The Rhetorical Uses of Enthusiasm

Graham Harman puts it well, the motto, henceforth, of this blog:

… knowing how to string together enthusiasms is even more important than knowing how to string together ideas.

You can string together 75 steps of the most ironclad proof (or so you think) but then a reader may just find it pompous and self-righteous upon trying to follow it. Your job is not just to convince yourself, but to convince your reader. And, there’s a big difference between a cynical deduction from one point to the next, and seeing a step so clearly that it becomes exciting. Unless you’re stringing together moments of excitement and passion, then not only are you losing your reader, but chances are that you have lapsed into cynically self-congratulatory and self-righteous, faux rigorous deduction.