Commoratio (kom-mor-a’-ti-o): Dwelling on or returning to one’s strongest argument. Latin equivalent for epimone.
I am right. Do you understand me? I know the answer. My answer is the “right answer”always—even if I’m wrong. And it does not matter. No matter how wrong you think I am, it is you who’re wrong. You might think there is something beyond the wall of convention that makes you right. Well, I’ve taken a few bricks out of that wall in anticipation of change. We are not talking natural order here. We’re talking about everything else. Do you remember when marajuana was illegal? Well, it is not illegal any more. It is wrong to call it illegal. What about abortion? Now it is illegal. What about gay marriage? Now it is legal.
So, if you have a hope, you may be able to induce a change. This is how democracy works. Nobody is %100 in favor of everything, so there’s always a chance for change—for better and for worse. Accepting the status quo is functional if you’ve thought about it and it aligns with your values—what you think is right. Just because it is true that abortion is illegal, it does not make it right that it is illegal.
This is all pretty basic, but it opens the portals of change. So you reflect on what keeps you party to the status quo. What motivates whre you reside? Laziness? Happiness? Trapped? Lack of vision? Fear? Every motive term you can imagine is operative here. And then, on the other side are the motives for change. We live in the grip of motives. They fuel our choice making. They are the foundation of our character. As you make your trajectory through life they answer the question “Why?” They answer to our conscience internally, and externally to people who care about the meaning of our actions. Of course, as Kenneth Burke tells us, we avow motives and others impute motives to derive meaning—the why. For example, the meaning of a handshake isn’t in the handshake, it’s in what motivates it.
Anyway, I am right. Whatever I project on the screen of social reality is in some way right. I don’t know why. I just think it. Thinking it does not make me wrong. It makes me like everybody else.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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