Who doesn’t love a good story?

The true master storytellers are in the South. Buttery-smooth delivery of the spoken word. Drawn in. Hanging. In fact, you can feel what they’re saying. Makes you believe almost anything that jumps from their tongue.

I studied storytelling in college. Well, storytelling and rocks. I think the academic world prefers to call it a Bachelor of Arts, Communication and Bachelor of Science, Earth Systems - but I like storytelling and rocks.

It’s a pretty weird combination at face value. Geomorphology and the Rhetorical Triangle?

I’ll leave the rocks behind today.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I get a ton of inspiration from natural systems thinking - and that’s what my studies in Earth Sciences provided me. But today, we’re going to talk about storytelling.

If you haven’t brushed up on the communication model in a while - here’s a refresher. Take look and think about it - don’t skip this step.

Communication is a science, but it’s taught and learned as art. Effective and eloquent communication is, indeed, an art. For purposes of this week’s newsletter - I want to hone in specifically on Rhetoric.

Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively and persuasively to inform, influence, or motivate an audience, encompassing the study of effective speaking and writing, and analyzing how communication (text, images, media) shapes understanding and reality. You might want to read that again.

If we’re going to use a weapon, we should probably know what makes it so powerful. Besides, nobody gets out of storytelling school without learning about the master:

Aristotle

This guy is GOAT of persuasion. The Tom Brady of Balance.

He was the first to lay the groundwork for the Rhetorical Triangle, a model representing his three persuasive appeals: Ethos (credibility/character), Pathos (emotion/audience feeling), and Logos (logic/reason/facts). These appeals are the core of effective persuasion and backbone of strong argument. The ultimate ammunition for every storyteller with an agenda.

Educators use the equilateral triangle to represent these parts by design. It suggests the interconnectedness and balance for a strong argument, although emphasis shifts with context. Let’s break this down.

Ethos: (Character/Credibility) - Why should I trust you?

This is all about the speaker, not the argument. It comes from demonstrated experience. This is where things like education, company, and title come into play. This is a really important nuance, because ethos has been quietly hijacked by modern credentialism. Let’s separate what ethos actually is from what we’ve trained ourselves to mistake for it.

Ethos is situational, relational, and earned in the moment. It doesn’t care if you have an the executive title or a pedgree from an Ivy League school. Aristotle described ethos as emerging from phronesis (practical wisdom) arete (virtue and moral character) and eunoia (goodwill toward the audience). Resumes are not required.

In modern systems, we use shortcuts to access trust because we are forced to operate at scale. We substitute education for competence, title for authority, and employer for legitimacy. But these aren’t ethos, they’re signals. They answer a fast question: “Has someone already vetted this person?” That shortcut made sense in hierarchical, slow-changing institutions. It breaks down in complex, adaptive systems.

That’s why storytellers are in high demand in corporate. They have a story to tell.

But employers do not equal ethos.

Where people work signals association, not integrity. Trust is earned - well, at least that used to be the case.

Big brands borrow trust, but small or unknown contexts have to earn it. Perhaps that’s a more accurate way of saying how it really is today.

The problem is, this creates distortion. Institutional trust gets confused with personal trust. Failure becomes externalized - and manifests as fault in “the system.” When systems fail, brand-based ethos collapses too.

Maybe this is how the world’s oldest job became the hottest new corporate job title? I thought prostitution was the world’s oldest job?!

Anyway - this is what it means, practically: Modern audiences are unconsciously recalibrating ethos and there’s a ton of tension behind it. We’re moving from institutional ethos to relational ethos. From “Trust me, I’m qualified” to “Watch how I show up” This shift explains why so many emerging ‘experts’ feel unheard and why unexpected voices gain traction. Storytelling is powerful.

Logos: (Logic) - Does This Make Sense?

This is all about the structure of the argument. I use the analogy of scaffolding a lot because it’s the temporary system that allows us to build the permanent structure. In this situation, it’s all about facts and data, causal reasoning, the ability to cite examples or make analogies and the order or sequence in which it is done.

Logos is where most modern discourse gets stuck. If we assume the data is correct, persuasion will follow….but how much data is correct? This smart greek guy knew logic alone convinces almost no one. Think about it - the bullshit that spews everywhere lacks data but possesses merit. To truth-seekers in practice, charts without context confuse more than they clarify. Logic has to be translated into human-scale meaning. Real data is not trusted logic.

