Develop a thesis that explains how "The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships" by Curtis Silver complements Sherry Turkle's "The Flight from Conversation."
Breakthrough Writer
The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design. Other Website: http://herculodge.typepad.com/
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November 25, 2015
English 1A In-Class Essay for December 2, 2015
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November 10, 2015
1A Lecture Updated 12-7-15: Review of Social Afflictions and Social Media
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
Louis CK video on Conan in which Louis CK criticizes smartphone addiction.
"Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"
"How Social Media Is Having a Positive Impact on Our Culture"
Lexicon:
- Luddite: someone who is afraid of technology because it brings great evils. A Luddite is paranoid and exaggerates the "catastrophe" of change because deep down he fears he's missing out. He suffers from Sour Grapes Syndrome.
- Narcissists: people who have a pathological craving for high esteem and admiration of others at the exclusion of substance, accomplishment, and moral character. Their contradiction is that while they crave the esteem of others, they have nothing but contempt for people. How could people crave the admiration of the very people they despise?
- Online identity or avatar: the pretend self that gradually can become the “real” self, created a delusion in not just the creator of the persona but others who see it, as we see in the case of comic personas who are taken seriously like Stephen Colbert. It turns out some conservatives watched him not knowing he was doing a parody of conservatives.
- Truncated emotion: emoticon
- Technology-driven neediness
- Banalities of real time confused with substance because of dopamine infusion
- Lowered social expectations from social media
- Facebook friend is a “low-risk connection.”
- Cognitive faculty decay, especially in the realm of attention span
- Control paradox: being controlled by the need to control
- Solitude aversion and the crack cocaine-like addiction of smart phones
- Dopamine overload and depression
One. How does technology allow us to fall in love with the idea of life while disdaining the reality of life? “We are lonely yet fearful of intimacy.”
Why are we fearful of intimacy? Because social media is about convenience and control and is antithetical to intimacy.
Intimacy requires the following:
compromise
listening skills
sharing
reciprocity
loss of control
long-term commitment
long-term sacrifices
generally speaking, intimacy requires more effort than a "social media friendship"
We run away from intimacy into a phony cyber world.
Two. We make our technologies and they make us; they shape us. In what way? That would make a good thesis.
The technologies must indulge us, make us the center of attention and thereby raise our self-regard.
The give us a sense of control.
They give us the illusion of intimacy without responsibility, empathy, and compromise with other humans (the very essential ingredients of real friendship and intimacy).
Technology spares us the possibility for disappointment, rejection, and loss; and we begin to prefer these fake friendships to real ones.
Three. The result of all this technology is the following:
We become fake, we become narcissistic, we become controlling, we become simulation-mongers (over the real) and we become tech addicts and we become partial attention bots.
You either agree with the description or do not. Or perhaps you believe in something in-between.
Here's a question related to the above: Do well-adjusted people react like the above or only addictive personalities?
Or can well-adjusted people, under social media influence, become addicts?
Four. How do smartphones make us cyborgs living in a perpetual adolescence?
We live in a “world of continual partial attention.”
We’ve all become “pauseable,” meaning people can “pause” us and get back to us when them want to.
Five. How do distinctions blur between the “real” world and the cyber world? 153. We are “absent but tethered” at the same time. We're in class, but we're not because we're texting a friend.
Six. What does Pete, and his avatar Rolo, say about Pete’s life? He craves a “life mix,” going in and out of Internet, mixing the two worlds. We can take private party conversation and post it on blogs so we can “appear on a larger virtual stage.”
Seven. What is the slippery slope of Facebook?
We begin with using Facebook to supplement friendship but then eventually Facebook becomes the core source of a weakened friendship and is preferred over spending real time with our friends (perhaps now former friends)
Eight. Does having a Twitter, Facebook, and blog presence, required for many people to appear "current," enhance or detract from the job?
Many people feel spread thin. Good luck taking a vacation because your Twitter, Facebook, and blog interaction have to remain current or you could lose business by appearing "inactive."
Nine. What is the false magic trap of texting? It feels like magic because we can text while doing something else so we feel that magic has taken place: time has been added to our busy lives, but in reality we fragment our attention and become the lesser for it.
Ten. What antisocial behaviors result from smartphone addiction?
No hello, no engagement with parents, no safety rules during driving.
Eleven. What is the "always-on culture" and how does it affect us?
We constantly feel behind, inadequate, anxious, and unable to enjoy solitude and intimacy. There is this fear that if I go off the grid, for even a week or two, I may return irrelevant and forgotten. This is a sort of psychosis.
Twelve. Why are young people drawn to smartphone culture or a "networked life"?
One, because the Net is something larger than they are and they can become of this Larger Thing.
Two, they feel they are stealing time by multi-tasking.
Three, they can play roles they can't play otherwise because they can control and embellish their online "profile."
Four, being networked gives them a sense of independence from their parents (though parents can keep tabs on them with software).
Lexicon Part II with Review
1. New Solitude: We are mentally absent (partially attentive at best) but tethered to others in a degraded way through the "Network," Twitter, Facebook, texting, etc.
2. Avatar: a created persona that becomes our Network identity. This identity lacks complexity and as such becomes a "flattened personae."
3. New Taboo : Authenticity, the messy real becomes loathed in place of preconceived archetypal forms.
4. emoticon: a pictorial representation of an emotion such as a happy or sad face.
5. New Pseudo-Intimacy: We are massaged and caressed by our Network relationships, which indulge our narcissism and we feel in control of these relationships so we avoid real intimacy,which requires compromise and give and take.
6. Off the Grid: going off the Network and disappearing for a while.
7. Technological Narcissism: Our gadgets make us feel like we're the center of attention and this feeling of being at the center (cynosure) becomes an addiction making us addicted to our Network.
8. Perpetual adolescence: living a life of "continual partial attention" as we multitask from one network to another. We toggle ourselves into adolescent multitasking.
9. Pausable: Anyone can be put on pause as we navigate our Network, which makes us feel supreme and in control. This feeling is valued over real relationships.
10. Life Mix: Navigating between our real and avatar selves.
11. Facebook Slippery Slope
12. Always-On Culture
13. Douglas Rushkoff talks about "present shock," the "diminishment of anything that isn't happening right now--and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is."
14. We are according to Rushkoff slaves to the cult of now, trivial things we put on Facebook and twitter, which have a false relevance. As he writes, "we tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored."
Thesis Examples (some weak; others strong)
We need to turn off our cell phones and computers and turn on to life.
We need to acknowledge that social media addiction is a disease that afflicts many of us.
Facebook is overrated.
I'm burned out from being on Facebook too much.
While there are obvious benefits from social networking, the empirical evidence so abundantly clear in Sherry Turkle's Alone Together points to a widespread social network-fueled pathology consisting of narcissism, false expectations of others, the distortion of time, the addiction to one's fictional cyber life, and compromised brain function from multi-tasking.
While social media is only about a decade old as of writing this research paper, Turkle makes a convincing case that our connection to social media is self-destructive in many ways, which include __________, __________, ____________, and ______________.
Turkle's diatribe against social media is a failed argument because her data cannot include long-term studies with such a new technology, she focuses on extreme cases, which can be found in anything, she uses too much anecdote rather scientific study, and she fails to counterbalance her claims with the prevailing benefits of social media.
Even though Turkle makes many valuable insights about the deleterious ways social networking affects us, her warning has come too late. Her book should have spent less time diagnosing our inevitable malaise and devoted more pages to the ways social networking can and should be used for our self-interests.
Those who dismiss Turkle as a Luddite offering no reasonable solutions to the problems she describes are misguided in their critique when we consider that ________________, _______________, _______________, and ___________________.
Turkle's pessimism is an exercise in intellectual charlatanism and buffoonery evidenced by her sensationalistic exaggerations of social network "mental diseases," her refusal to acknowledge the vast benefits of social networking, and her bullheaded stubbornness, which compels her to resist inevitable social and technological change.
Turkle's shrill diatribe against social networking is little more than a gloomy cloud of fraudulent brouhaha evidenced by _________, ___________, ___________, and _______________.
Study Questions
One. What is so pathological about needing to be tethered (always being leashed or connected to your social media)?
See page 171 in which we see the compulsion to see contact updates (being tethered or connected to smartphone) is so strong many sacrifice driving and walking safety, resulting in bruises, chipped teeth, even death.
On a level of anecdote this is true, but how pervasive is this pathological behavior?
See distraction injuries.
See car accidents.
People are degraded by our social media addiction in these ways:
People want to be interrupted. They are waiting for it. This speaks to a particular type of desperation.
There is no downtime. Therefore, there is no solitude, which is necessary for processing experience and information. Most importantly, as Turkle observes in her Ted Talk, solitude is the prerequisite for intimacy and connection with others.
Everything is rapid response without reflection. We lose our humanity.
Emoticons simplify who we are and strip us of nuance and complexity.
We lose the boundary between public and private life, sharing smartphone photos around the room.
The adolescent is denied alone time, a necessary rite of passage for independence. Instead of independence, the teenager becomes needy for approval and attention.
We have new emotional expectations. I know a young man who is mad at Facebook because his Facebook friends were either not commenting at all or enough at his posts.
We develop an unbalanced need for the validation of others rather than from our inner strength.
Being tethered makes us narcissistic as we read on page 177: “. . . one speaks about narcissism not to indicate people who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support. It cannot tolerate the complex demands of other people but tries to relate to them by distorting who they are and splitting off what it needs, what it can use. So, the narcissistic self gets on with others by dealing only with their made-to-measure representations.”
More and more young people are only “speaking” online at the exclusion of everything else. As a result, we are becoming more disconnected and more lonely.
We see on page 179 that when the self is compartmentalized or fragmented in so many online spaces, it does not mature but stays juvenile, immature, narcissistic.
We’re open to Facebook annihilation. One of my friends broke up with his girlfriend of 5 years. They shared dozens, perhaps hundreds of Facebook friends. He decided it was too awkward to keep his Facebook account and engaged in “Facebook annihilation,” deleting his account to avoid the awkwardness. This kind of thing didn’t happen a hundred years ago.
Minute preferences—for books and movies to name a couple of examples—become blown out of proportion in terms of one’s profile. Do the others approve of these preferences? Too much is at stake for these minute choices.
