, more willing to take risks, and more sexually eager” (72).
Masculinity has a biological purpose. We read: “Put baldly, this means that masculinity has an overriding purpose. Whether in men or musk oxen, masculinity is for prevailing in the competition for mates. It’s about being big and fierce enough to win fights, or to intimidate a rival into yielding without a fight.”
Four. What intellectual traps must we avoid when contemplating biological explanations for gender?
We must not equate the biological template of a male—aggressive, ruthlessly competitive, risk-taking—with an ideal of behavior. Nor must we equate this behavior with morality.
One man could embody masculine behavior and be a complete jackass. In contrast, another man could embody masculine behavior and be honorable and noble.
One thing is clear: Unleashing our male animal does not make us ideal or moral. Cultivating our masculinity with the harness of morality and honor is the only way.
Lots of “bros” or macho men or he-men are obnoxious braggarts, reckless troglodytes, and are on the road to self-destruction.
We must not read JG’s argument as an argument in favor of “jackass masculinity.”
There’s another danger. Not all women are attracted to macho bros. Some are, to be sure. But some women are attracted to shy bookish nerds. Some shy bookish nerds didn’t date in high school while the macho bros “got all the girls.” But ten, fifteen years down the road, the macho bros are working dead-end jobs, are unemployed, are in prison, are possibly dead. Some of the bookish nerds on the other hand might be in healthy relationships and running computer companies.
In other words, let us not glorify the unbridled macho bro.
Having masculine traits is good to a certain degree, but not if we become inconsiderate, rude, belligerent beasts.
We are not gorillas. Male gorillas are twice as big as female gorillas because they are “a harem-holding species.” Men do not hold harems in modern American society, last I checked.
Five. How does JG chronicle his own conflict with community and isolation?
JG makes a connection between masculinity and community: Men are judged by communal standards and enter rites of passages to be held in esteem and find belonging in their communities.
As a suburbanite living isolated in the suburbs, teaching college course, writing in isolation, and haunted by demons of masculine self-doubt, JG lives a lot in his head, isolated from those communal bonds that would him a sense of belonging, acceptance, and validation.
In this state of self-doubt, he longs for a way to prove his masculinity to himself and to others.
His crisis of self-worth is universal.
Many men find escape from their sense of domestic and masculine ineptitude by watching sports.
Television dramatizes men trying to regain their self-worth. Most famously, Breaking Bad, featuring Walter White, is about an effete chemistry teacher who becomes “The Danger.”
JG feels “soulless and emasculated” in his adjunct professor office. He’s been “man-dumped” by his friend.
He wants to get fired as a professor. He observes that the English Department is a feminized environment.
He wants to be a bad boy MMA fighter. He thinks being a bad boy will afford him the masculinity he craves.
He punches his poet friend Nobu, a long-time martial arts practitioner, at a party.
Six. What “man crisis” does JG chronicle in his book?
Perhaps American society offers too few healthy rituals to affirm masculinity. On page 82, we read that men are hungry for masculine qualities: “bravery, toughness, stoicism” and “we invent our own dragons” like Don Quixote to test ourselves.
The “dragon” could be an MMA fight, a bodybuilding competition, saving up for a Mustang GT, finding some trophy or other, getting a UCLA degree, getting a six-pack of abs, developing a hand-crushing handshake by exercising the hands with Captains of Crush Hand Crushers.
JG points out that YouTube is rife with crazy videos of men doing dares.
Men crave high-risk activities and simulated combat, so that they are drawn to wrestling and “combat” games. In contrast, JG observes that women are drawn to different, non-physical warfare, battles of cunning, deceit, and other Machiavellian methods. For JG, this difference is biological, not social.
Arguments against JG's book to consider:
One. His book may have some truth in genetic hardwiring of males, but it's too extreme. Socialization is a factor also. For example, it used to be essential to one's manliness and honor to engage in a duel, but this suicidal ritual is now extinct due to socialization. Manly codes don't require that men engage in duels.
Two. JG's book encourages stereotypes. Males and females break out of rigid role expectations all the time. JG's book desires to reinforce gender stereotypes.
Three. JG is too emotionally involved in the subject to see that his own masculine insecurity drives his argument, not facts. In other words, JG should not take an individual crisis and try to make a general principle about it. Perhaps another man with an identity or self-worth crisis would empower himself, not through MMA training, but by playing piano, guitar, or working on his tennis serve.
Four. JG draws on a lot of truth but perhaps exaggerates his claims. Perhaps he's not wrong absolutely but by degree.
Five. JG's book is a misreading of his life. He's not suffering a masculinity crisis, as he likes to believe. Rather, he is suffering from a meaning of life crisis--a crisis about a man who lacks purpose.
JG has never dismissed socialization. Nor has he endorsed dueling. He is simply stating that society is in denial about the significant role biology plays in gender roles.
Two. JG's book encourages stereotypes. Males and females break out of rigid role expectations all the time. JG's book desires to reinforce gender stereotypes.
Rebuttal to the Above
JG has never attempted to tell individual men or women how to behave. He is simply observing patterns of behavior recorded throughout history. He acknowledges that gender roles will always have outliers or exceptions, and never does he criticize these exceptions.
Three. JG is too emotionally involved in the subject to see that his own masculine insecurity drives his argument, not facts. In other words, JG should not take an individual crisis and try to make a general principle about it. Perhaps another man with an identity or self-worth crisis would empower himself, not through MMA training, but by playing piano, guitar, or working on his tennis serve.
Rebuttal to the Above
This book is part memoir. By its very nature, then, this book must be passionate if it is to be successful. No one wants to read a perfunctory memoir. That JG can combine passion with astute scholarship attests to the intellectual rigor of his writing and reinforces the claim that his book is a cogent look at the biological role of masculinity.
Four. JG draws on a lot of truth but perhaps exaggerates his claims. Perhaps he's not wrong absolutely but by degree.
Rebuttal to the Above
I cannot rebut any claims to exaggeration unless the writer be more specific. Next criticism, please.
Five. JG's book is a misreading of his life. He's not suffering a masculinity crisis, as he likes to believe. Rather, he is suffering from a meaning of life crisis--a crisis about a man who lacks purpose.
Rebuttal to the Above
The above criticism is an egregious example of the either/or fallacy. We do not have the either/or proposition that JG has either a masculinity crisis OR a meaning of life crisis. In fact, he may have both and there may be a connection between the two. Only a reader with a superficial grasp of JG’s book would make such a fallacious comment.
Six. While a masculinity crisis affects JGs journey, JG doesn’t focus enough on his purpose quest and instead does a “book stunt” or a book gimmick perhaps based on misguided ambition. As a result, his thesis is only half convincing and his book has a lot of padding. The book could have been at least 50 pages shorter.
Rebuttal to the Above
JG admits he uses a gimmick. Perhaps his book is a mix of ambition and sincere curiosity about the role of biology in masculinity. We shouldn’t fault him. None of us are pure. All of us have complicated “impure” motives even behind the best things we do.
Study Questions
One. Why do men fight both for real and for play?
JG cites 10 reasons:
Men fight to test themselves.
Men fight to pin each other on a hierarchy scale, what some might call the Man Points scale.
Men have natural, testosterone-fueled aggression.
Men fight to cultivate courage, what men call “heart.” By fighting, men acclimate to the pain and this acclimation, to be able to “take a hit,” allows one to “be a man.”
Men fight to bond with other men by affirming their shared courage.
Men fight to win the esteem of others.
Men fight to feel alive and feel freed from civilization’s numbing prison. See the movie Fight Club or read the novel.
Men fight to prepare for the real world of competition. See page 136.
Men fight to form alliances with other men. See page 135.
Men fight in ritualized combat as form of the “monkey dance,” a dance that leads to peace and prevents men from killing each other.
Two. Do boys and girls play the same?
No, their playing styles clash. Boys and girls engage in same-gender play 11 times more than mixed gender by their time their six (137).
Three. How can we explain the appeal of female MMA? Doesn’t it shatter JG’s thesis that violent sports belong to men?
People, regardless of gender, have similar basic drives that can be explained by the spike in interest in women’s MMA:
The craving for attention
The craving for relevance
The craving for validation
The craving for dominance
The desire to master a craft
The desire to be distinct
Four. Why do men become fanatics for their sports teams?
They want to belong to a gang, a primal expression of male bonding. Don’t doubt it. Rooting for “your team” is similar to gang affiliation.
Rooting for your team can be a form of power compensation for people who feel powerless in their real lives.
Rooting for a team can be a vicarious or fantasy existence for someone whose real world is sullied by boredom and a lack of purpose.
Rooting for a team can be a man’s escape from his domestic ineptitude and general feelings of worthlessness and irrelevance.
Rooting for a team can be about fashion. As Seinfeld says, “You’re rooting for clothes.”
Football can be a form of “sham warfare,” a sort of preparation for real war. See George Carlin video.
Five. What is an early example of sham warfare?
We see that English football originated over one thousand years ago and used a pig bladder. As an aside, my twin girls, 6 as of writing, like to play keep-away with me and this keep-away game, usually involving a blanket or a toy, has many parallels to football. I mention this because the game requires a certain amount of aggression and my twins, of course, are girls.
Six. What hypocrisy and delusion does JGs’ research reveal about spectator sports?
We pretend to hate violence when in fact we have an insatiable appetite for sadistic, cruel all-out violent spectacle. We always have since recorded history. See page 187.
Violence sells. Of all the Real Housewives shows, what’s number one? Atlanta. Why? It’s the most violent.
Looking at recorded history is a laundry list of shamefully violent entertainments:
Gladiator fights
Bull baiting
Bull fights
Lions vs. tigers vs. bears, etc.
Animal sadism
Public torture of humans
Public executions
Understanding Toulmin Logic
The Claim
The claim is the thesis or the central argument of the Toulmin essay.
Grounds
Evidence, reasons, and support comprise the grounds of the Toulmin essay.
Warrants
Warrants answer this question: Exactly how do the reasons offered in support of the conclusion work together?
In other words, what kind of guarantee—or warrant—is provided to demonstrate that the reasons proffered actually do support the claim or lead to the conclusion?
Perhaps the most simple way to explain this is to say that the warrants are the logic used to connect the grounds to the claim.
Example:
Claim: We need harsher fines and possible jail time for texting while driving.
Grounds: In spite of current texting-while-driving laws, the offense is on the rise. In fact, it’s up 50% from last year.
Warrant: Making people dig deeper into their pockets and scaring them with the possibility with heavy jail time will be a more effective deterrent than the current penalties.
Backing
Backing is using further logic to convince reader that you have chosen compelling and appropriate reasons for supporting your claim.
Modal Qualifiers
Modal qualifiers define the character and scope of the proposition or claim.
Unless there is evidence that the current laws are discouraging texting while driving . . .
In most cases, drivers who know that the penalties for texting while driving can be up to $3,000 and 2 years of jail time . . .
Rebuttals
At this point in your essay, you ask what are the possible objections to my argument? And what are the most compelling objections?
Can I state these counterarguments and rebuttal them effectively?
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like a cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is every day foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
The Professor in the Cage Lesson #2 with Steve Almond’s Anti-NFL Essay
Final Capstone Essay Five for 200 Points: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage:
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,100 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Same Option Reworded:
Does JG make a convincing case that ritualized violence enhances masculinity, manhood, and male social bonding?
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's "The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible" is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Some Arguments in Favor of Gottschall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. Like animals, men are hard-wired for violence in order to achieve safety, reproductive rights, and honor. The hard-wiring is so deep that we can see young males, both human and in the animal kingdom, show an instinct for play fighting. As males grow older, they are inclined to organized contests, duels, and competitions that test their might, agility, and courage.
Two. Men use ritualized violence to preserve their honor code, a display of courage, which earns respect. Ritualized violence builds heart and courage, which are essential to gaining respect from others and oneself.
Three. Men find that jousts and organized forms of combat provide authenticity and real feeling in a world taken over by artificial lifestyles and BS. Fighting sheds the BS and the artificial.
Four. Ritualized violence, which occurs have tempers have flared, contains rules and allows men to exorcise their aggression in a venue that is far safer than a street fight or a fight of passion.
Some Arguments to Refute Gottshall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. We no longer need ritualized violence to establish male hierarchies of male power and dominance because we have Hobbes’ Leviathan, a social contract and jurisprudence to litigate what is rightfully ours in terms of property and civil behavior.
Two. Gottschall’s points lose credibility in the context of his own admission to write a “gimmick memoir,” a sign of publishing ambition, not a quest for truth. Could his desire to write such a book be a mix of ambition and authenticity?
Three. Gottschall’s reliance on male hard-wiring argument is fatalistic or deterministic and dismisses conditioning and free choice for civil behavior. Take for instance Steve Almond’s diatribes against the NFL, which could be used as a source for your essay. Almond concedes that males love violence, but that they can make a choice to move forward, progress, and leave their troglodyte ways behind because of an ideological shift in their thinking and actions. In contrast, Gottschall is almost celebrating the ideology of ritualized male violence. He ignores the moral bankruptcy of making barbarism of a spectacle of entertainment, as Steve Almond argues. Instead, Gottschall asserts that barbaric spectacle is natural and therefore morally justified.
Four. While prison population and poor class share the need for respect with the aristocracy in what Gottschall calls “dueling culture,” the comparison is somewhat faulty. The Law of the Jungle does apply in conditions where there is no Leviathan, the social contract of order, but the aristocracy created their code in order to preserve their brand in order to maximize their efficacy in the world of business and commerce. That’s a significant difference.
Five. By Gottschall’s own admission, he is a broken man who suffered deep psychic wounds of masculine humiliation when he was bullied and by Gottschall’s own firsthand experience, MMA devotees mostly suffered similar humiliation. Taking these personal grievances does not make for a universal principle about men needing ritualized violence. True, many men, especially young men, are fascinated with MMA and UFC fighting and their market niche is coveted by advertisers. But this marketing gold age bracket does not make for an argument for the universality of the male need for barbaric spectacle as a form of healthy entertainment. To the contrary, many men outgrow their fascination for violence and evolve into higher states of development.
As a counterargument to the above, a lot of intellectuals, writers, and philosophers are just as aggressive as MMA fighters. Rather than using bare knuckles, however, these writers get into public feuds. They sometimes spit on each other, as Richard Ford did at a party when he spotted a book critic who lambasted Ford’s book. Some writers even throw punches. Petty jealousies and rivalries exist even in the “intellectual world.”
Six. Gottschall tries to make a universal point about the male hunger for ritualized violence, but his argument suffers because Gottschall doesn’t address the role of social class. Some would argue that the uneducated class of men will be fixated on ritualized violence throughout their lifetime becoming “fanboys” for their team, showing up to NFL games in the sixties wearing no shirt with their team’s logo painted on the gray hairs of their bare chest.
In contrast, the educated class may be drawn to violent sport for a while, but eventually outgrow this fixation as they set their sights on higher aspirations.
A counterargument to the above is that lots of educated men maintain a passion for violent sports throughout their lifetime.
Chapter 2 Study Questions
One. What is Gottschall’s claim about bullying?
He claims that bullying is not abnormal, pathological behavior.
He was bullied and he would have been a bully had he been tough enough, so therefore bullying is natural. Is that a logical statement?
He also observes that bullying is as “natural as ragweed and cancer.” Does that make a strong argument? Aren’t we trying to get rid of ragweed and cancer?
Also, does the common equals okay argument work? Slavery, racism, Jim Crow, sexism, and anti-Semitism have been and are common in certain societies. Does “majority rule” make for moral rule?
What Gottschall is saying is that bullying must be controlled through ritualized behavior. In hunter-gatherer societies, the most extreme bullies were “assassinated by coalitions of fed-up victims.”
On the other hand, mainstream, run-of-the-mill bullies thrive in adolescence and enjoy more dating success (35).
Two. What profound existential wound is Gottschall addressing in his book?
He’s not talking about the need to win fights. He’s talking about not fighting back repeatedly when faced with an adversary or a hostile antagonist. Shrinking away shows a lack of heart and courage. And to shrink away over and over is to be full of shame and self-loathing and to be loathed by others. To fight back, even in a losing cause, earns respect. But cowering away is to lose Man Points.
Walter White of Breaking Bad has the body language of shame because he doesn’t fight back against his bully, Society, and gets kicked in the butt, poor, unable to take care of his family’s needs, working as a chemistry high school teacher and part-time at a car wash where some of his students humiliate him (“You didn’t get the rims!”)
Only when Walter White fights the system in his own misguided way, become a drug manufacturer, does he “get his groove back,” his mojo, if you will. “I am the Danger.”
Gottschall wishes he would have stood up the linebacker who shook him like a doll at the tennis courts.
Playing the role of coward over and over, we begin to wonder if we are cowards. We need ritualized violence, combat, and sports to test our hearts in a relatively safe way. We need to cultivate our courage. Our manliness depends on it, so goes Gottschall’s argument.
Gottschall develops his MMA skills to find “redemption” from his existential wound, his imprint of shame and cowardice.
In fact, MMA gyms are a “support group for damaged men.” If they ever encounter a “duel,” they don’t want to dishonor themselves. They want to be able to stand up to their antagonist.
Three. Why did the official duel with pistols stop after World War I all over the world?
We replaced the culture of honor with a culture of laws, “Leviathan,” the social contract, and this Gottschall believes results in an emasculated culture (46).
But even in the absence of the duel, men will still engage in the “monkey dance”: “all of the wild and frequently ridiculous varieties of ritualized conflict in human males.” The dance says, “You want a piece of this!”
The mechanics are described on page 51:
Eye contact, hard stare
Verbal challenge (eg. ‘What you lookin’ at?’).
Close the distance. Sometimes chest bumping.
Finger poke or two-handed push to the chest.
Dominant hand roundhouse punch.
This ritualized combat often leads in death, as we read: “In many animals, ritual combat is a leading cause of male mortality in spite of its safeguards.”
Four. Is the Monkey Dance cultural or biological?
How you answer this question is crucial to how you will argue your essay.
Quoting self-defense expert Rory Miller, Gottschall writes, “The monkey dance wasn’t invented by any culture; it really is etched in the DNA of our species” (51).
ARGUMENT THAT PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS LEARNED AND COMMERCIALIZED
Almond’s claim that watching NFL is immoral is supported by the following:
One. We glorify violence.
Two. We live vicariously through the violence of others, using the players as proxies or substitutes for our own vicious impulses but put all the risk on them for head trauma, paralysis, broken limbs, life-long crippling, etc.
Three. We sponsor brutality with our cash dollars making us complicit in the life-long injuries and premature death suffered by NFL players. Studies show that on average NFL players live from mid to late fifties, about twenty years less than average lifespan.
