Home » 2015 (Page 16)
Yearly Archives: 2015
The New Polarization
A college student who rarely attended classes and turned in assignments poorly done or not at all, emailed his professor after receiving his final grade to ask if there was any way he could raise his grade — an F earned with a 25% average — to a C. Even grade inflation couldn’t help this hapless soul.
But hope springs eternal, and wishful thinking has become so pervasive that it has a new name: magical thinking, as if wishing just isn’t enough anymore.
It’s everywhere. Government programs with no revenue to pay for them. Students acquiring massive debt from loans to procure degrees in art history, classical philosophy or — no joke — viking studies. State sponsored alternative energy schemes built on nothing but high-minded intentions. School boards hiring puppet administrators and then firing them when student performance crashes.
On the one hand, we indulge in the most irrational flights of fancy with no concern for the consequences. On the other, we resist thinking out of the box by denying ourselves the opportunity to engage people with opposing viewpoints in civil discourse.
Is this the new face of polarization? Not just between groups, but within our own minds?
Instead, let’s turn it around: challenge yourself to seek out new viewpoints and strategies, not to escape from reality but to deal with it and succeed.
Just Plain Ugly
Here’s another lovely headline:
Top 15 Celebrities who are Just Plain Ugly
And no, I’m not including the link.
Why would anyone write an article like this? Why would anyone read it?
Sadly, the answers are obvious. Someone wrote it because he knew people would read it. And people read it either out of pure voyeurism or, even worse, because they need to tear down others to feel good about themselves.
Maybe we should revisit some old cliches:
- Don’t judge a book by its cover
- Beauty is only skin deep
- All that glitters is not gold
Sure, they’re cliches. But remember: cliches become cliches because people recognize their truth enough to repeat them over and over and over.
When we make the effort to see the best in others, that makes our world brighter. With practice, recognizing what’s good in others can motivate us to be like them, which will make us feel better about ourselves.
After all, the grass isn’t really greener on the other side of the fence.
Holocaust Day — Visionaries and Ideology
Who knew a trip to New York could be so emotional?
I didn’t want to go in the first place. As my 92-year-old student likes to quote: Travelling is for peasants.
But my wife convinced me with simple arithmetic. Four tickets to bring three kids and son-in-law home or two tickets to visit them. No-brainer.
So I went grudgingly, confirming in the end the truism that some of life’s most profound moments come not only unexpected but against our will.
Our first stop was the 9/11 museum. I marveled at the artistic vision that had conceived the memorial pools, the water channeling down in rivulets that mirrored the face of the fallen towers, the continuous downward rush balanced by the redemptive feeling of water — the source of life — returning to the heart of the world. Here there was solace, closure, and consolation.
But a very different feeling accosted me inside. Almost upon entering the doors a single word brandished itself across my mind’s eye: Holocaust.
Let me explain.
Read the whole article here.
Dangerous Freedom
With the holiday of Passover behind us, the dangers of freedom become more threatening than ever.
Freedom is a privilege, not an inheritance. Freedom is an obligation, not a right. Freedom calls us to duty, not to indulgence.
And the illusion of freedom may be the cruelest tyrant of all, seducing us into accepting the slavery of ego, impulse, and comfort.
Every day we should ask ourselves: are we fighting to deserve and to preserve the freedom that our fathers fought so hard for us to have?
Speak your mind… or not
How much damage is caused talking about other people? And for what? Usually to make ourselves feel superior at the expense of others.
And what if it’s true? So what if it is? If there’s no benefit, why say it?
How much time do we spend talking about the obvious or the irrelevant? The weather? The economy? Last night’s episode of Letterman?
As an icebreaker, small talk serves a purpose. But if it becomes a staple, if it leads nowhere except the next inanity, wouldn’t we be better off with silence?
Of course, that would leave us alone with our own thoughts, and that can be a pretty scary place to be.
Keeping Trust
Distance yourself from falsehood. – Exodus 23:7
We all like to think of ourselves as honest. But are we?
Do we rationalize white lies? Do we fudge our taxes? Do we return to the counter when we’re undercharged or when we get too much change? Do we make hasty promises that we forget to keep? Do we exaggerate? Do we embellish? Do we state as fact when in fact we aren’t so sure?
Do we lie outright when we’re caught in a compromising position?
It’s easy to justify “little” lies, or even big ones under pressure. How often are we lied to by our politicians — increasingly without shame or consequence? If they can do it, why shouldn’t we?
It comes down to trust. We want to be trusted. And we want to be able to trust others. So it’s not enough not to lie. Distance yourself from falsehood — whether a false word or a false thing or a false friend.
Not only do we become known by the company we keep; we become the company we keep. And once we lose our sensitivity to falsehood, it’s a near-impossible struggle to get it back.
The Hazards of Headline News
Here’s an insidious little headline: Money, Not Marriage, Makes Parents Better
Family structure, family meals, limiting television, extracurriculars. No worries. None of it makes much of a difference. Your child’s success or failure in life will have more to do with how much money you have. If it’s in LiveScience, it must be true. No?
Thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau for using our tax dollars to produce such a sinister study. Maybe their next project will offer similarly insightful results. How about something like this: Wings, Not Landing Gear, Make Air Travel Safer.
Well, sure, up to a point. But what does one really have to do with the other?
Read the whole post here.
Higher Education?
On March 9, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by the University of Iowa College of Law challenging Teresa Wagner’s successful lawsuit claiming political discrimination for her conservative views.
The decision comes a year after a more dramatic victory by Mike Adams, a conservative sociology professor who won a similar suit. Professor Adams was awarded a promotion, a raise, $50,000 in back pay and $710,000 in legal fees from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
Underlying both stories is the more serious concern that the culture of ideological narrow-mindedness and bullying has transformed college campuses around the nation from centers of higher thinking into indoctrination centers for political and philosophical uniformity.
And it’s not just universities. My Google search for this story turned up only two headlines, one from the conservative Washington Times and the other from the local Iowa Press Citizen. The print media, it seems, has no more interest in open discussion and debate over opposing viewpoints than does academia. Better to man the battlements and defend the ivory towers from that most dangerous of all enemy attackers — rational thinking and reasoned argument.
The same principle holds true in business, in education, in religion, and in every arena of social discourse. If we can’t articulate the position of our ideological opponents, we can’t refute their arguments and, more important, we can’t fully understand our own.
For a more thorough discussion regarding the evils of groupthink, please see my article here.
No Direction
“You just could not make this up,” tweeted Alan Price of the British employment law firm Peninsula.
Of course, I couldn’t have made it up at all, since I’d never heard of Zayn Malik or the boyband One Direction until this morning. That’s when I learned about the aftermath of Mr. Malik’s change of direction in headline news.
According to the Telegraph, Peninsula received 480 calls from employers asking how to respond to workers requesting compassionate leave so they can grieve over the music idol’s decision to go rogue — and that was just between Wednesday and Friday morning.
One shudders to think how these workers will react when real tragedy enters their lives. Or maybe they’re so removed from reality that the foibles of the entertainment industry are the only events in which they can find any relevance at all.
But that’s what happens in a world without direction.
The Illusion of Knowledge
Nothing could be more true in the age of unlimited access and information overload. King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “One who tears a hole in a fence invites in a snake.” In other words, no fence is better than a broken fence, since the former demands constant vigilance while the latter allows a false sense of security. The more we think we know, the more ignorant we actually are.
Please take a look at how modern research backs this up here.
Yonason Goldson 