 In this video, I want to discuss some of the major cultural premises that we use in persuasive arguments and that we use as persuaders. So I want to remind you, this is the third in a series of three videos related to the major premises that we use. We talked about psychological premises or the tools of motivation in one video. Then we also talked about content premises in another video. In this video, we're taking on our third and final topic in this series, which is cultural premises. So just as a brief review, I want to remind you that all of these are what we call entomomatic persuasion. They follow the entomomatic persuasion model set forth by our pal Aristotle, our friend Aristotle, who kind of looked at syllogism and said, you know, that's maybe not the best way to persuade people and there may be a better way to do that. So he said, let's get rid of syllogisms. Let's just assume that the major premise can go unstated. That the major premise that we would normally have in a syllogism will be unstated and that the audience will then supply that and we'll be on the same page. We'll be on the same wavelength with them, but we'll just leave it unstated and that will then provide, well, first of all, we have to be able to identify that common ground as a persuader to make sure that we're on the same page as the audience and to make sure that we're thinking the same thing that they are. But when we do and when we can make that connection, it encourages a significant co-creation of meaning between the audience and the persuader and establishes a really strong connection in that way as well. So as I said, we've looked at three different types of entomomatic persuasion, three different routes of entomomatic persuasion, if you will. And those are on the process or the psychological premises that we use sometimes. We've looked at content premises and in this third and final video, we'll be looking at cultural premises that are rooted in the values and behaviors and beliefs that are passed down by our culture. So let's start off just by briefly talking about what is culture. If we're going to talk about cultural premises, we need to be on the same page with what culture is. Well, culture is the learned and shared set of values or set of symbols, language, values and norms used to distinguish one group of people from another. So what we're going to really focus on here are these two things, learned and shared and then that set of symbols, values, symbols, language, values and norms that we use to establish culture. So just some real quick principles of cultural premises as we talked about this operates an entomomatic persuasion. So we're leaving the major premise unstated and the audience is supplying that and then the persuaders identifying that major premise as well and moving on as though it's assumed then by both parties. That just rely on our inherent cultural values and supposition. So the things that we take for granted as part of our culture and that are established as part of our culture and we need to remember that the elements of that culture are learned and shared. It's not something that's born into us, but it's something that is passed down to us from those around us. It's part of our, the enculturation process as part of our maturation as people and so we gain our culture from, we learn our culture from those around us and those who are raising us and have an influence on us. And then we in turn share that culture in the same way with those that are within our sphere of influence, if you will. So the elements of culture are learned and they are shared. It's important to keep that in mind that it's passed down. So we're going to take a look at three different kinds of cultural premises here in this video. The first are cultural images or myths and we'll go through what we mean by all those, but some various cultural images or myths that we use and can use in persuasion or commonly used in persuasion. We'll take a look at the impact of image or ethos and how that can be impactful for a persuader. And then finally we'll specifically focus on some American value, the American value system and how that is used in the persuasive process. Starting off, let's take a look at some cultural images and myths. So let's begin with what we call the wisdom of the rustic. The wisdom of the rustic. We like to look back at people who are from humble beginnings and who pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Again, particularly as people who are from westernized culture and individualized, individualistic cultures. We love people who just rise above their status and are able to do great things. We look at people like Davy Crockett. We look at people like Abraham Lincoln. We look at their humble beginnings and say, look what these people were able to accomplish. And so we use them as kind of templates to say, look, I'm a simple person as well. I'm a simple person as well. And we've seen this in various presidential campaigns. Joe Biden did it recently by continually talking about how he's just a humble guy from Scranton and a humble guy from Delaware. But his small town roots and his dad lost his job and so forth. And he rose above a station. Bill Clinton did the same thing by identifying that he was from Hope, Arkansas all the time. He's always talking about, he was the man from Hope. He was from this real humble beginnings and able to achieve because of his drive and his, you know, but he's harkening back to those days when we looked to those people here as Ronald Reagan did the same thing. Humble beginnings in Dixon, Illinois, worked as a life guard, you know, worked his way all the way up through the system and so forth to become the president of the United States. But he was, you