But data feels objective. It feels neutral. Together, data and logic feel indisputable. They’re not.

The peril isn’t in bad data, it’s in the unexamined authority attached to the data. This is where ethos and logos meet. In Aristotle’s frame, you need both…and modern culture collapsed the distinctions by treating quantification as truth, precision as accuracy, and measurement as meaning. Think about all the graphs you see on LinkedIn that go bottom-left to top right on two axis. This quietly grants data moral authority that it shouldn’t have. Storytellers are really, really good at this.

The core peril is when data becomes “irrefutable,” thinking stops.

People stop asking really important questions at this point. "Who benefits from this framing?” “What are we not seeing?” and “What breaks if conditions change?” Seems to me like data should inform judgement, not replace it. It feels like ‘data-driven’ decisions become the authority that forces wisdom out of the room. Data-driven storytelling is powerful.

Pathos: (Emotion) - Do I feel this matters?

It matters, perhaps now more than ever. Pathos is about emotional resonance, not manipulation. This is about how it makes you feel, an experience uniquely human in an artificial-forward society. Pathos includes story, empathy, shared fears - hopes - aspirations and moral urgency. Today, it’s often dismissed as irrational and even woo-woo, but the philosophers saw it as essential. We act because we feel, then we justify our actions with logic.

In practice, people don’t move because housing is unaffordable. They move because their kid can’t stay in the school district. They move because stability feels out of reach. Pathos answers the question, “Why should I care now?” In fact, if the misuse of logos creates false certainty, then misused pathos creates numbness and we simply freeze in place.

In Aristotle’s triangle, pathos is the force that activates our ‘give a shit’ switch. But when this emotion is over-used our nervous systems adapt and we become numb. This happens when we’re exposed to crisis after crisis, or outrage without outcome. It happens when we see systemic flaw after systemic flaw and tragedy without a pathway. Our emotion stops functioning a signal and becomes noise. (reference the communication model graphic above).

We’re built this way.

Our brain protects itself by disengaging. It’s not apathy, it’s self-preservation. What makes it even harder is that pathos works at the human scale, not it’s global counterpart. When suffering is present at a national or global scale without a clear role for the listener, our give a shit flies out the window. We simply cannot feel millions. The storytellers know this. They taught us.

While were slathering - let’s slather a little more.

There’s a modern pathos trap that really spirals us out of control. Algorithms reward intensity…ye old dopamine strikes again. Emotional content escalates, sad turns to tragic, concerns become outrage, and outrage turns to despair. Eventually, nothing lands. In fact, “pathos inflation'“ works exactly like monetary inflation. More emotion buys less response.

So Aristotle’s modern warning is likely that pathos has to be proportional, purposeful, and paired with action. Numbness is worse than disagreement. A numb public doesn’t care. When everything is urgent, nothing is felt.

The best way out is always through - Robert Frost

Here’s the good news. The antidote for all of this already exists. It’s not new tech, or a better idea. It’s not louder emotion or a new journal subscription….it’s balance and awareness. This triangle is a system for staying human while persuading one another.

Ethos keeps is grounded in trust. Logos keeps us grounded in reason. Pathos keeps us grounded in meaning. When one runs hot, the system gets shaky. But when all three are held in tension (hello, today?) people lean in.

The Storyteller’s Responsibility

This is where storytelling stops being entertainment and starts becoming stewardship. It’s also where picking the platform becomes paramount. We have to ask ourselves if we’re trying to be belief builders or truth seekers.

A good storyteller doesn’t borrow ethos they haven’t earned. They don’t hid behind data or avoid accountability. They don’t overwhelm people’s emotions without offering some sort of agency. Nope. A good storyteller slows the room down. They tell the right-sized story and they leave people more capable, not more convinced. This is where the compass comes out over the map - they leave people oriented.

We’re living through an era of inflated credentials, data absolutism, and emotional exhaustion….but yet we’re still hungry for coherence. Methinks this is what makes us unapologetically human. I know what I want out of a storyteller….I want the story to make sense of complexity without flattening it or being 'convinced.’ I also want to see leaders that show up instead of talking down.

The best stories don’t tell us what to think. They invite us in, and leave margin for discourse. And that, maybe more than anything else, is what’s missing.

Communication is a science. Rhetoric is an art. Storytelling is a responsibility.

Words matter, trust is earned.

And who doesn’t love a good story?

I’m Chris Moeller and I help build #ResilientCommunities. Ask me how. #TinyGiants #StableLiving