In part 1, ChatGPT and I discussed the origins of telos, ethos, pathos and logos. Here in part 2, we discuss more on telos, but with an autistic perspective.
ChatGPT (extract from part 1): For autistic individuals, thoughts and practices surrounding life purpose might diverge from neurotypical approaches due to differences in perception, experience, and the value placed on certain societal norms. Let’s break it down:
Life Purpose for an Autistic Person: Unique Considerations
For autistic individuals, defining and practicing life purpose may involve different thought processes, approaches, and challenges. Here are some ways life purpose might be experienced differently:
1. Intense Interests as Life Purpose:
Many autistic people have deep, focused interests that can provide a strong sense of purpose. These “special interests” can become the driving force behind career choices, hobbies, or creative pursuits, offering fulfillment through exploration and mastery of a subject.
2. Authenticity Over Societal Norms:
Autistic individuals may place a stronger emphasis on authenticity—living true to their values and desires rather than conforming to societal expectations. Life purpose for an autistic person might focus more on internal coherence and self-understanding, rather than achieving external milestones.
3. Purpose Beyond Work:
Because of challenges in traditional work environments, some autistic people might find purpose in areas outside of employment. This can include advocacy, creative pursuits, personal development, or deep study of particular subjects.
4. Self-Directed Paths:
Like in your self-directed learning approach, autistic individuals may thrive when pursuing life purpose outside of conventional structures (e.g., traditional schooling or career paths). Creating one’s own learning or growth path can provide a deep sense of meaning.
5. Navigating Executive Function Challenges:
Pursuing life purpose may involve additional navigation around executive functioning differences, sensory sensitivities, or other challenges. Support in areas like organization, planning, or managing emotional regulation can play a role in shaping how an autistic person engages with their purpose.
6. Community and Belonging:
Finding a sense of purpose in connection to communities that understand or share neurodivergent experiences can be deeply meaningful. Advocacy work for autism or other causes, or simply being part of a supportive neurodivergent community, can provide a sense of belonging and direction.
7. Rethinking Success:
The mainstream definition of success (wealth, status, etc.) might not resonate with an autistic person’s sense of life purpose. They might focus more on intellectual fulfillment, integrity, or personal well-being. In this sense, life purpose could be more about finding joy in everyday moments, projects, or connections rather than large-scale achievements.
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Finding Purpose in an Autistic Context
Reflecting on Deep Interests: What brings sustained joy or focus? For autistic individuals, this might be the key to identifying life purpose, whether it’s a particular subject, skill, or creative endeavor.
Avoiding Overwhelm: Managing sensory sensitivities and burnout can be crucial to sustaining purpose-driven activities.
Creating Safe and Supportive Environments: Both physically and socially, having a space that nurtures one’s strengths without forcing conformity is essential in finding purpose.
In short, the concept of life purpose for autistic individuals may lean towards more individualized, authentic, and interest-driven paths, with a greater focus on aligning with one’s internal world rather than societal pressures. Does this perspective resonate with your own experience?
Me: It’s what I started doing, before I knew I was autistic. It was prompted by my then new status of widow, after my late husband’s death from Huntington’s Disease. That started a search for a new identity, and was the start of shedding some societal pressures.
ChatGPT: It’s powerful that you began that search for a new identity during such a profound life transition, even before you knew you were autistic. Shedding societal pressures and discovering what is truly meaningful to you seems to have been a deep and transformative journey. It sounds like that process of redefining yourself has continued to align with embracing authenticity and self-directed growth. How has this ongoing exploration shaped the way you see your life purpose now?
Me: It means finding new ways to meet some societal pressures, and doing things that I love to make ends meet.
ChatGPT: That sounds like a meaningful balance—navigating societal pressures while staying true to your passions. It seems like you’ve found a way to blend practicality with doing what you love, which can be a challenge but also incredibly fulfilling. How are you currently managing that balance?
Me: It’s in what I do as a Shebah driver. It’s in my blog. It’s in my casual work for both the Queensland and Australian electoral commissions. It’s in my search to better understand autism.
It sounds like you’ve created a rich, multifaceted life where each part serves both your needs and passions. The blend of driving for Shebah, writing, working in electoral commissions, and deepening your understanding of autism seems to give you purpose and flexibility. It’s inspiring how you’ve woven together different roles to create this balance.
Moving on to rhetoric
Me: I try to. Most days it works. But, back to my blog post about telos and rhetoric, and my other fulfilling interests, like gender inequity. How would you explicate the pathos, logos and ethos of a film like “Promising Young Woman”?
Great question! “Promising Young Woman” is a compelling film with strong rhetorical elements, and explicating pathos, logos, and ethos can reveal how it communicates its messages about trauma, revenge, and gender dynamics. Here’s a breakdown of how these rhetorical appeals might apply to the film:
1. Pathos (Emotional Appeal):
Pathos plays a significant role in “Promising Young Woman” by evoking strong emotions from the audience. The film engages viewers through its portrayal of trauma, anger, and grief, particularly surrounding the themes of sexual violence and the societal response to it.
Emotional Impact of Trauma: The film centers on Cassie, whose life is shaped by the trauma of her best friend Nina’s sexual assault and subsequent suicide. The audience feels her pain, frustration, and anger as she seeks revenge, and the film creates empathy by focusing on how deeply the trauma affects both Cassie and, by extension, the viewer.
Moral Outrage: The scenes of Cassie confronting men who take advantage of intoxicated women stir emotions of anger and frustration toward a system and culture that enable sexual violence. This taps into the audience’s sense of justice and moral outrage, urging them to reflect on their own society’s treatment of survivors of sexual violence.
