Two children, Jack and Tom, are in a shop owned by an elderly man. While the boys are there, the man walks away from his counter to restock some shelves. Unconcerned, he leaves the cash register open. The boys see hundreds of dollars in the drawer, and both believe they could steal the money without being caught by the shopkeeper. But a young woman is looking into the window, and if the boys tried to steal  the money, she would surely see. Jack notices the woman. Tom doesn’t, and continues to think he could steal the cash and get away with it. Neither boy tries to steal the money. 

Outside, Tom asks Jack why he didn’t try to steal the cash.

“That woman in the window was watching us—we would’ve got in trouble!” Jack says. 

“What woman?” Tom asks.

“Wait—you didn’t see her? Why didn’t you try to steal the money?” Jack asks.

“Cause I think stealing is bad,” Tom replies.

Now let’s try to judge the morality of the boys and their actions. We have no reason to condemn either of them, as neither has done anything wrong. But it’s still tempting to view them differently. 

Jack was driven by a fear of getting caught, but for all we know, he would have done the same thing if he hadn’t seen the woman. So even though his motivation was different from Tom’s, we can’t call Jack selfish or dishonest or immoral. Still, there’s a difference: we know something about Tom that we don’t know about Jack.

If we agree that not stealing was the right move, we know that Tom did the right thing, even without the threat of punishment. Jack might have as well, but we don’t know one way or the other. In this situation, we can’t say whether Tom is “more moral” than Jack. (And we might not care, if we judge their actions solely by their outcomes.) But we definitely can’t say that Jack is more moral than Tom. 

Now let’s substitute god for the young woman. Is the situation the same? No, according to those who claim there is no morality without religion. With this view and god as the window shopper, Jack is definitively more moral than Tom, who is amoral at best. Yet Jack is still driven by a fear of punishment—just a fear of hell rather than being grounded.

If we view the situation the same way no matter who’s in the window, then the boys’ story suggests that morality and religion are independent. 

When we talk, we constantly make guesses about what our listeners know. Sometimes we get it wrong—we treat something as familiar when it isn’t. When the other person notices the error, the question comes out: what are you talking about?

We should ask this question more often.

This might seem silly—usually, the answer is obvious. But asking what someone is talking about reminds us that their topic was a choice. They chose to bring an issue to our attention; they gave one topic presence above others. When a writer gives presence to an issue, they suggest that it deserves our attention more than anything else they might have written about.

But why is this important? Choosing a topic is the first and most important decision any writer makes. Without presence, persuasion is impossible. Asking what a speaker is talking about gives us insights into their motivations, what they care about, and where they are attempting persuasion.

Sometimes, the answers are still obvious. Good newspapers give presence based on newsworthiness. The NRA gives presence to gun issues. ESPN gives presence to sports.

But sometimes the answers are more telling. Politicians usually give presence to issues, but they also discuss their opponents’ scandals. This is a choice—by discussing a scandal, a politician implies that the scandal deserves public attention more than other topics, like policy issues. Compared to most outlets, Fox News gives an unusual amount of presence to illegal immigration, while The Daily Show gives an unusual amount of presence to Fox. 

Our question also has relatives. Writers make decisions about presence constantly. Choosing the topic of a column or speech is important, but each paragraph and sentence requires another set of choices. If two politicians on different sides of an issue talk about it, we would expect them to focus on different things. One might give more presence to budget concerns; the other to concerns about social justice. We can notice these choices by asking, what are you talking about here? And if we’re interested in what a speaker is talking about, we should also ask what they aren’t talking about. Once we master what, we can graduate to why and how. 

For more on this point, check out The New Rhetoric.

Elections are for voters. We talk about elections with an analogy that focuses on candidates. This is a problem.

We understand elections through an analogy to contests. This is the wrong analogy, but it does make sense. In some ways, elections are like beauty contests: both have many entrants and one winner. In both, the contestants promote themselves. And in many ways, an election is like a boxing match: the contestants are hostile, each tries to damage the other while protecting themselves, and there are rounds. The contest analogy makes sense because it reflects the way elections currently work. 

So why is it wrong? The contest analogy reflects how things are, not how they should be. This is fine—the world naturally influences how we talk about it. But the world is also influenced by how we talk about it. Here, the contest analogy causes problems. In a contest, voters serve contestants, but in an election, candidates should serve voters. 

So what’s a better analogy? Education. Elections help democracies serve the will of the people. Education helps people understand their interests and how to promote those interests. Viewed this way, elections are not a hostile contest, but a cooperative endeavor to educate voters. With a candid discussion of issues and why they matter, people might develop a better understanding of their beliefs, and elections might actually reflect these beliefs. The education analogy reflects the true purpose of elections, and if we talk about elections as they should be, they might start to approach this ideal.

Education serves students; elections should serve voters. Students benefit themselves most when they want to learn. If voters take their responsibility seriously, they should also want to learn. And if voters want to learn, candidates should learn to teach.

1. The condescending we—we means you. How are we doing today? I’d be doing a lot better if you stopped addressing me like I’m a toddler. Never use.

