The Benefit Of Admitting You're Human

It’s that time of semester where I begin to feel beat down, and my writing reflects my apathy.  I start nit-picking syllabi and try to decide what I can afford to skip while still keeping a high grade.  But these blogs are psychologically heavier than a grade…these things are forever.  There are people who aren’t on the earth anymore, yet their blog is still available to the public.  It’s eerie, and perhaps my motivation is morbid, but I don’t want to be remembered as someone who skipped assignments just because I got a case of the ol’ ‘mehs’.  But that’s just my perspective. 

Speaking of perspective, Rees’s article from Just Six Numbers fits in appropriately in this week’s section.  The concept that Rees is trying to get across is a huge thing to conceptualize, which is why when this article aims to break the universe down numerically it has to start small…by breaking us down numerically.  The explanation of the amount of atoms in humans is an effective tool that operates in two ways:  It puts the rest of this article into context, and it immediately addresses the “why should we care” question from the tyrannical reader.  Numbers in any fashion turns me off, but Rees eased me into it in a way that made sense.  This is accommodation, but a very sly version of it.  All the numbers are still there as they would be in the original article, but it’s the examples that make sense of everything and put the information into context.

  

            Moving to Atkins… It’s difficult to read a series of texts and not hold each one to the standard of the text that preceded it.  But I’ll say it—Atkins doesn’t read as interestingly as Rees does.  Perhaps this opinion of mine was conjured within the first few lines of this article.  “Change takes a variety of forms.” (Atkins 12)  When an article opens up with elementary ‘duh’ statements, I’m turned off because I feel like I’m being talked down to.  I’m certainly beneath Atkins intellectually speaking, but I don’t think that this is an effective stance to convey through writing.  Going back to the theme of perspective, I had a hard time rising to the level of Atkins to really understand what he is talking about.  I think perspective largely relies on experience, and the closest we come to experience through text is by example.  Atkins gives quite a few examples, bouncing balls, melting ice, house of cards, etc.  But these examples are fixed and small, and don’t quite animate the depth of the content.  This article is not concerned with answering, “why should we care”, which makes it difficult to share perspective as a reader.  Aside from all that, I did like something in this article.  In tandem with my apathetic mood as of late, I found comfort in this quote: “We, however, can see that achieving being there should not be confused with choosing to go there.” (Atkins 14)  I know that this refers to ‘random’ chaotic energy, but it seems pretty applicable to life.  No need to go off on a tangent about where this applies, but it gives me hope about the moments where I look around and wonder, “how the hell did I get here?”

            Staying on topic is getting difficult these days… Haldane has a way of writing that I envy, a conversational tone akin to a grandfather passing on knowledge to their grandchild, and by the time the story is over I’ve forgotten that I was even reading at all.  Haldane is the master of examples that lend the reader perspective.  The entire article is wrought with details of creatures of all sizes, and with each example the purpose of the article becomes more and more clear.  This is exactly what I was looking for in Atkins article, an illustration that makes sense of the concept.  Haldane levels with the reader in the first paragraph, saying that he is looking at a zoology textbook in front of him and making humorous observations.  This makes Haldane a real person, instead of some scientific figure who knows more than the reader.  This rhetorical strategy of the author painting himself in a common light lends even more credibility to the perspective of this article.  As I write this and make these connections, I realize I opened this post with the same “humanizing” strategy.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who is losing steam at this point of the semester, and if my opener is relatable, then you’re more likely to read on.  But it wasn’t an intentional trap!  I just think writing is more enjoyable when the author doesn’t have to omit any underlying thoughts that ultimately contribute to the rhetorical situation of the writing.