Carl Safina Speech Analysis

 Earth is home to a near infinite number of humans and animals, right? What if humans and animals aren’t a part of two separate categories? Are we really as different as we think? Maybe not; Carl Safina, a well respected author and professor with a PhD in ecology, argues just that. Using the rhetorical appeals Pathos and Logos, Safina enforces a change in perspectives, persuading the audience of  his TED Talk: “What Are Animals Thinking and Feeling?” to realize, in his eyes, how blinded us humans are— by our domineering, destructive, and ignorant nature— to the commonalities we truly have with other species who live on the planet which we are all endemic to.

Pathos is one of the three Rhetorical Appeals; this appeal is essentially the use of emotion to persuade an audience to do or believe what the speaker would like them to. Safina uses Pathos a plethora of times in order to do this. In stating, “Humans not only feel grief, humans create grief”, Safina brings guilt to the table and serves it deliberately to make listeners question themselves, playing on their emotions to make them come to a realization of their ignorance. Once again, we see Pathos prevalent in his choice of media to present. When he describes this situation, “Here is an albatross chick, who was about six months old. It was about to start flying. It died. It was packed with red cigarette lighters” (Safina), he shows images of the albatross chick to push the audience to see the life behind the eyes of the chick before it passed. The purpose of this choice was again to play on the audience’s emotion. He also doubles back to this story, adding, “This is not the relationship we are supposed to have with the world” (Safina), reinforcing the idea that humans are blind to the destruction they cause and instilling shame in the listeners who are generally guilty of allowing this to happen.

Ethos, on the other hand, is the secondary rhetorical appeal present in Safina’s speech. Ethos refers to the logical approach used by a speaker to persuade their audience. Within his speech, Safina contrasts his heavy utilization of Pathos by applying Ethos. As an ecologist, Safina is well versed in the behavior of animals. He speaks to the intellect and emotion of different creatures, reporting, “if you give it the same drug that is used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, the crayfish relaxes, mellows out, and comes out, and starts exploring.” (Safina). This fact places emphasis on the likeness of humans and the animals we so desperately separate ourselves from and choose to dominate to feel better about ourselves. In the same way he uses the former piece of information, Safina includes, “People sometimes still ask: "But are they conscious?" Well, when you get general anesthesia, you become unconscious. It means that all of your sensory input is stopped. You have no sensation of the world around you. That's unconscious. When you have sensation of the world around you, you are conscious. Consciousness is very widespread.” (Safina). His statement, while holding a logical basis, once more assimilates the human race to whom we tend to call “beast”.

Ultimately, Safina’s use of Pathos and Logos enhances the degree of persuasion in his speech and engages the audience in a unique way. The appeals are valuable tools in wielding the understanding of what the speaker desires. Safina leaves a sonorous message in listeners’ minds of the deeply important realization of human ignorance and its impact on our planet.