2. The royal we—we means I. Use only if you or your ego could wear a crown.

3. The corporate we—we means the company. Companies include people, but corporate statements rarely represent all of a company’s employees. Use at work.

4. The inclusive we—we means me and you. Less pompous than I, less bossy than you, the inclusive we is a writer’s best friend. The inclusive we can make your readers feel like they’re on your side. Use in arguments.

5. The normal we—we means we. Use often.

God might exist. We don’t know. Since we don’t know, we have a choice: we can believe he exists, we can believe he doesn’t exist, or we can withhold belief.

Believers often try to spread the faith; they never claim to spread the proof. This is because good believers admit that belief in god requires a leap. Their position is provable, unproven, and impossible to disprove. 

And unlikely, according to atheists. Atheists point to the consensus of science and the plurality of religions to conclude that god doesn’t exist. But their position is unprovable, so good atheists admit that it also requires a leap. If god exists, wouldn’t we have some proof by now? Scientific progress is accelerating at a tremendous rate. Is it unreasonable to think that science will render god obsolete? 

It’s reasonable, but agnostics emphasize that it’s also uncertain. Both theists and atheists believe they have something the other lacks: theists claim revelation; atheists claim reason. Agnostics lack faith in either side, so they refuse to choose.

Cliches are double-edged swords. In moments of truth, they let us cut to the chase. And in the good old days, these phrases were surely the cat’s meow. But now, they’re bush league. We should avoid them like the plague, but that’s easier said than done. Old habits die hard. I don’t have an axe to grind, but I do have a bone to pick with cliches. Here are my two cents:

A good writer works like a dog—it’s a labor of love. But crystal clear writing takes an honest day’s work, and when a writer gets stuck between a rock and a hard place, cliches are the only game in town.

And in times like these, time is of the essence. Time flies, time is money, and money talks, so when we don’t have time to kill, we don’t have time to kill cliches. Still, there’s no time like the present to stop using them. We need to up our game like there’s no tomorrow. 

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie. But I should quit while I’m ahead—I wouldn’t want to beat a dead horse. 

In a democracy, the government gets its power from the will of the people. Sometimes the people agree, but sometimes people will different things. So we vote, and in a representative democracy, we vote for representatives. 

Well, what do representatives do? They vote; it’s their job to vote. Since it’s their job, they can spend all of their time thinking about how to vote, writing things to vote on, and arguing about votes. This last issue—debate—is the whole point of a representative democracy. Organizing votes for millions of people is slow and difficult. With a smaller group, voting is more efficient. It also allows for more thorough debate. Good debate requires good arguments, and good arguments are sometimes complicated. They can take awhile. So we let representatives speak at length.

And when people are actually presenting arguments, this works pretty well. One speaker makes their case, steps down, and debate continues. But what if they don’t step down? This is a filibuster.

The filibuster is not new—Cato pioneered it in the Roman Senate. When he disagreed with a proposal but lacked the votes to defeat it, he would just keep talking until the debate expired. Now, the filibuster is making a farce out of American democracy.

Democracies are supposed to reflect the will of the people; when the people disagree, the government follows the will of the majority. A filibuster undermines this will by making a majority insufficient: the Senate can pass any bill that receives more than 50 votes, but filibustered bills need 60. In the American Senate, any Senator can stall debate on a bill indefinitely using a filibuster. At one point, this meant actually talking, so to hold up the Civil Rights Act, Strum Thurmond actually had to speak for 24 hours straight. No longer. Now, Senators can stall debate simply by signaling their intent to filibuster.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix. The filibuster is fundamentally undemocratic, but this point hasn’t been made vividly enough. With one brave Senator, we could kill the filibuster in a matter of weeks. Here’s how:

A Senator announces their intention to kill the filibuster. To prove how undemocratic the practice is, they vow to filibuster every piece of legislation until filibuster reform is passed. Some bills would still pass, since many issues enjoy bipartisan consensus. But any remotely controversial bill—from either party or house of Congress—would be halted. The legislative process would slowly grind to a halt. People would be angry. Congress would be angry. The President would be angry. And the filibuster would die. 

Money is minted worthless but valued everywhere. Why?

Well, what is money? Money is currency, and currency is just something you can trade for something else. If I have bread and want fruit, and a friend has fruit and wants bread, we can use our food as currency. But I can only trade bread if I know someone who will accept it as payment. Everyone accepts money. 

Currency is only worth what you can trade it for. You can’t trade it for family or friends, and it can’t buy love or happiness. But it can buy almost anything else: the only limits on Richard Branson’s choices are laws, physics, and his imagination. 

The more money you have, the more influence you have over the world you live in. You decide how to chop up your slice of the pie, so the bigger your slice, the more choices—and power—you have. With more money, you have more choices when buying a house. You can travel more. But you also have more choices in philanthropy. There are hundreds of causes out there; with more money, you can devote more of the pie to the cause you care about. 

So what is money? Money is a tool. The more you have, the more freedom you have to shape your own life. And that’s the most valuable kind of freedom there is.