know, kind of connected as in every man and so we do that. We reach back to these people for inspiration and say, look, these people did it and so can we. The possibility of success is another cultural image or myth that, you know, everybody has an opportunity here, right? That's the American dream, is it not? That anybody has the opportunity to do anything as long as they put in the work and have the drive and take advantage of those opportunities and things, anybody can be president, right? Anybody can be president. Anybody can be CEO of the biggest company in the world. Anybody can do the possibility of success is there. That's part of our culture. That's part of, it's a cultural myth that we have and we love talking about these and we are inspired and persuaded by these things, by this possibility that we can be and do anything that we want. The coming of a Messiah and we're not talking, you know, about the Christian heritage and things like that, we're talking about when society finds itself in a difficult place, right? Society finds itself in a crossroads and society finds itself in a difficult situation or when a person perceives that to be the truth, then we start to look for, well, who's going to save us? There's somebody who's going to come along and save us. So one recent example of this, again, like it or not, is the Donald Trump ascension to the presidency, right? The America was kind of in a crossroads. We're kind of wondering, you know, who are we and people were dissatisfied. And so here comes our Messiah telling us everything that we want to hear, telling us how he can solve all these problems. He's done it before he's pulled himself up by his bootstraps, right? He tried to pull in that wisdom of the rustic thing, although, you know, somewhat diminished by the fact that he inherited his first millions of dollars from his dad, but still many people see Trump as the coming of a Messiah, sometimes politically and other times even further than that, right? The QAnon myth postulated that he was literally going to be saving us from, you know, people in Hollywood and people in positions of power from this deep state people who were, you know, prostituting children and running, running, you know, sex rings and even eating children to gain their, I don't even remember what it's called, to gain something that will help him retain their youth and that Trump was the one person who was going to be able to conquer this. That was the whole QAnon myth, right? So he was, you know, in their eyes, almost literally the coming of a Messiah, not just politically, but societally as well. The presence of a conspiracy, we are persuaded when we think that there's a, you know, because we feel like, honestly, when there's a big problem, it must have a big and elaborate answer, right? And the big elaborate causes behind us, there can't be anything simple. If it's a complex problem, there's no simple solution and there's no simple reason for it. So we, in some cases, invent or want to put in place the presence of a conspiracy. So again, not to belabor a point, but, you know, we come back to this whole QAnon thing and there's no simple answer for why society was facing some of these issues. And so we create and people bought into this, you know, whether it was a joke to begin with, whether it was serious to begin with, I don't know, but people bought into this whole huge conspiracy, right? Because it's a complex issue and lots of complex things going on. So there must be a hugely complex solution as well that involves Trump being elected president and then being able to harness that power and do all kinds of stuff that I don't even understand. I certainly don't have the time to get into in this video, but the presence of a conspiracy is a powerful persuader as well. If we can convince people that there's a conspiracy, which in some cases we are predisposed to believe, then we can use that as an effective persuasive tactic. The value of a challenge is something that we hold dear as a cultural image as well, right? Anything worth having is worth working for. And there's there's value in challenging ourselves and pushing ourselves, right? We remember the time when in 1960 or 1961, an inaugural address when John F. Kennedy said, we will land a man on the moon. I mean, at that time, that was so outrageous a claim that that there was no I mean, we weren't even close to that. That wasn't even a possibility, really. And yet within 10 years of him saying that we landed on the moon, right? Which is pretty amazing. So we were able to achieve that in just 10 short years, which is phenomenal, right? So we could because we'd like to challenge ourselves, we see ourselves as people who are able to overcome those challenges. Which is why the Army slogan that you used to have that slogan, be all that you can be, right? Be all you can be. Challenge yourself. Get out there and push yourself, which is why, you know, we are drawn to things like challenge accepted. If you're how I met your mother fan with, yeah, we're not going to turn down a challenge. We're going to we're going to challenge ourselves. Which I even more reason I've seen these ads for the exercise bikes and different things. And there's one that's a home, it's basically a punching bag, but it's got a it's connected to electronics. I don't know, it works you through a whole workout thing. Why do we look at these things and say, yes, that's great. I want somebody to yell at me through a TV screen while I'm riding an exercise bike. I want somebody to push me when I'm hitting this punching bag. I want somebody on the video screen because we enjoy challenges. We find value in a challenge. We find that that brings us to higher levels. And so we we are persuaded when somebody