Lingua Franca #6: Pathos

ALMOST ANY SUBJECT PRESENTED TO US

“Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us…”
 
-- Aristotle,  Rhetoric
 
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LINGUA FRANCA #6: PATHOS
 
For around 2200 years – from roughly 400 BC to 1800 AD – general education was the domain of the very wealthy.
 
There were many scattered exceptions, and there was a variety of technical training available to people of crafts and professions, but for most of human history, most humans have been illiterate, innumerate, and had very little training in critical thinking, the sciences, history, or philosophy.
 
Now, to really get one’s mind around how it used to be, you have to try to imagine the patterns of people’s lives in those days and ages. The primary sources of generational wealth in ancient days were land and natural resources, and there were constant lawsuits, debates, and conflicts over who controlled what lands, who was infringing on another person’s lands, who would be governor and overseer of newly incorporated lands into an empire, who would collect taxes and tributes and customs duties, and so forth.
 
Likewise, in many ancient societies, the primary goal of the many wealthier people was to rise to political prominence – to become leaders of a city or state, of the local religion or cult, and to otherwise influence fellow aristocrats and landowners and priests.
 
As such, for those 2200 years, rhetoric  was one of the chief topics of education; almost all general education curriculum had materials on how to think, prepare arguments, and be well-spoken and persuasive. This was essential to success in aristocratic life.
 
Around the Industrial Revolution, this began to change rapidly. Suddenly, crafts and factories and the development of new goods and more production became a greater source of wealth than cultivation of land, along with banking and trading which supported this.
 
The  Prussian Education System , from the most militant German state, became the model of general education for most of the Western world – it emphasized a lot of the general elements of thinking, calculating, math, literacy, and so forth – but it emphatically did not  teach rhetoric; it aimed at cultivating loyalty to the state and that strange sort of militant Prussian internal harmony. Rhetoric was not part of the curriculum.
 
If you received a general education in a regular school of a Western country, you probably learned in the Prussian model – without realizing it. Things like homework and assignments were designed to train a class of workers on how to discharge their duties well, not to question and analyze and persuade about how things were being done.
 
Indeed, before the opening of this piece, did you even know Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric?
 
“Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. ”
 
The “available means of persuasion” – what is that ? Have you ever even heard of such a thing?
 
And yet, it’s very important – and with all the upheavals in technology and media right now, perhaps more important than it’s been for many decades, if not centuries. In this chapter, we’ll explore the nature of rhetoric , and the descent of one type of persuasive speech – pathos , the type that’s least well-understood by us in the modern age.
 
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THE ABSTRACT AND THE CONCRETE
 
Socrates died in 399 BC from hemlock poison. Aristotle was born in 384 BC, 15 years later. Which is to say, born early enough to hear firsthand accounts of the conditions that led to Socrates’s trial and death, but with around three decades between the proceedings and Aristotle hearing a recounting of them.
 
Plato, born 429 BC, was 30 years old at Socrates’s trial and lived, remarkably, another 51 years after Socrates’s death. Plato’s longevity explains both why he was able to write so many works, and why his early works differ so much from the latter. Plato’s early works are grounded in Socrates’s actual dialogues with people, whereas his later works, like The Republic,  are generally thought to employ Socrates in a fictional role, saying things he never said to advance Plato’s ideas.
 
Aristotle studied under Plato in Athens, but I think those of us in modern times can be easily misled when we hear that Aristotle studied at Plato’s “school” or that Aristotle founded a “school.”
 
The topics the Ancient Greeks were diving into were very fresh, new, and alive – there was, as far as I can tell, far less of a set curriculum of instruction than what we think of when we think of a modern university.
 
These were discussion groups; groups of enquiry. It’s likely that whoever led a school would organize specific topics of discussion and study on certain days, and also would just have free-form discussions to explore the world, share observations, and debate.
 
