Doris Lessing’s persuasive piece called Group Minds, touches on the innate group behavior seen in humans. She first goes into depth about how, even more so those involved in Western society, humans as a whole tend to prefer being in a group over being alone. She emphasizes that, ironically, despite the claim to individuality we stick to groups. To emphasize this point, she points out the contradictory ideas, and backs up her statement by explaining studies on the human psyche in groups. Then, towards the end, she begins to express that humanity should inform themself of their group like mentality, if they truly want to make peer pressure stop being effective. While it’s not illogical to believe that humans are group creatures, and that it’s
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Despite trying to advocate for more to become educated on the topic of human mentality, it spends a large chunk of the piece trying to explain to you how the human mentality works. While, of course, that in itself wouldn’t be bad if Lessing had chosen to write more on why it would be effective and safe of us to educate ourselves on the topic of group mentality, however, she did not. Instead, the piece provides more persuasive devices-- ethos, pathos, and logos, for a cause that it hasn’t explicitly said it stands for. Proof of this is found in the sixth paragraph where Lessing attempts to create a connection between her and the reader, unifying them in something they’ve both experienced. However, she still does not necessarily say what she’s arguing for, and so, her use of pathos goes to waste.
The second issue ties into the third, which is that it doesn’t seem as if her terminology is strong. A good part of any argument is setting the foundation for the claims, setting the perimeters so that everyone understands what’s being argued. As she didn’t truly settle out what she’s exactly deciding to say in her thesis, and since she didn’t set the perimeters for her argument on why it’s important to educate oneself on group mentality, she leaves her readers in the dark about what her end goal is, her purpose is for this
Despite trying to advocate for more to become educated on the topic of human mentality, it spends a large chunk of the piece trying to explain to you how the human mentality works. While, of course, that in itself wouldn’t be bad if Lessing had chosen to write more on why it would be effective and safe of us to educate ourselves on the topic of group mentality, however, she did not. Instead, the piece provides more persuasive devices-- ethos, pathos, and logos, for a cause that it hasn’t explicitly said it stands for. Proof of this is found in the sixth paragraph where Lessing attempts to create a connection between her and the reader, unifying them in something they’ve both experienced. However, she still does not necessarily say what she’s arguing for, and so, her use of pathos goes to waste.
The second issue ties into the third, which is that it doesn’t seem as if her terminology is strong. A good part of any argument is setting the foundation for the claims, setting the perimeters so that everyone understands what’s being argued. As she didn’t truly settle out what she’s exactly deciding to say in her thesis, and since she didn’t set the perimeters for her argument on why it’s important to educate oneself on group mentality, she leaves her readers in the dark about what her end goal is, her purpose is for this