Four. We are complicit in the abuse and ill regard of women, misogyny when we consider that football encourages male aggression, overpowering others through sheer will and strength, entitlement, and a lack of accountability (we close our eyes to misbehavior because we want our “stars” to show up and help us conquer our enemies on game day).
This link between NFL aggression and misogyny is evident in the high rates of domestic assault.
The culture that glorifies football players as their warriors free to do as they please, including violence against women, is sometimes called the jockitocracy.
Five. Some defend the NFL by citing new safety rules, but these new rules are, to use an effective analogy, lipstick on a pig. The fundamental violent nature of football remains unchanged.
Six. Some defend the NFL by saying players choose to play at their own risk, but this assertion is countered by the fact that many players are poor and lack viable options.
Seven. The NFL doesn’t want the truth about brain trauma to be exposed because the trauma is prevalent and severe, resulting in dementia, brain damage, violence, suicide, and other pathologies.
Eight. More and more parents won’t let their sons play football at any level because of the reports of permanent head trauma.
Nine. NFL legend Mike Ditka says he wouldn’t let his children play football if he knew then what he knows now.
Ten. NFL uses tax loopholes and other forms of trickery to parasite off US taxpayers to fund its stadiums in spite of its astronomical profits.
Thesis Review
A good thesis is a complete sentence that defines your argument.
A good thesis addresses your opponents’ views in a concession clause.
A good thesis often has mapping components or mapping statements that outline your body paragraphs.
A good thesis avoids the obvious and instead struggles to grapple with difficult and complex ideas.
A good thesis embraces complexity and sophistication but is expressed with clarity.
Thesis That Supports Steve Almond
While I am a lifelong football fan who has enjoyed the suspense of close games over the years, I am convinced after reading Steve Almond’s anti-football manifesto that I can no longer patronize the game I once loved because it is morally and intellectually bankrupt evidenced by its bloodthirsty violence, misogyny-fueled domestic abuse, parasitic taxpayer trickery, exploitation of the underclass, high risk of permanent brain trauma, and narcissism-inducing jockitocracy.
Thesis That Opposes the Above
While I concede that the NFL has its fair share of pathologies as cited in the above thesis, the author makes a weak case for boycotting the NFL because he relies on focusing exclusively on the lowest common denominator of NFL behavior; he ignores the countless examples of NFL good works throughout the land, including charities and other social service programs; he ignores the fact that risk of danger exists in many vocations that are not held in such condemnation; and he ignores that the NFL provides opportunities for the economically disadvantaged.
Thesis That Opposes the Above Refutation
While I concede that the NFL is not Evil Incarnate and is capable of doing good works and providing good jobs, its abominations far outweigh its virtues evidenced by its refusal to compensate or even acknowledge the widespread head trauma, its dependence on the underclass to feed into its pool of exploited labor, and its recalcitrant record on domestic abuse.
Identifying Claims and Analyzing Arguments from Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition
We’ve learned in this class that we can call a thesis a claim, an assertion that must be supported with evidence and refuting counterarguments.
There are 3 different types of claims: fact, value, and policy.
Claims of Fact
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “Claims of fact are assertions (or arguments) that seek to define or classify something or establish that a problem or condition has existed, exists, or will exist.
For example, Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow argues that Jim Crow practices that notoriously oppressed people of color still exist in an insidious form, especially in the manner in which we incarcerate black and brown men.
In The Culture Code Rapaille argues that different cultures have unconscious codes and that a brand’s codes must not be disconnected with the culture that brand needs to appeal to. This is the problem or struggle that all companies have: being “on code” with their product. The crisis that is argued is the disconnection between people’s unconscious codes and the contrary codes that a brand may represent.
Many economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that there is major problem facing America, a shrinking middle class, that is destroying democracy and human freedom as this country knows it. Krugman and others will point to a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, a growing class of temporary workers that surpasses all other categories of workers (warehouse jobs for online companies, for example), and de-investment in the American labor force as jobs are outsourced in a world of global competition.
All three examples above are claims of fact. As Greene and Lidinsky write, “This is an assertion that a condition exists. A careful reader must examine the basis for this kind of claim: Are we truly facing a crisis?”
We further read, “Our point is that most claims of fact are debatable and challenge us to provide evidence to verify our arguments. They may be based on factual information, but they are not necessarily true. Most claims of fact present interpretations of evidence derived from inferences.”
A Claim of Fact That Seeks to Define Or Classify
Greene and Lidinsky point out that autism is a controversial topic because experts cannot agree on a definition. The behaviors attributed to autism “actually resist simple definition.”
There is also disagreement on a definition of obesity. For example, some argue that the current BMI standards are not accurate.
Another example that is difficult to define or classify is the notion of genius.
In all the cases above, the claim of fact is to assert a definition that must be supported with evidence and refutations of counterarguments.
Claims of Value
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of fact is different from a claim of value, which expresses an evaluation of a problem or condition that has existed, exists, or will exist. Is a condition good or bad? Is it important or inconsequential?
In other words, the claim isn’t whether or not a crisis or problem exists: The emphasis is on HOW serious the problem is.
How serious is global warming?
How serious is gender discrimination in schools?
How serious is racism in law enforcement and incarceration?
How serious is the threat of injury for people who engage in Cross-Fit training?
How serious are the health threats rendered from providing sodas in public schools?
How serious is the income gap between the haves and the have-nots?
Claims of Policy
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of policy is an argument for what should be the case, that a condition should exist. It is a call for change or a solution to a problem.
Examples
We must decriminalize drugs.
We must increase the minimum wage to X per hour.
We must have stricter laws that defend worker rights for temporary and migrant workers.
We must integrate more autistic children in mainstream classes.
We must implement universal health care.
If we are to keep capital punishment, then we must air it on TV.
We must implement stricter laws for texting while driving.
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’”
“Often a writer will signal a concession with phrases like the following:”
“It is true that . . .”
“I agree with X that Y is an important factor to consider.”
“Some studies have convincingly shown that . . .”
Identify Counterarguments
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and conflicting opinions.”
Developing a Thesis
Greene and Lidinsky write that a thesis is “an assertion that academic writers make at the beginning of what they write and then support with evidence throughout their essay.”
They then give the thesis these attributes:
Makes an assertion that is clearly defined, focused, and supported.
Reflects an awareness of the conversation from which the writer has take up the issue.
Is placed at the beginning of the essay.
Penetrates every paragraph like the skewer in a shish kebab.
Acknowledges points of view that differ from the writer’s own, reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Demonstrates an awareness of the readers’ assumptions and anticipates possible counterarguments.
Conveys a significant fresh perspective.
Working and Definitive Thesis
In the beginning, you develop a working or tentative thesis that gets more and more revised and refined as you struggle with the evidence and become more knowledgeable of the subject.
A writer who comes up with a thesis that remains unchanged is not elevating his or thinking to a sophisticated level.
Only a rare genius could spit out a meaningful thesis that defies revision.
Not just theses, but all writing is subject to multiple revisions. For example, the brilliant TV writers for 30 Rock, The Americans, and The Simpsons make hundreds of revisions for just one scene and even then they’re still not happy in some cases.
Four Models for Developing a Working Thesis
The Correcting-Misinterpretations Model
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “This model is used to correct writers whose arguments you believe have been misconstrued one or more important aspects of an issue. This thesis typically takes the form of a factual claim.
Examples of Correcting-Misinterpretation Model
Although LAUSD teachers are under fire for poor teaching performance, even the best teachers have been thrown into abysmal circumstances that defy strong teaching performance evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Even though Clotaire Rapaille is venerated as some sort of branding god, a close scrutiny exposes him as a shrewd self-promoter who relies on several gimmicks including _______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________.
The Filling-the-Gap Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The gap model points to what other writers may have overlooked or ignored in discussing a given issue. The gap model typically makes a claim of value.”
Example
Many psychology experts discuss happiness in terms of economic wellbeing, strong education, and strong family bonds as the essential foundational pillars of happiness, but these so-called experts fail to see that these pillars are worthless in the absence of morality as Eric Weiners’s study of Qatar shows, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
The Modifying-What-Others-Have-Said Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The modification model of thesis writing assumes that mutual understanding is possible.” In other words, we want to modify what many already agree upon.
Example
While most scholars agree that food stamps are essential for hungry children, the elderly, and the disabled, we need to put restrictions on EBT cards so that they cannot be used to buy alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and other non-food items.
The Hypothesis-Testing Model
The authors write, “The hypothesis-testing model begins with the assumption that writers may have good reasons for supporting their arguments, but that there are also a number of legitimate reasons that explain why something is, or is not, the case. . . . That is, the evidence is based on a hypothesis that researchers will continue to test by examining individual cases through an inductive method until the evidence refutes that hypothesis.”
For example, some researchers have found a link between the cholesterol drugs, called statins, and lower testosterone levels in men. Some say the link is causal; others say the link is correlative, which is to say these men who need to lower their cholesterol already have risk factors for low T levels.
As the authors continue, “The hypothesis-testing model assumes that the questions you raise will likely lead you to multiple answers that compete for your attention.”
The authors then give this model for such a thesis:
Some people explain this by suggesting that, but a close analysis of the problem reveals several compelling, but competing explanations.
Types of Argument
Informal argument is a quarrel, or a spin or BS on a subject; or there is propaganda. In contrast, formal or academic argument takes a stand, presents evidence, and uses logic to convince an audience of the writer’s position or claim.
In a formal argument, we are taking a stand on which intelligent people can disagree, so we don’t “prove” anything; at best we persuade or convince people that our position is the best of all the positions available.
Thesis Must be Debatable
Therefore, in formal argument the topic has compelling evidence on both sides.
The thesis or claim, the main point of our essay, must therefore be debatable. There must be substantial evidence and logic to support opposing views and it is our task to weigh the evidence and come to a claim that sides with one position over another. Our position may not be absolute; it may be a matter of degree and based on contingency.
For example, I may write an argumentative essay designed to assert America’s First Amendment rights for free speech, but my support of the First Amendment is not absolute. I would argue that there are cases where people can cross the line.
Groups that spread racial hatred should not be able to gather in a public space. Nor should groups committed to abusing children be able to spread their newsletters and other information to each other. While I believe in the First Amendment, I’m saying there is a line that cannot be crossed.
Thesis Is Not a Fact
We cannot write a thesis that is a statement of fact. For example, online college classes are becoming more and more available is a fact, not an argument.
We cannot write a thesis that is an expression of personal taste or preference. If we prefer working out at home rather than the gym, our preference is beyond dispute. However, if we make the case that there are advantages to home exercise that make gym memberships a bad idea, we have entered the realm of argumentation.
It is an over simplification to reduce all arguments to just two sides.
Should torture be banned? It’s not an either/or question. The ban depends on the circumstances described and the definition of torture. And then there is the matter of who decides who gets tortured and who does the torturing? There are so many questions, qualifications, edicts, provisos, clauses, condition, etc., that it is impossible to make a general for/against stand on this topic.
Why Argumentation Is Relevant
You make arguments for daily life problems all the time:
Should I go on Diet X or is this diet just another futile fad like all the other diets I’ve gone on?
Should I buy a new car or is my old car fine but I’m looking for attention and a way to alleviate my boredom, so I’m looking for the drama of a colossal purchase, which will be the source of conversations with others? In other words, am I looking for false connection through my rampant consumerism?
Should I break up with my girlfriend to give me more time to study and give me the “alone time” I need, or continue navigating that precarious balance between the demands of my job, my academic load, and my capricious, rapacious, overbearing, manipulative, emotionally needy girlfriend? (here the answer is embedded in the question)
Should I upgrade my phone to the latest generation to get all the new apps or am I just jealous that all my friends are upgrading and I fear they’ll leave me out of their social circle if I’m languishing with an outdated smartphone?
Should I go to Cal State and graduate with 20K debt or go to that prestigious private college that gives my résumé more punch on one hand but leaves me with over 100K in debt on the other?
Do I really want to get married under the age of thirty or am I just jealous of all the expensive presents my brother got after he got married?
Whether you are defining an argument for your personal life or for an academic paper, you are using the same skills: critical analysis, defining the problem, weighing different types of evidence against each other; learning to respond to a problem intellectually rather than emotionally; learning to identify possible fallacies and biases in your thinking that might lead you down the wrong path, etc.
We live in a win-lose culture that emphasizes the glory of winning and the shame of defeat. In politics, we speak of winning or losing behind our political leaders and their political agendas. But this position is doltish, barbaric, and often self-destructive.
Many times, we argue or I should say we should argue because we want to reach a common understanding. “Sometimes the goal of an argument is to identify a problem and suggest solutions that could satisfy those who hold a number of different positions on an issue” (8) Sometimes the solution for a problem is to make a compromise. For example, let's say students want more organic food in the college cafeteria but the price is triple for these organic foods and only one percent of the student body can afford these organic foods. Perhaps a compromise is to provide less processed, sugar-laden foods with fresh fruits and vegetables, which are not organic but at least provide more healthy choices.
Your aim is not to win or lose in your argument but be effective in your ability to persuade. Persuasion refers to how a speaker or writer influences an audience to adopt a belief or to follow a course of action.
Critical Writing
Applying your critical thinking to academic writing
You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue.
You will express your argument in 6 ways:
One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow?
Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant?
Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?
Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about?
You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday.
Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture.
You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals.
You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that?
Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?
Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”
Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader
To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text:
One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose?
Two. What arguments is the author responding to?
Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why?
Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why?
Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not?
Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument?
Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position?
Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments?
Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else?
Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, non sequitur, confusing causality with correlation, etc.?
Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.
Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise.
An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use:
We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation.
Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children
Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
They confuse correlation with causality.
Why are these parents always rich?
Are they narcissists?
Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.
Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.
Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.
To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”
Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.
There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.
Generating Ideas for Our Essays
How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?
The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.
Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.
Here’s an example:
One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”
Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”
Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:
Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.
Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.
Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.
Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.
Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.
Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”
Here are some pros:
I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli and Salmonella.
I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.
Cons
It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
Relying on soy is bad for the body.
My body craves animal protein.
Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.
One. Checklist for Critical Thinking
My attitude toward critical thinking:
Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber.
Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions?
Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing?
Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views?
Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence?
My skills to develop critical thinking
Can I summarize an argument accurately?
Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences?
Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?
3 Means of Persuasion
According to Aristotle, there are three means of persuasion that a speaker or writer can use to persuade his audience:
The appeal of reason and logic: logos
The appeal of emotions: pathos
The appeal of authority: ethos
Smoking will compromise your immune system and make you more at risk for cancer; therefore, logic, or logos, dictates that you should quit smoking.
If you die of cancer, you will be abandoning your family when they need you most; therefore an emotional appeal, or pathos, dictates that you quit smoking.
The surgeon general has warned you of the hazards of smoking; therefore the credibility of an authority or expert dictates that you quit smoking. If the writer lacks authority or credibility, he is often well served to draw upon the authority of someone else to support his argument.
The Rhetorical Triangle Connects All the Persuasive Methods
Logos, reason and logic, focuses on the text or the substance of the argument.
Ethos, the credibility or expertise from the writer, focuses on the writer.
Pathos, the emotional appeal, focuses on the emotional reaction of the audience.
The Elements of Argument
Thesis Statement (single sentence that states your position or claim)
Evidence (usually about 75% of your body paragraphs)
Refutation of opposing arguments or objections to your claim (usually about 25% of your body paragraphs)
Concluding statement (dramatic restatement of your thesis, which often also shows the broader implications of your important message).
Thesis
Thesis is one sentence that states your position about an issue.
Thesis example: Increasing the minimum wage to eighteen dollars an hour, contrary to “expert” economists, will boost the economy.
The above assertion is an effective thesis because it is debatable; it has at least two sides.
Thesis: We should increase the minimum wage to boost the economy.
Antithesis: Increasing the minimum wage will slow down the economy.
Evidence
Evidence is the material you use to make your thesis persuasive: facts, observations, expert opinion, examples, statistics, reasons, logic, and refutation.
Refutation
Your argument is only as strong as your understanding of your opponents and your ability to refute your opponents’ objections.
If while examining your opponents’ objections, you find their side is more compelling, you have to CHANGE YOUR SIDE AND YOUR THESIS because you must have integrity when you write. There is no shame in this. Changing your position through research and studying both sides is natural.
Conclusion
Your concluding statement reinforces your thesis and emphasizes the emotional appeal of your argument.
Learn to Identify the Elements of Argument in an Essay by Using Critical Thinking Skills
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
Lesson for Rhetorical Analysis (Chapter 4 from Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Rhetoric refers to “how various elements work together to form a convincing and persuasive argument” (90).
“When you write a rhetorical analysis, you examine the strategies a writer employs to achieve his or her purpose. In the process, you explain how these strategies work together to create an effective (or ineffective) argument.”
To write a rhetorical analysis, you must consider the following:
The argument’s rhetorical situation
The writer’s means of persuasion
The writer’s rhetorical strategies
The rhetorical situation is the writer, the writer’s purpose, the writer’s audience, the topic, and the context.
We analyze the rhetorical situation by doing the following:
Read the title’s subtitle, if there is one.
Look at the essay’s headnote for information about the writer, the issue being discussed, and the essay structure.
Look for clues within the essay such as words or phrases that provide information about the writer’s preconceptions. Historical or cultural references can indicate what ideas or information the writer expects readers to have.
Do a Web search to get information about the writer.
Example of How the Rhetorical Situation Gives Us Greater Understanding About the Text
I came across a book about the alleged limitations of alternative energy only to find that the author is paid by the oil industry to write his books.
I came across a book by an author who writes about nutrition and I learned that his findings were contradicted by new research, which the writer did not address because the research refuted his book’s main premise and the publisher had already paid him a .75 million-dollar advance.
I came across a book that refuted the health claims of veganism only to find that the author blamed her severe health problems on a twenty-year vegan diet. This last example could hurt or help the argument depending on how the argument is documented. Was the author showing a strong causal relationship between her illness and her vegan diet? Or was her connection correlational?
When we examine the writer, we ask the following:
What is the writer’s background? Does he work for a think tank that is of a particular political persuasion? Is he being paid by a lobbyist or corporation to regurgitate their opinions?
How does the writer’s background affect the argument’s content?
What preconceptions about the subject does the writer seem to have?
When we analyze the writer’s purpose, we ask the following:
Does the writer state his or her purpose directly or is the purpose implied?
Is the writer’s purpose simply to convince or to encourage action?
Does the writer rely primarily on logic or on emotion?
Does the writer have a hidden agenda?
How does the author use logos, pathos, and ethos to put the argument together?
