We commonly take relevance as we find it, as presented, as if we and our audience shared a common conception of what counts as relevant, by whom the counting is done, and to whom the counting applies. Yet when we undertake to persuade a critical and open-minded audience of the relevance of a subject, we must resist effortless presumption of a pre-existing consensus as to relevance lest our failure to explain our conception of relevance impairs the credibility of our appeal.

Thus, with art, with drama, with theatre, with stagecraft in particular, we start generally with the proposition that the visual and acoustical context, the settings, the levels, lighting, colors, tapestries, angles, what is revealed, what concealed, what elevated, and when, what moves and what is fixed, what flows from the rhythms and pitch, the tenor and bass, serve to enable the dramatic presentation. Indeed, they are the presentation. We set aside the criteria for identifying the “point” or “intent” – the conventional meaning – of the presentation, and, more fundamentally, the subject of the presentation, for these will vary within the audience and, in any event, are inseparable from the modes or, in our case, the stagecraft. We accept the inevitability of the disparate criteria and points of view and inquire, more generally, how the stagecraft informs and communicates, even as it is part of, the point, intent, meaning. The feelings, moods, the experience.

The lighting, how does it illuminate, or conceal, or gradually reveal, a character’s mood and message or the development of the mood and message, or the inability to give expression to a message? The levels. Do they reinforce the authority or subservience of the character, or place her in the dark or light? Angles, new vistas, where and when we peek into hidden thoughts? And so it goes.

The power of stagecraft. The subtle appeals. Beware when stagecraft leaves the theatre.

Our regular readers will recall a piece we posted last November titled: “Undetected (and Detectable) Shadows of Positions.” That piece probed a potential paradox hovering over, and lurking within, the advocates for, and against, the death penalty. Yes, over, and within, the advocates, as well as the subject of, the advocacy.

Let’s acknowledge that reduction of the death penalty to a binary debate between supporters and opponents blurs and, indeed, conceals, distinctions that, if made manifest, would create a veritable mix of strange bed-fellows, with contenders for similar positions oblivious, and, if not oblivious then indifferent, to the contradictions at the root of apparent consensus.

Having read Michael Sandel’s recent book on the moral limits of the market, I am hard pressed to escape the ubiquity of activities that, when they become the subject of market transactions (admittedly a concept that cries out for explanation) are thereby transformed in their very essence. Converted, for example, from a civic to a market activity.

Sandel’s observations pull together nicely, through a prism infused with perspectives from moral philosophy, and ranging theologies, a long and lively area researched by economists, psychologists, sociogists and other social scientists. Recall, for example, the findings that blood donations declined when blood banks began to pay for “donations.” Or the decline in the willingness of communities to accept hazardous wastes in their backyards when the state sought to pay the communities for their “hospitality.” Or the increase in (initially) objectionable activities when fines are conceptualized and experienced as (mere) fees. A $1.00 charge to litter; an extra charge for parents who pick-up children late from daycare; a payment to a child to write a thank you letter; a payment to a service company to present a “purchased” apology or a “purchased” wedding toast. The introduction of some “things” into the market transforms the very things that money can buy.

We segued to Sandel’s discussion of the moral limits of markets to frame our supplement to the November posting on the death penalty: when we sanction the death penalty, whatever the circumstances for its imposition and whatever the rationale(s) ushered in support of its imposition, we transform not only our views of justice, fairness, and the role of the criminal sanction in a society, we transform everyone, from the executioner, to the judge and jury, to the governors, officers and “agents” of the state, to each of us who must bear witness because, after all, there is no escape. And why should there be? What would escape look like? Self-renunciation? Or a conscience detached from sensations of ethical dilemma and struggle?

Each of us has a box (metaphorically speaking) filled with metaphors.  In our role as orator, we carry this box (our linguistic toolbox), filled with figures of speech, which we select to craft, and to deliver, the message we carry.

Continuing with a theme that ripples through our posts, often as an undercurrent, and now and then as a wave, words press our views upon our audience and reinforce our views in and to ourselves; and often the complacency of our audience, and within ourselves, entrenches these views, and thereby drains the words of complexity and strips them of luster. The words lose their meanings, or the meanings are veiled.   We take the words at face (non-figurative, non-metaphorical) value and unwittingly overlook the assumptions lurking within them. And therein lies danger.

