{"id":92460,"date":"2024-11-18T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T08:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=92460"},"modified":"2024-12-03T15:51:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T20:51:16","slug":"changing-the-way-our-leaders-speak-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/11\/18\/changing-the-way-our-leaders-speak-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the way “our leaders” speak to us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia<\/a> says that the old rules of communicating to the public are undergoing a major shift.<\/p>\n

Before they executed Socrates in the year 399 BC \u2014 on charges of impiety and corrupting youth \u2014 the philosopher was given a chance to defend himself before a jury.<\/p>\n

Socrates started his defense with an unusual plea.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Socrates defends himself at his trial (painting by Louis Joseph Lebrun, 1867)<\/p><\/div>\n

He told his listeners that he had no skill at making speeches<\/em>. He just knew the everyday language of the common people.<\/p>\n

Socrates explained that he had never studied rhetoric or oratory. He feared that he would embarrass himself by speaking so plainly in his trial defense.<\/p>\n

“I show myself to be not in the least a clever speaker,” Socrates told the jurors, “unless indeed they call him a clever speaker who speaks the truth.”<\/p>\n

He knew that others in his situation would give “speeches finely tricked out with words and phrases”. But Socrates only knew how to use “the same words with which I have been accustomed to speak” in the marketplace of Athens.<\/p>\n

Socrates wasn’t exaggerating. His entire reputation was built on conversation. He never wrote a book \u2014 or anything else, as far as we can tell.<\/p>\n

Spontaneous talking was the basis of his famous “Socratic method” \u2014 a simple back-and-forth dialogue. You might say it was the podcasting of its day. He aimed to speak plainly \u2014 seeking the truth through open and unfiltered conversation.<\/p>\n

That might get you elected President in the year 2024. But it didn’t work very well in Athens, circa 400 BC.<\/p>\n

Socrates received the death penalty \u2014 and was executed by poisoning.<\/p>\n

\n

Is that shocking? Not really.<\/p>\n

Western culture was built on one-way communication. Leaders and experts speak \u2014 and the rest of us listen. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is how leaders once spoke to the people \u2014 but it\u2019s now changing.<\/p><\/div>\n

Socrates was the last major thinker to rely solely on conversation. After his death, his successors wrote books and gave lectures.<\/p>\n

That’s what powerful people do. They make decisions. They give orders. They deliver speeches.<\/p>\n

But not anymore.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the election, the new wisdom is that giving speeches from a teleprompter doesn’t work in today’s culture. Citizens want their leaders to sit down and talk.<\/p>\n

And not just in politics. You may have seen the same thing in your workplace \u2014 or in classrooms and other group settings. People now resist one-way orders from the top.<\/p>\n

The word “scripted” is now an insult. Plainspoken dialogue is considered more trustworthy. This is part of the up-versus-down revolution I’ve written about elsewhere \u2014 a conflict that, I believe, may have even more impact on society than Left-versus-Right.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, the hierarchies we’ve inherited from the past are toppling. To some extent, they are even reversing.<\/p>\n

This is now impacting how leaders are expected to speak. Events of the last few days have raised awareness of this to a new level \u2014 but the “experts” should have expected it. That’s especially true because the experts will be those most impacted by this shift. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia says that the old rules of communicating to the public are undergoing a major shift. Before they executed Socrates in the year 399 BC \u2014 on charges of impiety and corrupting youth \u2014 the philosopher was given a chance to defend himself before a jury. Socrates started his defense with an unusual plea. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,28,53],"tags":[1527,732,1346,1574],"class_list":["post-92460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-media","category-politics","tag-ancientgreece","tag-athens","tag-socrates","tag-technocracy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-o3i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92463,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92460\/revisions\/92463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}