challenges us, when somebody can can provide that challenge for us. That's a that's a powerful persuasive tool. And then finally, the last cultural image or method I want to look at is the eternal return. The eternal return, basically looking back and saying, look, these guys had it all figured out. These people had it all figured out so we can draw from that, that it's happened before that these people were perfect. And so we do this a lot like, for example, with the founding fathers of the United States, right? We look at them and say, well, they had it all figured out. You hear politicians all the time say, well, our forefathers did this and they said this and they set this forth in the Constitution. And the truth is the forefathers, first of all, they were not perfect. They were not perfect, right? George Washington had a pretty big stick up his butt. He was kind of like overly serious. John Adams was the same way. He's very rigid and I love John Adams, but he was very rigid in his perspective of the world and the way he looked at things. I mean, Thomas Jefferson historically, clearly had affairs with multiple slaves, had maybe children with some of his slaves and owned slaves, several of them owned slaves. Ben Franklin was a veteran womanizer. He was constantly unfaithful to his wife, but they all did great things. That's not to diminish the great things they did in founding the United States and setting all this forth. But I think if we were able to ask them, they would each say, we didn't have it all figured out. We don't know, but that's what we put on them to say, look, I'm just trying to emulate what these people are doing because they were basically perfect and they had it all figured out and that's what we need to do. That's a powerful persuasive tool. Again, to pull forth this, this is what I'm trying to, as a persuader, when you're saying I'm trying to, all I'm trying to do is recreate what our forefathers were able to do, right? I'm just trying to bring us back into what they were able to do. So that's the myth of the eternal return. So we shift gears a little bit here and move out of the cultural myths and move into another area of cultural persuasion that we call image or ethos. And this is basically saying that we're drawn to people because of our belief in them, because of their image, because of their, because of the credibility that we perceive them to bring. And it really comes down to these three things that draw us to people as persuaders, as a culture, that we're drawn to three primary things when we think about somebody's image or ethos and whether or not we're gonna be persuaded by them. First of all, it's expertise. We are persuaded by, inherently by people who seem to bring an expertise to that area. So we're talking about something medical and somebody says, well, I'm a doctor and so forth. That's very persuasive, right? Now we need to be careful because there have been, for example, talk show hosts, radio and TV talk show hosts who say, yes, I'm doctor, so-and-so, and they may be doctors in there, but they're dispensing all this advice about medicine and healthy living and lifestyle choices and things like that. I'm gonna find out that they are a doctor, but they have a PhD in English literature or something like that, not any kind of expertise, but we hear that word doctor and we think, oh, this is an expert because we're persuaded by that, or an expert in any area. So if we can establish as persuaders some sort of expertise, then we are going to be likely more persuasive than we might otherwise be. Trustworthiness, again, lots goes into trustworthiness, but if we find somebody trustworthy, then it stands to reason we are going to be more drawn to them. Again, these are the things we find that studies have shown in our culture that these are characteristics of people can convey these things that we are more likely to be persuaded by them. So if we can convey this sense of trustworthiness in our image and in our ethos, then we are more likely to be persuasive than other people. And then dynamism, if we can provide some charisma, people feel connected to us then that's another thing. That's why you see a lot of actors and people that are brought in to promote products and things like that because they have this dynamism, this sense of character and charisma and even outside of selling things exactly or advertising, I mean, you look at one of the reasons that Ronald Reagan was so successful and he was called the great communicator was because he had this dynamism. I mean, the man was an actor professionally, right? He did that for many, many years. So he knew how to connect with an audience. He knew how to tell a story. He knew how to convey information in an effective way. So he had that dynamism, right? That sense of character and that charisma that went a long way. So these things individually are very powerful, persuasive tools. Collectively, they are really strong persuasive tools. So we should consider our image and our ethos and how that affects the willingness of people in our culture to accept what it is that we're saying. Then the final thing I wanna talk about here is the American value system and how that plays into persuasion and how it can be used to persuade and also how it's used to persuade us, right? So we need to be conscious and aware of both of those things. So the American value system, starting with the Puritan and pioneer morality. The sense of morality, we feel like the Puritans and the pioneers had when they came here that we are drawn to and it's, again, one of the reasons in politics, we talk so much about family values even from, you know, when we're persuaded by that talk, even from people who don't display any sense of family