If you want to put it into modern context, I think it was far more akin to pure experimental research like DARPA or Bell Labs than it was to a set university curriculum. The great thinkers of the age would work out ideas alone, take observations, and do experiments, and then come together in the group to share those. Occasional, there’d be very specific instruction in geometry or poetry or whatever, but there wasn’t a curriculum to be studied in order to receive a degree or a professional license of any sort.
 
We’ll cover the nature of philosophy  more next chapter – what it means now, and what it used to mean – but from this background, you can understand how Plato and Aristotle could wind up with such different conclusions about the world.
 
Some 19 centuries after Plato and Aristotle, the Italian master painter Raphael would paint the very famous School of Athens  with Plato and Aristotle at the center of it – Plato pointing up into the air, to show his grounding in abstract ideas, and Aristotle pointing to the ground to show his grounding in empirical study of the world.
 
Plato was one of the most terrific poets of all-time, to be sure. His language is beautiful. For my money, just in this amateur’s opinion, Plato is wildly overrated beyond that – I think his contemporary Xenophon surpasses him in many ways, and Aristotle surpasses him in every way.
 
(Actually, that’s not just my opinion – great thinkers and doers throughout history have tended to favor Xenophon over Plato: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Niccolo Machiavelli, and many others held Xenophon in the highest esteem, and Plato not so much. Both Xenophon and Aristotle tend to be regarded much more highly than Plato in any given sane era.)
 
But we’re not speaking of Xenophon this chapter – I’ll simply say you should read  Anabasis  which is one of the greatest memoirs of all-time about the Greek mercenaries during the Persian Civil War, and  The Education of Cyrus  about how character is developed, and how nations and empires are formed.
 
No, we’re talking about Aristotle here – and his grounding in the empirical. In addition to work on what’s now understood to be philosophy – metaphysics, logic, and such – he also did a tremendous amount of study of the world, both the natural sciences, as well as how men communicate and how communities are formed.
 
Aristotle’s Rhetoric  is a difficult read; it takes patience and hard work, but there’s many gems in it. Aristotle brings the same rigor to the subject that he would in studying marine biology and many of the natural sciences – making observations of what actually happens in dialogue and persuasion, the conditions they happen under, and synthesizing specifics into general rules of thumb.
 
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THE SOPHIST AND THE RHETORITICIAN
 
There was one area where Plato and Aristotle were in firm agreement – that sophists were not-so-great.
 
From Aristotle’s Rhetoric –
 
“What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. In rhetoric, however, the term 'rhetorician' may describe either the speaker's knowledge of the art, or his moral purpose.”
 
There’s already a gem in here along the lines of our exploration of Lingua Franca.
 
The modern definition of sophist, from the Apple dictionary –
 
sophist | ˈ säf ə st|
noun
• a paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric in ancient Greece, associated in popular thought with moral skepticism and specious reasoning.
• a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments.
 
We’ll discuss this more next chapter, but “philosophy” came from the words “Philo [love] Sophia [wisdom]” – a philosopher was a “lover of wisdom.”

This was contrasted against a Sophist, which came from the same root word Sophia – but it meant, simply, “the wise.”
 
A philosopher, then, was someone who was searched for wisdom, and a sophist was someone who portrayed themselves as wise – usually for pay.
 
We could say that the ancient philosopher was more like a scientist who was trying to figure out how things actually were, and the ancient sophist was more like an amoral trial attorney who might suspect his client is guilty of a crime, and yet wants to mislead the jury so that the guilty man is acquitted.
 
That’s the second definition of sophist – “a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments.” The sophist was less interested in the truth, and more interested in persuading – regardless of the nature of the underlying truth.
 
Yet, note!
 
The word “rhetoric,” even now 2400 years after Aristotle, still is tainted with the association of sophistry.
 
Aristotle –
 
“What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. In rhetoric, however, the term 'rhetorician' may describe either the speaker's knowledge of the art, or his moral purpose.”
 