Take two driven, arrogant guys. Give one of them a bold scheme to change the world. 90 minutes, 50 explosions, a car chase, and a gunfight-turned-fistfight later, you get this conversation:

A: “It’s over, B.”
B: “What have you done? Just imagine what we could’ve accomplished—think of the good we could’ve done.”
A: “You killed dozens of innocent people, B. That’s not right.”

And then B dies. This is the plot of most bad action movies, but it also captures one of the biggest questions in ethics. The good guy and the bad guy disagree over one fundamental point. What is more important: an action, or its consequences?

Now, the movies add differences to make the moral judgment easy. The villain is often book smart, foreign, and ugly; the hero is often street smart, American, and handsome. And usually, the bad guy kills a slew of innocent people almost immediately. But in real situations, moral judgments are more difficult. What if the villain’s plan really would have made a better world? When do good results justify bad actions? Can the ends ever justify the means?

When making moral judgments, most people consider both actions and consequences. Most people value equality, but equality often comes at the expense of freedom. Rights are important, but so is security. And where does compassion come in?

Although most people consider both actions and consequences, most moral theories pick one or the other. Theories that focus on actions are called deontological; those that focus on results are called consequentialist. Deontological theories focus on what is right. They speak in terms of duties, obligations, freedoms, and rights. Consequentialist theories focus on what is good, and speak in terms of results, consequences, implications, and utility.

Put another way, consequentialist theories focus on the ends, while deontological theories focus on the means. When the villain laments that his plan has failed, he’s focusing on ends—what the world would’ve been like if he succeeded. When the hero says that killing innocent people is wrong, he’s focusing on the means to that end. Maybe A disagrees with B’s vision for the world. Or maybe he likes the vision, just not enough to justify murder.

But consider a smaller case. What if you can make a person—or a group of people—much happier by telling a white lie? Do you do it, or is lying wrong? If lying is wrong, are you willing to tell the truth to a Nazi who comes to your door looking for Jews?

Situations like that one are tough, and they prompt another question—is it more important to be consistent in ethical decisions, or is it better to follow your gut, even if hypocrisy results? If you value consistency, you may find some of these theories interesting: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_Imperative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_ethics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Rule

The practice of good writing—already grossly overvalued—may soon attract scorn for its popularity. Every industry and every field of study sings its praises, and most Americans would question Abraham Lincoln’s importance before questioning the value of solid prose. Our infatuation with writing has become an obsession, a plague that infects every corner of society. 

The symptoms of this infection are most obvious in the publishing industry. Here, no sane person would dare argue against writing’s fiscal value. In the last decade alone, the list of rich and famous writers stretches towards infinity. Naming just one essayist from the thousands of household names is difficult; choosing one name from the scores of famous poets is nearly impossible. Novelists and screenwriters once enjoyed a monopoly on notoriety, but now they must compete with short fiction writers for the public’s attention. The recent swarm of literary journals has claimed its first casualty—our paper of record, People magazine. With this stalwart slain, writers are thirsty for another victim. If left unchecked, our rabid appetite for books will threaten the very core of our national identity. 

A more troubling development is unfolding in the business world, where once-proud pillars of capitalism are crumbling under the influence of writing and writers. People who toil in undervalued professions like business or personal injury law aspire to wealth; the modern writer can scarcely avoid affluence. The invisible hand that once punished insolvent businesses now unleashes its wrath on the inarticulate. 

But businesses are not totally to blame. The recent influx of students into writing programs has left business schools struggling to increase enrollment. New “language centers” and dedicated English buildings dot campuses across the nation, while engineering and science departments starve from lack of funding. Those few writers who resist the temptations of industry become darlings of the National Science Foundation, which is scientific in name only. 

These academic problems echo those rampant in our education system. Our society’s intoxication with writing has spread to K-12 education, with frightening results. Students are now permitted to write more than five paragraphs at a time, even on standardized tests. Proponents of writing have separated composition from literary analysis, arguing that the former is “more useful” than the latter. The American high school has tried—and failed—to disguise its motives by removing “grammar” from its name. High school graduates are now so far advanced that they no longer need to tell subject from predicate, or noun from verb. Past generations required a grammatical vocabulary to write carefully; today’s students practice writing so often that it becomes innate. 

Writing’s pervasiveness should be obvious, as should its detrimental effect on our society. Ten years ago, I could have made my case in a thirty-second television spot, but today I’m forced to write this argument, which really pisses me off. I don’t want to add to the problem, but one of writing’s virtues has escaped the public furor. Though it pains me to spread this plague, I must call attention to the “green case” for good writing.

Good prose saves trees.

In other words, ecumenical writing exhibits many properties that, if examined correctly, reveal a considerably amenable disposition towards sustainability and environmental progress. And every time we say “good prose saves trees” instead of that monstrosity, we save 18 words. Using fewer words makes documents shorter. Concise writing is often clearer, reducing the need for multiple documents. When we cut fat from sentences, we cut down fewer trees. Applied to every sentence in every document, this mindset could save whole forests. 

I hate to praise writing, but the green argument is the only one left. Good writing could save our planet. Failing that, it can at least save our minds.