People are “always on” for their Facebook friends, so their life becomes a never-ending avatar performance.
This “Second Life” on Facebook takes over their real life. See page 193.
Two. What Are the Causes of Phone Fatigue?
People feel more protected “on the screen,” that is to say texting or IMing.
People feel more in control of their image communicating “on the screen.”
People are too tired for phone conversation after all their multitasking.
Calling others might be looked at as “too demanding” and needy. Peer pressure says, "Don't be a caller; be a texter."
Calling might be perceived as urgent, pumped up to a level that is not true. If you call, you've lost your cool facade.
Calling violates the rules of efficiency.
Calling has “insufficient boundaries,” that is the call could get messy, complicated, dramatic, time-consuming, in short an unappealing prospect.
Calling others requires full attention and we’ve become accustomed to having only partial attention.
Examining Facebook Addiction
McMahon's the 10 Signs That Facebook Has Become a Self-Destructive Chimera and You Should Probably Delete Your Facebook Account
- You start “sharing” increasing gradations of meaningless trivia with your “friends” like what kind of dog food you purchased, what kind of nail polish you’re using before vacationing in Maui, how taking Omega-3 fish oil capsules makes you burp, etc.
- You’re spending 18 hours a day “managing” your friends’ comments ("No one has commented on my juicy entry that was posted almost 30 minutes ago. Damn them all!") and losing more perspective on what’s important in your life like getting out of the house, making real friends, and embarking on something truly creative.
- You become paranoid as to why a “friend” deleted you from his or her friends list and start losing sleep over why more and more Facebook people are deleting you from their existence.
- You become jealous and resentful when you see a “friend” commenting on someone’s “boring” post but that same person ignored your more “interesting” post.
- You start competing with your other Facebook “friends” for amassing more and more friends and comments.
- You fret when none of your Facebook friends wish you Happy Birthday.
- You obsess over the fact that one of your lifelong friends is engaging in more Facebook activity with a new Facebook acquaintance who has demoted your friendship ranking.
- You lose Facebook friends because you don’t reciprocate their offers to play Bubble Shooter, Pokemon Tower Defense, Trollface Launch, Whack Your Boss, and other games that require too much time for anyone who is gainfully employed.
- You become a Facebook snob, rejecting friend invitationsfrom people who have fewer than 300 Facebook friends.
- You become a Facebook elitist only accepting friend invitations from people who have a bare minimum of a Masters Degree, share your political beliefs, and have published or produced a work of art that was reviewed by a major publication.
See Facebook Fatigue
See Facebook Fatigue--It's Real
Maybe the above links hurt the author's argument because they suggest we have a self-correcting mechanism that makes us move on when we've saturated ourselves with something. Maybe we've reached the saturation point.
But think again. A study says Facebook Fatigue Is Setting But Other Social Media Is Growing.
So perhaps other social media simply take the place of the old stuff even though the "new stuff" is the same as the old.
Sample A Introduction and Thesis in Support of Turkle
Recently I wrote something mildly amusing on Facebook about my twins, how they preferred to be lazy and take the elevator rather than be strong and take the stairs as I had urged them, and I started getting a torrent of “likes” and comments. I found myself checking my Facebook status more often than necessary to monitor the growing attention my post was getting and I realized I was enjoying a pathetic dopamine ego massage from all the adulation I was receiving. I was, for a brief while anyway, Facebook’s King of the Mountain and Super Funny Man, a talented force who no doubt, my post proved, could have made a handsome living doing the stand-up comedy circuit.
And then it hit me. I am pathetic. I am woefully and egregiously needy. I am a disgusting wretch who’s allowed the technology of his time, social media and Facebook specifically, to ratchet up his neediness.
Gloating over all my perceived exaltation was not a sign of my wit and strength. To the contrary, it showed how bereft and pathetically trivial my life had become. I was yet another pathological pawn in the social media game, trying to connect with my Facebook friends when in fact I was “together” on Facebook but woefully alone, or as Sherry Turkle’s book succinctly puts it, I was another casualty in the social media’s merciless mouth, a member of those who are Alone Together. Turkle’s book of the same title remarkably analyzes the way technology has changed who we are degrading us in many ways, not the least of which is ______________, ___________, ______________, ________________, and __________________.
Another Successful Example
I am a nineteen-year-old student taking McMahon’s English 1A class, which features a final essay, the most heavily weighted essay in class, about the dangers of social media. I belong to a generation immured in Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine, to mention a few. Is McMahon’s choice of book, Alone Together, an implicit excoriation of my generation? The book in question, by MIT professor Sherry Turkle, sounds off the alarm bells about the grave dangers of social media: It’s addictive; it makes us dumb; it disconnects us from others; it makes us insecure narcissists. The alleged weaknesses of Turkl’s argument are several and include the following: Because social media is such a new phenomenon, we don’t have any long-term data to support her claims; her extreme anecdotes point to outliers but not mainstream users of social media and we can always find outliers in any category of human behavior; her zeal to wean us off social media blinds her to its benefits for those of us who are not pathologically addicted to it; technophobe and Luddite arguments have been around for centuries and they always prove to be shrill, paranoid overreactions to inevitable change. Having examined these criticisms in the face of a careful reading of the book, I have concluded that Turkle has written a legitimate, relevant, and compelling argument, supported by empirical research and sound logic, about the ways social media is destroying, not a fringe, but a pervasive segment of society in the realm of addiction, physical injury, narcissism, dehumanization, attention deficit disorder, and generalized loneliness.
Sample B Intro and Thesis Against Turkle
Is MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, a healthy voice in the wilderness decrying the pathologies of social media or is she a shrill technophobe alarming us to the coming Technological Dystopia? As a nineteen-year-old college student, am I well served by heeding the vivid warnings in Turkle’s polemic? I doubt it, for while Turkle does a good job of showing the variety of pathologies engendered by social media, her argument collapses under the weight of her one-sided bias, her excessive focus on extreme, outlier anecdotes, her Procrustean exposition (picking only the data that serves your purposes and ignoring the data that contradicts your claims) forcing a narrative of dystopian madness to fit into her rigid, preconceived thesis; and her lack of access to any real long-term studies to give us an accurate, objective look at the alleged self-destructiveness from social media.
The above would be an A; however, it suffers from mapping overlap. Let's try to fix it.
Here's an A grade Revision
Is MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, a healthy voice in the wilderness decrying the pathologies of social media or is she a shrill technophobe alarming us to the coming Technological Dystopia? As a nineteen-year-old college student, am I well served by heeding the vivid warnings in Turkle’s polemic? I doubt it, for while Turkle does a good job of showing the variety of pathologies engendered by social media, her argument collapses under the weight of her one-sided bias, her excessive focus on extreme, outlier anecdotes, her rigid either/or fallacy regarding the worthiness of the Internet; her confusion with correlation and causation; her willful ignorance of Sturgeon's Law to push her over-simplistic argument, and her lack of access to any real long-term studies to give us an accurate, objective look at the alleged self-destructiveness from social media.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
If our posts on Facebook get us a lot of attention in the form of “likes” and comments and we find this attention makes us gloat like we’re the King of Facebook, we have to ask ourselves: Should we be getting our thrills in this manner? Of all the things to get thrilled about, the birth of a baby, the expulsion of a fascist leader, the discovery of a cure for some terminable disease, why do so many of us jump for joy upon getting Facebook “likes” and comments?
Could the answer be we’ve lowered our expectations about what defines our own happiness? Before Facebook, we had more exalted expectations that drove us, that defined our goals, which made us truly happy. But now we sit in a robe while eating a Pop Tart and copy and paste something someone else wrote on Facebook and the attention we get from our posts makes us happy.
Maybe we shouldn’t be happy. Maybe we should be ashamed. Maybe we should be full of self-loathing. Maybe we should be full of disgust.
In addition to a Facebook “like” category, there needs to be a “Get a Life, You Pathetic Loser” category, so that my real friends can remind me how far down the rabbit hole of a wasted life I’ve allowed Facebook and Twitter to send me.
Such are the sentiments of Sherry Turkle, the author of Alone Together who argues convincingly that Facebook and other forms of social media have denigrated the human condition by ________________, ________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________________.
Intro: NYT article about how connected and alone we are.
Study Questions
One. What is the liminal world and how do we get lost there?
See page 213 in which we see there are worlds beyond our daily life routines where we feel encouraged to experiment with our identity and alter ego, giving it a powerful life that can get out of control. This is where we nurture our avatar and we lose boundaries with ourselves and others, surrendering to a life of excess fantasy and cutting cut off from reality.
Two. A flourishing human being experiences “flow,” we read on page 226. What is “flow” and how does the networked life impede it? What are the consequences? Flow means being fully immersed into the present, being fully focused, having undivided attention. People who are truly happy experience flow; people who are miserable distract themselves from their misery by texting and checking their Facebook status.
Three. What is the “seeking” drive and how does it make us addicted to being networked? 227
We crave connectivity so much that we're vulnerable to the ping of a new email or some other sound summoning us. As a result, we live a life of fragmented distraction.
Four. What are the rules of texting such as the ten minute response rule and others? See page 265. Also “full attention reciprocity” and its imbalance. One friend tries harder and feels less because of it.
“I text you more than you text me. And my response time is quicker than yours. What gives? Should I end this friendship?”
Five. What does the abused man on page 281 say about people, even sadistic ones, that makes them better than robots? They have a story. There is a "back story" like characters in a movie. They are part of life. Robots are not.
Six. What is the Facebook Friend Paradox? See 280. We have so many "friends" on Facebook but Americans say they've never had so few friends.
Seven. Summarize the abuse of technology and this abuse’s role in dehumanization. See 292, 293, 295, and elsewhere.
The abuse is gradual. As Marshal McLuhan writes, quoted from The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, “The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts,” but alter “patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.”
In other words, the Net or the “Media work their magic, or their mischief, on the nervous system itself.”
The technology takes over our minds and our bodies. There are psychological changes taking places, chemical addiction, a tingle of neurotransmitter when you see a red colored “like” on Facebook.
The technology has become so small, little handheld devices, that it has become ubiquitous and as such inseparable from us. It has gotten inside us.