When we analyze the writer’s audience, we ask the following:
Who is the writer’s intended audience?
Does the writer see the audience as informed or uninformed?
Does the writer see the audience as hostile, friendly, or neutral?
What values does the writer think the audience holds?
On what points do the writer and the audience agree? On what points do they disagree?
Consider the Author’s Stylistic Techniques
Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.
Example: “We must not educate the masses because education is like a great flame and the hordes of people are like moths that will fly into the flames at their own peril.”
In the above example “like a great flame” is a simile.
“Gorging on plate after plate of chicken fried steak at HomeTown Buffet, I felt like Jonah lost in the belly of a giant, dyspeptic whale on the verge of spitting me back into the throng of angry people.”
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison in which two dissimilar things are compared without the word like or as. “We must educate the masses to protect them from the disease of ignorance.”
Allusion: An allusion (not to be confused with illusion) is a reference within a work to a person, literary or biblical text, or historical event in order to enlarge the context of the situation being written about.
“Even though I am not a religious man, I would agree with Jesus who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which is why rich people are in general against the minimum wage and the social and economic justice a healthy minimum wage exacts upon our society.”
Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of similar grammatical structures to emphasize related ideas and make passages easier to follow.
“Failure to get your college education will make you languish in the abyss of ignorance, weep in the chasm of unemployment, and wallow in the crater of self-abnegation.”
Repetition: Intentional repetition involves repeating a word or phrase for emphasis, clarity, or emotional impact (pathos).
“Are you able to accept the blows of not having a college education? Are you able to accept the shock of a low-paying job? Are you able to accept the disgrace of living on life’s margins?”
Rhetorical questions: A rhetorical question is a question that is asked to encourage readers to reflect on an issue, not to elicit a reply.
“How can you remain on the outside of college when all that remains is for you to walk through those open gates? How can you let an opportunity as golden as a college education pass you by when the consequences are so devastating?”
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Critical Reading, Part II
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
When we examine the writer, we ask the following:
What is the writer’s background? Does he work for a think tank that is of a particular political persuasion? Is he being paid by a lobbyist or corporation to regurgitate their opinions?
How does the writer’s background affect the argument’s content?
What preconceptions about the subject does the writer seem to have?
When we analyze the writer’s purpose, we ask the following:
Does the writer state his or her purpose directly or is the purpose implied?
Is the writer’s purpose simply to convince or to encourage action?
Does the writer rely primarily on logic or on emotion?
Does the writer have a hidden agenda?
How does the author use logos, pathos, and ethos to put the argument together?
When we analyze the writer’s audience, we ask the following:
Who is the writer’s intended audience?
Does the writer see the audience as informed or uninformed?
Does the writer see the audience as hostile, friendly, or neutral?
What values does the writer think the audience holds?
On what points do the writer and the audience agree? On what points do they disagree?
Consider the Author’s Stylistic Techniques
Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.
Example: “We must not educate the masses because education is like a great flame and the hordes of people are like moths that will fly into the flames at their own peril.”
In the above example “like a great flame” is a simile.
“Gorging on plate after plate of chicken fried steak at HomeTown Buffet, I felt like Jonah lost in the belly of a giant, dyspeptic whale on the verge of spitting me back into the throng of angry people.”
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison in which two dissimilar things are compared without the word like or as. “We must educate the masses to protect them from the disease of ignorance.”
Allusion: An allusion (not to be confused with illusion) is a reference within a work to a person, literary or biblical text, or historical event in order to enlarge the context of the situation being written about.
“Even though I am not a religious man, I would agree with Jesus who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which is why rich people are in general against the minimum wage and the social and economic justice a healthy minimum wage exacts upon our society.”
Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of similar grammatical structures to emphasize related ideas and make passages easier to follow.
“Failure to get your college education will make you languish in the abyss of ignorance, weep in the chasm of unemployment, and wallow in the crater of self-abnegation.”
Repetition: Intentional repetition involves repeating a word or phrase for emphasis, clarity, or emotional impact (pathos).
“Are you able to accept the blows of not having a college education? Are you able to accept the shock of a low-paying job? Are you able to accept the disgrace of living on life’s margins?”
Rhetorical questions: A rhetorical question is a question that is asked to encourage readers to reflect on an issue, not to elicit a reply.
“How can you remain on the outside of college when all that remains is for you to walk through those open gates? How can you let an opportunity as golden as a college education pass you by when the consequences are so devastating?”
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
Based on your reading of "The End of Solitude" (98), support or refute the argument that fear of solitude is a mental disease with serious consequences.
Essay Summary
Deresiewicz, or WD (use WD in your essay; it will be easier) writes that "solitude has traditionally been a societal value" in the "dimension of religious experience."
Whether we like it or not, ALL of us are religious. Alfred North Whitehead writes that what you do in your solitude defines your religion.
Connecting yourself--no matter the method you use--is your "religion."
The creative works you pursue in solitude are your religion.
The processing and recuperating of experience are your religion.
WD writes: "Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism, a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom. The seer returns with new tablets or new dances, his face bright with the old truth."
That is another way of saying we use solitude to take stock or inventory and critique our behaviors in the attempt for self-improvement.
A social media addict cannot engage in serious self-critique: "I don't want to criticize my behavior. I just got 400 likes on Facebook. Dude, you're killing my buzz."
Solitude, in other words, is essential for self-transformation.
In Romanticism, solitude connects us with Nature and this connection is our way of communing with the Divine.
In intellectualism, solitude is a time to read. The intellectual believes that reading strengthens the mind and spirit and compels us to self-transformation.
The Great Shift
There was a great shift in society that made solitude something to be feared and avoided.
In the suburbs, we became isolated. The Internet bridged us to the world. We changed to a people defined by our solitude to a people defined by our visibility and our validation from others. This visibility and validation has become an addiction, a feeble attempt to compensate for our fragile, fragmented, insecure, undeveloped selves. Our selves our undeveloped and fragile because we haven't feed them their essential nourishment that can only come from solitude.
The result of our addiction to being validated by others is that we have become infantile, insecure narcissists incapable of solitude, empathy, contemplation, and self-transformation.
Lesson Five Chapters 8 and 9 From Critical Thinking to Argument
Logic and Logical Fallacies (adapted from Chapter 5 of Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Logic comes from the Greek word logos, meaning, word, thought, principle, or reason. Logic is concerned with the principles of correct reasoning.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood; therefore, it is not true.
Syllogism with an Illogical Middle Term Is Invalid
Flawed logic occurs when the middle term has the same term in the major and minor premise but not in the conclusion.
Major Premise: All dogs are mammals.
Minor Premise: Some mammals are porpoises.
Conclusion: Therefore, some porpoises are dogs.
Syllogism with a Key Term Whose Meaning Shifts Cannot be Valid
Major Premise: Only man is capable of analytical reasoning.
Minor Premise: Anna is not a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Anna is not capable of analytical reasoning.
The key term shift is “man,” which refers to “mankind,” not the male gender.
Syllogism with a Negative Premise
If either premise in a syllogism is negative, then the conclusion must also be negative. The following syllogism is not valid:
Major Premise: Only the Toyota Prius can go in the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW can drive in the fast-track lane.
If both premises are negative, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion:
Major Premise: The Toyota Prius cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Enthymemes
An enthymeme is a syllogism with one or two parts of its argument—usually, the major premise—missing.
Robert has lied, so he cannot be trusted.
We’re missing the major premise:
Major Premise: People who lie cannot be trusted.
Minor Premise: Robert has lied.
Conclusion: Therefore, Robert cannot be trusted.
When writers or speakers use enthymemes, they are sometimes trying to hide the flaw of the first premise:
Major Premise: All countries governed by dictators should be invaded.
Minor Premise: North Korea is a country governed by a dictator.
Conclusion: Therefore, North Korea should be invaded.
The premise that all countries governed by dictators should be invaded is a gross generalization and can easily be shot down under close scrutiny.
Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning begins with specific observations or evidence and moves to a general conclusion.
My Volvo was always in the shop. My neighbor’s Mini Cooper and BMW are always in the shop. My other neighbor’s Audi is in the shop.
Now my wife and I own a Honda and Nissan and those cars are never in the shop.
European cars cost more to maintain than Japanese cars and the empirical evidence and data support my claim.
Essay One for 150 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
His soul is empty or at the very least incomplete living “the life of the mind.” He doesn’t feel like a complete man. He contemplates his “failure” as a professor who already had his “fifteen minutes of fame.”
He is haunted by memories of being a coward in certain situations, and he wants to find redemption by finding his heart, finding his courage, and proving his manhood.
He is at a career crisis where he wants his bosses at the college to fire him because he’s in a sort of limbo teaching part-time and seeing his literary theories being ignored.
One of man’s greatest fears is irrelevance. To be ignored or to be deemed of someone of no consequence is a huge insult to a man’s manhood. Gottschall is determined to make himself a force to be reckoned with.
As he stares out his office window and sees the Mark Schrader’s Academy of Mixed, Martial Arts, he feels the hunger to go on a Masculinity Quest in order that he may partake in the strength, vitality, and courage of the fighting world. We read, “they were so alive in their octagon while I was rotting in my cube.”
Living a life of Apollonian order can only take him so far. He needs Dionysian passion to restore his life. He needs to find his vitality, the antidote to ennui, boredom with life.
He also delights in the possible “scandal” of him becoming an MMA fighter, a scandal so big he might get fired. Getting fired, he seems to believe, is an important step in him developing the courage to begin a new chapter in his life.
His quest is also partly fame-driven. He sees himself writing a book about a professor who embarks on an MMA quest. He is desperate to revitalize his career.
In his middle-age, he has not found vindication for his existence, his life choices, and his forged identity.
He appears to have something to prove to others and himself.
He appears to want to have more than an intellectual understanding of violence. He wants to do research on a physical level.
Only through physical immersion in MMA does the author experience the primal fear, the adrenalin rush, the reptilian survival reaction that is important to understanding human nature and himself.
Only through MMA does the author believe he can conquer fear, and worse, cowardice, a sort of moral failure from a worldview where courage and honor take the forefront.
Only through MMA, one man pitted against another man, can he see who he really is in a world that conceals everything with BS. An MMA fights strips life of its BS.
Gottschall is fascinated by the notion of respect in the realm of MMA fighting and how this respect reconciles with trying to tear another’s limbs off.
Gottschall is on a courage quest to discover if he is a coward or not.
He is drawn by sincere curiosity about cage fighting: “Why do men fight? Why do so many people like to watch? And why, especially when it comes to violence, do men differ so greatly from women?”
Further, he asks:
“Why do human beings spend (waste?) so much energy on sports?
“Why do fighters try to stare each other down? And why do nonhuman primates do exactly the same thing?”
But what if the author is exaggerating his crisis? What if his “crisis” is a pose so that he can embark on a “gimmick memoir” in which a schmuck puts himself in harm’s way and essentially makes himself a fish out of water? You need to consider these questions as you write your essay.
Is the book a sincere inquiry into male aggression or an exaggerated account in the author’s quest to publish a best-selling book? Or a bit of both impulses?
Two. What point is crucial to your thesis for your final paper?
As Gottschall does his research on MMA fighting, he concludes that fighting is not “about the darkness in men” but “about how men keep the darkness in check.” In other words, competitive fighting, however barbaric, negates even greater forms of barbarism if men didn’t have outlets for their violence and aggression.
Social Capital and Bonding
These outlets test men's honor, courage, and strength. They affirm man's social capital. Men need this capital. Money and consumer toys are not enough.
Unconscious Violence
What destroys men is not the violence they know and understand, but the violence they don't know. In other words, violence springing from the unconscious is uncontrolled violence, and that is the most dangerous violence of all.
Unconscious violence is the toxic vituperation of a churlish crank who, unable to vent his aggression, becomes a crank, a grouch, and a malcontent.
But male aggression channeled in the right way elicits men's admiration.
Social Capital and Fighting a Bully
I opposed a bully my senior year in high school that is still talked about today.
Ritualized violence in sports, wrestling, and fake combat is healthy for men because:
Develops trust
Develops manly self-esteem
Creates bonding
Builds social capital
Points to the hero
But is this true? Do aggressive contests tame men or add fuel to the fire, so to speak?
What if male aggression points to dysfunction and failure?
Many have said that professional and college football provides men a parallel universe so they can escape the ineptitude and impotence they feel in their domestic and work lives.
Men are trapped in some cubicle job, feel unloved in their domestic life, and seek escape from their private hell through sports, live TV entertainment, recorded sports, sports talk, fantasy football, sports podcasts. They create an entire universe that serves as refuge from their domestic prison.
Sports is a big business serving the needs of "defeated" domestic men.
The NFL, according to this logic, is part of a symbiotic relationship with capitalism to keep men working hard as they contribute to the economic machine and lose their souls in the process. Such a state of affairs hardly empowers men.
Thinking of your thesis, you need to really contemplate the above point. It is crucial because Gottschall is exploring the idea that competitive violence is necessary for men. That is a powerful argument. Knowing the reasons behind such an argument will be invaluable to your essay.
An important counterargument to consider is Steve Almond’s essay about the moral bankruptcy of watching NFL. This ritualized violence is not innate, suggests Almond, but conditioned and we are responsible for reconditioning ourselves by weaning ourselves off violence. Don’t feed the wolf, so to speak. Starve the wolf.
But if we starve the wolf, that is male aggression, are we turning men into effete egg heads, demure, sensitive gentle bots, emasculated ciphers?
Some argue we all have animal passions, but we should not inflame them. As civilized, “forward-looking” humans, we learn to suppress our animal and cultivate our higher angels.
Gottschall would disagree. He’d say the wolf, male aggression, is innate, not conditioned. No matter what we do, we cannot rid ourselves of aggression.
The truth could be a bit of both.
Gottschall argues that duels, ritualized violence if you will, are necessary to test man’s courage or cowardice. Without such a test, a man cannot know who he is or where he stands.
Gottschall further supports his claim that ritualized violence is necessary for men by arguing that “we should avoid falling for a self-flattering narrative that portrays us as the enlightened ones.” We fight with rules in order that the two aggrieved parties don’t take the fight to even more barbaric levels.
A duel, unlike a fight of passion, requires delay. One must fight after the rage has settled within a system of rules.
Three. How is this book much more than exploration of MMA fighting?
This book is more than an exploration of MMA fighting. It is the history of men’s compulsion to engage in duels, manly contests. These duels exist in the literary world with verbal jousts. But on a more primitive level, they exist as physical combat with their origins dating to Europe in the 1500s.
Further, Gottschall observes that “the duel is not even a human invention. Animals have their fights, too, and biologists refer to them tellingly as duels, sports, tournaments, or, most commonly, ritual combat.”
The Monkey Dance
This combat is ritualized in the form of the “monkey dance”: We read, “Humans, especially men, are masters of what I call the monkey dance—a dizzying variety of ritualized, rule-bound competitions.”
These competitions are essential to male bonding, trust, and social capital.
But what about men who don't perform well at the monkey dance? What becomes of them? Are they or should they be relegated to outsider status? Whether they should or not, such marginalization happens.
Four. What is the function of the monkey dance?
While they often seem stupid and end in maiming and even death, these monkey dances are essential to establishing hierarchies, which keep the peace in the long-run; and for “minimizing carnage and social chaos.”
Men are obsessed with male hierarchies, a major theme in sports talk radio.
Men will argue vociferously about who are the ten greatest basketball players of all time. Who is the greatest running back of all time: quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker, etc.
These arguments can end friendships.
The monkey dance isn’t limited to men.
I know a man, a night club bouncer, who cut in line at a fresh seafood store near San Diego and a woman weighing about 300 and wearing a Junior Seau football jersey assumed hostile posturing before attacking this bouncer with her enormous belly, using it like a wrecking ball and sending him flat on his back where to continued to assault hi with powerful slaps to the face and kicks to the ribs.
Five. What is the appeal of a professor training for a primitive gladiator fight?
JG is empty. His intellectual life seems like a joke. He is depressed. He craves more than what his family and job can give him.
Like the novel Fight Club, people in the real world become numb, alienated, and depressed over living in a synthetic universe where everything we do is the result of an elaborate mechanism. Men feel like a cog in the machine. They've become disconnected from their Male Animal Spirit and seek rebirth.
One of the most salient points of the book is that men crave social capital that cannot be derived from family and job alone.
The Script
Decent, hard-working men conform to life's script, go to college, get a job, have a family, live in the suburbs, pay their bills on time, have an excellent credit rating, yet they feel empty, hollow, humiliated, emasculated, and irrelevant. Adorning themselves in the consumer trappings of suburban life has proved useless. There remains an emptiness inside. For all their consumer goods, men need to connect to their Primal Self. And they need to do so in a way that won't put them in jail.
Fighting is an attempt to strip ourselves of these consumer trappings and confront our manhood face to face, bare-knuckled, so to speak.
Fighting is a way to give honor to courage and survival of the fittest. Such rituals are pagan. Paganism values honor, strength, and courage in contrast to Christianity, which emphasizes compassion for the weak and forgiveness of others, and turning the other cheek.
History of Duels
Duels fill the imagination. One famous duel is that of the son of Alexander Hamilton, Philip, and his opponent. Three years later, Alexander Hamilton died in a duel himself. His death agony lasted 38 hours. His son’s was about 24 hours.
These duels were reactions over insult exchanges. Calling someone a liar or something similar resulted in a duel in early 19th Century America.
Hamilton entered the duel knowing he’d saddle his family with debts and that dueling was against his Christian faith. However, he was compelled by the code of manly honor. We read that, “Throughout the five-hundred-year history of Euro-American dueling culture aristocratic men were generally prepared to kill each other at the drop of a hat.”
Honor was a premium in duel culture. Honor “represented the entirety of a man’s social wealth.”
"You have offended my honor, sir. I challenge you to a duel."
Six. Do we have an honor culture today? Yes, in Muscular Cultures.
This notion of “social wealth” or social capital has today been transferred to what Gottschall calls “muscular cultures.” We see muscular cultures in prison, sports, and warfare. They bring out the “roots of masculine aggression.”
We further read that , “Prisons are the most extreme honor cultures currently in existence. The harder the prison, the harder the culture of honor.”
In prison, they don’t call this social capital honor. They call it respect.
A world of honor or respect is a world of “reciprocation. A man of honor builds a reputation for payback. In a tit-for-tat fashion he returns favors and retaliates against slights.”
We read an example of disrespect, even stealing someone’s banana or cutting in line at prison, can result in death because disrespect is the ultimate sin in a prison environment. We read, “By failing to retaliate, the new guy fails the heart test . . .”
