Fight Back Against Rhetoric!

There are certain people in this world because of their job or lecturers think they can ignore the fact that "the geek shall inherit the earth". They think they can bamboozle geeks and plebs into submission, but I say fight those subjectivists and all that accompanies them (false product claims, moral relativism, deconstructionism blah blah blah). Blah, blah, blah was the gist of the cartoon by Jon Kudelka that accompanied Stephen Matchett's article on the back page of the current edition of the Weekend Australian's Review section. A superb insight into rhetoric (yes, that includes humanities and sales bullies) and defence mechanisms to deploy against them. He cited a few good resources and books which I'll list here:

Matchett, S. 2005, Schope out your rivals, The Weekend Australian Review, 19-20 March, p. 40.

Burton, G. 2003, Silvae Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric [Online, accessed 20 Feb. 2005]. URL: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Schopenhauer, A. 1896, The Art of Controversy, trans. T. B. Saunders [Online, accessed 20 Feb. 2005]. URL: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy

Cialdini, R. B. 1998, "Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion", Perennial Currents.

These people have gotten away with belittling us geeks and proletariat for too long, let's fight back against the self-proclaimed "intellectuals" and bourgeoisie. Yikes now I sound like one of them, anyway we need protection against these professional nihilists so let's use some of their tricks on them.