Sympathy and Identification: By showing Cassie’s deep emotional scars and personal struggle, the film encourages viewers to sympathize with her, even as her actions become morally ambiguous. Her vulnerability, alongside her calculated behavior, creates a complex emotional landscape that pulls the audience in.
2. Logos (Logical Appeal):
Logos in the film is more subtle, but it is present in the way the narrative logically addresses societal issues regarding sexual assault and accountability.
Revealing Societal Hypocrisy: The film uses Cassie’s experiences to showcase the logical contradictions in society’s attitudes toward consent and sexual assault. It critiques how the legal system and social circles fail to hold perpetrators accountable, relying on reasoning about how survivors are discredited or silenced.
Rational Critique of Justice: Cassie’s methodical approach to confronting those who wronged her friend mirrors a form of cold logic. Her actions expose the flawed reasoning used to justify the dismissals of sexual assault cases, such as the belief that it “wasn’t a big deal” or that “boys will be boys.” The film dissects these arguments, showing how they perpetuate injustice.
Logical Consequences: The film takes a logical structure in showing the consequences of unchecked actions. Each character’s encounter with Cassie demonstrates a cause-and-effect relationship: those who avoid accountability or act without consequence eventually face their reckoning, whether legally, socially, or morally.
3. Ethos (Ethical Appeal):
Ethos is concerned with credibility and moral character, which is pivotal in the film’s portrayal of both Cassie and the people she encounters.
Cassie’s Credibility: Cassie’s ethical appeal is complicated. On one hand, she is seen as morally justified in seeking justice for her friend, but her methods are ethically ambiguous, raising questions about whether revenge is a legitimate response. The film leverages Cassie’s complexity, making the audience question where they stand on issues of justice and morality.
Challenging Authority and Integrity: The film questions the ethos of those in power—like the legal system, educational institutions, and Cassie’s social circle—that fail survivors of sexual violence. The ethical appeal here is in showing the inconsistency between how these institutions present themselves (as protectors of justice) and how they actually behave (often enabling abusers).
Ethical Dilemmas: By presenting characters who justify their actions—like the lawyer who defended rapists or the bystanders who chose silence—the film forces the audience to confront ethical dilemmas about complicity and responsibility. Cassie’s actions bring into question whether those who enabled the crime can be forgiven, thus challenging the viewer’s own sense of morality.
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Synthesis of Pathos, Logos, and Ethos:
“Promising Young Woman” excels by weaving all three rhetorical appeals together. Pathos engages the audience’s emotions, creating a visceral reaction to Cassie’s pain and the societal injustice. Logos drives home the film’s logical critique of how sexual assault is handled (or mishandled) by the system, exposing gaps in reasoning and accountability. Ethos challenges both Cassie’s moral standing and the ethical integrity of those around her, inviting the audience to grapple with questions of revenge, justice, and forgiveness.
The film, through this combination of emotional resonance, rational argument, and ethical questioning, compels viewers to reflect on their own complicity and the broader societal structures that fail victims. Would you say this is in line with how you see the film’s rhetorical elements?
Me: It is, and it isn’t. One aspect of my autistic brain is that I understand ethos, pathos and logos, but I have (inconsistent) trouble analysing and explicating.
ChatGPT: I can understand how that inconsistency with analysis and explication, despite understanding the concepts, would feel frustrating, especially with something like ethos, pathos, and logos, which are both intuitive and structured. For an autistic brain, the abstract, non-linear nature of emotional appeal (pathos) or ethical nuance (ethos) might sometimes clash with the need for clarity and structure. In contrast, the logical appeal (logos) could be easier to grasp due to its analytical nature.
Do you think it’s the emotional interpretation or the more ambiguous ethical aspects that sometimes create that inconsistency for you? Or is it more about how these rhetorical concepts are applied in creative works like film or poetry?
Me: Hyperempathy sometimes gets in the way.
ChatGPT: That makes a lot of sense. With hyperempathy, it’s easy to be so immersed in the emotions of a character or a situation that it might become difficult to step back and analyze those emotions from a more detached perspective. The depth of feeling could make pathos especially challenging to analyze without getting personally affected by the material.
Do you find that hyperempathy influences your experience with ethos and logos as well, or is it mostly the emotional and ethical dimensions of rhetoric that are harder to unpack?
Me: It depends on the piece – poem, movie, music, book. Some I can view dispassionately, others invoke the hyperempathy.
Like the poem, “The Jaguar”. It was a university assignment, an explication essay, of that poem that led me to the concrete conclusion that I might be autistic.
ChatGPT: It’s fascinating how “The Jaguar” was such a pivotal moment for you in recognizing your autism. The mix of personal resonance and the hyperempathy it evoked must have made it difficult to approach the poem analytically. Sometimes, when a work resonates on a deeper emotional level, especially with topics like neurodegenerative conditions that are close to your own life experience, it can blur the line between intellectual analysis and emotional engagement.
Me: Looking back at that episode, I can see the hubris, as well. I had been to an author event with the author of that poem. My own experience with my late husband’s Huntington’s Disease kicked that hyperempathy into overdrive.
ChatGPT:
That experience would definitely intensify the emotional connection, especially when the poem resonated so closely with your own life. The hyperempathy, combined with a direct encounter with the author, must have made it even harder to maintain the distance needed for academic analysis. It’s understandable how that personal connection could blur the line between understanding the poem intellectually and being emotionally swept up by it.
On to part 3 – the essay that made me realise that I really might be autistic.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 