An example of the Net’s growing power: In 2005 adults in North America spent six hours online weekly; by 2009 that number doubled to twelve hours.
For young adults, that number is much higher.
The average American teen sends/receives 2,272 texts a month.
Average American is “on screen” 8.5 hours a day.
Our technology as “remapped the neural circuitry,” writes Nicholas Carr.
Carr points out that our powers of concentration have diminished. We quickly get “fidgety.”
Former good readers can’t read long books or even long articles anymore. They can only skim info-bites.
We call less; we read newspapers less; we spend face-to-face time with people less, we read less, we use snail mail less; the list goes on.
Eight. What is realtechnik and how is it an antidote to our dehumanization? See the definition and others in this book review.
Page 267
As you read through Turkle's thoughts and observations, certain concepts stand out as especially important. Here I will mention a few that made a strong impression on me:
- Realtechnik — a way of thinking about the impact of technologies and the choices we can make about their uses.
What I call realtechnik suggests that we step back and reassess when we hear triumphalist or apocalyptic narratives about how to live with technology. Realtechnik is skeptical about linear progress. It encourages humility, a state of mind in which we are most open to facing problems and reconsidering decisions. It helps us to acknowledge costs and recognize the things we hold inviolate.
Nine. Distinguish between our vulnerabilities and our needs. See page 295.We are vulnerable to technologically-driven narcissism, and we have lost our real needs, real human connection, replacing them with artificial needs, control and adulation.
Carr writes, “We are plunged into an eco-system of interruption technologies.” The effect is fragmentation and the atrophy of our concentration and focus.
Ten. Turkle’s book is that of a Net Skeptic refuting the Net Enthusiasts. Some would call Turkle a Luddite. Is that a fair criticism? Explain.
Nicholas Carr writes: “The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.”
Eleven. What effect does technology have on the brain? Carr writes that the brain is malleable, that it is shaped by technology, that parts of the brain die and other parts flourish depending on a changing environment. “The brain is very plastic.”
“There is evidence that the cells of our brains literally develop and grow bigger with use, and atrophy or waste away with disuse.”
Being hooked on the Net, we switch back and forth different interruption technologies and we lose competence, intelligence, and intellect.
Twelve. What effect does the Net have on our intellect?
Carr writes: “We enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.”
Considering the brain’s plasticity, “if you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Interent.”
“The Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli-repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.”
We read in The Shallows that researcher Maryanne Wolf says Net immersion makes us “sacrifice the facility that makes deep reading possible. We revert to being ‘mere decoders of information.’”
Carr writes that the Web is “an interruption machine” and “frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and makes us tense and anxious. The more complex the train of thought we’re involved in, the greater the impairment the distractions cause.”
Carr cites studies that when we go back and forth from two or more tasks, we impede thinking and competence.
Other studies show that the more we’re on the Web, the more we become Skimmers, not Readers. Brain and eye activity changes.
A skimmer is called a “Power Browser.” The PB reads more but more superficially. “Hyperlinks distract people from reading and thinking deeply.”
As skimmers, we no longer value narratives, stories that tell important truths about ourselves.
According to Douglas Rushkoff, "The traditional linear story works by creating a character we can identify with, putting that character we can identify with, putting that character in danger, and then allowing him or her to discover a way out. We meet Oedipus, Luke Skywalker, or Dora the Explorer. Something happens--an initiating event--that sends the character on a quest." The characters embark on, what Joseph Campbell calls, a "heroic journey."
With "interactivity," the remote control, for example, consumers of entertainment are less likely to absorb a meaningful narrative. They'd rather skim.
Without meaningful narratives, we become ignorant, even dumb, according to Rushkoff, who writes that Americans are immersed in a "mediated disortion field," with such misinformation that the number of Americans "unsure about evolution increased from 7 percent to 21 percent, while those questioning global warming increased from 31 percent in 1997 to 48 percent in 2010."
Skimmers are not apparently well educated.
The Internet, Rushkoff continues, makes us skinners of "Everyone Is Equal" so that legit and non-legit opinion makers share the stage. See Cult of the Amateur.
Doug's Critique of Networked World with comments
Research Sources
Review of Internet Dangers
One. Multitasking results in divided energy and mediocre work as we live in a state of continual partial attention.
Two. Death of intimacy results from preference of control and convenience over compromise and reciprocity. Everyone is "pauseable."
Three. A networked life encourages narcissism and constant need for social validation from others; also a networked life makes us feel we're the center of the universe.
Four. A networked life flattens our personae into emoticans.
Five. We suffer off-the-grid anxiety because we have an always-on mentality.
Six. We live in the New Solitude, which means we're mentally absent from others but at the same time we're tethered to each other in a degraded way.
Seven. We live in present shock in which we see "the diminishment of anything that isn't happening right now--and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is" (Rushkoff).
Eight. We suffer from digiphrenia, as Rushkoff writes, using technology to be in more than one place at the same time.
Nine. Internet alters our brain circuits for the worse, turning us into "skimmers."
Links that accuse Turkle of being a technophobe:
From Jonah Lehrer in NYT:
There is no easy reply to these critiques. The Internet is full of absurdities, from the booming economy of virtual worlds — a user recently paid $335,000 for land on a fictitious asteroid in Entropia Universe — to the mass retweeting of ****** ******. It’s always fun to mock the stilted language of teenagers and lament the decline of letter writing. But these obvious objections shouldn’t obscure the real mystery: If the Internet is such an alienating force, then why can’t we escape it? If Facebook is so insufferable, then why do hundreds of millions of people check their page every day? Why did I just text my wife instead of calling her?
I certainly don’t expect Turkle to have all the answers, but her ethnographic portraits would have benefited from a more probing investigation of such questions. The teenagers she quotes complain about everything — phones, texting, e-mail, Skype. And yet, virtually none of them seem willing to turn off the digital spigot.
Perhaps this is because, despite our misgivings about the Internet, its effects on real-life relationships seem mostly positive, if minor. A 2007 study at Michigan State University involving 800 undergraduates, for instance, found that Facebook users had more social capital than abstainers, and that the site increased measures of “psychological well-being,” especially in those suffering from low self-esteem. Other studies have found that frequent blogging leads to increased levels of social support and integration and may serve as “the core of building intimate relationships.” One recurring theme to emerge from much of this research is that most people, at least so far, are primarily using the online world to enhance their offline relationships, not supplant them.
Needless to say, the portrait painted by these studies is very different from the one in Turkle’s fascinating, readable and one-sided book. We are so eager to take sides on technology, to describe the Web in utopian or dystopian terms, but maybe that’s the problem. In the end, it’s just another tool, an accessory that allows us to do what we’ve always done: interact with one other. The form of these interactions is always changing. But the conversation remains.
Jonah Lehrer’s most recent book is “How We Decide.”
Example Thesis Structures
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider ______________, ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Turkle's argument that social media presents dangers to our humanity is both exaggerated and erroneous evidenced by ___________, ___________, ________________, ____________, and _______________.
While Turkle does a good job of showing the narcissism and disconnection from the misuse of social media, her vision of a future techno-dystopia is misguided because _______________, ____________, _______________, and _________________.
Objections to Sherry Turkle's Argument
One. She is too one-sided with only negative anecdotes and examples of the way technology disconnects us and makes us narcissistic.
Two. She exaggerates the pitfalls and dangers of social media.
Three. She offers no solutions to social media addiction and dehumanization.
Four. She resists the inevitability of change brought on by technology.
Balanced Critique of Alone Together from NYT
Most Common Error Last Essay: Pronoun Shifts and Agreement
We suffer learned helplessness when you feel like everything you do is a failure. A person suffering from helplessness will often have delusions that destroy all their efforts. When one feels helpless, we must exercise the Third Eye so you can see your problems from an objective distance. When a person has the Third Eye, they are able to develop strategies to transcend their sense of recurring futility.
Another Example
When a person repeatedly checks their status on Facebook, they develop an addiction that can result in you spending over twelve hours a day checking on your "status." We live in an age in which social media dominates our lives. Your self-esteem too often is affected by the amount or lack of attention you're getting while posting on Facebook. We need to step back, process what we're doing, and realize we're only hurting ourselves. So next time you get the urge to go on Facebook, think again. One's sanity depends on it.
Faulty Pronoun Error Reference
Different Types of Pronoun Errors
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
|
after |
once |
until |
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
Related articles
Surprise! Narcissism Linked to Frequent Facebook and Twitter Use
The Facebook Complainer: No One Appreciates Me
Narcissism- Is your partner selfish, dominant and arrogant?
7 signs you might be a narcissist
Are You A Narcissist Just Because You Like To Talk About Yourself Online?
Your Annotated Bibliography
Your annotated bibliography, like your Works Cited page, shows your sources (in this case 5) in alphabetical order.
Under each listing, you need 3 paragraphs:
Provide a concise summary.
Show the significance or quality of the source (authority, credibility, thoroughness, relevance).
Explain the source's purpose or usefulness for supporting your thesis.
Outlines for Essays That Argue a Position
Present the topic
Concede your opponents' position
Develop a thesis statement that both asserts your position and addresses your opponents.
Provide your first reason (mapping component) with support.
Provide your second reason (mapping component) with support.
(Etc.)
Counterargument-Refutation Section
Conclusion
Harvard College Writing Center Conclusion Advice
Purdue Owl Formal Topic Outline
Common Errors: Comma Splices and Sentence Fragments
Find the comma splice:
Grading freshmen composition essays makes you lose IQ points. Why? Because there’s only one of you grading over 500 sub-literate essays a semester. You don’t raise them up, by sheer numbers, they pull you down. Try telling this to your Dean and see how sympathetic he is. He’ll say, “We hired you to change the future of America, you nincompoop!”
Identify Comma Splices and Fragments in the Following
I’m in a constant struggle to lose weight. I exercise like a fitness demon, that’s not the problem. My problem is that I eat like a crazed survivor of a famine whose every meal must compensate for the deprivation I’ve suffered in some cosmic universe that doesn’t exist. Except in my gluttonous imagination.