This is already a useful lesson for Lingua Franca  – when someone says, “that’s just rhetoric” they mean that it’s sophistry .
 
And yet, these two mappings onto one word is unfortunate – because everything persuasive is rhetoric . Rhetoric doesn’t have to misleading; indeed, Aristotle notes that rhetoric is just a technical skill. Similar to engineering, you can use rhetoric to build great things or terrible things.
 
But these two meanings are mapped onto the word rhetoric, and the word suffers for it. When people hear the word “rhetoric” they tend to think of dishonesty, sophistry.
 
Aristotle notes that – it was true even in his day so many centuries ago. You could call someone a “rhetorician” in a pejorative sense, if you thought they didn’t care about the truth and only wanted to be persuasive.
 
But again , all persuasive speech is rhetoric . In a technical sense, it’s value-neutral. You can use rhetoric to advance the truth – Aristotle notes it’s easier to advance the truth than falsehoods with rhetoric – or you can use it to try to obscure the truth.
 
So there’s already a lesson there – when a particular word is both technical and moral, often the moral definition of it dominates one’s thinking and discussion. That’s unfortunate – because rhetoric is incredibly valuable to at least be aware of , and to understand , and to be able to navigate skillfully.
 
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THE THREE MODES OF PERSUASIVE SPEECH
 
Aristotle –
 
“Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.”
 
It might not be obvious on a quick skim, but there’s actually an immense amount of lessons in that single paragraph.
 
Aristotle notes three types of persuasive speech, and he elaborates on them much further in Rhetoric .
 
The first is emphasizing your character and the nature of you, yourself, as a speaker on the topic. This includes things like being fundamentally honest, decent, pro-social, and so forth, as well as being credible in the area that’s being spoken about. A successful medical doctor can emphasize their long studies and their history of success in medicine to be taken more seriously when speaking about health and medical interventions. This is Aristotle’s first type of persuasion.
 
Next is “putting the audience in a certain frame of mind” – primarily emotionally. This is appealing to the audience’s emotions and prejudices, in order that they receive what you’re saying more favorably. This would be like a doctor who is about to advise someone to quit smoking saying, “Think of your children. Wouldn’t it be terrible if you died of cancer and they were all alone in the world?” This is the most important and least understood part of rhetoric, and we’ll cover it much more in a moment.
 
Finally, there’s “proof” – or, generally speaking, just logically laying out facts and evidence, cause-and-effect. In the doctor’s case, it might be referring to the science behind a particular health intervention, all the studies on the topic, the patterns they’ve observed in treating patients in the past, and so on.
 
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ETHOS, LOGOS, AND PATHOS
 
Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion are now typically called Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.
 
The first two are clear enough – we can see the root words in them right away.
 
“Ethos” of course is the root word of ethical . This refers more to character-based ethos than to ethical codes in the modern sense, but we can see the word and are familiar with it right away.
 
“Logos” is familiar to us as well – logical . That makes sense.
 
But when Pathos  is defined in modern terms, it’s typically defined as “an emotional appeal.”
 
But, wait – I don’t see the word “emotion” being derived from the word “pathos” – isn’t that sort of odd? Ethos, ethical. Logos, logical. Pathos… emotional?
 
What’s going on here?
 
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A PATHETIC APPEAL
 
The Greek word “pathos” does have a modern equivalent – pathetic.
 
Ethos was an ethical appeal  – to show that you’ve got excellent character and trustworthiness on the subject you were weighing in on.
 
Logos was a logical appeal  – to outline the facts, evidence, and cause-and-effect of your case.
 
Pathos was a pathetic appeal  – designed to invoke feelings of pity and prejudice.
 
The English word “passion” also descends from the Greek pathos  – but again, in the vein of Lingua Franca , the word passion has flipped its valence as well. When the Christian tradition speaks of the “Passion of Christ” – Jesus being tortured and executed by the Romans – they weren’t using the word “passion” in the sense of “I’m really passionate about social media.”
 
