Ethos

Many writers get stopped in their pursuit of making their works of art their prime source of income, but since money is an issue that many of us all share and one that we spend quite a deal of time discussing, I have decided to address an issue that is more unique to my situation.

I have an issue with Ethos, a word that constantly aggravates me in countless ways.

First there are the practical applications of the term.  Ethos is a form of persuasion.  It is the ability to appear credible to an audience that one is speaking to.  Without credibility, no matter what I say, profound or not, it will not matter to the people I speak to if they do not take me seriously.

As I have researched again and again how to gain more credibility when I speak or write or whatnot, one word appears again and again, which prompted me to search for the meaning of this word as well.  The word I speak of is Confidence.

No word has possibly more meanings than this word.  To some degree the word has over 7 billion definitions.  One for every person who lives on Earth.  The complexity of such a definition renders this path of the research moot.  So, I decided to look at the original meaning of the word and turned to Latin.

This yielded much better and far more interesting results.  In Latin, the word Confidence roughly translates to "Lying with Skill".  With that in mind, I turn now back to initial problem, the hurdle that I still now am trying to overcome.  Ethos.

Realizing that Confidence is just really skillful deception reminded me of a few things.  First and foremost among them is that I am on the Autistic Spectrum, not on the Anti Social Personality one.   And while Sociopaths once again seem to have everything easier than everyone else, it is a bit terrifying when you realize that one of the conditions for strong Ethos is to be a Pathological Liar.

Being that most of our politicians are really good at lying (at least in theory) and that much respect is given to them, this supports my hypothesis.

The question still begs though.  If I am not a Pathological Liar, or a Sociopath and seen even by my friends as the eccentric Uncle at the Family Reunion, how do I gain the Ethos to speak in front of world audiences in my goals to improve the world.

If my desire is to use my courage to speak out against oppression to all minorities, not just the flavor of the week ones, how do I gain the trust of people to be listened to?  This is a work in progress and I hope to find these answers soon.