I embraced the six meals a day philosophy a long time ago. The premise is that you should eat several small meals, each one no bigger than the palm of your hand. Rather than eat three large meals and thereby overburden your digestive system. The problem is that my six meals aren’t palm sized, they’re more the size of a watermelon and even then I’m still hungry. Now that you mention it, I don’t even eat six meals a day, I eat ten. And not small snacks either. We’re talking substantial heaping cartloads of food.
Did I tell you I can’t stop eating after one plate? I like to take seconds and thirds. Sometimes fourths. And then there’s my daughters’ leftovers, Panini grilled cheese pesto sandwiches, popcorn, tortilla chips, pancakes, waffles, French toast. I snort it all up like an anteater as I clean the kitchen table.
Have we discussed chocolate cake? I need two large slices, about twice a week, to fend off the existential vacuum. I’ll take red velvet in a pinch. Though it doesn’t penetrate my craving sensors as deeply as the chocolate.
My wife is currently baking coffee cinnamon swirl cake because she likes to bake a dessert before we watch our favorite show Game of Thrones.
I told her I didn’t want any coffee cake as I’m trying to trim my waistline, but she reminded me that I already ate over half of it. I don’t even remember what I’m eating, I think I’m in trouble.
Sentence Fragments on Owl Purdue
According to Andrea A. Lunsford in The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eight Edition, there are 20 writing errors that merit “The Top 20.”
One. Wrong word: Confusing one word for another.
Here's a list of wrong word usage.
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone.
Complement is to complete or match well with something.
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods, Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters, I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Every where we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Everywhere we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven . Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedra remain legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because of privacy.
- Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
- Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
- Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
- Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
- Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
- Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
- Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
- Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
- Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
- Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Related articles
Doug's Critique of Our Networked World Reminds Me of Sherry Turkle's Alone Together
Lesson 2: The Pathology of Being Tethered and Phone Fatigue, Chapters 9 and 10
'The Shallows' - The Web Is Changing Our Brains
Why arguing is the best way to learn
Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr
Why technology is not always the solution for better education
Posted at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
1A Lecture Update 11-30-15: "Stop Googling, Let's Talk," "The Touch-Screen Generation," and Social Media Pathologies
Peer Edit for English 1A Final Essay (First Draft)
First Page
- Do you have a salient, distinctive title that is relevant to your topic and thesis?
- Do you have your name, instructor’s name, the course, and date (in that order) at the top left?
Format
- Are you using 12-point font with Times New Roman?
- Are your lines double-spaced?
- Is your font color black?
- Do you make sure there are no extra spaces between paragraphs (some students erroneously use 4 spaces between paragraphs)
- Do you use 1-inch margins?
- Do you use block format for quotes of 4 or more lines in which you indent another inch from the left margin?
Introduction
- Does your introduction have a compelling hook using an anecdote, a troubling current event, a startling statistic, etc.?
- Do you avoid pat phrases or clichés? For example, “In today’s society . . .” or “In today’s modern world . . .” or “Since the Dawn of Man . . .”
Thesis
- Do you have a thesis that articulates your main purpose in clear, specific language?
- Is your thesis sophisticated in that it makes an assertion that goes beyond the obvious and self-evident?
- Is your thesis debatable?
- Do you address your opponents with a concession clause? (While opponents of my proposal to raise the minimum wage to $22 an hour make some compelling points, their argument collapses when we consider _____________, _______________, __________________, and ________________. )
- Does your thesis have explicit or implicit mapping components that outline the body paragraphs of your essay?
General Questions from Your Reader
One. What’s most compelling about the essay so far?
Two. What is most needed for improvement so far?
Three. Something I would like the writer to explain more is . . .
Four. One last comment would be . . .
Your In-Class Writing Exam
Develop a thesis that explains how "The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships" by Curtis Silver complements Sherry Turkle's "The Flight from Conversation."
Avoid the Thesis Summary Trap
You can fall into a trap of summarizing the author’s points when you are in agreement with the author.
Here’s an example of a Summary Trap Thesis:
While her argument is not without flaws, Sherry Turkle persuasively demonstrates that social media is resulting in superficial connections, loss of empathy, narcissism, and constant-attention anxiety.
By supporting the mapping components above, you’re simply summarizing Turkle’s essay and/or Ted Talk.
The solution is to emphasize a defense of the author by refuting her opponents.
Here’s an example of a Refutation Thesis:
While her argument is not without flaws especially her failure to complicate her narrative with examples of people flourishing in their social media connections, Sherry Turkle’s warning about the human degradation resulting from the misuse of social media remains convincing in the face of her opponents’ objections, including the charge that we don’t have enough long-term data to support her claims; Turkle posits an over simplistic either/or fallacy with her conversation-connection paradigm; and Turkle’s social media critique is a thinly-veiled diatribe against Millennials.
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Here are some thesis attempts:
Thesis 1
While I’ll concede that there are mindless consumers of social media who evidence the pathologies described by Sherry Turkle, her overall argument that society as a whole is replacing the full humanity of conversation for dehumanized connections is overstated when we consider that many of us are productively harnessing these technologies after an initial addiction phase, that many of us can embrace these technological connections without losing our conversational relationships (yes, we can chew gum and walk at the same time, Turkle), and that Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap) does not justify throwing away the “baby with the bathwater.”
Thesis 2
I am willing to concede that many of us can adapt to the gadgets that entice us into the world of social media. I will further concede that many of us can connect and converse simultaneously. However, let us not fool ourselves by minimizing the damage brought on by the juggernaut of social media. Let us instead take a close look at Turkle’s argument, that even mature, healthy-minded consumers of social media are being seduced into cheap connections that are degrading their empathy, friendships, self-reflection, solitude, and meaningful connections. Turkle’s argument holds up to the scrutiny of empirical evidence, rigorous research, sound logic, and keen psychological insight and encourages us to approach our gadgets with healthy moderation.
Thesis 3
The problem with addressing Turkle’s argument is that different age groups tend to react differently to social media. While most adults adapt to social media and eventually find a balance between superficial connections and deep conversation, youngsters and teenagers are the most vulnerable to the pathologies that result from social media addiction. Young people mired in social media are afflicted with the disease of fame, empathy loss, and mass shaming.
Thesis 4
We’ve always had mindless consumers, addicts, social degenerates, depressives, narcissists, dysfunctional solipsists, and the like. To use them as a reason to be weary of social media is a fallacy evident in Turkle’s argument, which is sodden with exaggeration, generational hostility toward Millennials, and oversimplifications.
Thesis 5
Through empirical research, cogent psychological insight, lucid logic, and compelling anecdotage, Turkle convincingly demonstrates that social media does not merely dehumanize society’s socially dysfunctional outliers but degrades even the best of us.
Thesis 6
Those who are quick to dismiss Turkle’s warning that we are becoming a culture of connectors, not real talkers, fail to grasp the underlying psychology that supports Turkle’s claim. The underlying psychology pertains to our default setting for the path of least resistance, our maladaptation for superficial online friendships, or what I call “low-hanging fruit,” and the economic and time demands that encourage us even further to be seduced by social media’s counterfeit, dehumanizing, time-saving friendships.
Thesis 7
It chafes me to see McMahon brainwash his students with the Sherry Turkle Kool-Aid, especially since my teacher is so egregiously misguided on this topic. For one, McMahon fails to see that while social media results in a certain amount of loneliness, depression, and narcissism, it's better than not having social media at all. Economic necessity and time limits push us into our social media as the communication of “last resort.” For another thing, McMahon, you or Sherry Turkle notwithstanding, the technology isn’t going to go away or to abate. To forego our gadgets would be to withdraw even deeper into the loneliness ecosphere and become social pariahs. The third thing that collapses your argument, McMahon, is that you fail to see that most of us since our infancy have been deprived of the interactive and linguistic skills to have the kind of conversations you and Turkle wish us to have. We are simply doing the best we can with the tools provided us. We are not, as Turkle is, privileged to enter some superior world of conversation. Finally, you need to face the fact that sometimes in life we take what we can get, even compromised, inferior versions of communication. If you and Turkle want to ride your little intellectual bromance and scold society for not living up to your conversational expectations, that’s on you. But I can tell you, most of us are contentedly acclimated to the social media gadgets we have and the limited communications that result from them. Don’t take away what little joys we have, and please mind your own business. Just a final reminder, McMahon: You promised not to give a bad grade to students who disagree with you, even someone who opposes you with the vehemence you see here. Here’s your chance for fairness, McMahon. Are you with me?
Thesis 8
The student who so vociferously objects to McMahon’s claim that social media results in social pathologies is profoundly misguided. To say that we should settle for compromised forms of social media connection is, contrary to McMahon’s high expectations for us, a form of self-debasement that makes McMahon cringe with sorrow and despair. Secondly, the student’s shrill and alarmist notion that fully realized conversation is a pastime reserved only for the privileged bourgeois is a fallacious argument disconnected from the empirical evidence that shows that since the beginning of time people of all economic stratums have been able to converse with detailed authenticity and meaningful connection. This acrimonious, unreasonable student is throwing a class-warfare canard at McMahon, and this student’s canard has hit the ground with a lame thud. Finally, McMahon’s argument is not, as the ill-advised student would have us believe, based on a “bromance” with Sherry Turkle; rather, McMahon wants his students to exercise moderation, prudence, and mindfulness in their social media activities so that they can cultivate the meaningful conversations they deserve.
"Stop Googling, Let's Talk" by Sherry Turkle
"The Touch-Screen Generation" by Hanna Rosin
One. What is dangerous about being able to access stimulation at the swipe of a finger?
The sense of entitlement, impatience, and delusional omnipotence (resulting in fussiness) could point to a transformation into a brat generation.
Another danger is parent laziness syndrome. "Give them the iPad. That'll shut 'em up."
What really speaks to the danger of screen time is that the very apps developers Rosin talks to limit their own children's screen time. Some allow for no screen time.
Two. What is the technological neurosis of our digital age?
We read, "By their pinched reactions, these parents illuminated for me the neurosis of our age: as technology becomes ubiquitous in our lives, American parents are becoming more, not less, wary of what it might be doing to their children."
Parents want their children to master technology. However, they don't want their children to be anti-social: "Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can't make eye contact and has an avatar for a girlfriend."
Part of the fear lies in the unknown. The iPad is so new as of Rosin's essay (published in 2013) that there is not yet any research on its effects on a child's brain.