Passion too used to be a strong negative word. Being in the grips of passion would be a bad thing. Romeo and Juliet both committing suicide over star-crossed love would be passionate , in the old sense of the word. Being in “the grips of passion” meant being unable to think clearly, being reduced to the state of being an animal, unable to use one’s logic, reason, ethics, and morality. It was decidedly not a good thing, in the old sense of the word.
 
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PATHOS, PATHOS, PATHOS
 
Both Ethos  and Logos  are not hard to understand. In modern English, to employ Pathos , emphasize your credibility and good character. In modern English, to employ Logos , emphasize the facts, evidence, and cause-and-effect relationships.
 
Pathos … pathos is something else.
 
Aristotle: “… persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions.  Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.  It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts.”
 
We can see, then, why rhetoric  can so easily be treated as a bad thing . Even in Aristotle’s day, the sophist-type rhetorician would be focused almost entirely on getting the audience into a receptive and pleased mindset, or into a hostile and pained mindset, appropriate to what judgments they want made.
 
This, of course, is completely independent from credibility and character  (Ethos), as well as all the facts, evidence, and logic!
 
Aristotle obviously thinks very poorly of this type of persuasion being the primary focus, but here is where the genius of Aristotle shines.
 
He mentions that the best courts and constitutions forbid anything except laying out the facts of a case, thus attempting to have judges make their assessments solely on Logos.
 
But Aristotle didn’t stop there and moralize – he spent around half of Rhetoric  analyzing every type of common persuasive emotion, who tends to feel it, and under what conditions they feel it –
 
“The Emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgements, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites. We must arrange what we have to say about each of them under three heads. Take, for instance, the emotion of anger: here we must discover (1) what the state of mind of angry people is, (2) who the people are with whom they usually get angry, and (3) on what grounds they get angry with them. It is not enough to know one or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be unable to arouse anger in any one. ”
 
This is the genius of Aristotle. He goes through many types of emotions – Pathos – and the conditions under which they emerge. He makes fine-grained distinctions as to when and how these things happen. EX –
 
“There are three kinds of slighting-contempt, spite, and insolence. (1) Contempt is one kind of slighting: you feel contempt for what you consider unimportant, and it is just such things that you slight. (2) Spite is another kind; it is a thwarting another man's wishes, not to get something yourself but to prevent his getting it. The slight arises just from the fact that you do not aim at something for yourself: clearly you do not think that he can do you harm, for then you would be afraid of him instead of slighting him, nor yet that he can do you any good worth mentioning, for then you would be anxious to make friends with him. (3)  Insolence is also a form of slighting, since it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the pleasure involved.  (Retaliation is not 'insolence', but vengeance.) The cause of the pleasure thus enjoyed by the insolent man is that he thinks himself greatly superior to others when ill-treating them.  That is why youths and rich men are insolent; they think themselves superior when they show insolence. ”
 
You read this, and you get smarter. Aristotle’s Rhetoric  is a difficult read – it’s not pleasant easy “beach reading” – but it makes you smarter.
 
Aristotle goes on in this vein for a long time, and also analyzes the emotions common to youth, people in the prime of their life, and in old age. It’s all very insightful. Another single example should illustrate –
 
“We will next consider Emulation, showing in what follows its causes and objects, and the state of mind in which it is felt.  Emulation is pain caused by seeing the presence, in persons whose nature is like our own, of good things that are highly valued and are possible for ourselves to acquire; but it is felt not because others have these goods, but because we have not got them ourselves.  It is therefore a good feeling felt by good persons, whereas envy is a bad feeling felt by bad persons.  Emulation makes us take steps to secure the good things in question, envy makes us take steps to stop our neighbour having them. Emulation must therefore tend to be felt by persons who believe themselves to deserve certain good things that they have not got, it being understood that no one aspires to things which appear impossible.  It is accordingly felt by the young and by persons of lofty disposition. Also by those who possess such good things as are deserved by men held in honour-these are wealth, abundance of friends, public office, and the like; on the assumption that they ought to be good men, they are emulous to gain such goods because they ought, in their belief, to belong to men whose state of mind is good.”
 