Failing to have heart and losing respect will make someone a prison slave. “Not fighting over a banana or a book is the same as declaring I am a rabbit. I am food.”
In duel culture, to refuse to duel was the equivalent to suicide, a form of “social annihilation.” To be a “duel dodger was, in many ways, a fate worse than death.”
Conclusion:
No matter how successful in the material world, men are not happy unless they enjoy "social wealth," the esteem of others and themselves for having the kind of honor that is born of courage and masculine power.
Seven. Could it be that fighting for honor is lame?
What if we're all looking for validation and respect, and violence is simply a lame or stupid attempt at getting that validation and respect?
What if it's a form of outdated, backward masculinity?
What if it's just plain stupid?
What if we could find honor, respect, and validation through art, piano, music, painting, theater, etc.?
On the other hand, what if we're programmed to respect a certain degree of physical menace and an ability for self-defense? What if an absence of these traits makes men less appealing to women?
Season 1, Episode #9
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Thesis Sample That Supports JG
JG effectively supports his claim that men are hard-wired for male aggression and can only flourish if this aggression is expressed in rituals, which have positive outcomes, including _________________________, _______________________, ____________________, and ___________________.
Thesis Sample That Supports JG with Concession Clause
While we have to be careful that positing biological theories of gender behavior can result in gender stereotypes, it is irrefutable that for most males aggression needs ritualized violence in order to ______________________, _____________________, ___________________, and ____________________________.
Thesis Sample That Disagrees with JG with Concession Clause and 2nd Clarifying Thesis
While biology accounts for male aggression, the JG is misguided in his argument for ritualized violence because such violence, in spite of its alleged benefits, has a dark side. This dark side consists of _______________________, ___________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
Thesis Sample That Vehemently Disagrees with JG
JG's thesis is a propagandistic "Bro Science" for traditional masculinity sodden with a myriad of fallacies and bad ideas, which include ____________________, _________________________, _________________________, and _____________________________.
Thesis Sample That Defends JG from the Above
While I concede there is a spattering of "Bro Science" throughout The Professor in the Cage, JG has presented us with a magnificent meditation on the emptiness of modern life and how differentiating real masculinity from fake masculinity points to a way to overcome civilization's emptiness.
Critical Writing
Applying your critical thinking to academic writing
You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue.
You will express your argument in 6 ways:
One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow?
Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant?
Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?
Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about?
You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday.
Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture.
You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals.
You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that?
Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?
Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”
Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader
To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text:
One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose?
Two. What arguments is the author responding to?
Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why?
Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why?
Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not?
Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument?
Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position?
Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments?
Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else?
Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, non sequitur, confusing causality with correlation, etc.?
Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.
Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise.
An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use:
We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation.
Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children
Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
They confuse correlation with causality.
Why are these parents always rich?
Are they narcissists?
Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.
Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.
Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.
To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”
Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.
There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.
Generating Ideas for Our Essays
How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?
The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.
Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.
Here’s an example:
One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”
Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”
Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:
Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.
Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.
Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.
Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.
Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.
Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”
Here are some pros:
I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli and Salmonella.
I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.
Cons
It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
Relying on soy is bad for the body.
My body craves animal protein.
Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.
One. Checklist for Critical Thinking
My attitude toward critical thinking:
Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber.
Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions?
Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing?
Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views?
Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence?
My skills to develop critical thinking
Can I summarize an argument accurately?
Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences?
Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?
NOT long ago, friends of mine confessed over dinner that they had put spyware on their 15-year-old son’s computer so they could monitor all he did online. At first I was repelled at this invasion of privacy. Now, after doing a fair amount of research, I get it.
Make no mistake: If you put spyware on your computer, you have the ability to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. That’s what spyware is — at least the parental monitoring kind. You don’t have to be an expert to put it on your computer. You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports — weekly, daily, whatever — showing you everything your child is doing on the machine.
Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won’t even consider it.
Maybe it’s the word: spyware. It brings up associations of Dick Cheney sitting in a dark room, rubbing his hands together and reading your most private thoughts. But this isn’t the government we are talking about — this is your family. It’s a mistake to confuse the two. Loving parents are doing the surveillance here, not faceless bureaucrats. And most parents already monitor their children, watching over their home environment, their school.
Today’s overprotective parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications — yet when it comes to chatting with pedophiles or watching beheadings or gambling away their entire life savings, then...thentheir children deserve independence?
Some will say that you should simply trust your child, that if he is old enough to go on the Internet he is old enough to know the dangers. Trust is one thing, but surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.
Some will say that it’s better just to use parental blocks that deny access to risky sites. I have found that they don’t work. Children know how to get around them. But more than that — and this is where it gets tough — I want to know what’s being said in e-mail and instant messages and in chat rooms.
There are two reasons for this. First, we’ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile or the girl who was cyberbullied to the point where she committed suicide. Would a watchful eye have helped? We rely in the real world on teachers and parents to guard against bullies — do we just dismiss bullying on the Internet and all it entails because we are entering difficult ethical ground?
Second, everything your child types can already be seen by the world — teachers, potential employers, friends, neighbors, future dates. Shouldn’t he learn now that the Internet is not a haven of privacy?
One of the most popular arguments against spyware is the claim that you are reading your teenager’s every thought, that in today’s world, a computer is the little key-locked diary of the past. But posting thoughts on the Internet isn’t the same thing as hiding them under your mattress. Maybe you should buy your children one of those little key-locked diaries so that they too can understand the difference.
Am I suggesting eavesdropping on every conversation? No. With new technology comes new responsibility. That works both ways. There is a fine line between being responsibly protective and irresponsibly nosy. You shouldn’t monitor to find out if your daughter’s friend has a crush on Kevin next door or that Mrs. Peterson gives too much homework or what schoolmate snubbed your son. You are there to start conversations and to be a safety net. To borrow from the national intelligence lexicon — and yes, that’s uncomfortable — you’re listening for dangerous chatter.
Will your teenagers find other ways of communicating to their friends when they realize you may be watching? Yes. But text messages and cellphones don’t offer the anonymity and danger of the Internet. They are usually one-on-one with someone you know. It is far easier for a predator to troll chat rooms and MySpace and Facebook.
There will be tough calls. If your 16-year-old son, for example, is visiting hardcore pornography sites, what do you do? When I was 16, we looked at Playboy centerfolds and read Penthouse Forum. You may argue that’s not the same thing, that Internet pornography makes that stuff seem about as harmful as “SpongeBob.”
And you’re probably right. But in my day, that’s all you could get. If something more graphic had been out there, we probably would have gone for it. Interest in those, um, topics is natural. So start a dialogue based on that knowledge. You should have that talk anyway, but now you can have it with some kind of context.
Parenting has never been for the faint of heart. One friend of mine, using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer. He wisely took a deep breath before confronting her. Then he decided to come clean, to let her know how he had found out, to speak with her about the dangers inherent in her behavior. He’d had these conversations before, of course, but this time he had context. She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.
Our knee-jerk reaction as freedom-loving Americans is to be suspicious of anything that hints at invasion of privacy. That’s a good and noble thing. But it’s not an absolute, particularly in the face of the new and evolving challenges presented by the Internet. And particularly when it comes to our children.
Do you tell your children that the spyware is on the computer? I side with yes, but it might be enough to show them this article, have a discussion about your concerns and let them know the possibility is there.
Harlan Coben is the author of the forthcoming novel “Hold Tight.”
Harlan Coben Acknowledges Opposing Views
In paragraph 1, his gut reaction was to reject his friend’s use of spyware on his children’s computers.
In paragraphs 2 and 3, Coben concedes that it is scary to contemplate the ability to invade your child’s privacy with spyware, but he says it’s worth it.
In paragraph 4, he concedes that this is scary totalitarian tactic that “reeks of Dick Cheney” but he counters by writing we’re not government; we’re parents.
In paragraph 5, he makes a comparison argument: “parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications—yet when it comes to chatting with pedophiles or watching beheadings . . . then their children deserve independence?”
In paragraph 6, he addresses the rebuttal that we should “just trust” our children, but he rejects this notion because we’re not talking about trust; we’re talking about neglect: “surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.”
In paragraph 7, he counters the claim that parental blocks, not spyware, should be used by saying that he tried parental blocks, and they do not work. For example, they do not work with cyber-bullying or cyber-pedophiles.
In paragraph 9, he makes the rebuttal that the Internet already violates privacy; children should learn that the Internet is “not a haven of privacy.”
In paragraph 10, Coben rejects the comparison of private thoughts kept in a diary with Internet activities.
In paragraph 11, Coben distinguishes the notion of “being responsibly protective and irresponsibly nosy.”
In paragraph 12, Coben shows that texting on a phone is less dangerous than the Internet because the latter is more porous, allowing thousands of predators into the child’s world.
Coben concedes in paragraph 13, that there will be tough choices. At what point does a child’s curiosity for porn cross the line?
Coben concludes by saying freedom and privacy are not absolutes; they are relative terms that have to be addressed in a radically different way in our Internet age.
In “The Undercover Parent” (Op-Ed, March 16), the novelist Harlan Coben writes that putting spyware on a child’s computer is a “good idea.”
As a mother and advice columnist for girls, I disagree. For most families, spyware is not only unnecessary, but it also sends the unfortunate message, “I don’t trust you.”
Mr. Coben said a friend of his “using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer.” He confronted her about her behavior. “She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.”
Huh?! No anger? No tears or shouting or slammed doors? C’mon. If only raising teenagers were that simple.
Parenting is both a job and a joy. It does not require spyware, but it does require love, respect, time, trust, money and being as available as possible 24/7. Luck helps, too.
Carol Weston New York, March 16, 2008
Checklist for Evaluation Letters of Response (or any rebuttal for that matter)
What assumptions does the letter-writer make? Do you share those assumptions?
What is the writer’s claim?
In what ways does the writer consider the audience?
What evidence, if any, does the writer offer to support the claim?
Is there anything about the style of the letter—the distinctive use of language, the tone—that makes the letter especially engaging or especially annoying?
A Checklist for Examining Assumptions
What assumptions does the writer's argument presuppose?
Are these assumptions explicit or implicit?
Are these assumptions important to the author's argument or only incidental?
Does the author give any evidence of being aware of the hidden assumptions in her argument?
Would a critic be likely to share these assumptions, or are they exactly what a critic would challenge?
What sort of evidence would be relevant to supporting or rejecting these assumptions?
Am I willing to grant the author's assumptions? Would most readers gran them? If not, why not?
Assumptions in Carol Weston's letter:
One. She assumes that proclaiming herself to be a mother and an advice columnist for girls gives her credibility and superior moral standing. Some might say, her opening phrase sounds cliched and pompous.
Two. She assumes that spyware means "I don't trust you." That assumption could be in error. The parent could be saying, "I don't trust predators."
Three. She assumes that because the parent used spyware to catch his daughter using drugs and sleeping with the drug dealer that the discovery is somehow compromised because it hurt the daughter's feelings. This assumption is erroneous. The girl's welfare, not her feelings about getting caught or invasion of privacy, are the priority.
Four. When she lectures Coben by writing, "Parenting is both a job and a joy," she is implicitly saying that Coben is ignorant of the hard work and joys of parenting. In fact, she has proven neither. Again, she comes across as a pompous, ignorant scold.
Five. When she lectures Coben by saying parening requires "love, respect, time, trust," she again implies that Coben is abnegating his parental responsibilities by using spyware. To the contrary, Coben has made the case that Internet predators make spyware another took parents must use their toolbox to protect their children. Carol Weston's letter is not only wrong; it's insufferable.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
In-Class Exercise
Write an argumentative thesis that addresses Coben's essay and be sure your thesis has 3 mapping components.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
The Professor in the Cage Lesson #2 with Steve Almond’s Anti-NFL Essay
Final Capstone Essay Five for 200 Points: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage:
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,100 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's "The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible" is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Some Arguments in Favor of Gottschall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. Like animals, men are hard-wired for violence in order to achieve safety, reproductive rights, and honor. The hard-wiring is so deep that we can see young males, both human and in the animal kingdom, show an instinct for play fighting. As males grow older, they are inclined to organized contests, duels, and competitions that test their might, agility, and courage.
Two. Men use ritualized violence to preserve their honor code, a display of courage, which earns respect. Ritualized violence builds heart and courage, which are essential to gaining respect from others and oneself.
Three. Men find that jousts and organized forms of combat provide authenticity and real feeling in a world taken over by artificial lifestyles and BS. Fighting sheds the BS and the artificial.
Four. Ritualized violence, which occurs have tempers have flared, contains rules and allows men to exorcise their aggression in a venue that is far safer than a street fight or a fight of passion.
Some Arguments to Refute Gottshall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. We no longer need ritualized violence to establish male hierarchies of male power and dominance because we have Hobbes’ Leviathan, a social contract and jurisprudence to litigate what is rightfully ours in terms of property and civil behavior.
Two. Gottschall’s points lose credibility in the context of his own admission to write a “gimmick memoir,” a sign of publishing ambition, not a quest for truth. Could his desire to write such a book be a mix of ambition and authenticity?
Three. Gottschall’s reliance on male hard-wiring argument is fatalistic or deterministic and dismisses conditioning and free choice for civil behavior. Take for instance Steve Almond’s diatribes against the NFL, which could be used as a source for your essay. Almond concedes that males love violence, but that they can make a choice to move forward, progress, and leave their troglodyte ways behind because of an ideological shift in their thinking and actions. In contrast, Gottschall is almost celebrating the ideology of ritualized male violence. He ignores the moral bankruptcy of making barbarism of a spectacle of entertainment, as Steve Almond argues. Instead, Gottschall asserts that barbaric spectacle is natural and therefore morally justified.
Four. While prison population and poor class share the need for respect with the aristocracy in what Gottschall calls “dueling culture,” the comparison is somewhat faulty. The Law of the Jungle does apply in conditions where there is no Leviathan, the social contract of order, but the aristocracy created their code in order to preserve their brand in order to maximize their efficacy in the world of business and commerce. That’s a significant difference.
Five. By Gottschall’s own admission, he is a broken man who suffered deep psychic wounds of masculine humiliation when he was bullied and by Gottschall’s own firsthand experience, MMA devotees mostly suffered similar humiliation. Taking these personal grievances does not make for a universal principle about men needing ritualized violence. True, many men, especially young men, are fascinated with MMA and UFC fighting and their market niche is coveted by advertisers. But this marketing gold age bracket does not make for an argument for the universality of the male need for barbaric spectacle as a form of healthy entertainment. To the contrary, many men outgrow their fascination for violence and evolve into higher states of development.
As a counterargument to the above, a lot of intellectuals, writers, and philosophers are just as aggressive as MMA fighters. Rather than using bare knuckles, however, these writers get into public feuds. They sometimes spit on each other, as Richard Ford did at a party when he spotted a book critic who lambasted Ford’s book. Some writers even throw punches. Petty jealousies and rivalries exist even in the “intellectual world.”
Six. Gottschall tries to make a universal point about the male hunger for ritualized violence, but his argument suffers because Gottschall doesn’t address the role of social class. Some would argue that the uneducated class of men will be fixated on ritualized violence throughout their lifetime becoming “fanboys” for their team, showing up to NFL games in the sixties wearing no shirt with their team’s logo painted on the gray hairs of their bare chest.
In contrast, the educated class may be drawn to violent sport for a while, but eventually outgrow this fixation as they set their sights on higher aspirations.
A counterargument to the above is that lots of educated men maintain a passion for violent sports throughout their lifetime.
Chapter 2 Study Questions
One. What is Gottschall’s claim about bullying?
He claims that bullying is not abnormal, pathological behavior.
He was bullied and he would have been a bully had he been tough enough, so therefore bullying is natural. Is that a logical statement?
He also observes that bullying is as “natural as ragweed and cancer.” Does that make a strong argument? Aren’t we trying to get rid of ragweed and cancer?
Also, does the common equals okay argument work? Slavery, racism, Jim Crow, sexism, and anti-Semitism have been and are common in certain societies. Does “majority rule” make for moral rule?
What Gottschall is saying is that bullying must be controlled through ritualized behavior. In hunter-gatherer societies, the most extreme bullies were “assassinated by coalitions of fed-up victims.”
On the other hand, mainstream, run-of-the-mill bullies thrive in adolescence and enjoy more dating success (35).
Two. What profound existential wound is Gottschall addressing in his book?
He’s not talking about the need to win fights. He’s talking about not fighting back repeatedly when faced with an adversary or a hostile antagonist. Shrinking away shows a lack of heart and courage. And to shrink away over and over is to be full of shame and self-loathing and to be loathed by others. To fight back, even in a losing cause, earns respect. But cowering away is to lose Man Points.
Walter White of Breaking Bad has the body language of shame because he doesn’t fight back against his bully, Society, and gets kicked in the butt, poor, unable to take care of his family’s needs, working as a chemistry high school teacher and part-time at a car wash where some of his students humiliate him (“You didn’t get the rims!”)
Only when Walter White fights the system in his own misguided way, become a drug manufacturer, does he “get his groove back,” his mojo, if you will. “I am the Danger.”
Gottschall wishes he would have stood up the linebacker who shook him like a doll at the tennis courts.
Playing the role of coward over and over, we begin to wonder if we are cowards. We need ritualized violence, combat, and sports to test our hearts in a relatively safe way. We need to cultivate our courage. Our manliness depends on it, so goes Gottschall’s argument.
Gottschall develops his MMA skills to find “redemption” from his existential wound, his imprint of shame and cowardice.
In fact, MMA gyms are a “support group for damaged men.” If they ever encounter a “duel,” they don’t want to dishonor themselves. They want to be able to stand up to their antagonist.
Three. Why did the official duel with pistols stop after World War I all over the world?
We replaced the culture of honor with a culture of laws, “Leviathan,” the social contract, and this Gottschall believes results in an emasculated culture (46).
But even in the absence of the duel, men will still engage in the “monkey dance”: “all of the wild and frequently ridiculous varieties of ritualized conflict in human males.” The dance says, “You want a piece of this!”
The mechanics are described on page 51:
Eye contact, hard stare
Verbal challenge (eg. ‘What you lookin’ at?’).
Close the distance. Sometimes chest bumping.
Finger poke or two-handed push to the chest.
Dominant hand roundhouse punch.
This ritualized combat often leads in death, as we read: “In many animals, ritual combat is a leading cause of male mortality in spite of its safeguards.”
Four. Is the Monkey Dance cultural or biological?
How you answer this question is crucial to how you will argue your essay.
Quoting self-defense expert Rory Miller, Gottschall writes, “The monkey dance wasn’t invented by any culture; it really is etched in the DNA of our species” (51).
