Chapter III
Unless you are a hermit, interaction with other people will take up a large proportion of your daily life. Anything you want to gain in life, will no doubt at some point revolve around interacting with other people. As a pack animal, we are all interdependent upon each other and interaction is highly important. Even the hunter cannot live without the herd and must know how to interact with it; he must also know how to act within the pack, and maybe even have to know how to interact with the alpha male of the pack. Interaction occurs on all levels, with inferiors, with superiors and with equals. The more efficient your method of interaction, the more you can hope to gain.
Language is the word used to describe the interaction between humans on a mutually understandable basis, be it on a conscious or subconscious level. With the most mutually understandable to the conscious mind being the verbal language, many different forms have developed dependant on the geographical independence of civilisations, and the ongoing conquest of civilisations over one another. As it is the most mutually understandable way to interact with a persons conscious self, the art of verbal language is a highly useful skill in negotiating with people what you want done.
Rhetoric is the term given to the art of oral persuasion, the skill of using language to make sentences and speeches that are aesthetically pleasing to listen to, that help persuade and argue cases through means of twisting and bending the rules of logic existing in a persons neural network, so that the end outcome is a justification that appears logical and right, whilst on closer examination it has failed on both these counts and has generally only created an unjustified statement.
Humans however overlook this, distracted by the smooth flow of the words and being taken along by the current. They are soothed to a smooth ecstasy as they are internally happy that they feel they understand something, and this is the weakness to play with. As such the understanding and use of rhetoric is highly valuable on many counts, in attack and in defence. You should come to learn the art of rhetoric, so that it cannot be used against you to entice you down paths you'd rather not travel, and so that you can use it to persuade your life to be that which you wish it to be.
Once the skill of rhetoric has been learnt, it can be used in many situations from the blagging of undone homework if you are at school, to the very same thing in front of your boss. It is the gift of the gab, and it is valued by many people, indeed people are superstitious enough to kiss a little stone in Ireland as it is said to begift the power of the gab upon the kisser. You can persuade people that what you want to do, is really what they want to do, that what you think is right, is what's right. Maybe your you want to persuade your friend to drive you to the chippy, maybe you want to persuade your friends to go out, maybe you want to persuade your opponent he's worse than you, maybe you want to persuade a friend to come to a class with you. Rhetoric will help in all of these.