“Which is it?  Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake?”

from Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, Number 7.

Thus spoke Nietzsche, revealing to those with eyes behind eyes, a fabulous persuasion tactic, I coin up as Paradoxy.

Paradoxy takes three terms – in Nietzsche’s case, God, man, and mistakes – and poses them in linguistic opposition.  Two concepts must share overlapping meaning (God and man) and the third term takes a critical stance (mistake) that forces you to determine whether and how A -> B or B -> A best fits the critical stance.

Let’s play with Paradoxy.

Beautiful:  Do you wear Versace or does Versace wear you?

Faithful:  Do you follow Osama or does Osama follow you?

Trivial:  Steve paradoxes Nietzsche or Nietzsche paradoxes Steve?

Paradoxy generally functions as a WATTage switch.  Paradoxy makes the target think more about the message and also provides a bias in a particular direction.  For example, Nietzsche’s Paradoxy makes you think more about God and man, but from the bias of Mistake.

Of course, to a persistent Low WATT processor, a Paradoxy may nicely function as a Cue with that critical stance term, Nietzsche’s Mistake in our running example, pointing to the “correct” take on God and man.  You don’t have to think about the conceptual relationship between God and man or which came first or whether the whole thing is altogether foolish; you need only know that it is a Mistake!

Paradoxy could also function as an Argument.  A well done Paradoxy requires a bright mind and a clever facility with language.  People who can create more and better Paradoxy’s are certainly providing crucial information about verbal intelligence.  Thus, the quantity and quality of Paradoxy is an Argument.

So, my new play, Paradoxy, functions as either a WATTage switch, an Argument, or a Cue depending on prespecified conditions.  Most commonly, Paradoxy will function as the WATTage switch with just a bit of Bias.

Paradoxy is similar to rhetorical questions.  It’s a linguistic variable that performs a persuasion function.  With rhetorical questions, let’s make sure we know the terminology.

A rhetorical question is an utterance that is a statement, but looks like a question.  A rhetorical is a polite way of making a claim without appearing to take a stand.

People who study longer get better grades, don’t they?

Persuasion blogs build character, don’t they?

He’s made his point, hasn’t he?

What provides the persuasion force with both rhetorical questions and Paradoxy is their linguistic attribute.  They force us to use language in a way that affects persuasive processing.

Of course, Nietzsche is neither the first nor the last paradoxy trickster.  Paradoxy, properly dressed, is in the Dialectic clan, which shows Socrates, Hegel, and Marx in the family picture.

Let’s get out of here on this Paradoxy.

Origins:  philosophy makes persuasion or persuasion makes philosophy?

Fouad Ajami observes the change in our Afghan commanders from McChrystal to Petraeus and notes . . .

We have a peerless commander on his way to the Afghan theater of war. He knows the ways of the East, and he has mastered them the hard way. In his time in Iraq he was fond of a maxim of T.E. Lawrence: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are there to help them, not win it for them.”

Nice observation, but we said this a long time ago with ‘Awrence of Attribution.

Assuming the quotation is apt for this war, then we’re in a state of confusion.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

Observed at Amazon:

The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Ham by Friedrich Nietzsche~Michael Tanner~R. J. Hollingdale (Paperback – Jan. 1, 1990)

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Genesis 22:1-2

One of the most harrowing and confusing episodes in the Old Testament occurs in Genesis with Abraham giving his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering to the Lord.  The Lord directs Abraham to do this and Abraham faithfully complies.  Isaac apparently shows no resistance even while his father ties him to the altar.

Some people can read this as the Terrible God demanding cruel obedience, nervously testing His subjects to see if they will indeed comply.  Yet, this interpretation is obviously illogical because God being God knew the end of the story even before He ordered Abraham to make the sacrifice.  God clearly did not do this to see what would happen – He knew.  So, why?

Consider persuasion theory.  Performing actions strengthens beliefs and attitudes.  Thus, if you want your children to form a positive attitude about cleanliness and conscientiousness, have them engage in behaviors like brushing their teeth or picking up their room.  Merely by performance of behavior, children can develop the desired beliefs and attitudes.  You thus create the attitude through action, not through Central Route Arguments.

Even more compelling here is Dissonance Theory.  A classic method of internal change with Dissonance is through the Counter-Attitudinal Behavior.  You set up some situation that provokes people into doing something they do not like and after they do the action, their attitude will move to support the behavior.  And, if a father standing over his beloved son with a fatal knife in his hands is not an example of a Counter Attitudinal Behavior, we need to rewrite a lot of journals and books.

Now, this is human nature.  All people respond this way.  They tend to develop, strengthen, or change attitudes and beliefs from the behaviors they enact, creating, if you will, change from the outside in.  Apply this to our problem with Abraham’s attempted sacrifice.

Think about the persuasion source and the persuasion receiver in this story.  Abraham is the Other Guy, the receiver, and God is the persuasion agent, the source.  God wants to strengthen Abraham’s faith (belief and attitude) and has Abraham perform behaviors that serve this purpose.  God orders the sacrifice not because God needs the reassurance, but because God wants to prove Abraham’s faith to Abraham – and so too with Isaac.

A persuasion perspective on this event provides a very different understanding.  Instead of the Terrible God, we have God doing persuasion on his beloved Abraham.  And, God uses persuasion not because God is limited, but because humans are limited with their human nature.  Along with signs and miracles, God uses plain old persuasion.

The rollout of the new iPhone demonstrates how failure can function persuasively, but in two different ways, depending, as always, on the WATTage of the receiver.  Consider:

AT&T’s epic iPhone 4 pre-order snafu on Tuesday was the latest in a long line of headaches the carrier has caused Apple.

Normally snafus, epic or ordinary, are outcomes you avoid, but when it’s Somebody Else’s Snafu, you can make persuasion lemonade out of the Other Guys lemons.  A bright observer notes:

“This is the best thing that could have happened to Apple,” he said. “The more scarce something is, the more we want it.

He’s been reading me . . . or more likely Robert Cialdini . . . and the CLARCCS persuasion cues, most notably, Scarcity, or When It Is Rare, It Is Good.  With Low WATT processors, mere scarcity, this time in the form of difficult ordering, makes the object more desirable.

But, if you think about this just a bit, it also opens the door to another persuasion tactic, Dissonance or We Love That For Which We Suffer.  Barriers build zealots.

So, whether on the Central or Peripheral Route, hard times are good times for Apple.  For now, anyway.