For my current blog on causal argument, I had to search really hard (probably because I don't know where to find my material!). My search led me to ananova.com and in that there was this report about hippos which was astounding as well as thought provoking. Although on the surface, the report is just an ordinary news piece, when one goes in depth into it, one realizes about the deeper meaning of it:
How man has come to destroy nature for his own pleasure.
According to the blog,
"Less than 30 years ago, more than 29,000 lived in Virunga National Park, on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But this year's census shows that only 1,300 remain"
The main reason for this decline is due to illegal trading of hippo teeth for ivory. Another reason is the inter-factional fighting which has prevented wildlife organizations to do any sort of productive work in the region.
The blog then goes to describe the effects of such an ecological imbalance. In general, when one thinks about this, on realizes how God has given and man has destroyed. Instead of cherishing and protecting nature, we are slowly but surely destroying our only means of survival; for, without nature, where would we get our food, water and specially our life giving oxygen from?
The blog uses a mix of pathos and logos to make its argument. By using examples and statistics about the hippos in the region and by quoting sources from well known organizations such as WWF, it establishes ethos. It uses pathos to provoke our thoughts about how destructive man is and that in fighting with each other or just for pleasure, man is really harming the ecological balance. The blog uses logos by giving an example of how due to indiscriminate killing and poaching of hippos, the fish have reduced in number and about twenty thousand people around the region depend on fish for their food supply.
Thus the blog successfully establishes its argument. However, it leaves the question unanswered as to what can be done to improve the situation. This is one of the important factors which mark the difference between a successful argument and an unsuccessful one. Though the argument is established, the reader does not know how or what to do to improve the situation and thus, the argument loses the sympathy of the reader and thus sounds like a general statistic or piece of information that does not hold much value for the average reader.
  ¶ 10:38 PM

  Riverbend's blogs are interesting to read for the simple fact that her language and tone makes you feel as if you're listening to an ordinary person. Its a friendly, casual tone. I’ve read three blogs of hers and the feature common to all of them is that she uses a tone which sounds genuine and not outward show. Although she cannot provide evidential support to the incidents she describes, she still proves credible to me because of the pathos in her blogs.

The one incident which she describes, which is about one of her neighbors is really effective and that’s what really worked for me, the way she described it. That when soldiers were raiding her neighbors house, the way they treated him was as if he was an animal or had committed a huge crime. When they bring him out of the house, another of the neighbors pleads the soldiers to let the women go inside the house because they hadn’t covered their face (which is a must according to the Islam laws). He understood that it was embarrassing for the women to be dragged out of their house at night without any covering on their faces. The reluctance and harshness of the soldier when seen in the background of this helplessness and the second neighbor’s courage to risk his life in requesting the soldier; this is what makes the incident so powerful and appealing.

In other blogs, she uses scathing criticism against some people on television who are supposed to be from women’s organizations but know hardly anything about the ground reality of the situation of women there.

Overall, her tone is informal and appealing due to the pathos. She is also personally concerned about the harsh conditions the Iraqi’s are facing and feels emphatically for them. This is what adds to her credibility and makes the reader want to read and agree wth her.
  ¶ 4:23 PM

  Benjamin's essay about storytelling is like a wake up call to all of us. In this essay, he metions storytelling and how it has been lost and replaced over the years by the more "attractive" media and novels.
Storytelling is an art though today, we hardly find any good story tellers. The art of narrating an experience verbally to an quiet audience waiting breathlessly for every word; a group of people sitting around one person, all with eager and amazed eyes, listening with full concentration. That is a sight one doesn't get to see these days. The days of story telling are fading away and it is being replaced by the more popular novel. However, a bigger threat to story telling comes from the advancement in technology, development of the media. This essay focuses mainly on the advantages of story telling and why this form of art is slowly but steadily dissapearing.
The art of storytelling, as per the author, develops from experience, from stories heard from different people, from travels in foreign lands, to unknown places. He basically classifies storytellers in two categories -
the people who have stayed in their lands and have a knowledge of the local tales and traditions
and
the people who have travelled far and wide and have experiences to share.
Both the kinds enjoy an equally attentive and eager audience. However, these two categories overlap closely. The people who have settled in one place are those who after travelling far and wide have finally chosen to settle down in one place. Thus, the audience would get to hear tales about local traditions as well as faraway lands.
Every story has something or the other to give to the listener. Besides awe and amazement, most stories have either a moral or a practical application. Each story offers some advice or a proverb which makes the listener realize the importance of old sayings, thus preserving traditions while giving a valid reason for it.
The greatest treasure storytelling offers is imagination, creativity and an escape to the miraculous. None of these can be got from a novel. A story captivates the mind and is highly sensous as it makes the listener imagine himself taken away to the land where the story occurs. Each person who narrates a story, can do so successfully only if the story has been embedded in his mind. Each time a storyteller tells a story, he transfers part of himself to his listeners and this way, he becomes immortal.
The basic of storytelling lies not in the importance of the information given in the story, but the way it affects the senses. Each piece information a story provides is meant only to affect the listeners frame of mind, to "pyschologically shade" it. The listener is free to interpret the information the way he likes, it is not enforced on him. In the essay, there is a paragraph which mentions a story by Herodotus about an egyptian king, Psammenitus who is taken prisoner by another king, Cambyses. Cambyses wants to humiliate Psammenitus for which he parades the kings daughter as a maid and his son on the way to be executed. Psammenitus is silent and motionless. But when he sees one of his old servants, an impoverished man, in those ranks, he beats his head giving the greatest signs of mourning. This can be interpreted in a lot of ways, but Herodotus leaves the interpretation to us. In this way, he very successfully shades our mind.
Stories give us a picture of perfectness, of fantasy, of wonder and miracles; something which we cannot see in our real lives. It thus helps incorporate some good, to bring some amount of that perfectness from the story into our lives.
The main reasons given for the "slow death" of storytelling are the advancement of technology and the gradual shift from the stress on "pyschological shading" to information. Advancement in technologies have allowed vast amount of information to be transmitted to a large audience in a short amount of time. The huge amount of information is too much for a single human being to process all at once and thus this information fails to "shade" the mind because the entire thought process is used up just to filter the informtaion. Before the advancement in technology, the mind was relaxed. It could comprehend the information and allow itself to be driven away into a fantasy world. With time, the amount of information grew. People started moving from towns to cities. LIfe was fast in the cities and no one really had the time to sit patiently to listen to a story.
In Tolstoy's words -
"It is strange that Dostoevsky is so widely read......But I simply cannot comprehend why Leskov is not read. He is a truthful writer"
An important point in the essay is that about death and immortality. It is said that the idea of eternity has ever had its strongest source in death. The picture of death was slowly removed from public memory in the nineteenth century as opposed to the twelfth century when it was portrayed in a significant way with the deathbed and all. It is during a person's last hour that he/she imparts all his knowledge, all his experiences, all his wisdom and all that he has to share onto those around him/her. This is the source for stories, advice, traditions and legends. With all this fading away, is it a wonder that storytelling is dying out?
However, those who still have the gift of telling a tale and the others, with the gift of patiently listening to it are glorified. The storyteller is an artist, a teacher, a counsel, an advisor and a sage. The storyteller is on who lets the story speak for himself/herself. This is the aura that surrounds the storyteller.
  ¶ 12:30 AM