values, right? But we're drawn to that because we feel connected to that Puritan and pioneer morality, right? So then in the United States, we're also very individualistic culture. We value the individual. So the value of the individual is something that we're persuaded by. When somebody's talking about our individual uniqueness and the value that we bring and the difference that one person can make, we value the individual and we value somebody who goes against the grain, we value somebody who's willing to kind of stand up, so to speak, right? Against others and so that value of the individual is something that's a very persuasive tool. Achievement and success. Again, things we value in the United States. We value achievement and success as an individualistic culture. We kind of place the me above the we and so we look for that individual achievement, individual accomplishment, individual success. So when we can persuade people that that is possible and that's something that we can help them achieve, then they're gonna be persuaded by that or if we can convince them something that we have achieved and they're gonna be persuaded by that, they're gonna find us, you know, again, that expertise is gonna be important now. Change and progress is another one. Change and progress is an American value. We don't hold on to things as much as other cultures do. We tend to move forward. We want progress. As Tony Robbins says, change is inevitable. Progress is optional and in the United States, we tend to choose that. You can look around our landscapes, for example, and just look at that. We don't tend to hold on to buildings, for example. When a building gets older and ages, then we tend to tear it down to make way for the new, right? Now, other cultures, they don't really do that as much. They hold on to those older buildings. They have a different notion of change and progress and the importance that those things have. So when we can persuade people using the idea that progress is necessary and this is what progress will take and so forth, then people are going to find that appealing. Continuing on in that same vein of the American value system, we value ethical equality with this sense of equality. Now, we don't always achieve it as we know. We've had horrible histories with racial prejudice and bias and stemming back to slavery and things like that. It took us forever to come to any sense of equality between the sexes and to start to even look at women as equals to men, for example. But again, we're a work in progress, so to speak, and we at least ostensibly value equality and want that equality. So if we can make a case based on equality, that's something that's going to be persuasively effective for us. Effort and optimism, this idea that hard work pays off, that if you put in the time and you put in the energy and you put in the required resources and so forth, that you're gonna get there in the end. That's an American value as well. So that's something else that we use to sell things on and we use to sell people on that idea. But even though we know it doesn't always, you could work all your life very hard and still not end up with much, but that's not the American way. We have this inherent optimism in the stream that if I put the time and I put the effort in, then I'm gonna get what's coming to me. I'm gonna get what I deserve here. So we can tap into that effort and optimism as a persuasive tool and tactic as well. And finally, efficiency, practicality and pragmatism. And one of the best examples of this, maybe this is because I grew up in farming community and so forth, but the combine harvester is, I mean, it's literally in the name. It combines several functions that make, have made farming tremendous progress in helping farming become more efficient and more practical and more pragmatic. It combines several functions that used to take, several passes through to get these accomplishment. Well, this accomplishes multiple things at one time and that increases the efficiency. It increases the ability of one person to farm more land. And so you don't need as many people to farm as much land and one person can do much, much more now than they could before, thanks to that combine harvester and the productivity that that provides. It's also very practical. It does a job very specifically and it combines several, anyway, that's what we're all about. What can we do to make our lives more efficient? What can we do to help increase our productivity and what's practical around us? And so we're in some ways more concerned with function than fashion, many of us are. So that's an American value as well. And we can tap into that when we persuade people that if we convince them that what we're doing is gonna increase our efficiency and our practicality and so forth, then that's a persuasive tactic. So anyway, lots of things to look at here with culture and lots of methodologies through which we can persuade people using cultural values and cultural premises. So again, we look at these three different types of persuasive processes and premises, the process premises, the content premises and the cultural premises. We have lots of options, lots of methodologies all based in that, the enthmomatic persuasion method of Aristotle. If you have questions about any of this, about cultural premises or about any of the other enthmomatic premises and persuasive tactics that we've talked about, please feel free to email me and be happy to connect with you via email. In the meantime, again, be on the lookout not only for ways that you can use cultural premises and persuasion, but also be aware of when others are using them with you so that we can be more effective receivers and audiences of persuasion as well. Happy communicating.