Our interest today is in the mixture of metaphor that share a common root and typically appear as flat, a flatness that fosters coercion, a coercion amplified by the pedestrian cloak of, and around, the word.

Let’s have a brief look together, a joint tapping at the edges, and then let’s each have our own visit.

Version. A version to define (di)versions and (per)versions and animate quests for (con)versions through coercion. The variations of the versions threaten the chosen, consensus version. Beware the (re)version and (in)version that, unrestrained or unconstrained, would subvert the convention of separate versions into a durable, defining, controlling version.

Or should we fear the banality of the (accepted) version: the host dependant on its parasitic (di)versions that empower and sustain the version, through a symbiosis that leaves residual (a)version to those who challenge with (apparent or concealed) (sub)versions. But how can we tell the host from the parasite; who do we know who holds the version?

Whose version defines perversion; whose version propels conversions and stimulates subversions that threaten to create a new version? Until our immersion in the consensus version has drained the impulse to diversion?

From James Baldwin: “And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have all been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about ourselves and our kinsmen and our past, and about love, life, and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.”

Let’s each embark on our own visits.

Beware the banality of the modest metaphor.

Our title may seem anomalous given our unequivocal conviction in the value of inquiry, and our endorsement of challenging questions of settled views. Thus, an explanation is in order.

We use “unasked” and “unstated” to frame our subject, which we intend unequivocally as a question to ourselves and (hesitantly) to others. The question might be stated as follows: what is the impact (if any) of a discussion of (questioning of) a subject on the attitudes of participants towards the subject discussed (questioned)? The question needs to be more specific: are there subjects the questioning of which subverts the very objectives which the questioning sought to promote?

Clearly, we can anticipate cause and effect challenges of sorts: directional causation (whether x causes y or y causes x); correlation (whether x and y go together but only because z causes each of them); and absence of causation (whether x and y are independent of each other and of a common variable and just so happen, as it were, to be present together).

Clearly too we can anticipate normative questions: even if the questioning of a subject impacts the subject then is the impact helpful, useful, or counterproductive? The answer presupposes an objective, a desired outcome, as measured against a ratings matrix. Put differently, if we discuss a subject with the specific intention to promote the subject then we defeat our purpose if the fact of the discussion subverts the subject (as measure in accordance with our ratings matrix). Put this way, the causal and normative questions loom large even if we assume the sufficiency of our ratings matrix.

Moreover, we face methodological choices, which in turn raise questions: perhaps the counterproductive outcome on our subject of the questioning of the subject reflects a poorly phrased question, or a question situated in a context that corrodes the question and therefore corrodes the subject questioned. For example, perhaps a question posed to another in private is asked, and answered, differently than the same question posed, in the same cadence, etc., but in public. Perhaps the asking of a question to one person corrodes the subject questioned, whereas the question asked of another leaves the subject unaffected. Surely, some of these challenges are easily identified and resolved. And others will escape identification and resolution.

Our observations below will not seek to identify and disentangle, let alone answer, the above sorts of questions or to sketch out criteria to guide evaluation of methodological choices. Rather, we will pose a question, through an example, and encourage consideration of the question by our readers.

With that all said: how do we value, and measure the value of, our acts of charity? Does a person who works at a shelter on Saturday for 8 hours provide a greater sum of valued charity than a person who works and is taxed, with the tax in an amount available for government expenditure to purchase 8 hours of service to the charity? How do we ensure that we take the measure in full and identify not only what is a cost of what but what is a benefit of what, directly and indirectly?

Or to quote Jane Austen, who gets to the point indirectly:

“How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!”

Ah, but how is care measured? If we measure care by the provision of personal service at the charity – through direct and voluntary personal engagememt, then might we stifle the impulse to donate cold hard – but ever so critical – cash by the executive who stays at his desk and leaves to others to engage at shelters, in whatever form and venue they take? Perhaps, at the end, all we may conclude is that the questioning of a subject that we seek to promote sometimes subverts the subject and sometimes promotes the subject and sometimes has no impact on the subject. Whether we can identify the outcome in advance and whether we have the conviction that we have identified it correctly, raise questions that may best be stated expressly and answers that may best be tendered aloud.