{"id":29544,"date":"2019-07-12T22:30:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T03:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29544"},"modified":"2019-07-12T22:30:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T03:30:01","slug":"briefly-lack-of-ability-to-use-language-rationally-threatens-your-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29544","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Lack of ability to use language rationally threatens your future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Emoji.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29545\" src=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Emoji.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"343\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Emoji.jpg 460w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Emoji-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Few things threaten the future of the human race as much as the decline of the widespread ability to read words and evaluate them rationally. This has become a culture dominated by images and emotions, which scares me because our freedom and our wealth were built on ideas and rational thinking. Not so long ago, it was considered vital for every person to be able to read coherent arguments and respond to them with intelligence and reason. Today, emotions trump reason and images trump words. When Neil Postman published \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2l6ui8w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Amusing Ourselves to Death<\/a>\u201d in 1985, he made the argument that the age of television was slowly destroying Americans\u2019 ability to reason. Postman is long dead, but it turns out that he and other academics such as Marshall McLuhan saw where things were going far before words started falling out of favor. I beg you to read Postman\u2019s short and clear book, but if you won\u2019t invest that much time, at least consider this article about news today. In \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/technology\/452148-could-i-have-some-news-with-my-emotions-please\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Could I have some news with my emotions, please?<\/a>\u201d a former NBC News executive bemoans the sad state of \u201cemotion over information\u201d in television news. I believe \u201ctelevision news\u201d is an oxymoron, but I\u2019ll leave that for another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few things threaten the future of the human race as much as the decline of the widespread ability to read words and evaluate them rationally. This has become a culture dominated by images and emotions, which scares me because our freedom and our wealth were built on ideas and rational thinking. Not so long ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29544\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-29544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7Gw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29546,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29544\/revisions\/29546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}