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To almost everyone, the public discourse is more or less pathetic, at various levels. But how much is “too much”? If we define the “too” as the extent to which it does more harm than good, I certainly do not think the public discourse is too pathetic.

Personally, I think being pathetic is absolutely necessary in today’s mass media, because that is the way to interact with audience. Recall every little detail of our life, commercials, political agitations or public good, the force that motivates us to donate for the victims to vote for a particular candidate is the messages/information delivered that resonate with our emotion, that we can identify with. It might sound ridiculous, but if we think about it, no matter how perfect the logic is or how well the argument is structured, it all has to come down to emotion if you are counting on the audience to interact and respond.

There are certainly a lot of pathetic fallacies that are designed to trap audience’s emotion and people do fall into those emotional pitfalls. I personally do not see any problem in it. It does not mean that being blindly emotional is always a sensible thing to do, but it might often be the most effective way, although some logical understanding will be a plus. In my opinion, emotion usually beats reasoning in many aspects of our life. People buy insurance not because of the propagandas that promote retirement planning but the emotional discourse that says “ give your family the future protection”; we donate to the tornado victims not because the sensible reasoning that we have the civic duty to do so (in fact, we don’t) but we feel sorry about the tragedy and would want to help as if the other people would help us under the same situations. Yes, some of them might be misleading, but in general it does more good than harm on public affairs. Therefore, the public discourse is never too pathetic.

When making a point, using emotion is a temping way to try and persuade the audience. Playing with people's fears, wants, and past experiences is an easy way to convince an audience of things that they may not truly believe or that are really true. In politics or any public discourse, the use, and abuse of pathos, are common. The question for this assignment is to examine if pathos plays to much of a role in public discourse. In my opinion, it is a necessary evil in our discourse. With the rush-rush world we live in, most people do not have the time to stop and think about politics and their opinions on larger decisions. By using emotional appeals, journalist and television personalities get people involved in issues they would normally not. Even though the tactics they use skew and distort their opinions, the audience will eventually come to their own conclusions. In my opinion, the pathos used in public discourse is necessary so that people stay interested in the topics they discuss.

Is our public discourse too pathetic right now? As I sat and began to collect my thoughts regarding this question and form of rhetoric, I realized I needed to first address the nature of the pathetic argument/appeal itself first. Of the three points of the rhetoric triangle I find the pathetic approach to be the one people are most easily influenced by, but at the same time is the most malicious. When an audience’s emotions are played off of they can really be convinced of anything, whether or not it is logical. I say the pathetic argument is the most malicious in that it can be made and convince without being logical—it manipulates. Over time I have developed this very pessimistic outlook on the pathetic argument because I have fallen victim to it so many times, many of those times without even realizing it.
The most common headlines I see plaguing public discourse these days are usually, “IT’S OVER”, “THE OTHER WOMAN’S STORY”, or “FINALLY GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED” in bold letters. I realize that the reason people pick up and buy these magazines, papers, or tune into the T.V. and listen is because understanding them does not require any prior knowledge or a logical understanding, all you need is to be human and have emotions of any kind. We can easily understand the way in which people feel and establish our own feelings towards something. Anyone can understand the basic story without requiring any knowledge or logic, just an emotional understanding. My opinion is that yes, our public discourse is very pathetic but because it needs to be. Newspapers, tabloids, speeches, any form of discourse need to have pathetic appeal to some nature, otherwise the greater audience may feel excluded and not understand. It is the pathetic nature of these headlines that catches the audience’s attention at first, not necessarily the thought provoking or logical statement. We can all relate to this pathetic headline and understand it because we are human. It’s simple; if a magazine wants to sell and have a greater audience, it needs to have pathetic appeal.
What I do see happening though is discourse relying too heavily on this pathetic appeal in order to sell, and in turn loosing its logical and ethical nature. As I said before the pathetic appeal is malicious in that it is so manipulating, and with less and less logic and ethics in discourse, we are loosing sight of what we should be reading, as well as what’s right and balanced. For the most part our public discourse has fallen victim to a reliance on pathetic appeal and begun to lack consideration for the balance needed between all three points of rhetoric.