The new generation are "digital natives"; they grow up fluent in the language of computers, tablets and other devices.
The tablet is a "rattle on steroids," easy to use and quickly sucks the toddler into its world.
Parents are terrified by the transformation they see in their children: "the zombie effect." They go into a trance.
Three. What counterarguments would opponents offer to those who are opposed to iPads?
For one, "Every new medium has, within a short time of its introduction, been condemned as a threat to young people. Pulp novels . . . TV . . ."
For two, if your child has an addictive personality, he may glom onto anything, if not the iPad.
For three, there is evidence that the iPad is an effective educational tool.
For four, too many parents treat the iPad like "junk food," using it "for passing the time in a frivolous way . . ." and the children "will fully absorb that attitude, and the neurosis will be passed to the next generation to the next generation." In other words, the parents, not the iPad, are at fault.
For five, more and more research is showing that iPads are effective tools for helping autistic children.
See Facebook Validation essay.
And Seeking Validation.
Narcissism Linked to Frequent Facebook and Twitter Use
Does Facebook Promote Narcissism?
Does Facebook and Other Social Media Encourage Narcissism?
Does Facebook Turn People Into Narcissists?
More and more young people are only “speaking” online at the exclusion of everything else. As a result, we are becoming more disconnected and more lonely.
See Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
Social Networking: Failure to Connect
Social Media Decreases Loneliness
Most Common Error Last Essay: Pronoun Shifts and Agreement
We suffer learned helplessness when you feel like everything you do is a failure. A person suffering from helplessness will often have delusions that destroy all their efforts. When one feels helpless, we must exercise the Third Eye so you can see your problems from an objective distance. When a person has the Third Eye, they are able to develop strategies to transcend their sense of recurring futility. Therefore, you can free oneself from your dilemma and helps others with this form of self-empowerment. Let us all take notice, then, that one should cultivate a sense of free-will so we can overcome these crises.
Faulty Pronoun Error Reference
Different Types of Pronoun Errors
Posted at 02:24 PM in Acting Out Culture III | Permalink | Comments (0)
English 1A Lesson Updated for 11-25-15: Reclaiming Conversation and Vice News on Internet Addiction in China
(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)
Know what kind of argument you are writing:
Argument to advance a thesis:
You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.
For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.
Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.
Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.
Refutation argument:
You refute against an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).
For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.
In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.
Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.
Support Your Claim
Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.
Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View
You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.
You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.
You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.
Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments
Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).
Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:
Plain
Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.
More Dressed Up
Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.
Plain
We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.
More Dressed Up
The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.
Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable
Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:
some
most
a few
often
under certain conditions
when necessary
occasionally
Example:
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Examine Your Core Assumptions
Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.
Claim
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Assumption
Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.
Here's a link (with grammar errors) for writing counterarguments and refutations in your essay.
Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.
Some things to consider for your conclusion paragraph
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
What are causes of our loneliness and disconnection other than social media?
Moving into the suburbs
Growing debt equals more work hours.
Sub-living wages equals more work hours.
Anxiety and stress of "trying to stay afloat" impedes time and money for social life.
Addictive personalities will find whatever is available to feed their addiction. All addictive behavior leads to isolation and disconnection.
We live in an addictive society. Social media and consumerism have joined forces to make us addicts.
What can we attribute to Facebook as a misery cause?
It encourages the envy from social comparison and FOMO (fear of missing out).
But can we blame Facebook if we have let it become our default when we're looking for connection?
Do we confuse connection with real bonds? What's the difference?
"The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
In-Class Activity
In groups of 2, do three things:
- Write a thesis statement that supports Turkle
- Write a thesis that refutes Turkle
- Decide which one of the two thesis statements is more persuasive and explain your decision.
Posted at 01:45 PM in Acting Out Culture III | Permalink | Comments (0)
1A Lecture Updated for 11-23-15: Facebook and Depression; "The Empathy Deficit," Improving Your Argument,
Thesis Statement Variations for Essay on Sherry Turkle's Critique of Social Media
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Here are some thesis attempts:
Thesis 1
While I’ll concede that there are mindless consumers of social media who evidence the pathologies described by Sherry Turkle, her overall argument that society as a whole is replacing the full humanity of conversation for dehumanized connections is overstated when we consider that many of us are productively harnessing these technologies after an initial addiction phase, that many of us can embrace these technological connections without losing our conversational relationships (yes, we can chew gum and walk at the same time, Turkle), and that Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap) does not justify throwing away the “baby with the bathwater.”
Thesis 2
I am willing to concede that many of us can adapt to the gadgets that entice us into the world of social media. I will further concede that many of us can connect and converse simultaneously. However, let us not fool ourselves by minimizing the damage brought on by the juggernaut of social media. Let us instead take a close look at Turkle’s argument, that even mature, healthy-minded consumers of social media are being seduced into cheap connections that are degrading their empathy, friendships, self-reflection, solitude, and meaningful connections. Turkle’s argument holds up to the scrutiny of empirical evidence, rigorous research, sound logic, and keen psychological insight and encourages us to approach our gadgets with healthy moderation.
Thesis 3
The problem with addressing Turkle’s argument is that different age groups tend to react differently to social media. While most adults adapt to social media and eventually find a balance between superficial connections and deep conversation, youngsters and teenagers are the most vulnerable to the pathologies that result from social media addiction. Young people mired in social media are afflicted with the disease of fame, empathy loss, and mass shaming.
Thesis 4
We’ve always had mindless consumers, addicts, social degenerates, depressives, narcissists, dysfunctional solipsists, and the like. To use them as a reason to be weary of social media is a fallacy evident in Turkle’s argument, which is sodden with exaggeration, generational hostility toward Millennials, and oversimplifications.
Thesis 5
Through empirical research, cogent psychological insight, lucid logic, and compelling anecdotage, Turkle convincingly demonstrates that social media does not merely dehumanize society’s socially dysfunctional outliers but degrades even the best of us.
Thesis 6
Those who are quick to dismiss Turkle’s warning that we are becoming a culture of connectors, not real talkers, fail to grasp the underlying psychology that supports Turkle’s claim. The underlying psychology pertains to our default setting for the path of least resistance, our maladaptation for superficial online friendships, or what I call “low-hanging fruit,” and the economic and time demands that encourage us even further to be seduced by social media’s counterfeit, dehumanizing, time-saving friendships.
Thesis 7
It chafes me to see McMahon brainwash his students with the Sherry Turkle Kool-Aid, especially since my teacher is so egregiously misguided on this topic. For one, McMahon fails to see that while social media results in a certain amount of loneliness, depression, and narcissism, it's better than not having social media at all. Economic necessity and time limits push us into our social media as the communication of “last resort.” For another thing, McMahon, you or Sherry Turkle notwithstanding, the technology isn’t going to go away or to abate. To forego our gadgets would be to withdraw even deeper into the loneliness ecosphere and become social pariahs. The third thing that collapses your argument, McMahon, is that you fail to see that most of us since our infancy have been deprived of the interactive and linguistic skills to have the kind of conversations you and Turkle wish us to have. We are simply doing the best we can with the tools provided us. We are not, as Turkle is, privileged to enter some superior world of conversation. Finally, you need to face the fact that sometimes in life we take what we can get, even compromised, inferior versions of communication. If you and Turkle want to ride your little intellectual bromance and scold society for not living up to your conversational expectations, that’s on you. But I can tell you, most of us are contentedly acclimated to the social media gadgets we have and the limited communications that result from them. Don’t take away what little joys we have, and please mind your own business. Just a final reminder, McMahon: You promised not to give a bad grade to students who disagree with you, even someone who opposes you with the vehemence you see here. Here’s your chance for fairness, McMahon. Are you with me?
Thesis 8
The student who so vociferously objects to McMahon’s claim that social media results in social pathologies is profoundly misguided. To say that we should settle for compromised forms of social media connection is, contrary to McMahon’s high expectations for us, a form of self-debasement that makes McMahon cringe with sorrow and despair. Secondly, the student’s shrill and alarmist notion that fully realized conversation is a pastime reserved only for the privileged bourgeois is a fallacious argument disconnected from the empirical evidence that shows that since the beginning of time people of all economic stratums have been able to converse with detailed authenticity and meaningful connection. This acrimonious, unreasonable student is throwing a class-warfare canard at McMahon, and this student’s canard has hit the ground with a lame thud. Finally, McMahon’s argument is not, as the ill-advised student would have us believe, based on a “bromance” with Sherry Turkle; rather, McMahon wants his students to exercise moderation, prudence, and mindfulness in their social media activities so that they can cultivate the meaningful conversations they deserve.
The Atlantic article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" could be a research link.
Another worthy research link is The New Yorker article "How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy."
"The Empathy Deficit" by Keith O'Brien
One. What is the empathy deficit?
We read that Generation Wi-Fi, or specifically college students, today "are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years."
This lack of empathy results in the following:
A cold heart
No sympathy or compassion for those who suffer
No concern for others' misfortunes
Two. Why should we be concerned about the empathy deficit?
Cultures who score low on empathy, such as Moldova, score low on the Happiness Index. In Moldova, a common saying, we read in Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, is "not my problem." No one wants to live there.
Economic injustice spreads from a lack of empathy. We read that "Rich People Care Less" and "Powerful and Cold-Hearted" in the NYT.
Three. What’s the problem with defining empathy?
There is no agreement or definitive definition. We know it’s about reading other people’s emotion and feeling their emotion and this shared feeling gives us connection with others. This connection in turn results in greater compassion.
We also read that when we have empathy we can read other people’s distress signals and we feel compelled to react compassionately toward those signals.
Four. What is the relationship between narcissism and empathy?
As narcissism increases (through privilege, entitlement, false self-esteem, wealth, or other causes), empathy decreases.
Narcissism is defined as “increased self-absorption” in the essay.
Someone once defined narcissism this way: On one hand the narcissist has this unlimited craving for the adulation of others; on the other hand, this same narcissist has utter contempt for others. The contradiction of the narcissist speaks to his insanity.
Five. According to college surveys, what is the state of empathy?
Analyzing 72 surveys, researchers found that empathy was flat from 1979-2000. Then around 2000, “there’s this sudden, sharp drop.”
