Heterogenium (he’-ter-o-gen-i-um): Avoiding an issue by changing the subject to something different. Sometimes considered a vice.
The police officer asked me if I knew how fast I was driving through the School Zone I had just passed through. I told him “If I studied hard, I could probably learn.” I though I was really funny. The cop didn’t. He said, “Ok wise guy, out of the car.” I got out of the car and stood there waiting to be shot or beaten up. The cop asked me: “Are you taking drugs?” I answered, “Sure, what are you giving?” The cop put his hand on his gun. “Get in the police car,” he said in a very angry voice. I said, “Ok, do you want me to drive?” He pulled out his gun and pointed it at me: “Get in the fu*king car shithead.” I promptly got into the car. Sitting in the back seat behind the wire mesh, I said “Your police car smells real good, like my mother’s perfume.” He yelled “shut up!”and turned on sire ..
Getting back to what had started my trip to jail: I did know how fast I had been driving in the School Zone. I had been crawling along at 15MPH—the speed limit. So what’s going on here? I am a “Goader.” I drive people in authority over the edge. I employ the strategy of being “passively annoying” focusing on the relational dimension of communication (verbal and nonverbal) with those people in authority who invite goading. I guess you could say, I’m disrespectful of authority. That’s why I became an anarchist.
It all started with Bob Dylan and “The Times They Are a Changing.” The world was turning upside down. I was experimenting with Lucky Strikes and nudy-nudy magazines. I found them perfectly acceptable, although people in authority told me they would ruin my life—make me into a coughing sex fiend. I thought to myself, “So what? What’s wrong with that?” When my mother found my magazines, she rolled one up and beat me with it. I pretended I enjoyed it and she beat me even harder. I had goaded her. I found that power and control are a two-way street. The tables can turned by acting like you don’t care—that you are unaffected, that your response may be irrelevant, like laughing at being spanked,.
Once, when my boss asked me “When are you going to get off your ass and do something?” It was probably a rhetorical question—he wasn’t expecting a response. This is fertile ground for a goad! I answered: “I stand for lunch. Your treat?” He tried fire me, but he couldn’t because I had photos him and Ms. Strabo in the basement, and they weren’t taking inventory, unless you do it naked laying down. The boss’s wife would surely maim him if she found out. Anyway, my response sent the boss to flip-out-ville. He was about to throw a stapler at me and I yelled: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” He knew exactly what I meant and dropped stapler.
I’ve started running workshops for powerless people. The workshops are titled “Golden Goads.” I’ve been quite successful teaching my students how to briefly turn hierarchies on their heads. No matter how brief they last, they let their overseers know that hey are vulnerable—that power is granted, not achieved.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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