ARGUMENT THAT PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS LEARNED AND COMMERCIALIZED
Almond’s claim that watching NFL is immoral is supported by the following:
One. We glorify violence.
Two. We live vicariously through the violence of others, using the players as proxies or substitutes for our own vicious impulses but put all the risk on them for head trauma, paralysis, broken limbs, life-long crippling, etc.
Three. We sponsor brutality with our cash dollars making us complicit in the life-long injuries and premature death suffered by NFL players. Studies show that on average NFL players live from mid to late fifties, about twenty years less than average lifespan.
Four. We are complicit in the abuse and ill regard of women, misogyny when we consider that football encourages male aggression, overpowering others through sheer will and strength, entitlement, and a lack of accountability (we close our eyes to misbehavior because we want our “stars” to show up and help us conquer our enemies on game day).
This link between NFL aggression and misogyny is evident in the high rates of domestic assault.
The culture that glorifies football players as their warriors free to do as they please, including violence against women, is sometimes called the jockitocracy.
Five. Some defend the NFL by citing new safety rules, but these new rules are, to use an effective analogy, lipstick on a pig. The fundamental violent nature of football remains unchanged.
Six. Some defend the NFL by saying players choose to play at their own risk, but this assertion is countered by the fact that many players are poor and lack viable options.
Seven. The NFL doesn’t want the truth about brain trauma to be exposed because the trauma is prevalent and severe, resulting in dementia, brain damage, violence, suicide, and other pathologies.
Eight. More and more parents won’t let their sons play football at any level because of the reports of permanent head trauma.
Nine. NFL legend Mike Ditka says he wouldn’t let his children play football if he knew then what he knows now.
Ten. NFL uses tax loopholes and other forms of trickery to parasite off US taxpayers to fund its stadiums in spite of its astronomical profits.
Thesis Review
A good thesis is a complete sentence that defines your argument.
A good thesis addresses your opponents’ views in a concession clause.
A good thesis often has mapping components or mapping statements that outline your body paragraphs.
A good thesis avoids the obvious and instead struggles to grapple with difficult and complex ideas.
A good thesis embraces complexity and sophistication but is expressed with clarity.
Thesis That Supports Steve Almond
While I am a lifelong football fan who has enjoyed the suspense of close games over the years, I am convinced after reading Steve Almond’s anti-football manifesto that I can no longer patronize the game I once loved because it is morally and intellectually bankrupt evidenced by its bloodthirsty violence, misogyny-fueled domestic abuse, parasitic taxpayer trickery, exploitation of the underclass, high risk of permanent brain trauma, and narcissism-inducing jockitocracy.
Thesis That Opposes the Above
While I concede that the NFL has its fair share of pathologies as cited in the above thesis, the author makes a weak case for boycotting the NFL because he relies on focusing exclusively on the lowest common denominator of NFL behavior; he ignores the countless examples of NFL good works throughout the land, including charities and other social service programs; he ignores the fact that risk of danger exists in many vocations that are not held in such condemnation; and he ignores that the NFL provides opportunities for the economically disadvantaged.
Thesis That Opposes the Above Refutation
While I concede that the NFL is not Evil Incarnate and is capable of doing good works and providing good jobs, its abominations far outweigh its virtues evidenced by its refusal to compensate or even acknowledge the widespread head trauma, its dependence on the underclass to feed into its pool of exploited labor, and its recalcitrant record on domestic abuse.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Critical Reading, Part II
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
When we examine the writer, we ask the following:
What is the writer’s background? Does he work for a think tank that is of a particular political persuasion? Is he being paid by a lobbyist or corporation to regurgitate their opinions?
How does the writer’s background affect the argument’s content?
What preconceptions about the subject does the writer seem to have?
When we analyze the writer’s purpose, we ask the following:
Does the writer state his or her purpose directly or is the purpose implied?
Is the writer’s purpose simply to convince or to encourage action?
Does the writer rely primarily on logic or on emotion?
Does the writer have a hidden agenda?
How does the author use logos, pathos, and ethos to put the argument together?
When we analyze the writer’s audience, we ask the following:
Who is the writer’s intended audience?
Does the writer see the audience as informed or uninformed?
Does the writer see the audience as hostile, friendly, or neutral?
What values does the writer think the audience holds?
On what points do the writer and the audience agree? On what points do they disagree?
Consider the Author’s Stylistic Techniques
Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.
Example: “We must not educate the masses because education is like a great flame and the hordes of people are like moths that will fly into the flames at their own peril.”
In the above example “like a great flame” is a simile.
“Gorging on plate after plate of chicken fried steak at HomeTown Buffet, I felt like Jonah lost in the belly of a giant, dyspeptic whale on the verge of spitting me back into the throng of angry people.”
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison in which two dissimilar things are compared without the word like or as. “We must educate the masses to protect them from the disease of ignorance.”
Allusion: An allusion (not to be confused with illusion) is a reference within a work to a person, literary or biblical text, or historical event in order to enlarge the context of the situation being written about.
“Even though I am not a religious man, I would agree with Jesus who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which is why rich people are in general against the minimum wage and the social and economic justice a healthy minimum wage exacts upon our society.”
Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of similar grammatical structures to emphasize related ideas and make passages easier to follow.
“Failure to get your college education will make you languish in the abyss of ignorance, weep in the chasm of unemployment, and wallow in the crater of self-abnegation.”
Repetition: Intentional repetition involves repeating a word or phrase for emphasis, clarity, or emotional impact (pathos).
“Are you able to accept the blows of not having a college education? Are you able to accept the shock of a low-paying job? Are you able to accept the disgrace of living on life’s margins?”
Rhetorical questions: A rhetorical question is a question that is asked to encourage readers to reflect on an issue, not to elicit a reply.
“How can you remain on the outside of college when all that remains is for you to walk through those open gates? How can you let an opportunity as golden as a college education pass you by when the consequences are so devastating?”
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
Based on your reading of "The End of Solitude" (98), support or refute the argument that fear of solitude is a mental disease with serious consequences.
Essay Summary
Deresiewicz, or WD (use WD in your essay; it will be easier) writes that "solitude has traditionally been a societal value" in the "dimension of religious experience."
Whether we like it or not, ALL of us are religious. Alfred North Whitehead writes that what you do in your solitude defines your religion.
Connecting yourself--no matter the method you use--is your "religion."
The creative works you pursue in solitude are your religion.
The processing and recuperating of experience are your religion.
WD writes: "Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism, a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom. The seer returns with new tablets or new dances, his face bright with the old truth."
That is another way of saying we use solitude to take stock or inventory and critique our behaviors in the attempt for self-improvement.
A social media addict cannot engage in serious self-critique: "I don't want to criticize my behavior. I just got 400 likes on Facebook. Dude, you're killing my buzz."
Solitude, in other words, is essential for self-transformation.
In Romanticism, solitude connects us with Nature and this connection is our way of communing with the Divine.
In intellectualism, solitude is a time to read. The intellectual believes that reading strengthens the mind and spirit and compels us to self-transformation.
The Great Shift
There was a great shift in society that made solitude something to be feared and avoided.
In the suburbs, we became isolated. The Internet bridged us to the world. We changed to a people defined by our solitude to a people defined by our visibility and our validation from others. This visibility and validation has become an addiction, a feeble attempt to compensate for our fragile, fragmented, insecure, undeveloped selves. Our selves our undeveloped and fragile because we haven't feed them their essential nourishment that can only come from solitude.
The result of our addiction to being validated by others is that we have become infantile, insecure narcissists incapable of solitude, empathy, contemplation, and self-transformation.
Lesson Five Chapters 8 and 9 From Critical Thinking to Argument
Logic and Logical Fallacies (adapted from Chapter 5 of Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Logic comes from the Greek word logos, meaning, word, thought, principle, or reason. Logic is concerned with the principles of correct reasoning.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood; therefore, it is not true.
Syllogism with an Illogical Middle Term Is Invalid
Flawed logic occurs when the middle term has the same term in the major and minor premise but not in the conclusion.
Major Premise: All dogs are mammals.
Minor Premise: Some mammals are porpoises.
Conclusion: Therefore, some porpoises are dogs.
Syllogism with a Key Term Whose Meaning Shifts Cannot be Valid
Major Premise: Only man is capable of analytical reasoning.
Minor Premise: Anna is not a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Anna is not capable of analytical reasoning.
The key term shift is “man,” which refers to “mankind,” not the male gender.
Syllogism with a Negative Premise
If either premise in a syllogism is negative, then the conclusion must also be negative. The following syllogism is not valid:
Major Premise: Only the Toyota Prius can go in the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW can drive in the fast-track lane.
If both premises are negative, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion:
Major Premise: The Toyota Prius cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Enthymemes
An enthymeme is a syllogism with one or two parts of its argument—usually, the major premise—missing.
Robert has lied, so he cannot be trusted.
We’re missing the major premise:
Major Premise: People who lie cannot be trusted.
Minor Premise: Robert has lied.
Conclusion: Therefore, Robert cannot be trusted.
When writers or speakers use enthymemes, they are sometimes trying to hide the flaw of the first premise:
Major Premise: All countries governed by dictators should be invaded.
Minor Premise: North Korea is a country governed by a dictator.
Conclusion: Therefore, North Korea should be invaded.
The premise that all countries governed by dictators should be invaded is a gross generalization and can easily be shot down under close scrutiny.
Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning begins with specific observations or evidence and moves to a general conclusion.
My Volvo was always in the shop. My neighbor’s Mini Cooper and BMW are always in the shop. My other neighbor’s Audi is in the shop.
Now my wife and I own a Honda and Nissan and those cars are never in the shop.
European cars cost more to maintain than Japanese cars and the empirical evidence and data support my claim.
Essay One for 150 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
His soul is empty or at the very least incomplete living “the life of the mind.” He doesn’t feel like a complete man. He contemplates his “failure” as a professor who already had his “fifteen minutes of fame.”
He is haunted by memories of being a coward in certain situations, and he wants to find redemption by finding his heart, finding his courage, and proving his manhood.
He is at a career crisis where he wants his bosses at the college to fire him because he’s in a sort of limbo teaching part-time and seeing his literary theories being ignored.
One of man’s greatest fears is irrelevance. To be ignored or to be deemed of someone of no consequence is a huge insult to a man’s manhood. Gottschall is determined to make himself a force to be reckoned with.
As he stares out his office window and sees the Mark Schrader’s Academy of Mixed, Martial Arts, he feels the hunger to go on a Masculinity Quest in order that he may partake in the strength, vitality, and courage of the fighting world. We read, “they were so alive in their octagon while I was rotting in my cube.”
Living a life of Apollonian order can only take him so far. He needs Dionysian passion to restore his life. He needs to find his vitality, the antidote to ennui, boredom with life.
He also delights in the possible “scandal” of him becoming an MMA fighter, a scandal so big he might get fired. Getting fired, he seems to believe, is an important step in him developing the courage to begin a new chapter in his life.
His quest is also partly fame-driven. He sees himself writing a book about a professor who embarks on an MMA quest. He is desperate to revitalize his career.
In his middle-age, he has not found vindication for his existence, his life choices, and his forged identity.
He appears to have something to prove to others and himself.
He appears to want to have more than an intellectual understanding of violence. He wants to do research on a physical level.
Only through physical immersion in MMA does the author experience the primal fear, the adrenalin rush, the reptilian survival reaction that is important to understanding human nature and himself.
Only through MMA does the author believe he can conquer fear, and worse, cowardice, a sort of moral failure from a worldview where courage and honor take the forefront.
Only through MMA, one man pitted against another man, can he see who he really is in a world that conceals everything with BS. An MMA fights strips life of its BS.
Gottschall is fascinated by the notion of respect in the realm of MMA fighting and how this respect reconciles with trying to tear another’s limbs off.
Gottschall is on a courage quest to discover if he is a coward or not.
He is drawn by sincere curiosity about cage fighting: “Why do men fight? Why do so many people like to watch? And why, especially when it comes to violence, do men differ so greatly from women?”
Further, he asks:
“Why do human beings spend (waste?) so much energy on sports?
“Why do fighters try to stare each other down? And why do nonhuman primates do exactly the same thing?”
But what if the author is exaggerating his crisis? What if his “crisis” is a pose so that he can embark on a “gimmick memoir” in which a schmuck puts himself in harm’s way and essentially makes himself a fish out of water? You need to consider these questions as you write your essay.
Is the book a sincere inquiry into male aggression or an exaggerated account in the author’s quest to publish a best-selling book? Or a bit of both impulses?
Two. What point is crucial to your thesis for your final paper?
As Gottschall does his research on MMA fighting, he concludes that fighting is not “about the darkness in men” but “about how men keep the darkness in check.” In other words, competitive fighting, however barbaric, negates even greater forms of barbarism if men didn’t have outlets for their violence and aggression.
But is this true? Do aggressive contests tame men or add fuel to the fire, so to speak?
Many have said that professional and college football provides men a parallel universe so they can escape the ineptitude and impotence they feel in their domestic and work lives.
The NFL, according to this logic, is part of a symbiotic relationship with capitalism to keep men working hard as they contribute to the economic machine and lose their souls in the process. Such a state of affairs hardly empowers men.
Thinking of your thesis, you need to really contemplate the above point. It is crucial because Gottschall is exploring the idea that competitive violence is necessary for men. That is a powerful argument. Knowing the reasons behind such an argument will be invaluable to your essay.
An important counterargument to consider is Steve Almond’s essay about the moral bankruptcy of watching NFL. This ritualized violence is not innate, suggests Almond, but conditioned and we are responsible for reconditioning ourselves by weaning ourselves off violence. Don’t feed the wolf, so to speak. Starve the wolf.
But if we starve the wolf, that is male aggression, are we turning men into effete egg heads, demure, sensitive gentle bots, emasculated ciphers?
Some argue we all have animal passions, but we should not inflame them. As civilized, “forward-looking” humans, we learn to suppress our animal and cultivate our higher angels.
Gottschall would disagree. He’d say the wolf, male aggression, is innate, not conditioned. No matter what we do, we cannot rid ourselves of aggression.
The truth could be a bit of both.
Gottschall argues that duels, ritualized violence if you will, are necessary to test man’s courage or cowardice. Without such a test, a man cannot know who he is or where he stands.
Gottschall further supports his claim that ritualized violence is necessary for men by arguing that “we should avoid falling for a self-flattering narrative that portrays us as the enlightened ones.” We fight with rules in order that the two aggrieved parties don’t take the fight to even more barbaric levels.
A duel, unlike a fight of passion, requires delay. One must fight after the rage has settled within a system of rules.
Three. How is this book much more than exploration of MMA fighting?
This book is more than an exploration of MMA fighting. It is the history of men’s compulsion to engage in duels, manly contests. These duels exist in the literary world with verbal jousts. But on a more primitive level, they exist as physical combat with their origins dating to Europe in the 1500s.
Further, Gottschall observes that “the duel is not even a human invention. Animals have their fights, too, and biologists refer to them tellingly as duels, sports, tournaments, or, most commonly, ritual combat.”
The Monkey Dance
This combat is ritualized in the form of the “monkey dance”: We read, “Humans, especially men, are masters of what I call the monkey dance—a dizzying variety of ritualized, rule-bound competitions.”
Four. What is the function of the monkey dance?
While they often seem stupid and end in maiming and even death, these monkey dances are essential to establishing hierarchies, which keep the peace in the long-run; and for “minimizing carnage and social chaos.”
Men are obsessed with male hierarchies, a major theme in sports talk radio.
Men will argue vociferously about who are the ten greatest basketball players of all time. Who is the greatest running back of all time: quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker, etc.
These arguments can end friendships.
The monkey dance isn’t limited to men.
I know a man, a night club bouncer, who cut in line at a fresh seafood store near San Diego and a woman weighing about 300 and wearing a Junior Seau football jersey assumed hostile posturing before attacking this bouncer with her enormous belly, using it like a wrecking ball and sending him flat on his back where to continued to assault hi with powerful slaps to the face and kicks to the ribs.
Five. What is the appeal of a primitive gladiator fight?
Like the novel Fight Club, people in the real world become numb, alienated, and depressed over living in a synthetic universe where everything we do is the result of an elaborate mechanism.
Decent, hard-working men conform to life's script, go to college, get a job, have a family, live in the suburbs, pay their bills on time, have an excellent credit rating, yet they feel empty, hollow, humiliated, emasculated, and irrelevant. Adorning themselves in the consumer trappings of suburban life has proved useless.
Fighting is an attempt to strip ourselves of these consumer trappings and confront our manhood face to face, bare-knuckled, so to speak.
Fighting is a way to give honor to courage and survival of the fittest. Such rituals are pagan. Paganism values honor, strength, and courage in contrast to Christianity, which emphasizes compassion for the weak and forgiveness of others, and turning the other cheek.
Duels fill the imagination. One famous duel is that of the son of Alexander Hamilton, Philip, and his opponent. Three years later, Alexander Hamilton died in a duel himself. His death agony lasted 38 hours. His son’s was about 24 hours.
These duels were reactions over insult exchanges. Calling someone a liar or something similar resulted in a duel in early 19th Century America.
Hamilton entered the duel knowing he’d saddle his family with debts and that dueling was against his Christian faith. However, he was compelled by the code of manly honor. We read that, “Throughout the five-hundred-year history of Euro-American dueling culture aristocratic men were generally prepared to kill each other at the drop of a hat.”
Honor was a premium in duel culture. Honor “represented the entirety of a man’s social wealth.”
Six. Do we have an honor culture today?
This notion of “social wealth” has today been transferred to what Gottschall calls “muscular cultures.” We see muscular cultures in prison, sports, and warfare. They bring out the “roots of masculine aggression.”
We further read that , “Prisons are the most extreme honor cultures currently in existence. The harder the prison, the harder the culture of honor.”
In prison, they don’t call this social capital honor. They call it respect.
A world of honor or respect is a world of “reciprocation. A man of honor builds a reputation for payback. In a tit-for-tat fashion he returns favors and retaliates against slights.”
We read an example of disrespect, even stealing someone’s banana or cutting in line at prison, can result in death because disrespect is the ultimate sin in a prison environment. We read, “By failing to retaliate, the new guy fails the heart test . . .”
Failing to have heart and losing respect will make someone a prison slave. “Not fighting over a banana or a book is the same as declaring I am a rabbit. I am food.”
In duel culture, to refuse to duel was the equivalent to suicide, a form of “social annihilation.” To be a “duel dodger was, in many ways, a fate worse than death.”
