Category: Unit 2: Rhetoric

Describe your overall ability to pay attention when it comes to school work (<100 words)   On a scale of 1 – 10, indicate how addicted you are to you phones

I would say that when it comes to schoolwork, I tend to focus better, however sometimes, I like to take a little break and go on my phone. However, I would say on a scale of 1-10, I would be a 6 or 7 in terms of general addiction to my phone.

While reading “My Distraction Sickness” please note how long it takes you to get through the piece (Google says it’s a 45 min read); also, count the number of times you get distracted (for whatever reason) and tally them at the end.

With all of my distractions, it took me about an hour and a half to read the entire article, with 35 distractions.

Describe the tone of all three articles, how do they differ? (<100 words)

The tone of all three articles were drastically different. Sullivan’s was taking the approach of an addict telling you their recovery story, Rosen’s such much more analytically in the style of a tradition research paper, and Anderson’s was much more personal and humorous with the use of the second person POV.

What are Sam Anderson’s primary arguments in defense of distraction? (see part III of In Defense of Distraction) Do you find them convincing? Why or why not (<150 words)

The primary arguments Anderson makes in his article “ In Defense of Distraction”, he is saying distraction isn’t a problem because it makes life more interesting, and that it can harness for the greater good.

After reading all three articles, what are your thoughts on this “epidemic of distraction”? (<50 words)

I agree more with Anderson’s opinion to a certain extend, because I agree that having a distraction to the world around you is necessary, but it shouldn’t be taken to an extreme.

Please annotate “My Distraction Sickness” – highlight at least three instances for each of the following rhetoric concepts: Invention, Style, Memory, Pathos, Ethos

Invention: I duly surrendered my little device, only to feel a sudden pang of panic on my way back to my seat. If it hadn’t been for everyone staring at me, I might have turned around immediately and asked for it back. Since the invention of the printing press, every new revolution in information technology has prompted apocalyptic fears. From the panic that easy access to the vernacular English Bible would destroy Christian orthodoxy all the way to the revulsion, in the 1950s, at the barbaric young medium of television, cultural critics have moaned and wailed at every turn. A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times   Arrangement: Ethos: A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Pathos: If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Logos: Distractions arrive in your brain connected to people you know (or think you know), which is the genius of social, peer-to-peer media. Since our earliest evolution, humans have been unusually passionate about gossip, which some attribute to the need to stay abreast of news among friends and family as our social networks expanded. We were hooked on information as eagerly as sugar. And give us access to gossip the way modernity has given us access to sugar and we have an uncontrollable impulse to binge.   Style: We were hooked on information as eagerly as sugar. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?” By the last few months, I realized I had been engaging — like most addicts — in a form of denial.   Memory: At your desk at work, or at home on your laptop, you disappeared down a rabbit hole of links and resurfaced minutes (or hours) later to reencounter the world. But the smartphone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing. Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives. Am I exaggerating? A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times. Most of these interactions were for less than 30 seconds, but they add up. Just as revealing: The users weren’t fully aware of how addicted they were. They thought they picked up their phones half as much as they actually did. But whether they were aware of it or not, a new technology had seized control of around one third of these young adults’ waking hours. We can eat together while checking our feeds. We can transform life into what the writer Sherry Turkle refers to as “life-mix.” But of course, as I had discovered in my blogging years, the family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together.

Distraction/Attention worksheet

Warren Israel

Professor Wilson Ding

English 2150

October 15, 2023

Option 1: Choose two artworks of the same medium and genre and write two pages of analysis comparing, and contrasting those artifacts’ rhetorical elements. 

Two chosen artworks: 

• Marc Chagall “I and the Village”
• Kamala Ibrahim Ishag “Untitled”

When I went to the MOMA, two paintings really stood out to me, I and the Village by Marc Chagall and the untitled work of Kamala Ibrahim Ishag. I wanted to discuss the Marc Chagall painting because he is a very famous painter in Israeli and Jewish history. In fact, in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament hall, there is a hall solely dedicated to his artwork. The Ishag painting I chose because after touring the museum for a hot minute, Tasnima, Sabeehah, and I wanted to sit down and rest. During my research, I found that Ishag was an influential artist in Sudan, and helped establish the modern art movement in Sudan. We coincidentally sat in front of this painting, and as I was reading the description, I noticed many striking comparisons to Chagall’s.The main similarity I noticed was that both works depicted spiritual aspects of religion. Many of Chagall’s most famous works portray Jews in their Eastern European villages, or shetels (as they are called in Yiddish). They are very abstract and fantastically, almost psychedelic in appearance. Ishag’s painting illustrates a Sudanese women’s spirit possession cult named Zar. Both paintings also represent elements of nature. In the description of I and The Village, it stated that Chagall wanted to show the connection between humans and animals, and highlight the Hasidic belief that animals were humanity’s link to the universe. Ishag also utilized nature in her piece by using earthy colors, which helped enhance the motif of ancient African folk religions. The main difference between the two paintings is the perspective of the artists in relation to their works. Chagall grew up in the setting of his artwork. This is most likely why it contains a very diverse and vibrant array of colors. Chagall has a more personal relationship to this work, and by using these strong colors, the audience sees the childlike and lively perspective he does. Ishag, however, has a significantly more analytical position on her work. Although Ishag does have an interest in Zar, this was gained from her anthropological research on the community. While Chagall intends to show the audience his perspective as an insider, Ishag is attempting to show the audience the Zar community as an outsider. This is why Ishag uses earthy colors, and why she shows the faces of the women instead of painting from the perspective of the women. Ishag is painting the earthy, outer shell of this experience while painting in an abstract manner to attempt to explain to her audience what the experience is like. While both paintings are abstract depictions of religious communities, Chagall paints with more lively colors to show his insider childhood perspective, and Ishag paints in earthy, muted colors because since she is an outsider, she can only paint the exterior of the situation.

The main ways both debaters explained their arguments was to show the perspective of the Black man in America. In this field, Baldwin has inherent ethos over Buckley and the audience because he was most likely the only Black person in the room. He utilized pathos by explaining that his ancestors helped build America as slaves, financially, and literally because slaves were responsible for many pieces of infrastructure across the country. He also explained how when he was a child, he was taught that his ancestors were essentially worthless because they weren’t the famous figures of white history, and how American heroes, such as Gary Cooper, were seen as fighting Black people. He finally employed logos by stating the hypocrisy in having built the country, yet not being able to completely enjoy the privileges of it. 

Buckley possesses an ethos to discuss the plight of African Americans because he is a well respected academic and political commentator. However, this pales in comparison to Baldwin because he is not Black, and he grew with significantly more privilege than Baldwin. Therefore, when he shares experiences of a black man getting harassed by the police or getting kicked out of a bar, it doesn’t appear as genuine as Baldwin. For pathos, Buckley mostly made quippy remarks. One in particular I found to be somewhat amusing is when he said “I assume that if you all were to become the governors of the United States, then the problem of racism will end immediately.” This is a good form of pathos because through humor, he is able to engage the audience, and if he becomes likable enough to them, he can make them agree with what he is saying. Two arguments Buckley made while using logos stuck out to me. First he said that “Everything has to come at the expense of something else.” and “Things are changing in American society because Baldwin is able to share the problems of the Black community, and people show concern about it.”

1. Father son: To what extent does father involvement in a child’s life impact their romantic relationships?
2. Speaking Hebrew at home: To what extent is the Hebrew Language richer than English? 
3. Jewish family dynamics: To what extent is the role of the grandmother in the jewish household different from other cultures?