A specific type of empathy, called empathic concern (how much one cares about others), dropped 48 percent between 1979 and 2009.
Six. What cultural changes have accompanied this dramatic drop in empathy?
The rise of video games, 24-hour cable television, widespread divorce, laptops and cellphones have created an insular world where people withdraw more and more into themselves and what David Brooks calls “The Big Me.”
With news overload coming at us on social media, cellphones, and 24-hour cable TV, we read that we suffer a sort of tragic news overload in which one world catastrophe bleeds into the next until we become numb and our empathy traits die off in a sort of gangrene or frostbite.
(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)
Know what kind of argument you are writing:
Argument to advance a thesis:
You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.
For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.
Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.
Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.
Refutation argument:
You refute an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).
For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.
In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.
Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.
Support Your Claim
Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.
Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View
You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.
You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.
You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.
Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments
Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).
Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:
Plain
Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.
More Dressed Up
Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.
Plain
We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.
More Dressed Up
The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.
Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable
Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:
some
most
a few
often
under certain conditions
when necessary
occasionally
Example:
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Examine Your Core Assumptions
Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.
Claim
Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Assumption
Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.
Here's a link (with grammar errors) for writing counterarguments and refutations in your essay.
Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Comma Rules (based in part by Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers)
Commas are designed to help writers avoid confusing sentences and to clarify the logic of their sentences.
If you cook Jeff will clean the dishes. (Will you cook Jeff?)
While we were eating a rattlesnake approached us. (Were we eating a rattlesnake?)
Comma Rule 1: Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) joining two independent clauses.
Rattlesnakes are high in protein, but I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Rattlesnakes are dangerous, and the desert species are even more so.
We are a proud people, for our ancestors passed down these famous delicacies over a period of five thousand years.
The exception to rule 1 is when the two independent clauses are short:
The plane took off and we were on our way.
Comma Rule 2: Use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.
When Jeff Henderson was in prison, he developed an appetite for reading.
In the nearby room, the TV is blaring full blast.
Tanning in the hot Hermosa Beach sun for over two hours, I realized I had better call it a day.
The exception is when the short adverb clause or phrase is short and doesn’t create the possibility of a misreading:
In no time we were at 2,800 feet.
Comma Rule 3: Use a comma between all items in a series.
Jeff Henderson found redemption through hard work, self-reinvention, and social altruism.
Finding his passion, mastering his craft, and giving back to the community were all part of Jeff Henderson’s self-reinvention.
Comma Rule 4: Use a comma between coordinate adjectives not joined with “and.” Do not use a comma between cumulative adjectives.
The adjectives below are called coordinate because they modify the noun separately:
Jeff Henderson is a passionate, articulate, wise speaker.
The adjectives above are coordinate because they can be joined with “and.” Jeff Henderson is passionate and articulate and wise.
Adjectives that do not modify the noun separately are cumulative.
Three large gray shapes moved slowly toward us.
Chocolate fudge peanut butter swirl coconut cake is divine.
Comma Rule 5: Use commas to set off nonrestrictive (nonessential) elements.
Restrictive or essential information doesn’t have a comma:
For school the students need notebooks that are college-ruled.
Jeff’s cat that just had kittens became very aggressive.
Nonrestrictive:
For school the students need college-ruled notebooks, which are on sale at the bookstore.
Jeff Henderson’s mansion, which is located in Las Vegas, has a state-of-the-art kitchen.
My youngest sister, who plays left wing on the soccer team, now lives at The Sands, a beach house near Los Angeles.
Posted at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
1A Lecture Updated for 11-18-15: "The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships," Mixed Structure, and Sherry Turkle's "Reclaiming Conversation"
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
“The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” by Curtis Silver
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
For three, there's a point where too many choices of friendship interaction kills all the choices. We become overwhelmed and retreat from making any choice at all.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
The Atlantic article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" could be a research link.
Another worthy research link is The New Yorker article "How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy."
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
"The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
Identifying Claims and Analyzing Arguments from Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition
We’ve learned in this class that we can call a thesis a claim, an assertion that must be supported with evidence and refuting counterarguments.
There are 3 different types of claims: fact, value, and policy.
Claims of Fact
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “Claims of fact are assertions (or arguments) that seek to define or classify something or establish that a problem or condition has existed, exists, or will exist.
For example, Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow argues that Jim Crow practices that notoriously oppressed people of color still exist in an insidious form, especially in the manner in which we incarcerate black and brown men.
In The Culture Code Rapaille argues that different cultures have unconscious codes and that a brand’s codes must not be disconnected with the culture that brand needs to appeal to. This is the problem or struggle that all companies have: being “on code” with their product. The crisis that is argued is the disconnection between people’s unconscious codes and the contrary codes that a brand may represent.
Many economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that there is major problem facing America, a shrinking middle class, that is destroying democracy and human freedom as this country knows it. Krugman and others will point to a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, a growing class of temporary workers that surpasses all other categories of workers (warehouse jobs for online companies, for example), and de-investment in the American labor force as jobs are outsourced in a world of global competition.
All three examples above are claims of fact. As Greene and Lidinsky write, “This is an assertion that a condition exists. A careful reader must examine the basis for this kind of claim: Are we truly facing a crisis?”
We further read, “Our point is that most claims of fact are debatable and challenge us to provide evidence to verify our arguments. They may be based on factual information, but they are not necessarily true. Most claims of fact present interpretations of evidence derived from inferences.”
A Claim of Fact That Seeks to Define Or Classify
Greene and Lidinsky point out that autism is a controversial topic because experts cannot agree on a definition. The behaviors attributed to autism “actually resist simple definition.”
There is also disagreement on a definition of obesity. For example, some argue that the current BMI standards are not accurate.
Another example that is difficult to define or classify is the notion of genius.
In all the cases above, the claim of fact is to assert a definition that must be supported with evidence and refutations of counterarguments.
Claims of Value
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of fact is different from a claim of value, which expresses an evaluation of a problem or condition that has existed, exists, or will exist. Is a condition good or bad? Is it important or inconsequential?
In other words, the claim isn’t whether or not a crisis or problem exists: The emphasis is on HOW serious the problem is.
How serious is global warming?
How serious is gender discrimination in schools?
How serious is racism in law enforcement and incarceration?
How serious is the threat of injury for people who engage in Cross-Fit training?
How serious are the health threats rendered from providing sodas in public schools?
How serious are Brand codes and their connection or disconnection with the consumer’s unconscious codes?
Claims of Policy
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of policy is an argument for what should be the case, that a condition should exist. It is a call for change or a solution to a problem.
Examples
We must decriminalize drugs.
We must increase the minimum wage to X per hour.
We must have stricter laws that defend worker rights for temporary and migrant workers.
We must integrate more autistic children in mainstream classes.
We must implement universal health care.
If we are to keep capital punishment, then we must air it on TV.
We must implement stricter laws for texting while driving.
The Importance of Using Concession with Claims
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’”
“Often a writer will signal a concession with phrases like the following:”
“It is true that . . .”
“I agree with X that Y is an important factor to consider.”
“Some studies have convincingly shown that . . .”
Identify Counterarguments
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and conflicting opinions.”
Developing a Thesis
Greene and Lidinsky write that a thesis is “an assertion that academic writers make at the beginning of what they write and then support with evidence throughout their essay.” They then give the thesis these attributes:
Makes an assertion that is clearly defined, focused, and supported.
Reflects an awareness of the conversation from which the writer has taken up the issue.
Is placed at the beginning of the essay.
Penetrates every paragraph like the skewer in a shish kebab.
Acknowledges points of view that differ from the writer’s own, reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Demonstrates an awareness of the readers’ assumptions and anticipates possible counterarguments.
Conveys a significant fresh perspective.
Working and Definitive Thesis
In the beginning, you develop a working or tentative thesis that gets more and more revised and refined as you struggle with the evidence and become more knowledgeable of the subject.
A writer who comes up with a thesis that remains unchanged is not elevating his or her thinking to a sophisticated level.
Only a rare genius could spit out a meaningful thesis that defies revision.
Not just theses, but all writing is subject to multiple revisions. For example, the brilliant TV writers for 30 Rock, The Americans, and The Simpsons make hundreds of revisions for just one scene and even then they’re still not happy in some cases.
Four Models for Developing a Working Thesis
The Correcting-Misinterpretations Model
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “This model is used to correct writers whose arguments you believe have misconstrued one or more important aspects of an issue. This thesis typically takes the form of a factual claim.
Examples of Correcting-Misinterpretation Model
Although LAUSD teachers are under fire for poor teaching performance, even the best teachers have been thrown into abysmal circumstances that defy strong teaching performance evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Even though Clotaire Rapaille is venerated as some sort of branding god, a close scrutiny exposes him as a shrewd self-promoter who relies on several gimmicks including _______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________.
The Filling-the-Gap Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The gap model points to what other writers may have overlooked or ignored in discussing a given issue. The gap model typically makes a claim of value.”
Example
Many psychology experts discuss happiness in terms of economic wellbeing, strong education, and strong family bonds as the essential foundational pillars of happiness, but these so-called experts fail to see that these pillars are worthless in the absence of morality, as Eric Weiners’s study of Qatar shows, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
The Modifying-What-Others-Have-Said Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The modification model of thesis writing assumes that mutual understanding is possible.” In other words, we want to modify what many already agree upon.
Example
While most scholars agree that food stamps are essential for hungry children, the elderly, and the disabled, we need to put restrictions on EBT cards so that they cannot be used to buy alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and other non-food items.
The Hypothesis-Testing Model
The authors write, “The hypothesis-testing model begins with the assumption that writers may have good reasons for supporting their arguments, but that there are also a number of legitimate reasons that explain why something is, or is not, the case. . . . That is, the evidence is based on a hypothesis that researchers will continue to test by examining individual cases through an inductive method until the evidence refutes that hypothesis.”
For example, some researchers have found a link between the cholesterol drugs, called statins, and lower testosterone levels in men. Some say the link is causal; others say the link is correlative, which is to say these men who need to lower their cholesterol already have risk factors for low T levels.
As the authors continue, “The hypothesis-testing model assumes that the questions you raise will likely lead you to multiple answers that compete for your attention.”
The authors then give this model for such a thesis:
Some people explain this by suggesting that, but a close analysis of the problem reveals several compelling, but competing explanations.