Conclusion:
No matter how successful in the material world, men are not happy unless they enjoy "social wealth," the esteem of others and themselves for having the kind of honor that is born of courage and masculine power.
Seven. Could it be that fighting for honor is lame?
What if we're all looking for validation and respect, and violence is simply a lame or stupid attempt at getting that validation and respect?
What if we could find honor, respect, and validation through art, piano, music, painting, theater, etc.?
On the other hand, what if we're programmed to respect a certain degree of physical menace and an ability for self-defense? What if an absence of these traits makes men less appealing to women?
Season 1, Episode #9
Critical Writing
Applying your critical thinking to academic writing
You will find that your task as a writer at the higher levels of critical thinking is to argue.
You will express your argument in 6 ways:
One. You will define a situation that calls for some response in writing by asking critical questions. For example, is the Confederate flag a symbol of honor and respect for the heritage of white people in the South? Or is the flag a symbol of racial hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow?
Two. You will demonstrate the timeliness of your argument. In other words, why is your argument relevant?
Why is it relevant for example to address the decision of many parents to NOT vaccinate their children?
Three. Establish your personal investment in the topic. Why do you care about the topic you’re writing about?
You may be alarmed to see exponential increases in college costs and this is personal because you have children who will presumably go to college someday.
Four. Appeal to your readers by anticipating their thoughts, beliefs, and values, especially as they pertain to the topic you are writing about. You may be arguing a vegetarian diet to people who are predisposed to believing that vegetarian eating is a hideous exercise in self-denial and amounts to torture.
You may have to allay their doubts by making them delicious vegetarian foods or by convincing them that they can make such meals.
You may be arguing against the NFL to those who defend it on the basis of the relatively high salaries NFL players make. Do you have an answer to that?
Five. Support your argument with solid reasons and compelling evidence. If you're going to make the claim that the NFL is morally repugnant, can you support that? How?
Six. Anticipate your readers’ reasons for disagreeing with your position and try to change their mind so they “see things your way.” We call this “making the readers drink your Kool-Aid.”
Being a Critical Reader Means Being an Active Reader
To be an active reader we must ask the following when we read a text:
One. What is the author’s thesis or purpose?
Two. What arguments is the author responding to?
Three. Is the issue relevant or significant? If not, why?
Four. How do I know that what the author says is true or credible? If not, why?
Five. Is the author’s evidence legitimate? Sufficient? Why or why not?
Six. Do I have legitimate opposition to the author’s argument?
Seven. What are some counterarguments to the author’s position?
Eight. Has the author addressed the most compelling counterarguments?
Nine. Is the author searching for truth or is the author beholden to an agenda, political, business, lobby, or something else?
Ten. Is the author’s position compromised by the use of logical fallacies such as either/or, Straw Man, ad hominem, non sequitur, confusing causality with correlation, etc.?
Eleven. Has the author used effective rhetorical strategies to be persuasive? Rhetorical strategies in the most general sense include ethos (credibility), logos (clear logic), and pathos (appealing to emotion). Another rhetorical strategy is the use of biting satire when one wants to mercilessly attack a target.
Twelve. You should write in the margins of your text (annotate) to address the above questions. Using annotations increases your memory and reading comprehension far beyond passive reading. And research shows annotating while reading is far superior to using a highlighter, which is mostly a useless exercise.
An annotation can be very brief. Here are some I use:
We begin by not worrying about being critical. We brainstorm a huge list of ideas and then when the list is complete, we undergo the process of evaluation.
Sample Topic for an Essay: Parents Who Don’t Immunize Their Children
Most parents who don’t immunize their children are educated and upper class.
They read on the Internet that immunizations lead to autism or other health problems.
They follow some “natural guru” who warns that vaccines aren’t organic and pose health risks.
They panic over anecdotal evidence that shows vaccines are dangerous.
They confuse correlation with causality.
Why are these parents always rich?
Are they narcissists?
Are they looking for simple answers for complex problems?
Would they not stand in line for the Ebola vaccine, if it existed?
These parents are endangering others by not getting the vaccine.
Thesis that is a claim of cause and effect:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children tend to be narcissistic people of privilege who believe their sources of information are superior to “the mainstream media”; who are looking for simple explanations that might protect their children from autism; who are confusing correlation with causality; and who are benefiting from the very vaccinations they refuse to give their children.
Thesis that is a claim of argumentation:
Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children should be prosecuted by the law because they are endangering the public and they are relying on pseudo-intellectual science to base their decisions.
To test a thesis, we must always ask: “What might be objections to my claim?”
Prosecuting parents will only give those parents more reason to be paranoid that the government is conspiring against them.
There are less severe ways to get parents to comply with the need to vaccinate their children.
Generating Ideas for Our Essays
How do we prepare our minds so we have “Eureka” (I found it) moments and apply these moments to our writing?
The word eureka comes from the Greek heuristic, a method or process for discovering ideas. The principle posits that one thought triggers another.
Diverse and conflicting opinions in a classroom are a heuristic tool for generating thoughts.
Here’s an example:
One student says, “Fat people should pay a fat tax because they incur more medical costs than non-fat people.”
Another student says, “Wrong. Fat people die at a far younger age. It’s people who live past seventy, non-fat people, who put a bigger drain on medical costs. In fact, smokers and fat people, by dying young, save us money.”
Another heuristic method is breaking down the subject into classical topics:
Definition: What is it? Jealousy is a form of insanity in which a morally bankrupt person assumes his partner is as morally bankrupt as he is.
Comparison: What is it like or unlike? Compared to the risk of us dying from global warming, death from a terrorist attack is relatively miniscule.
Relationship: What caused it, and what will it cause? The chief cause of our shrinking brain and its concomitant reduced attention span is gadget screen time.
Testimony: What is said about it by experts? Social scientists explain that the United States’ mass incarceration of poor people actually increases the crime rate.
Another heuristic method is finding a controversial topic and writing a list of pros and cons.
Consider the topic, “Should I become a vegan?”
Here are some pros:
I’ll focus on eating healthier foods.
I won’t be eating as many foods potentially contaminated by E.coli and Salmonella.
I won’t be contributing as much to the suffering of sentient creatures.
I won’t be contributing as much to greenhouse gasses.
I’ll be eating less cholesterol and saturated fats.
Cons
It’s debatable that a vegan diet is healthier than a Paleo (heavy meat eating) diet.
Relying on soy is bad for the body.
My body craves animal protein.
Being a vegan will ostracize me from my family and friends.
One. Checklist for Critical Thinking
My attitude toward critical thinking:
Does my thinking show imaginative open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity? Or do I exist in a circular, self-feeding, insular brain loop resulting in solipsism? The latter is also called living in the echo chamber.
Am I willing to honestly examine my assumptions?
Am I willing to entertain new ideas—both those that I encounter while reading and those that come to mind while writing?
Am I willing to approach a debatable topic by using dialectical argument, going back and forth between opposing views?
Am I willing to exert myself—for instance, to do research—to acquire information and to evaluate evidence?
My skills to develop critical thinking
Can I summarize an argument accurately?
Can I evaluate assumptions, evidence, and inferences?
Can I present my ideas effectively—for instance, by organizing and by writing in a manner appropriate to my imagined audience?
NOT long ago, friends of mine confessed over dinner that they had put spyware on their 15-year-old son’s computer so they could monitor all he did online. At first I was repelled at this invasion of privacy. Now, after doing a fair amount of research, I get it.
Make no mistake: If you put spyware on your computer, you have the ability to log every keystroke your child makes and thus a good portion of his or her private world. That’s what spyware is — at least the parental monitoring kind. You don’t have to be an expert to put it on your computer. You just download the software from a vendor and you will receive reports — weekly, daily, whatever — showing you everything your child is doing on the machine.
Scary. But a good idea. Most parents won’t even consider it.
Maybe it’s the word: spyware. It brings up associations of Dick Cheney sitting in a dark room, rubbing his hands together and reading your most private thoughts. But this isn’t the government we are talking about — this is your family. It’s a mistake to confuse the two. Loving parents are doing the surveillance here, not faceless bureaucrats. And most parents already monitor their children, watching over their home environment, their school.
Today’s overprotective parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications — yet when it comes to chatting with pedophiles or watching beheadings or gambling away their entire life savings, then...thentheir children deserve independence?
Some will say that you should simply trust your child, that if he is old enough to go on the Internet he is old enough to know the dangers. Trust is one thing, but surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.
Some will say that it’s better just to use parental blocks that deny access to risky sites. I have found that they don’t work. Children know how to get around them. But more than that — and this is where it gets tough — I want to know what’s being said in e-mail and instant messages and in chat rooms.
There are two reasons for this. First, we’ve all read about the young boy unknowingly conversing with a pedophile or the girl who was cyberbullied to the point where she committed suicide. Would a watchful eye have helped? We rely in the real world on teachers and parents to guard against bullies — do we just dismiss bullying on the Internet and all it entails because we are entering difficult ethical ground?
Second, everything your child types can already be seen by the world — teachers, potential employers, friends, neighbors, future dates. Shouldn’t he learn now that the Internet is not a haven of privacy?
One of the most popular arguments against spyware is the claim that you are reading your teenager’s every thought, that in today’s world, a computer is the little key-locked diary of the past. But posting thoughts on the Internet isn’t the same thing as hiding them under your mattress. Maybe you should buy your children one of those little key-locked diaries so that they too can understand the difference.
Am I suggesting eavesdropping on every conversation? No. With new technology comes new responsibility. That works both ways. There is a fine line between being responsibly protective and irresponsibly nosy. You shouldn’t monitor to find out if your daughter’s friend has a crush on Kevin next door or that Mrs. Peterson gives too much homework or what schoolmate snubbed your son. You are there to start conversations and to be a safety net. To borrow from the national intelligence lexicon — and yes, that’s uncomfortable — you’re listening for dangerous chatter.
Will your teenagers find other ways of communicating to their friends when they realize you may be watching? Yes. But text messages and cellphones don’t offer the anonymity and danger of the Internet. They are usually one-on-one with someone you know. It is far easier for a predator to troll chat rooms and MySpace and Facebook.
There will be tough calls. If your 16-year-old son, for example, is visiting hardcore pornography sites, what do you do? When I was 16, we looked at Playboy centerfolds and read Penthouse Forum. You may argue that’s not the same thing, that Internet pornography makes that stuff seem about as harmful as “SpongeBob.”
And you’re probably right. But in my day, that’s all you could get. If something more graphic had been out there, we probably would have gone for it. Interest in those, um, topics is natural. So start a dialogue based on that knowledge. You should have that talk anyway, but now you can have it with some kind of context.
Parenting has never been for the faint of heart. One friend of mine, using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer. He wisely took a deep breath before confronting her. Then he decided to come clean, to let her know how he had found out, to speak with her about the dangers inherent in her behavior. He’d had these conversations before, of course, but this time he had context. She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.
Our knee-jerk reaction as freedom-loving Americans is to be suspicious of anything that hints at invasion of privacy. That’s a good and noble thing. But it’s not an absolute, particularly in the face of the new and evolving challenges presented by the Internet. And particularly when it comes to our children.
Do you tell your children that the spyware is on the computer? I side with yes, but it might be enough to show them this article, have a discussion about your concerns and let them know the possibility is there.
Harlan Coben is the author of the forthcoming novel “Hold Tight.”
Harlan Coben Acknowledges Opposing Views
In paragraph 1, his gut reaction was to reject his friend’s use of spyware on his children’s computers.
In paragraphs 2 and 3, Coben concedes that it is scary to contemplate the ability to invade your child’s privacy with spyware, but he says it’s worth it.
In paragraph 4, he concedes that this is scary totalitarian tactic that “reeks of Dick Cheney” but he counters by writing we’re not government; we’re parents.
In paragraph 5, he makes a comparison argument: “parents fight their kids’ battles on the playground, berate coaches about playing time and fill out college applications—yet when it comes to chatting with pedophiles or watching beheadings . . . then their children deserve independence?”
In paragraph 6, he addresses the rebuttal that we should “just trust” our children, but he rejects this notion because we’re not talking about trust; we’re talking about neglect: “surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence.”
In paragraph 7, he counters the claim that parental blocks, not spyware, should be used by saying that he tried parental blocks, and they do not work. For example, they do not work with cyber-bullying or cyber-pedophiles.
In paragraph 9, he makes the rebuttal that the Internet already violates privacy; children should learn that the Internet is “not a haven of privacy.”
In paragraph 10, Coben rejects the comparison of private thoughts kept in a diary with Internet activities.
In paragraph 11, Coben distinguishes the notion of “being responsibly protective and irresponsibly nosy.”
In paragraph 12, Coben shows that texting on a phone is less dangerous than the Internet because the latter is more porous, allowing thousands of predators into the child’s world.
Coben concedes in paragraph 13, that there will be tough choices. At what point does a child’s curiosity for porn cross the line?
Coben concludes by saying freedom and privacy are not absolutes; they are relative terms that have to be addressed in a radically different way in our Internet age.
In “The Undercover Parent” (Op-Ed, March 16), the novelist Harlan Coben writes that putting spyware on a child’s computer is a “good idea.”
As a mother and advice columnist for girls, I disagree. For most families, spyware is not only unnecessary, but it also sends the unfortunate message, “I don’t trust you.”
Mr. Coben said a friend of his “using spyware to monitor his college-bound, straight-A daughter, found out that not only was she using drugs but she was sleeping with her dealer.” He confronted her about her behavior. “She listened. There was no anger. Things seem better now.”
Huh?! No anger? No tears or shouting or slammed doors? C’mon. If only raising teenagers were that simple.
Parenting is both a job and a joy. It does not require spyware, but it does require love, respect, time, trust, money and being as available as possible 24/7. Luck helps, too.
Carol Weston New York, March 16, 2008
Checklist for Evaluation Letters of Response (or any rebuttal for that matter)
What assumptions does the letter-writer make? Do you share those assumptions?
What is the writer’s claim?
In what ways does the writer consider the audience?
What evidence, if any, does the writer offer to support the claim?
Is there anything about the style of the letter—the distinctive use of language, the tone—that makes the letter especially engaging or especially annoying?
A Checklist for Examining Assumptions
What assumptions does the writer's argument presuppose?
Are these assumptions explicit or implicit?
Are these assumptions important to the author's argument or only incidental?
Does the author give any evidence of being aware of the hidden assumptions in her argument?
Would a critic be likely to share these assumptions, or are they exactly what a critic would challenge?
What sort of evidence would be relevant to supporting or rejecting these assumptions?
Am I willing to grant the author's assumptions? Would most readers gran them? If not, why not?
Assumptions in Carol Weston's letter:
One. She assumes that proclaiming herself to be a mother and an advice columnist for girls gives her credibility and superior moral standing. Some might say, her opening phrase sounds cliched and pompous.
Two. She assumes that spyware means "I don't trust you." That assumption could be in error. The parent could be saying, "I don't trust predators."
Three. She assumes that because the parent used spyware to catch his daughter using drugs and sleeping with the drug dealer that the discovery is somehow compromised because it hurt the daughter's feelings. This assumption is erroneous. The girl's welfare, not her feelings about getting caught or invasion of privacy, are the priority.
Four. When she lectures Coben by writing, "Parenting is both a job and a joy," she is implicitly saying that Coben is ignorant of the hard work and joys of parenting. In fact, she has proven neither. Again, she comes across as a pompous, ignorant scold.
Five. When she lectures Coben by saying parening requires "love, respect, time, trust," she again implies that Coben is abnegating his parental responsibilities by using spyware. To the contrary, Coben has made the case that Internet predators make spyware another took parents must use their toolbox to protect their children. Carol Weston's letter is not only wrong; it's insufferable.
Study the Templates of Argumentation
While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . .
While the authors' supports make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . .
These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . .
While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . .
Although it is often true that . . .
While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . .
While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . .
While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince when we consider X, Y, and Z.
My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z.
While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .
In-Class Exercise
Write an argumentative thesis that addresses Coben's essay and be sure your thesis has 3 mapping components.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Essay One for 100 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Arguments against JG's book to consider:
One. His book may have some truth in genetic hardwiring of males, but it's too extreme. Socialization is a factor also. For example, it used to be essential to one's manliness and honor to engage in a duel, but this suicidal ritual is now extinct due to socialization. Manly codes don't require that men engage in duels.
Rebuttal to the Above
JG has never dismissed socialization. Nor has he endorsed dueling. He is simply stating that society is in denial about the significant role biology plays in gender roles.
Two. JG's book encourages stereotypes. Males and females break out of rigid role expectations all the time. JG's book desires to reinforce gender stereotypes.
Rebuttal to the Above
JG has never attempted to tell individual men or women how to behave. He is simply observing patterns of behavior recorded throughout history. He acknowledges that gender roles will always have outliers or exceptions, and never does he criticize these exceptions.
Three. JG is too emotionally involved in the subject to see that his own masculine insecurity drives his argument, not facts. In other words, JG should not take an individual crisis and try to make a general principle about it. Perhaps another man with an identity or self-worth crisis would empower himself, not through MMA training, but by playing piano, guitar, or working on his tennis serve.
Rebuttal to the Above
This book is part memoir. By its very nature, then, this book must be passionate if it is to be successful. No one wants to read a perfunctory memoir. That JG can combine passion with astute scholarship attests to the intellectual rigor of his writing and reinforces the claim that his book is a cogent look at the biological role of masculinity.
Four. JG draws on a lot of truth but perhaps exaggerates his claims. Perhaps he's not wrong absolutely but by degree.
Rebuttal to the Above
I cannot rebut any claims to exaggeration unless the writer be more specific. Next criticism, please.
Five. JG's book is a misreading of his life. He's not suffering a masculinity crisis, as he likes to believe. Rather, he is suffering from a meaning of life crisis--a crisis about a man who lacks purpose.
Rebuttal to the Above
The above criticism is an egregious example of the either/or fallacy. We do not have the either/or proposition that JG has either a masculinity crisis OR a meaning of life crisis. In fact, he may have both and there may be a connection between the two. Only a reader with a superficial grasp of JG’s book would make such a fallacious comment.
Six. While a masculinity crisis affects JGs journey, JG doesn’t focus enough on his purpose quest and instead does a “book stunt” or a book gimmick perhaps based on misguided ambition. As a result, his thesis is only half convincing and his book has a lot of padding. The book could have been at least 50 pages shorter.
Rebuttal to the Above
JG admits he uses a gimmick. Perhaps his book is a mix of ambition and sincere curiosity about the role of biology in masculinity. We shouldn’t fault him. None of us are pure. All of us have complicated “impure” motives even behind the best things we do.
