Advocacy

I’m thinking to myself while walking down the street: everywhere I go lately, I encounter advocacy. At the intersection of a one-way street and a two-way street, there is written on the sidewalk at the corner, in bold purple chalk, in front of an old white clapboard house, this sentence, “Be responsible for your own life.” I imagine that here lives a philosopher, and an advocate of responsibility. I wonder if the philosopher/advocate’s dinner was burnt while he or she kneeled on the sidewalk scratching out the message.

An SUV scoots past me advocating a lifestyle. It roars up the one way street with a variety of environmental stickers covering its bumper. An unkempt house with a lawn in the middle of the block displays a sign that advocates for a fringe mayoral candidate. A gang member advocates in hieroglyphics on a trash can left overnight on the street. Advocacy does not appear to be limited by age or by economic status. Advocates are everywhere.

Much of the media is dedicated to advocating. It advocates for liberalism or conservativism or humanism or consumerism, for animal rights, for a healthy lifestyle or to abolish a disease. Some advocates wear ribbons on their clothing, to each cause its own color. Men in suits hold Bibles wandering from house to house knocking on doors. They advocate for salvation or for membership in a church and sometimes for both.

Some advocates advocate against other advocates citing flaws in their doctrine. Some may call these finer points of debate unimportant; yet to be an advocate, one must cling to the fine points which define their correct position. Small or large these differences count and are therefore worthwhile advocating for. It is important to be right.

Advocates become fluent in the data and/or rhetoric supporting their side of an argument. Advocates are frequently deaf to data or rhetoric of the opposite point of view. It is after all time-consuming simply listening to one side. Listening to both sides is often too much of a commitment. Should there be a third side to an argument it is traumatic enough for some advocates to simply swap their ribbon for a simpler shade.

It is after all difficult to get off-message with a linear understanding and a scripted line of reasoning. Like a one-way street where all cars go in the same direction, it is dangerous not to go in the right direction. It is the responsible thing to do. However when an advocate suddenly turns into the two way traffic of an argument, what are they to do? They may be unable to negotiate skillfully guided arguments aimed in the opposite direction. It’s safer to stay in the flow, safer to steer straight ahead.

An argument can’t get out of hand on a one way street of thought. Advocates don’t want to be lured into a two-way street, the signs and arrows have told them the correct direction in which to think. A wrong turn onto a two-way argument is confusing and could spark original thought and unwanted wrong-way leanings to uncomfortable logic.

I’ll never learn how the street philosopher would define an advocate’s responsibility in life. I doubt that the sidewalk scribe would assert that advocates are singly responsible to travel in one direction for their own interests. Perhaps the philosopher would assert that responsibility requires skillful advocacy with full understanding of opposing arguments; one-way streets are seldom sufficient to arrive at a destination.

Addendum:

A wise man sent me this quote from by another wise man in reference to this post:

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle.