Experienced stage magicians will tell you that what matters most is not the cleverness of your magic trick, but the compelling quality of your narrative. A well-executed card trick is an amusing diversion, but a psychologically effective illusion, one that powerfully draws its audience in to suspend its disbelief, can make an impression that lasts a lifetime.<\/p>\n
Which leads to an obvious question: If you are fighting for a cause — let’s say a good cause, like fighting poverty or discrimination, or helping to ensure a cleaner environment — to what extent is is ok to employ the principles of effective stage magic?<\/p>\n
I’m not talking about making cards disappear. Rather, I’m talking about the ability to draw in an audience, to weave a compelling and emotionally engaging narrative, to move people to action through the sheer power of your performance.<\/p>\n
Is it “cheating” to lean on such tools, rather than letting your good message speak for itself? Or is it in fact the opposite: That to effectively fight for a good cause, you need to use every rhetorical trick in the book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Experienced stage magicians will tell you that what matters most is not the cleverness of your magic trick, but the compelling quality of your narrative. A well-executed card trick is an amusing diversion, but a psychologically effective illusion, one that powerfully draws its audience in to suspend its disbelief, can make an impression that lasts … Continue reading “The question of rhetoric”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14897,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14896\/revisions\/14897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}