Study Questions
One. Why do men fight both for real and for play?
JG cites 10 reasons:
Men fight to test themselves.
Men fight to pin each other on a hierarchy scale, what some might call the Man Points scale.
Men have natural, testosterone-fueled aggression.
Men fight to cultivate courage, what men call “heart.” By fighting, men acclimate to the pain and this acclimation, to be able to “take a hit,” allows one to “be a man.”
Men fight to bond with other men by affirming their shared courage.
Men fight to win the esteem of others.
Men fight to feel alive and feel freed from civilization’s numbing prison. See the movie Fight Club or read the novel.
Men fight to prepare for the real world of competition. See page 136.
Men fight to form alliances with other men. See page 135.
Men fight in ritualized combat as form of the “monkey dance,” a dance that leads to peace and prevents men from killing each other.
Two. Do boys and girls play the same?
No, their playing styles clash. Boys and girls engage in same-gender play 11 times more than mixed gender by their time their six (137).
Three. How can we explain the appeal of female MMA? Doesn’t it shatter JG’s thesis that violent sports belong to men?
People, regardless of gender, have similar basic drives that can be explained by the spike in interest in women’s MMA:
The craving for attention
The craving for relevance
The craving for validation
The craving for dominance
The desire to master a craft
The desire to be distinct
Four. Why do men become fanatics for their sports teams?
They want to belong to a gang, a primal expression of male bonding. Don’t doubt it. Rooting for “your team” is similar to gang affiliation.
Rooting for your team can be a form of power compensation for people who feel powerless in their real lives.
Rooting for a team can be a vicarious or fantasy existence for someone whose real world is sullied by boredom and a lack of purpose.
Rooting for a team can be a man’s escape from his domestic ineptitude and general feelings of worthlessness and irrelevance.
Rooting for a team can be about fashion. As Seinfeld says, “You’re rooting for clothes.”
Football can be a form of “sham warfare,” a sort of preparation for real war. See George Carlin video.
Five. What is an early example of sham warfare?
We see that English football originated over one thousand years ago and used a pig bladder. As an aside, my twin girls, 6 as of writing, like to play keep-away with me and this keep-away game, usually involving a blanket or a toy, has many parallels to football. I mention this because the game requires a certain amount of aggression and my twins, of course, are girls.
Six. What hypocrisy and delusion does JGs’ research reveal about spectator sports?
We pretend to hate violence when in fact we have an insatiable appetite for sadistic, cruel all-out violent spectacle. We always have since recorded history. See page 187.
Violence sells. Of all the Real Housewives shows, what’s number one? Atlanta. Why? It’s the most violent.
Looking at recorded history is a laundry list of shamefully violent entertainments:
Essay One for 100 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
One. What is one of the central controversies of the book?
Here lies the debate in Gottschall’s book. A lot of sociologists, such as Allan G. Johnson, criticize the biology model of gender differences, arguing that the biology model is false and born out of the need to service patriarchy, a male-dominated society. Critics such as Johnson argue that gender differences and gender roles are social constructions.
Gottschall would disagree. He argues that masculinity, the need to fight and to pump up in the gym, is a biological need in order to obtain power. If we don’t obtain this power, he argues, we get pushed around.
At one point, Gottschall (JG) argues with “the poet” about masculinity. He says to the poet: “Can you name a single society in world history where physical strength wasn’t part of the masculine ideal?”
He continues: “We didn’t invent masculinity. It’s not a cultural thing. It’s not even a people thing. Watch an alpha chimp or a silverback gorilla strut around. They’re macho!”
And then ironically, JG and the poet had a “masculine ritual” of arguing back and forth to see who’s right rather than come to a mutual understanding, a point JG makes to prove his argument.
JG argues all males seek masculine power: “The big get their way, while the small give way.” This is the Law of the Jungle. To call this law a product of socialization or cultural patriarchy or media brainwashing is too ignore the evidence.
Two. How is prison a microcosm of society at large?
JG writes: “As in prison, strength equals respect in its most basic dimension: when you are strong, guys don’t f*** with you. . . . Bullies and criminals aren’t looking to test themselves in fair fights. So young men bulk up on the weights for many reasons. They want to look good. They may want to improve in sports. But they are also building up an arsenal of deterrence. Muscle is a bold advertisement: I am not a rabbit. I am not food.”
Three. What school of thought disagrees with JG’s argument that masculinity is biological?
We read that “For about a half a century academic thinking about gender has been guided by the theory of the ‘sex/gender system.’”
Sex is biological, but gender is learned, according to this theory. In other words, there is a strong dividing line between sex and gender.
As we read: “But gender—all of the attributes we typically describe as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’—is purely cultural. We all emerge into the world as genderless blobs that parents, media, and teachers torture into culturally appropriate shapes. The act of taking the soggy mass of human raw material and mashing it into a rigid gender mold has been called ‘boying’ and ‘girling.”
JG rejects the above notion, mainly because science shows that males are more hardwired than females in two ways: “competitive and violent behavior.”
You can talk to parents, and they will tell you boy toddlers are more aggressive than female toddlers, for example.
Much of JG’s book is a rejection of the sex/gender dichotomy. He writes: “the basic masculine and feminine traits—male more competitive and aggressive, females more peaceable and nurturing—extend across diverse animal species. Over the past few decades biologists have determined that masculinity and femininity are rooted in something very simple: how fast the two sexes can reproduce. . . .”
Men are in competition with other men for reproductive success, and this competition starts early.
We read: “This competition to attract mates and defeat rivals is what Darwin called sexual selection. And in males the suite of features shaped by generations of consistent high-risk, high-reward competition for mates is what we call masculinity. As Darwin indicated, these features consist of being bigger, stronger, more bellicose, more willing to take risks, and more sexually eager” (72).
Masculinity has a biological purpose. We read: “Put baldly, this means that masculinity has an overriding purpose. Whether in men or musk oxen, masculinity is for prevailing in the competition for mates. It’s about being big and fierce enough to win fights, or to intimidate a rival into yielding without a fight.”
Four. What intellectual traps must we avoid when contemplating biological explanations for gender?
We must not equate the biological template of a male—aggressive, ruthlessly competitive, risk-taking—with an ideal of behavior. Nor must we equate this behavior with morality.
One man could embody masculine behavior and be a complete jackass. In contrast, another man could embody masculine behavior and be honorable and noble.
One thing is clear: Unleashing our male animal does not make us ideal or moral. Cultivating our masculinity with the harness of morality and honor is the only way.
Lots of “bros” or macho men or he-men are obnoxious braggarts, reckless troglodytes, and are on the road to self-destruction.
We must not read JG’s argument as an argument in favor of “jackass masculinity.”
There’s another danger. Not all women are attracted to macho bros. Some are, to be sure. But some women are attracted to shy bookish nerds. Some shy bookish nerds didn’t date in high school while the macho bros “got all the girls.” But ten, fifteen years down the road, the macho bros are working dead-end jobs, are unemployed, are in prison, are possibly dead. Some of the bookish nerds on the other hand might be in healthy relationships and running computer companies.
In other words, let us not glorify the unbridled macho bro.
Having masculine traits is good to a certain degree, but not if we become inconsiderate, rude, belligerent beasts.
We are not gorillas. Male gorillas are twice as big as female gorillas because they are “a harem-holding species.” Men do not hold harems in modern American society, last I checked.
Five. How does JG chronicle his own conflict with community and isolation?
JG makes a connection between masculinity and community: Men are judged by communal standards and enter rites of passages to be held in esteem and find belonging in their communities.
As a suburbanite living isolated in the suburbs, teaching college course, writing in isolation, and haunted by demons of masculine self-doubt, JG lives a lot in his head, isolated from those communal bonds that would him a sense of belonging, acceptance, and validation.
In this state of self-doubt, he longs for a way to prove his masculinity to himself and to others.
His crisis of self-worth is universal.
Many men find escape from their sense of domestic and masculine ineptitude by watching sports.
Television dramatizes men trying to regain their self-worth. Most famously, Breaking Bad, featuring Walter White, is about an effete chemistry teacher who becomes “The Danger.”
JG feels “soulless and emasculated” in his adjunct professor office. He’s been “man-dumped” by his friend.
He wants to get fired as a professor. He observes that the English Department is a feminized environment.
He wants to be a bad boy MMA fighter. He thinks being a bad boy will afford him the masculinity he craves.
He punches his poet friend Nobu, a long-time martial arts practitioner, at a party.
Six. What “man crisis” does JG chronicle in his book?
Perhaps American society offers too few healthy rituals to affirm masculinity. On page 82, we read that men are hungry for masculine qualities: “bravery, toughness, stoicism” and “we invent our own dragons” like Don Quixote to test ourselves.
The “dragon” could be an MMA fight, a bodybuilding competition, saving up for a Mustang GT, finding some trophy or other, getting a UCLA degree, getting a six-pack of abs, developing a hand-crushing handshake by exercising the hands with Captains of Crush Hand Crushers.
JG points out that YouTube is rife with crazy videos of men doing dares.
Men crave high-risk activities and simulated combat, so that they are drawn to wrestling and “combat” games. In contrast, JG observes that women are drawn to different, non-physical warfare, battles of cunning, deceit, and other Machiavellian methods. For JG, this difference is biological, not social.
Arguments against JG's book to consider:
One. His book may have some truth in genetic hardwiring of males, but it's too extreme. Socialization is a factor also. For example, it used to be essential to one's manliness and honor to engage in a duel, but this suicidal ritual is now extinct due to socialization. Manly codes don't require that men engage in duels.
Two. JG's book encourages stereotypes. Males and females break out of rigid role expectations all the time. JG's book desires to reinforce gender stereotypes.
Three. JG is too emotionally involved in the subject to see that his own masculine insecurity drives his argument, not facts. In other words, JG should not take an individual crisis and try to make a general principle about it. Perhaps another man with an identity or self-worth crisis would empower himself, not through MMA training, but by playing piano, guitar, or working on his tennis serve.
Four. JG draws on a lot of truth but perhaps exaggerates his claims. Perhaps he's not wrong absolutely but by degree.
Five. JG's book is a misreading of his life. He's not suffering a masculinity crisis, as he likes to believe. Rather, he is suffering from a meaning of life crisis--a crisis about a man who lacks purpose.
The Professor in the Cage Lesson #2 with Steve Almond’s Anti-NFL Essay
Final Capstone Essay Five for 200 Points: Jonathan Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage:
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’s The Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,100 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's "The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible" is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Some Arguments in Favor of Gottschall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. Like animals, men are hard-wired for violence in order to achieve safety, reproductive rights, and honor. The hard-wiring is so deep that we can see young males, both human and in the animal kingdom, show an instinct for play fighting. As males grow older, they are inclined to organized contests, duels, and competitions that test their might, agility, and courage.
Two. Men use ritualized violence to preserve their honor code, a display of courage, which earns respect. Ritualized violence builds heart and courage, which are essential to gaining respect from others and oneself.
Three. Men find that jousts and organized forms of combat provide authenticity and real feeling in a world taken over by artificial lifestyles and BS. Fighting sheds the BS and the artificial.
Four. Ritualized violence, which occurs have tempers have flared, contains rules and allows men to exorcise their aggression in a venue that is far safer than a street fight or a fight of passion.
Some Arguments to Refute Gottshall’s Claim That Ritualized Violence Is Beneficial
One. We no longer need ritualized violence to establish male hierarchies of male power and dominance because we have Hobbes’ Leviathan, a social contract and jurisprudence to litigate what is rightfully ours in terms of property and civil behavior.
Two. Gottschall’s points lose credibility in the context of his own admission to write a “gimmick memoir,” a sign of publishing ambition, not a quest for truth. Could his desire to write such a book be a mix of ambition and authenticity?
Three. Gottschall’s reliance on male hard-wiring argument is fatalistic or deterministic and dismisses conditioning and free choice for civil behavior. Take for instance Steve Almond’s diatribes against the NFL, which could be used as a source for your essay. Almond concedes that males love violence, but that they can make a choice to move forward, progress, and leave their troglodyte ways behind because of an ideological shift in their thinking and actions. In contrast, Gottschall is almost celebrating the ideology of ritualized male violence. He ignores the moral bankruptcy of making barbarism of a spectacle of entertainment, as Steve Almond argues. Instead, Gottschall asserts that barbaric spectacle is natural and therefore morally justified.
Four. While prison population and poor class share the need for respect with the aristocracy in what Gottschall calls “dueling culture,” the comparison is somewhat faulty. The Law of the Jungle does apply in conditions where there is no Leviathan, the social contract of order, but the aristocracy created their code in order to preserve their brand in order to maximize their efficacy in the world of business and commerce. That’s a significant difference.
Five. By Gottschall’s own admission, he is a broken man who suffered deep psychic wounds of masculine humiliation when he was bullied and by Gottschall’s own firsthand experience, MMA devotees mostly suffered similar humiliation. Taking these personal grievances does not make for a universal principle about men needing ritualized violence. True, many men, especially young men, are fascinated with MMA and UFC fighting and their market niche is coveted by advertisers. But this marketing gold age bracket does not make for an argument for the universality of the male need for barbaric spectacle as a form of healthy entertainment. To the contrary, many men outgrow their fascination for violence and evolve into higher states of development.
As a counterargument to the above, a lot of intellectuals, writers, and philosophers are just as aggressive as MMA fighters. Rather than using bare knuckles, however, these writers get into public feuds. They sometimes spit on each other, as Richard Ford did at a party when he spotted a book critic who lambasted Ford’s book. Some writers even throw punches. Petty jealousies and rivalries exist even in the “intellectual world.”
Six. Gottschall tries to make a universal point about the male hunger for ritualized violence, but his argument suffers because Gottschall doesn’t address the role of social class. Some would argue that the uneducated class of men will be fixated on ritualized violence throughout their lifetime becoming “fanboys” for their team, showing up to NFL games in the sixties wearing no shirt with their team’s logo painted on the gray hairs of their bare chest.
In contrast, the educated class may be drawn to violent sport for a while, but eventually outgrow this fixation as they set their sights on higher aspirations.
A counterargument to the above is that lots of educated men maintain a passion for violent sports throughout their lifetime.
Chapter 2 Study Questions
One. What is Gottschall’s claim about bullying?
He claims that bullying is not abnormal, pathological behavior.
He was bullied and he would have been a bully had he been tough enough, so therefore bullying is natural. Is that a logical statement?
He also observes that bullying is as “natural as ragweed and cancer.” Does that make a strong argument? Aren’t we trying to get rid of ragweed and cancer?
Also, does the common equals okay argument work? Slavery, racism, Jim Crow, sexism, and anti-Semitism have been and are common in certain societies. Does “majority rule” make for moral rule?
What Gottschall is saying is that bullying must be controlled through ritualized behavior. In hunter-gatherer societies, the most extreme bullies were “assassinated by coalitions of fed-up victims.”
On the other hand, mainstream, run-of-the-mill bullies thrive in adolescence and enjoy more dating success (35).
Two. What profound existential wound is Gottschall addressing in his book?
He’s not talking about the need to win fights. He’s talking about not fighting back repeatedly when faced with an adversary or a hostile antagonist. Shrinking away shows a lack of heart and courage. And to shrink away over and over is to be full of shame and self-loathing and to be loathed by others. To fight back, even in a losing cause, earns respect. But cowering away is to lose Man Points.
Walter White of Breaking Bad has the body language of shame because he doesn’t fight back against his bully, Society, and gets kicked in the butt, poor, unable to take care of his family’s needs, working as a chemistry high school teacher and part-time at a car wash where some of his students humiliate him (“You didn’t get the rims!”)
Only when Walter White fights the system in his own misguided way, become a drug manufacturer, does he “get his groove back,” his mojo, if you will. “I am the Danger.”
Gottschall wishes he would have stood up the linebacker who shook him like a doll at the tennis courts.
Playing the role of coward over and over, we begin to wonder if we are cowards. We need ritualized violence, combat, and sports to test our hearts in a relatively safe way. We need to cultivate our courage. Our manliness depends on it, so goes Gottschall’s argument.
Gottschall develops his MMA skills to find “redemption” from his existential wound, his imprint of shame and cowardice.
In fact, MMA gyms are a “support group for damaged men.” If they ever encounter a “duel,” they don’t want to dishonor themselves. They want to be able to stand up to their antagonist.
Three. Why did the official duel with pistols stop after World War I all over the world?
We replaced the culture of honor with a culture of laws, “Leviathan,” the social contract, and this Gottschall believes results in an emasculated culture (46).
But even in the absence of the duel, men will still engage in the “monkey dance”: “all of the wild and frequently ridiculous varieties of ritualized conflict in human males.” The dance says, “You want a piece of this!”
The mechanics are described on page 51:
Eye contact, hard stare
Verbal challenge (eg. ‘What you lookin’ at?’).
Close the distance. Sometimes chest bumping.
Finger poke or two-handed push to the chest.
Dominant hand roundhouse punch.
This ritualized combat often leads in death, as we read: “In many animals, ritual combat is a leading cause of male mortality in spite of its safeguards.”
Four. Is the Monkey Dance cultural or biological?
How you answer this question is crucial to how you will argue your essay.
Quoting self-defense expert Rory Miller, Gottschall writes, “The monkey dance wasn’t invented by any culture; it really is etched in the DNA of our species” (51).
ARGUMENT THAT PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS LEARNED AND COMMERCIALIZED
Almond’s claim that watching NFL is immoral is supported by the following:
One. We glorify violence.
Two. We live vicariously through the violence of others, using the players as proxies or substitutes for our own vicious impulses but put all the risk on them for head trauma, paralysis, broken limbs, life-long crippling, etc.
Three. We sponsor brutality with our cash dollars making us complicit in the life-long injuries and premature death suffered by NFL players. Studies show that on average NFL players live from mid to late fifties, about twenty years less than average lifespan.
Four. We are complicit in the abuse and ill regard of women, misogyny when we consider that football encourages male aggression, overpowering others through sheer will and strength, entitlement, and a lack of accountability (we close our eyes to misbehavior because we want our “stars” to show up and help us conquer our enemies on game day).
This link between NFL aggression and misogyny is evident in the high rates of domestic assault.
The culture that glorifies football players as their warriors free to do as they please, including violence against women, is sometimes called the jockitocracy.
Five. Some defend the NFL by citing new safety rules, but these new rules are, to use an effective analogy, lipstick on a pig. The fundamental violent nature of football remains unchanged.
Six. Some defend the NFL by saying players choose to play at their own risk, but this assertion is countered by the fact that many players are poor and lack viable options.
