Sophistication: Rhetoric and the Rise of Self-Consciousness

Our digitized, technological culture is controlled by five principles of language and reality that were first enunciated during the fifth century BCE in the city-states of Greece as the basis of the art of rhetoric:

* Words are tools
* Images are real
* Information is power
* Change is inevitable
* Truth is relative

These rhetorical principles are expressed in conflicting concepts of history, politics, education, ethics, and aesthetics. They invest our art and literature with the archetypal themes and symbols that portray rudimentary emotions. And they influence the fundamental concepts and methods of our political, cultural, and educational institutions.

Yet, as recent history demonstrates, the sophistication of our culture is a Faustian bargain affecting all the realms of self-consciousness, self-expression, and self-realization.