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Some Provocative/Inspirational Ideas from Readings
Matthew Crawford (“Attention as a Cultural Problem”)
1. Attention is a resource that we should have full control of, yet increasingly in the 21st century we are unable to “own” our attention. We need to reclaim our attention for ourselves.
2. We have become obsessed with defining freedom as “the satisfaction of individual preferences,” which has blinded us to the fact that “mind-bogglingly wealthy corporations armed with big data” have been engineering our individual preferences for us.
3. Many of us live disembodied lives. We are stuck in the worlds in our heads, rather than in the human and material worlds in which we are actually situated.
Key words/phrases: “attention,” “individuality,” “distraction,” “commons,” “coherence.”
Plato(“Ion”)
1. Poetry (or literature) encourages unjustified belief. The rhapsode Ion exemplifies this problem because he swears he possesses true knowledge even though he has only received this knowledge through his recitation of poetry (not through “real” experience).
2. Divinely inspired/creative/aesthetic knowledge is not a form of moral knowledge because at its heart it is delusional.
3. You can either be inspired (like Ion) or skilled (like Socrates) but you cannot be both. Plato, through Socrates, argues that skill is much more desirable than inspiration.
Key words/phrases: “virtue,” “knowledge,” “inspiration,” “trance,” “skill.”
Lakoff/Johnson (Metaphors We Live By, Chapters 1-6)
1.We conceptually structure the ways in which we think and act through metaphors. Thus metaphors like argument is war, love is war, time is money and a host of similar conceptual metaphors guide our lives.
2. There is a coherent systematicity to these metaphors that guide or lives. If you live by the concept that time is money than you will conceive of time as a limited resource and make important choices about how you live your life based on your systematic belief that time is indeed money.
3. Cultures find coherence through metaphorical structures. Up=good, down=bad, more=up, less=down and etc. allow cultures to find agreement.
Key words/phrases: “metaphors,” “conceptual structures,” “coherence,” “argument,” “culture.”
Sherry Turkle (“The Flight from Conversation”)
1. Many of us have forgotten the value of face-to-face, unstructured conversation. Instead, we have embraced a way of interacting with each other that primarily values “constant connection.”
2. Even a silent phone, sitting on a table between two people, creates a serious distraction to the possibility of carrying out a meaningful conversation.
3. Being bored can actually be very good for us. Studies show that we come up with many of our best ideas when we are bored.
Key words/phrases: “conversation,” “connection,” “empathy,” “solitude,” “fragmentation.”
Ta-NehisiCoates (Between the World and Me, Part 1)
1. Self-knowledge (knowledge of who you are historically, culturally and psychologically) and self-created knowledge (knowledge that you arrive at through your own self-directed study) are highly desirable forms of knowledge.
2. America has yet to grapple meaningfully with its history of systematic mistreatment of African-Americans.
3. Real education should be discomforting. It should not simply prove what you already think you know.
Key words/phrases: “bodies,” “control,” “fear,” “wisdom,” “violence,” “race as social construct.”