Another reaction to Andre Brinks' A Dry White Season

In A Dry White Season Andre Brink did an enormous job of adding extremely insightful politics into narration between characters. On page 186, Melanie’s father shares some understanding about abstractions:
He grinned, exposing his uneven, yellow-stained teeth, many of them mere stumps. ‘One thing I seem to discover as I grow older is that the more one gets involved in philosophy and stuff, in transcendental things, the more surely you’re faced back to the earth. We’ll all go back to the old chtonic gods yet. That’s the problem of people running after Abstractions. Started with Plato. Mind you, he’s misunderstood in a shocking way. Still, give me Socrates any time. We’re all living in the spell of the Abstract. Hitler, Apartheid, the Great American Dream, the lot’”.
I love this passage because it reminds the reader of the realities behind abstractions. Farther along in the book the same character talks about humans’ tendency to look at the facts rather than the flesh. People tend to get so caught up in a “theory” or an “idea”, whether that theory or idea is acted out humanely and compassionately. Another example of this that comes to mind is segregation. Segregation (or like Brink uses the example of Apartheid) had many supporters because in theory, separating very different cultures seems like a good idea. Only when activists began protesting using real live emotion did the civil rights movement gain momentum. Only then will indifference turn into curiosity, and curiosity turn into action. In Sociology I learned how social movements are formed, with emphasis on getting people emotionally involved in the movement. Again in this writing class we learned about different types of argument, and I have found that emotional appeal captures the reader with incredible effectiveness. Perhaps pathos is so effective because of what Brink argues. Abstracts can become dangerous, allowing people to loose sight of the most reliable judge- emotion.