What a veritable gold-mine of insight!
 
There’s probably dozens of lessons that could be illustrated here – we could note, for instance, that we have no commonly used modern word for “Emulation” – which is a mix of admiration, desire, worthiness, and striving. Aristotle notes that it’s only felt by people who feel like they have a chance to get whatever they want to emulate; people don’t feel this towards things that seem impossible to them.
 
Aristotle contrasts it against envy – where you wish the person you were envious of didn’t have the thing in question. Actually, in modern English, “envy” might be more similar to Aristotle’s “emulation”; whereas we’d probably say “jealousy” for what Aristotle calls envy.
 
This is the genius of Aristotle – he doesn’t particularly like the sophists of Athens running around preaching and teaching Pathos  as the primary means of persuasion, but he nonetheless investigates exactly how it’s done, with guidelines on how to do and to counteract it.
 
To flip envy/jealousy to admiration/emulation, then, would include showing that the person in question deserves the things they have, and – more importantly – emphasizing that the listener could also reach those levels.
 
There’s so many gems here – Aristotle’s Rhetoric  is hard work to read, but it makes you smarter.
 
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ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC: A MODERN EXAMPLE
 
I try as much as possible to use no modern political examples to illustrate these works, because again, I aim for principles that are timeless, and don’t want to get bogged down in – well, the passions of the day.
 
But rhetoric  is always designed to come alive in its age – citing even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from less than 100 years ago, wouldn’t make the example come alive, so we’ll turn towards the recent day and age for an example.
 
We can see that the recent American Presidential election was absolutely dominated by ethos  and pathos , with very little logos  involved. This has been the trend in American politics for quite some time, but it just hit its high-water mark.
 
We’ll take the example of the American Republican Presidential Debate to illustrate some aspects of rhetoric. Do kindly please refrain from sending me mail about the recent election; I’m not interested in discussing it, I merely wanted one real-life example that people can understand and learn from. I’m interested in the analysis more than the current day’s passions.
 
With that said, at the Republican debate,  you can see all this on fully display  –
 
Moderator Megyn Kelly: “Mr. Trump. One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides – in particular, when it comes to women. You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals’ –“
 
This is a challenge to Trump’s ethos ; it’s suggesting he has bad character.
 
He interrupts immediately with a joke –
 
Candidate Donald Trump: “Only Rosie O’Donnel.”  (A sometimes adversary of his in the past, who might be described as heavyset.)
 
The audience laughs and cheers raucously.
 
(Aristotle noted in Rhetoric  that “those who reply with humorous levity when we are speaking seriously […] indicates contempt.” )
 
In the face of a pretty strong allegation, Trump responds with contemptuous humor – indicating a sense of superiority, which, incidentally, is actually sometimes an effective technique at preserving ethos . (That’s not to say it’s morally right or wrong, just that it’s effective – indeed, he won the GOP nomination and then the Presidency.)
 
Kelly: “No it wasn’t. Your Twitter account –“
 
Trump (to the audience, who are still laughing): “Thank you.”
 
Kelly: “For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnel.”

Trump (contemptuously): “I’m sure it was.”
 
Kelly (continuing): “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women's looks. You once told a contestant on 'Celebrity Apprentice' it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”
 
We can see here the word “temperament” as almost an exact stand-in for ethos . It’s, broadly speaking, an attack on Trump’s character. You can also see pathos  mixed in – ending the question with “the war on women.”
 
That’s not to say there’s no factual material in the question and the selection – but it’s dominated by ethos and pathos.
 
Trump’s response: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.
 
(Audience cheers.)

Trump: “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win any more. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico, both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody. And frankly what I say, and oftentimes it’s fun, it’s kidding, we have a good time – what I say is what I say. And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, but I could probably not be, based on the way you’ve treated me, but I wouldn’t do that.
 