Seven. The NFL doesn’t want the truth about brain trauma to be exposed because the trauma is prevalent and severe, resulting in dementia, brain damage, violence, suicide, and other pathologies.
Eight. More and more parents won’t let their sons play football at any level because of the reports of permanent head trauma.
Nine. NFL legend Mike Ditka says he wouldn’t let his children play football if he knew then what he knows now.
Ten. NFL uses tax loopholes and other forms of trickery to parasite off US taxpayers to fund its stadiums in spite of its astronomical profits.
Thesis Review
A good thesis is a complete sentence that defines your argument.
A good thesis addresses your opponents’ views in a concession clause.
A good thesis often has mapping components or mapping statements that outline your body paragraphs.
A good thesis avoids the obvious and instead struggles to grapple with difficult and complex ideas.
A good thesis embraces complexity and sophistication but is expressed with clarity.
Thesis That Supports Steve Almond
While I am a lifelong football fan who has enjoyed the suspense of close games over the years, I am convinced after reading Steve Almond’s anti-football manifesto that I can no longer patronize the game I once loved because it is morally and intellectually bankrupt evidenced by its bloodthirsty violence, misogyny-fueled domestic abuse, parasitic taxpayer trickery, exploitation of the underclass, high risk of permanent brain trauma, and narcissism-inducing jockitocracy.
Thesis That Opposes the Above
While I concede that the NFL has its fair share of pathologies as cited in the above thesis, the author makes a weak case for boycotting the NFL because he relies on focusing exclusively on the lowest common denominator of NFL behavior; he ignores the countless examples of NFL good works throughout the land, including charities and other social service programs; he ignores the fact that risk of danger exists in many vocations that are not held in such condemnation; and he ignores that the NFL provides opportunities for the economically disadvantaged.
Thesis That Opposes the Above Refutation
While I concede that the NFL is not Evil Incarnate and is capable of doing good works and providing good jobs, its abominations far outweigh its virtues evidenced by its refusal to compensate or even acknowledge the widespread head trauma, its dependence on the underclass to feed into its pool of exploited labor, and its recalcitrant record on domestic abuse.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Critical Reading, Part II
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
When we examine the writer, we ask the following:
What is the writer’s background? Does he work for a think tank that is of a particular political persuasion? Is he being paid by a lobbyist or corporation to regurgitate their opinions?
How does the writer’s background affect the argument’s content?
What preconceptions about the subject does the writer seem to have?
When we analyze the writer’s purpose, we ask the following:
Does the writer state his or her purpose directly or is the purpose implied?
Is the writer’s purpose simply to convince or to encourage action?
Does the writer rely primarily on logic or on emotion?
Does the writer have a hidden agenda?
How does the author use logos, pathos, and ethos to put the argument together?
When we analyze the writer’s audience, we ask the following:
Who is the writer’s intended audience?
Does the writer see the audience as informed or uninformed?
Does the writer see the audience as hostile, friendly, or neutral?
What values does the writer think the audience holds?
On what points do the writer and the audience agree? On what points do they disagree?
Consider the Author’s Stylistic Techniques
Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.
Example: “We must not educate the masses because education is like a great flame and the hordes of people are like moths that will fly into the flames at their own peril.”
In the above example “like a great flame” is a simile.
“Gorging on plate after plate of chicken fried steak at HomeTown Buffet, I felt like Jonah lost in the belly of a giant, dyspeptic whale on the verge of spitting me back into the throng of angry people.”
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison in which two dissimilar things are compared without the word like or as. “We must educate the masses to protect them from the disease of ignorance.”
Allusion: An allusion (not to be confused with illusion) is a reference within a work to a person, literary or biblical text, or historical event in order to enlarge the context of the situation being written about.
“Even though I am not a religious man, I would agree with Jesus who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which is why rich people are in general against the minimum wage and the social and economic justice a healthy minimum wage exacts upon our society.”
Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of similar grammatical structures to emphasize related ideas and make passages easier to follow.
“Failure to get your college education will make you languish in the abyss of ignorance, weep in the chasm of unemployment, and wallow in the crater of self-abnegation.”
Repetition: Intentional repetition involves repeating a word or phrase for emphasis, clarity, or emotional impact (pathos).
“Are you able to accept the blows of not having a college education? Are you able to accept the shock of a low-paying job? Are you able to accept the disgrace of living on life’s margins?”
Rhetorical questions: A rhetorical question is a question that is asked to encourage readers to reflect on an issue, not to elicit a reply.
“How can you remain on the outside of college when all that remains is for you to walk through those open gates? How can you let an opportunity as golden as a college education pass you by when the consequences are so devastating?”
Checklist for Analyzing an Argument (your own or a reading you’re evaluating)
What is the claim or thesis?
What evidence is given, if any?
What assumptions are being made—and are they acceptable?
Are important terms clearly defined?
What support or evidence is offered on behalf of the claim?
Are the examples relevant, and are they convincing?
Are the statistics (if any) relevant, accurate, and complete?
Do the statistics allow only the interpretation that is offered in the argument?
If authorities and experts are cited, are they indeed authorities on this topic, and can they be regarded as impartial?
Is the logic—deductive and inductive—valid?
Is there an appeal to emotion—for instance, if satire is used to ridicule the opposing view—is this appeal acceptable?
Does the writer seem to you to be fair?
Are the counterarguments adequately considered?
Is there any evidence of dishonesty or of a discreditable attempt to manipulate the reader?
How does the writer establish the image of himself or herself that we sense in the essay? What is the writer’s tone, and is it appropriate?
Based on your reading of "The End of Solitude" (98), support or refute the argument that fear of solitude is a mental disease with serious consequences.
Essay Summary
Deresiewicz, or WD (use WD in your essay; it will be easier) writes that "solitude has traditionally been a societal value" in the "dimension of religious experience."
Whether we like it or not, ALL of us are religious. Alfred North Whitehead writes that what you do in your solitude defines your religion.
Connecting yourself--no matter the method you use--is your "religion."
The creative works you pursue in solitude are your religion.
The processing and recuperating of experience are your religion.
WD writes: "Religious solitude is a kind of self-correcting social mechanism, a way of burning out the underbrush of moral habit and spiritual custom. The seer returns with new tablets or new dances, his face bright with the old truth."
That is another way of saying we use solitude to take stock or inventory and critique our behaviors in the attempt for self-improvement.
A social media addict cannot engage in serious self-critique: "I don't want to criticize my behavior. I just got 400 likes on Facebook. Dude, you're killing my buzz."
Solitude, in other words, is essential for self-transformation.
In Romanticism, solitude connects us with Nature and this connection is our way of communing with the Divine.
In intellectualism, solitude is a time to read. The intellectual believes that reading strengthens the mind and spirit and compels us to self-transformation.
The Great Shift
There was a great shift in society that made solitude something to be feared and avoided.
In the suburbs, we became isolated. The Internet bridged us to the world. We changed to a people defined by our solitude to a people defined by our visibility and our validation from others. This visibility and validation has become an addiction, a feeble attempt to compensate for our fragile, fragmented, insecure, undeveloped selves. Our selves our undeveloped and fragile because we haven't feed them their essential nourishment that can only come from solitude.
The result of our addiction to being validated by others is that we have become infantile, insecure narcissists incapable of solitude, empathy, contemplation, and self-transformation.
Lesson Five Chapters 8 and 9 From Critical Thinking to Argument
Logic and Logical Fallacies (adapted from Chapter 5 of Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Logic comes from the Greek word logos, meaning, word, thought, principle, or reason. Logic is concerned with the principles of correct reasoning.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood; therefore, it is not true.
Syllogism with an Illogical Middle Term Is Invalid
Flawed logic occurs when the middle term has the same term in the major and minor premise but not in the conclusion.
Major Premise: All dogs are mammals.
Minor Premise: Some mammals are porpoises.
Conclusion: Therefore, some porpoises are dogs.
Syllogism with a Key Term Whose Meaning Shifts Cannot be Valid
Major Premise: Only man is capable of analytical reasoning.
Minor Premise: Anna is not a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Anna is not capable of analytical reasoning.
The key term shift is “man,” which refers to “mankind,” not the male gender.
Syllogism with a Negative Premise
If either premise in a syllogism is negative, then the conclusion must also be negative. The following syllogism is not valid:
Major Premise: Only the Toyota Prius can go in the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW can drive in the fast-track lane.
If both premises are negative, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion:
Major Premise: The Toyota Prius cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Enthymemes
An enthymeme is a syllogism with one or two parts of its argument—usually, the major premise—missing.
Robert has lied, so he cannot be trusted.
We’re missing the major premise:
Major Premise: People who lie cannot be trusted.
Minor Premise: Robert has lied.
Conclusion: Therefore, Robert cannot be trusted.
When writers or speakers use enthymemes, they are sometimes trying to hide the flaw of the first premise:
Major Premise: All countries governed by dictators should be invaded.
Minor Premise: North Korea is a country governed by a dictator.
Conclusion: Therefore, North Korea should be invaded.
The premise that all countries governed by dictators should be invaded is a gross generalization and can easily be shot down under close scrutiny.
Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning begins with specific observations or evidence and moves to a general conclusion.
My Volvo was always in the shop. My neighbor’s Mini Cooper and BMW are always in the shop. My other neighbor’s Audi is in the shop.
Now my wife and I own a Honda and Nissan and those cars are never in the shop.
European cars cost more to maintain than Japanese cars and the empirical evidence and data support my claim.
Essay One for 100 Points Based on Choosing One of the Following Options
Option 1
In the context of Gottschall’sThe Professor in the Cage, develop an argumentative thesis about the relationship between masculinity and ritualized violence. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have a Works Cited page with 3 sources, including one from the El Camino College database.
Option 2
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that Steve Almond's"The NFL Is Morally Reprehensible"is a compelling argument against Gottschall's case that ritualized violence is a natural and essential part of masculinity.
Study Questions
One. In the Preface we see a liberal arts professor living a cloistered life subject himself to torture. Explain his transition from Apollonian order to Dionysian chaos.
His soul is empty or at the very least incomplete living “the life of the mind.” He doesn’t feel like a complete man. He contemplates his “failure” as a professor who already had his “fifteen minutes of fame.”
He is haunted by memories of being a coward in certain situations, and he wants to find redemption by finding his heart, finding his courage, and proving his manhood.
He is at a career crisis where he wants his bosses at the college to fire him because he’s in a sort of limbo teaching part-time and seeing his literary theories being ignored.
One of man’s greatest fears is irrelevance. To be ignored or to be deemed of someone of no consequence is a huge insult to a man’s manhood. Gottschall is determined to make himself a force to be reckoned with.
As he stares out his office window and sees the Mark Schrader’s Academy of Mixed, Martial Arts, he feels the hunger to go on a Journey Quest in order that he may partake in the strength, vitality, and courage of the fighting world. We read, “they were so alive in their octagon while I was rotting in my cube.” Living a life of Apollonian order can only take him so far. He needs Dionysian passion to restore his life. He needs to find his vitality, the antidote to ennui, boredom with life.
He also delights in the possible “scandal” of him becoming an MMA fighter, a scandal so big he might get fired. Getting fired, he seems to believe, is an important step in him developing the courage to begin a new chapter in his life.
His quest is also partly fame-driven. He sees himself writing a book about a professor who embarks on an MMA quest. He is desperate to revitalize his career.
In his middle-age, he has not found vindication for his existence, his life choices, and his forged identity.
He appears to have something to prove to others and himself.
He appears to want to have more than an intellectual understanding of violence. He wants to do research on a physical level.
Only through physical immersion in MMA does the author experience the primal fear, the adrenalin rush, the reptilian survival reaction that is important to understanding human nature and himself.
Only through MMA does the author believe he can conquer fear, and worse, cowardice, a sort of moral failure from a worldview where courage and honor take the forefront.
Only through MMA, one man pitted against another man, can he see who he really is in a world that conceals everything with BS. An MMA fights strips life of its BS.
Gottschall is fascinated by the notion of respect in the realm of MMA fighting and how this respect reconciles with trying to tear another’s limbs off.
Gottschall is on a courage quest and discover if he is a coward or not.
He is drawn by sincere curiosity about cage fighting: “Why do men fight? Why do so many people like to watch? And why, especially when it comes to violence, do men differ so greatly from women?”
Further, he asks:
“Why do human beings spend (waste?) so much energy on sports?
“Why do fighters try to stare each other down? And why do nonhuman primates do exactly the same thing?”
But what if the author is exaggerating his crisis? What if his “crisis” is a pose so that he can embark on a “gimmick memoir” in which a schmuck puts himself in harm’s way and essentially makes himself a fish out of water? You need to consider these questions as you write your essay.
Is the book a sincere inquiry into male aggression or an exaggerated account in the author’s quest to publish a best-selling book? Or a bit of both impulses?
Two. What point is crucial to your thesis for your final paper?
As Gottschall does his research on MMA fighting, he concludes that fighting is not “about the darkness in men” but “about how men keep the darkness in check.” In other words, competitive fighting, however barbaric, negates even greater forms of barbarism if men didn’t have outlets for their violence and aggression.
Many have said that professional and college football provides men a parallel universe so they can escape the ineptitude and impotence they feel in their domestic and work lives. The NFL, according to this logic, is part of a symbiotic relationship with capitalism to keep men working hard as they contribute to the economic machine and lose their souls in the process.
Thinking of your thesis, you need to really contemplate the above point. It is crucial because Gottschall is exploring the idea that competitive violence is necessary for men. That is a powerful argument. Knowing the reasons behind such an argument will be invaluable to your essay.
An important counterargument to consider is Steve Almond’s essay about the moral bankruptcy of watching NFL. This ritualized violence is not innate, suggests Almond, but conditioned and we are responsible for reconditioning ourselves by weaning ourselves off violence. Don’t feed the wolf, so to speak. Starve the wolf.
We all have animal passions, but we should not inflame them. As civilized, “forward-looking” humans, we learn to suppress our animal and cultivate our higher angels.
Gottschall would disagree. He’d say the wolf is innate, not conditioned. No matter what we do, we cannot rid ourselves of aggression.
The truth could be a bit of both.
Gottschall argues that duels, ritualized violence if you will, are necessary to test man’s courage or cowardice. Without such a test, a man cannot know who he is or where he stands.
Gottschall further supports his claim that ritualized violence is necessary for men by arguing that “we should avoid falling for a self-flattering narrative that portrays us as the enlightened ones.” We fight with rules in order that the two aggrieved parties don’t take the fight to even more barbaric levels.
A duel, unlike a fight of passion, requires delay. One must fight after the rage has settled within a system of rules.
Three. How is this book much more than exploration of MMA fighting?
This book is more than an exploration of MMA fighting. It is the history of men’s compulsion to engage in duels, manly contests. These duels exist in the literary world with verbal jousts. But on a more primitive level, they exist as physical combat with their origins dating to Europe in the 1500s.
Further, Gottschall observes that “the duel is not even a human invention. Animals have their fights, too, and biologists refer to them tellingly as duels, sports, tournaments, or, most commonly, ritual combat.”
This combat is ritualized in the form of the “monkey dance”: We read, “Humans, especially men, are masters of what I call the monkey dance—a dizzying variety of ritualized, rule-bound competitions.”
Four. What is the function of the monkey dance?
While they often seem stupid and end in maiming and even death, these monkey dances are essential to establishing hierarchies, which keep the peace in the long-run; and for “minimizing carnage and social chaos.”
Men are obsessed with male hierarchies, a major theme in sports talk radio.
Men will argue vociferously about who are the ten greatest basketball players of all time. Who is the greatest running back of all time: quarterback, wide receiver, linebacker, etc.
These arguments can end friendships.
The monkey dance isn’t limited to men. I know a man, a night club bouncer, who cut in line at a fresh seafood store near San Diego and a woman weighing about 300 and wearing a Junior Seau football jersey assumed hostile posturing before attacking this bouncer with her enormous belly, using it like a wrecking ball and sending him flat on his back where to continued to assault hi with powerful slaps to the face and kicks to the ribs.
Five. What is the appeal of a primitive gladiator fight?
Like the novel Fight Club, people in the real world become numb, alienated, and depressed over living in a synthetic universe where everything we do is the result of an elaborate mechanism.
Fighting is an attempt to strip ourselves of these elaborate machinations and confront our manhood face to face, bare-knuckled, so to speak.
Fighting is a way to give honor to courage and survival of the fittest. Such rituals are pagan. Paganism values honor, strength, and courage in contrast to Christianity, which emphasizes compassion for the weak and forgiveness of others, and turning the other cheek.
Duels fill the imagination. One famous duel is that of the son of Alexander Hamilton, Philip, and his opponent. Three years later, Alexander Hamilton died in a duel himself. His death agony lasted 38 hours. His son’s was about 24 hours.
These duels were reactions over insult exchanges. Calling someone a liar or something similar resulted in a duel in early 19th Century America.
Hamilton entered the duel knowing he’d saddle his family with debts and that dueling was against his Christian faith. However, he was compelled by the code of manly honor. We read that, “Throughout the five-hundred-year history of Euro-American dueling culture aristocratic men were generally prepared to kill each other at the drop of a hat.”
Honor was a premium in duel culture. Honor “represented the entirety of a man’s social wealth.”
Six. Do we have an honor culture today?
This notion of “social wealth” has today been transferred to what Gottschall calls “muscular cultures.” We see muscular cultures in prison, sports, and warfare. They bring out the “roots of masculine aggression.”
We further read that , “Prisons are the most extreme honor cultures currently in existence. The harder the prison, the harder the culture of honor.”
In prison, they don’t call this social capital honor. They call it respect.
A world of honor or respect is a world of “reciprocation. A man of honor builds a reputation for payback. In a tit-for-tat fashion he returns favors and retaliates against slights.”
We read an example of disrespect, even stealing someone’s banana or cutting in line at prison, can result in death because disrespect is the ultimate sin in a prison environment. We read, “By failing to retaliate, the new guy fails the heart test . . .”
Failing to have heart and losing respect will make someone a prison slave. “Not fighting over a banana or a book is the same as declaring I am a rabbit. I am food.”
In duel culture, to refuse to duel was the equivalent to suicide, a form of “social annihilation.” To be a “duel dodger was, in many ways, a fate worse than death.”
Seven. Could it be that fighting for honor is lame?
What if we're all looking for validation and respect, and violence is simply a lame or stupid attempt at getting that validation and respect?
What if we could find honor, respect, and validation through art, piano, music, painting, theater, etc.?
On the other hand, what if we're programmed to respect a certain degree of physical menace and an ability for self-defense? What if an absence of these traits makes men less appealing to women?
