How to not be spoilt for choice

The Greeks have had a fair influence on how we speak and perceive speech today. We can also thank them for writing some of the first recipe books for rhetorical speech and spicing up communication. There were too many cooks, and Plato’s Man may indeed be spoiled, but I love what they cooked up anyway.

It’s easy to imagine Athens choked full of pontifical middle-aged men who called themselves “philosophers”. It comes from the Greek “phil” or love + “soph” or wisdom. “Soph” eventually came to be associated with anything that involved cunning, knowledge and confusion, as should be fitting. A sophomore is someone who needs more knowledge because they’re still in their second year of college (If it seems like a poor joke, then it’s probably true); Sophie’s Choice is so because it’s a difficult choice between equally well-suited options, which is often solved by an internal monologue of sophistry (or the art of speaking wisdom). Those who practise sophistry need to do it with sophistication.

Sophists utilize rhetoric. And the Greeks played hopscotch with it. The art of speaking, or manipulation, or being a jerk, was broken down into elements which made up rhetoric. Everything from the conception to the presentation of an idea is rhetoric. There’s a reason why “It’s Bond. James Bond” is better than “My name is James Bond” and “I like you, and I want to date you” is worth billions less than “I’ve got a blank space baby, and I’ll write your name”. You can always transform into something better.