Graecismus (gree-kis’-mus): Using Greek words, examples, or grammatical structures. Sometimes considered an affectation of erudition.
η ρητορική κυλά σαν ποτάμι (rhetoric flows like a river). It picks you up like a floating leaf and carries you where it will—you would be συνεπαρμένος (carried away). And rhetor tells us there at least two ways of looking at everything. This is the famous δύο λόγοι (two reasons) that drove Plato crazy. How could there be “two reasons” if the Truth is one? Two reasons may b a sign of error that needs to be corrected by διάλεκτος (dialectic), Plato’s remedy for σοφιστεία (sophistry).
η επανάληψη είναι η ψυχή της αλήθειας (repetition is the soul of truth). Truth is always everywhere the same. It does not vary one bit. When lies effectively affect Truth’s repetitive character, they pass for true, no matter what their substantive claims are. They may make us into dupes. “Stop the steal” is a case in point. Its repetitive ubiquity drove people to believe it was true and to instigate an insurrection by storming the nation’s Capitol Building. In addition, rumor may function to validate lies—to make them believable. Virgil’s “Aeneid” (Book iv) offers a vivid description of rumor:
“At once Rumour runs through Libya’s great cities—Rumour the swiftest of all evils. Speed lends her strength, and she wins vigour as she goes; small at first through fear, soon she mounts up to heaven, and walks the ground with head hidden in the clouds. Mother Earth, provoked to anger against the gods, brought her forth last, they say, as sister to Coeus and Enceladus, swift of foot and fleet of wing, a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many watchful eyes beneath—wondrous to tell—as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth, she flies through the gloom, screeching, and droops not her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on guard on high rooftop or lofty turrets, and affrights great cities, clinging to the false and wrong, yet heralding truth. Now exulting in manifold gossip, she filled the nations and sang alike of fact and falsehood, how Aeneas is come, one born of Trojan blood, to whom in marriage fair Dido deigns to join herself; now they while away the winter, all its length, in wanton ease together, heedless of their realms and enthralled by shameless passion. These tales the foul goddess spreads here and there upon the lips of men. Straightway to King Iarbas she bends her course, and with her words fires his spirit and heaps high his wrath.”
Gossip is a kind of rumor, equally destructive. But like everything Greek, rumor can play a positive role—the role Fame—of making people famous—or infamous for that matter. Social media has allowed rumor to move at the speed of light, affecting peoples’ perceptions of reality, by massive cyber communities, who may wrongfully lash out at people, properties, or institutions, lost in a muddle of misinformation. You don’t have to look far for a podcast whose programs spread lies. So what do we do? We find a trusted source. It’s getting harder and harder to know who to trust. This difficulty may lead to censorship and this revision of the First Amendment. The free flow of opinion and information are foundations of democracy, not lies.
What shall we do?
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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