(Audience mixes cheering and jeering.)
 
Trump: “We need strength. We need energy. We need quickness. We need brain in this country to turn it around. That I can tell you – right now.”
 
Again, you can see that the answer is around 90% pathos, with the rest of it ethos. Logos is not on display here; this isn’t a reasoned and measured analysis of evidence; not at all.
 
Of course, “big trouble… don’t win any more… we lose… we lose… we need strength…” – this is pure pathos .
 
And of course, “I’ve been challenged by so many people” points at ethos  – character. Trump then flags the whole thing as personal, and implies Kelly has a bad character in response to her question. “Honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, but I could probably not be, based on the way you’ve treated me…”
 
There is very little logos  here, if any. Indeed, on the GOP side of the election, the candidate that spoke most often about “pure policy” (logos) was Jeb Bush, who did very poorly despite raising the most fundraising and being seen as the frontrunner for the nomination before the election cycle started.
 
When you start to study the elements of rhetoric, you can actually see how speakers are employing it and using it in real time. The whole exchange by Kelly and Trump – it was a famous one and a large part of the news cycle during the election – was dominated by ethos and pathos.
 
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LESSONS
 
To wrap up, there’s many profitable lessons in the vein of Lingua Franca  here. First, I’d do well to say again that Aristotle’s  Rhetoric  is worth reading. It’s hard reading, but profitable.
 
Next, we can note the case where the word “rhetoric” gets mixed-up with its most common and abused form – the pathetic appeal  only. In modern English, we might say that it’s “trying to be manipulative towards the listener’s emotions.”
 
But – we can take a cue form Aristotle here. Rhetoric is simultaneously a value-neutral technical field, and a description of a specific type of morality and intentions in practice. The latter – we could call it sophistry – can have many negative effects.
 
But most people throw the baby out with the bathwater – yes, much of rhetoric is disreputable, and it’s easy to see why it has a bad reputation. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be studied by honest and forthright people – just the opposite, in fact.
 
Rhetoric is . It happens. It’s happening all the time. It’s worthy of study.
 
Next, we might note that the word “Pathos” has been covered-up a little bit in modern language; it’s now called an “emotional appeal” instead of a “pathetic appeal.”
 
The reason is obvious enough – the word pathetic  drifted from a slightly negative valence to a strong negative valence over time.
 
But indeed, I think you can see how a great many of what are called “emotional appeals” do indeed trend towards the pathetic – “war on women”, “this country is in big trouble and doesn’t win any more” – these are not uplifting and cheerful emotions; the root of them is fear and despair, which seem to have always been more motivating and animating to an audience than mere cheerfulness and optimism.
 
We can draw a final lesson about rhetoric  and pathos , then, in the vein of our Lingua Franca series. Because the concept  of rhetoric is associated with sophistry and pathos, many good people neglect to study it – feel it’s disreputable and not worth learning.
 
But if you neglect to study rhetoric, you cede the ground of arguments to those people who do know it and have mastered it. Rhetoric can be employed for disreputable ends, it’s true, but that’s not the only thing it can do – ever and always, people are persuaded by a mix of the character and background of a speaker, the emotions the speaker instills, and – lastly and sadly often leastly – by the facts, evidence, logic, and cause-and-effect.
 
Aristotle said it like this –
 
“The use of persuasive speech is to lead to decisions. (When we know a thing, and have decided about it, there is no further use in speaking about it.) This is so even if one is addressing a single person and urging him to do or not to do something, as when we scold a man for his conduct or try to change his views: the single person is as much your 'judge' as if he were one of many; we may say, without qualification, that any one is your judge whom you have to persuade.”
 
Indeed, all persuasive speech is rhetoric – how could it be otherwise?
 
The topic is not just well-worthy of study – it’s absolutely crucial to gain an understanding of, to navigate modern life.