Rhetoric and Ideology Project
Reflection:
In my project I wanted to talk about addiction and the benefits to getting people help rather than just throwing then in jail. At first I wanted to create a big collage with people I know that have being incarcerated for possession of drugs and then do interviews with the people about how they could have benefited to getting physical help with the addiction. Because of the circumstances with COVID I couldn’t interview people so instead I did research on people that died in jail and was arrested on drug charges. I felt like this is important because if these people would have been send to a rehabilitation center first maybe they could have gotten clean and wouldn’t have died.
Looking more into how addiction is treated by the legal system has only made my beliefs stronger. We need to look at addiction as a disease that we can cure with support and time. People have had their life or their families lives ripped away from them because the system didn’t help them by throwing them into jail. If we could have a detox and rehabilitation system for people struggling with addiction we could save so many lives from over dosing, going to jail, or even hurting other people. A lot of people see being an addict is a crime but once you are an addict you understand the behavior and the tendencies. Once you are dependent on something like that it rewires your brain to want that and makes you believe you can’t live without it.
The biggest thing I learned in this project is that rhetoric is everywhere. Rhetoric can be anything from shoes to house decorations to energy drinks. It can be anything you can form an opinion about. An ideology is a set of beliefs set in a group. So believing that addiction is a crime is a ideology because it is a default belief in a group.
In a democratic society we would need to be able to listen to other peoples rhetoric. We would have to learn to take in and analyze the facts rather than ignoring it and arguing back. The point of a democracy is to give more power to the people. I think people in a democratic society would use this rhetoric to get their voices heard and help change what they believe in.
Looking more into how addiction is treated by the legal system has only made my beliefs stronger. We need to look at addiction as a disease that we can cure with support and time. People have had their life or their families lives ripped away from them because the system didn’t help them by throwing them into jail. If we could have a detox and rehabilitation system for people struggling with addiction we could save so many lives from over dosing, going to jail, or even hurting other people. A lot of people see being an addict is a crime but once you are an addict you understand the behavior and the tendencies. Once you are dependent on something like that it rewires your brain to want that and makes you believe you can’t live without it.
The biggest thing I learned in this project is that rhetoric is everywhere. Rhetoric can be anything from shoes to house decorations to energy drinks. It can be anything you can form an opinion about. An ideology is a set of beliefs set in a group. So believing that addiction is a crime is a ideology because it is a default belief in a group.
In a democratic society we would need to be able to listen to other peoples rhetoric. We would have to learn to take in and analyze the facts rather than ignoring it and arguing back. The point of a democracy is to give more power to the people. I think people in a democratic society would use this rhetoric to get their voices heard and help change what they believe in.