Posted at 01:25 PM in Acting Out Culture III | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 09, 2015
1A Lecture Updated for 11-16-15: "The Flight from Conversation," Types of Claims, and Nonessential and Essential Clauses
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
"The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
Student Essay That Addresses Turkle's Essay
Critique of Turkle's Essay That Seems to Unwittingly Support Turkle
Identifying Claims and Analyzing Arguments from Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition
We’ve learned in this class that we can call a thesis a claim, an assertion that must be supported with evidence and refuting counterarguments.
There are 3 different types of claims: fact, value, and policy.
Claims of Fact
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “Claims of fact are assertions (or arguments) that seek to define or classify something or establish that a problem or condition has existed, exists, or will exist.
For example, Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow argues that Jim Crow practices that notoriously oppressed people of color still exist in an insidious form, especially in the manner in which we incarcerate black and brown men.
In The Culture Code Rapaille argues that different cultures have unconscious codes and that a brand’s codes must not be disconnected with the culture that brand needs to appeal to. This is the problem or struggle that all companies have: being “on code” with their product. The crisis that is argued is the disconnection between people’s unconscious codes and the contrary codes that a brand may represent.
Many economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that there is major problem facing America, a shrinking middle class, that is destroying democracy and human freedom as this country knows it. Krugman and others will point to a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, a growing class of temporary workers that surpasses all other categories of workers (warehouse jobs for online companies, for example), and de-investment in the American labor force as jobs are outsourced in a world of global competition.
All three examples above are claims of fact. As Greene and Lidinsky write, “This is an assertion that a condition exists. A careful reader must examine the basis for this kind of claim: Are we truly facing a crisis?”
We further read, “Our point is that most claims of fact are debatable and challenge us to provide evidence to verify our arguments. They may be based on factual information, but they are not necessarily true. Most claims of fact present interpretations of evidence derived from inferences.”
A Claim of Fact That Seeks to Define Or Classify
Greene and Lidinsky point out that autism is a controversial topic because experts cannot agree on a definition. The behaviors attributed to autism “actually resist simple definition.”
There is also disagreement on a definition of obesity. For example, some argue that the current BMI standards are not accurate.
Another example that is difficult to define or classify is the notion of genius.
In all the cases above, the claim of fact is to assert a definition that must be supported with evidence and refutations of counterarguments.
Claims of Value
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of fact is different from a claim of value, which expresses an evaluation of a problem or condition that has existed, exists, or will exist. Is a condition good or bad? Is it important or inconsequential?
In other words, the claim isn’t whether or not a crisis or problem exists: The emphasis is on HOW serious the problem is.
How serious is global warming?
How serious is gender discrimination in schools?
How serious is racism in law enforcement and incarceration?
How serious is the threat of injury for people who engage in Cross-Fit training?
How serious are the health threats rendered from providing sodas in public schools?
How serious are Brand codes and their connection or disconnection with the consumer’s unconscious codes?
Claims of Policy
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of policy is an argument for what should be the case, that a condition should exist. It is a call for change or a solution to a problem.
Examples
We must decriminalize drugs.
We must increase the minimum wage to X per hour.
We must have stricter laws that defend worker rights for temporary and migrant workers.
We must integrate more autistic children in mainstream classes.
We must implement universal health care.
If we are to keep capital punishment, then we must air it on TV.
We must implement stricter laws for texting while driving.
The Importance of Using Concession with Claims
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’”
“Often a writer will signal a concession with phrases like the following:”
“It is true that . . .”
“I agree with X that Y is an important factor to consider.”
“Some studies have convincingly shown that . . .”
Identify Counterarguments
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and conflicting opinions.”
Developing a Thesis
Greene and Lidinsky write that a thesis is “an assertion that academic writers make at the beginning of what they write and then support with evidence throughout their essay.” They then give the thesis these attributes:
Makes an assertion that is clearly defined, focused, and supported.
Reflects an awareness of the conversation from which the writer has taken up the issue.
Is placed at the beginning of the essay.
Penetrates every paragraph like the skewer in a shish kebab.
Acknowledges points of view that differ from the writer’s own, reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Demonstrates an awareness of the readers’ assumptions and anticipates possible counterarguments.
Conveys a significant fresh perspective.
Working and Definitive Thesis
In the beginning, you develop a working or tentative thesis that gets more and more revised and refined as you struggle with the evidence and become more knowledgeable of the subject.
A writer who comes up with a thesis that remains unchanged is not elevating his or her thinking to a sophisticated level.
Only a rare genius could spit out a meaningful thesis that defies revision.
Not just theses, but all writing is subject to multiple revisions. For example, the brilliant TV writers for 30 Rock, The Americans, and The Simpsons make hundreds of revisions for just one scene and even then they’re still not happy in some cases.
Four Models for Developing a Working Thesis
The Correcting-Misinterpretations Model
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “This model is used to correct writers whose arguments you believe have misconstrued one or more important aspects of an issue. This thesis typically takes the form of a factual claim.
Examples of Correcting-Misinterpretation Model
Although LAUSD teachers are under fire for poor teaching performance, even the best teachers have been thrown into abysmal circumstances that defy strong teaching performance evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Even though Clotaire Rapaille is venerated as some sort of branding god, a close scrutiny exposes him as a shrewd self-promoter who relies on several gimmicks including _______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________.
The Filling-the-Gap Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The gap model points to what other writers may have overlooked or ignored in discussing a given issue. The gap model typically makes a claim of value.”
Example
Many psychology experts discuss happiness in terms of economic wellbeing, strong education, and strong family bonds as the essential foundational pillars of happiness, but these so-called experts fail to see that these pillars are worthless in the absence of morality, as Eric Weiners’s study of Qatar shows, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
The Modifying-What-Others-Have-Said Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The modification model of thesis writing assumes that mutual understanding is possible.” In other words, we want to modify what many already agree upon.
Example
While most scholars agree that food stamps are essential for hungry children, the elderly, and the disabled, we need to put restrictions on EBT cards so that they cannot be used to buy alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and other non-food items.
The Hypothesis-Testing Model
The authors write, “The hypothesis-testing model begins with the assumption that writers may have good reasons for supporting their arguments, but that there are also a number of legitimate reasons that explain why something is, or is not, the case. . . . That is, the evidence is based on a hypothesis that researchers will continue to test by examining individual cases through an inductive method until the evidence refutes that hypothesis.”
For example, some researchers have found a link between the cholesterol drugs, called statins, and lower testosterone levels in men. Some say the link is causal; others say the link is correlative, which is to say these men who need to lower their cholesterol already have risk factors for low T levels.
As the authors continue, “The hypothesis-testing model assumes that the questions you raise will likely lead you to multiple answers that compete for your attention.”
The authors then give this model for such a thesis:
Some people explain this by suggesting that, but a close analysis of the problem reveals several compelling, but competing explanations.
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Thesis Response
In today’s digital age, it may be true that we suffer from an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, and online shaming; however, these pathologies are less the cause of social media than the symptoms of a dystopian culture built on income inequality evidenced by _______________, ________________, ______________, and ____________________.
Another Thesis Response
While income inequality is surely the cause of some of our social pathologies, we have to attribute even more of the blame on social media such as Facebook, which is responsible for __________________, __________________, _________________, and ________________________.
What are causes of our loneliness and disconnection other than social media?
Moving into the suburbs
Growing debt equals more work hours.
Sub-living wages equals more work hours.
Anxiety and stress of "trying to stay afloat" impedes time and money for social life.
Addictive personalities will find whatever is available to feed their addiction. All addictive behavior leads to isolation and disconnection.
We live in an addictive society. Social media and consumerism have joined forces to make us addicts.
What can we attribute to Facebook as a misery cause?
It encourages the envy from social comparison and FOMO (fear of missing out).
But can we blame Facebook if we have let it become our default when we're looking for connection?
Do we confuse connection with real bonds? What's the difference?
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
“The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” by Curtis Silver
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
The Atlantic article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" could be a research link.
Another worthy research link is The New Yorker article "How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy."
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Mixed Structure
Mixed construction is when the sentence parts do not fit in terms of grammar or logic.
Once you establish a grammatical unit or pattern, you have to be consistent.
Example 1: The prepositional phrase followed by a verb
Faulty
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness double their risk of unemployment and living below the poverty line.
Corrected
For most people who suffer from learned helplessness, they find they will be twice as likely to face unemployment and poverty.
Faulty
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection renders the effects of learned helplessness.
Corrected
In Ha Jin’s masterful short story collection, we see the effects of learned helplessness.
Faulty
Depending on our method of travel and our destination determines how many suitcases we are allowed to pack.
Corrected
The number of suitcases we can pack is determined by our method of travel and our destination.
Mixed Structure 2: Using a verb after a dependent clause
Faulty
When Jeff Henderson is promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting.
Corrected
Being promoted to head chef without warning is very exciting for Jeff Henderson.
Mixed Structure 3: Mixing a subordinate conjunction with a coordinating conjunction
Faulty
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, but he misused his talents.
Corrected
Although Jeff Henderson is a man of great genius and intellect, he misused his talents.
Faulty
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, yet she could not write it.
Corrected
Even though Ellen heard French spoken all her life, she could not write it.
Mixed Structure 4: The construction is so confusing you must to throw it away and start all over
Faulty
In the prison no-snitch code Jeff Henderson learns to recognize variations of the code rather than by its real application in which he learns to arrive at a more realistic view of the snitch code’s true nature.
Corrected
In prison Jeff Henderson discovered that the no-snitch code doesn’t really exist.
Faulty
Recurring bouts of depression among the avalanche survivors set a record for number patients admitted into mental hospitals.
Corrected
Recurring bouts of depression among avalanche survivors resulted in a large number of them being admitted into mental hospitals.
Mixed Structure 5: Faulty Predication: The subject and the predicate should make sense together.
Faulty
We decided that Jeff Henderson’s best interests would not be well served staying in prison.
Corrected
We decided that Jeff Henderson would not be well served staying in prison.
Faulty
Using a gas mask is a precaution now worn by firemen.
Corrected
Firemen wear gas masks as a precaution against smoke inhalation.
Faulty
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is often curable.
Corrected
Early diagnosis of prostrate cancer is essential for successful treatment.
Mixed Structure 6: Faulty Apposition: The appositive and the noun to which it refers should be logically equivalent
Faulty
The gourmet chef, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Corrected
Gourmet cooking, a very lucrative field, requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.
Mixed Structure 7: Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
College instructors discourage “is when,” “is where,” and most commonly “is because” constructions because they violate logic.
Faulty
Bipolar disorder is when people suffer dangerous mood swings.
Corrected
Bipolar disorder is often recognized by dangerous mood swings.
Faulty
A torn rotator cuff is where you feel this intense pain in your shoulder that won’t go away.
Corrected
A torn rotator cuff will cause chronic pain in your shoulder.
Faulty
The reason I write so many comma splices is because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Corrected
I write so many comma splices because the complete sentences feel logically related to each other.
Faulty
The reason I ate the whole pizza is because my family was a half hour late from coming home to the park and I couldn’t wait any longer.
Corrected
I ate the entire pizza because I’m a glutton.
In-class exercise: Write a sample of the seven mixed structure types and show a corrected version of it:
One. Verb after a prepositional phrase
Two. Verb after a dependent clause
Three. Mixing a subordinating conjunction (Whenever, when, although, though, to name some) with a coordinate conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
Four. The sentence is so confusing you have to start over.
Five. Faulty predication
Six: Faulty apposition
Seven. Incorrect use of the “is when,” “is where,” and “is because” construction
Posted at 12:55 PM in Acting Out Culture III | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 08, 2015
Lesson 4: Part 2 of Logotherapy and Comparing Chekhov's "Gooseberries" with Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning
Lesson 4, Logotherapy Part 2
One. What may be the hardest principle in Frankl’s book for us to embrace?
That life is unavoidable suffering and that we are responsible to teach ourselves to “suffer bravely,” that such “brave suffering” is what gives us meaning.
Frankl knew a lot about suffering. In the concentration camps, he tells us, the chances of survival were one out of twenty-eight.
His manuscript, which was lost in the camp, was his “child” and the source of his meaning and purpose. He feels stripped of purpose, but then he finds in a dead man’s coat pocket a Hebrew prayer that calls on him to live his thoughts, not to merely write them down in a book (115).
Two. What is the Deathbed Test?
Frankl also talks about the woman who attempted suicide after her younger son died and she was left with her older son, who was afflicted with infantile paralysis. The mother actually had tried to commit suicide with her paralytic son and it was her son, wanting to live in spite of his debilitation, who had stopped her.
Frankl conducted a group therapy session in which he asked another woman, thirty years of age, to imagine herself at eighty on her deathbed judging her own existence. She saw that her life had been devoted to trifles and vanity. Frankl quotes her exactly: “Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure!” Contrasting her life with the rich thirty-year-old, the mother of the paralyzed son that making a fuller life for her crippled son was her meaning, and even a privilege, and she learned that embracing her struggle to help her son with a entirely different attitude was the beginning of her freeing herself from her suicidal depression.
Frankl presented the mother with a moral choice: Either be resigned to a meaningless, self-absorbed existence or find meaning through devotion to her son.
This proposition became the woman’s “therapy,” or better put, logotherapy.
Three. What does Frankl want us to understand regarding “super-meaning”?
Frankl asserts that “ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
Another path to super-meaning is seeing our suffering and loss as an occasion to be worthy of the people we loved and lost.
Frankl doesn’t want our sufferings to go in vain, but be the ingredients that make up our life meaning.
Four. What is the relationship between death and meaning?
Life’s brevity demands that our finite choices be meaningful. To live randomly and recklessly is to show contemptuous disregard for our existence.
Finding meaning through the finiteness of our existence is not pessimistic. As Frankl writes,
The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. . . . “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
Five. Explain Frankl’s treatment for neurotic fears and anxieties (122).
We can be afraid of dying, sweating, blushing, having panic attacks, etc.
Frankl explains: “The fear is the mother of the event.”
How do we impede this fear response since the more we obsess over the fear the more the fear is likely to overtake us?
We cannot force fear away. Nor can we force pleasure. As Frankl writes:
Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. This excessive intention, or “hyper-intention,” as I call it, can be observed particularly in cases of sexual neurosis. . . . Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
To summarize, fear is both the mother of our affliction and the mother of the hyper-intention that impedes our wishes and desires.
To combat this fear, Frankl has implemented “paradoxical intention,” in which we are encouraged to intend the very thing we fear.
Frankl uses the example of a man with sweat phobia who is encouraged to demonstrate with great pride to the world the amazing volumes of sweat he can produce: “I only sweat out a quart before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!”
The fear is defused in part through humor and “a reversal of the patient’s attitude, inasmuch as his fear is replaced by a paradoxical wish” (124).
Frankl quotes Gordon W. Allport: “The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management.”
Six. What is Frankl’s attitude toward the debate between free will and determinism?
Frankl makes it clear that any philosophy or psychotherapy rooted in the belief that we are the sum of biology and environment (determinism) with no free will is a dangerous principle, stripping us of an opportunity to find meaning.
Frankl cites examples of the depressed and hopeless that turned their life around. He even cites an evil Nazi who showed goodness in his character before he died of cancer (132).
Frankl’s argument that we are self-determining speaks to his primary thesis: that no matter how mired we are in excruciating circumstances we have the freedom to choose the attitude toward our suffering and that our attitude can determine if we will find meaning.
That we can change speaks to Frankl’s belief in second chances. He writes that no matter how close we are to death, we can turn our life around: “Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now” (150).
As someone who believes in meaning, Frankl is at odds with nihilistic therapists who believe life is a joke, place of random events with no grand purpose, a place with no justice, a place without meaning. Such people live in a condition of “learned meaninglessness” (152).
On a personal note, while I may concede that life is often random, stripped of justice, and appears to be too absurd as to cradle an ultimate meaning or grand scheme of things, such thoughts don’t abnegate my responsibilities to my personal morality, my duty to my wife and children, and my duty to society. To abnegate my responsibilities would be to surrender to complete nihilism and show reckless disregard and contempt for myself and others.
Even if there is no perfect, complete Meaning, we should fight against complete “Non-Meaning.”
Likewise, Freud was wrong when he said a diverse group of hungry people would all become the same group of animals. Frankl, who saw suffering and hunger in ways Freud never did, saw that people either maintained their humanity and dignity or they did not in varying degrees: “people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints.”
Comparing “Gooseberries” and Man’s Search for Meaning
Essay Assignment
In a 1,000-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that shows how the life lessons in Man's Search for Meaning explain the demise of Nikolai from Chekhov's "Gooseberries."
Some Things to Consider for Your Essay
Comparing Man's Search for Meaning and "Gooseberries," consider the following:
One. Nikolai has no ideal other than being a false god.
Two. He has no higher purpose other than to find comfort and hedonism
Three. He avoids conflict and stress, the very thing Frankl says fulfills us.
Four. By hiding from life, Nikolai is like the servant in the story Death in Tehran.
Nikolay's Irrational Mind Born from His Pathology Or the Other Way Around?
Nikolay suffers from the most extreme form of egotism, called solipsism. Solipsism can be defined in many ways:
Only one's mind exists.
No one exists as humans, only a two-dimensional, fawning audience.
The self can never know others, only its own self.
The solipsist can attach no meaning to others, only to himself.
The solipsist lives in an insular, private world disconnected from others. We could argue therefore that smart phones are a form of solipsism.
Ludwig Wittgenstein writes of solipsism: "Hell is not other people. Hell is yourself." And he writes, "I am my own world."
Nikolay's second pathology is self-complacency.
Complacency is being satisfied with mediocrity.
Complacency is being content without new challenges.
Complacency is being soothed and medicated on routine and the comfort of monotony.
Complacency dulls one's appetite for life.
Complacency is a form of the Jahiliyyah, a long period of ignorance and darkness.
Nikolay's third pathology is the spiritual death resulting from cocooning or contracting rather than expanding in life.
Cocooning is retreating into the home and creating a safe place while avoiding the challenges and anxieties produced by interacting with the outside world.
Cocooning in the modern age is constructing elaborate home entertainment systems and personal chefs that allow us to never leave the home.
“Gooseberries” Study Questions
One. What is Nikolai’s “disorder”?
He wants to find the comfort of his youth, the country. This “fixed idea” prevents him from broadening his horizons. Rather than move forward with his life as an adult, he longs to regress back to the cozy comforts of childhood. He wants to be a child again; he wants to go back to the womb.
In seeking the serenity and safety of country life, he chooses death. His longing for the country pushes him into a tiny world without adventure and challenge; it's the same as disappearing into the "TV cave."
The ego is not challenged in such a small world. A tiny world is the world of solipsism.
Ivan speaks about his brother’s longing to disappear into the country as a kind of death. We read, “He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathized with the desire to shut oneself up one’s own farm. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a man.” He continues to contrast city life and country life: “To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life—it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of a free spirit.”
A life eating cabbage soup in the isolation of the country is a life of inertia (stagnation) and entropy (degeneration).
Nikolai becomes ruthless in the pursuit of his dream and “stingy.” He lives like a “beggar” to save for his country cottage, farmhouse, vegetable garden, and gooseberry bush.
Ivan pities his brother and tries to give Nikolai money for holiday, but his brother saves that money also. Nothing can change his mind: “Once a man gets a fixed idea, there’s nothing to be done,” Ivan says of his brother.
At the age of 40, Nikolai is still obsessed (since the age of 19) married an “elderly, ugly widow” with designs of her dying and using her inheritance to buy his dream farm. He keeps his wife “half starved” and siphons her money into his bank account. Her life with Nikolai is so dreadful that she loses her will to live, giving up “her soul to God,” and Nikolai without conscience or any sense of blame.
Two. Ivan says, “Money like vodka, can play queer tricks with a man.” Explain.
We hear Ivan tell a story about the merchant who poured honey on his riches so he could eat his money before he died. We see a connection between greed and spite. The connection is so strong that the greedy descends into madness eating his money coated with honey. He seems to be saying implicitly: "I want my riches and you can't have any." Ivan is attributing the same disease to his brother Nikolai.
To underscore the message of greed and insanity, Ivan offers yet another example of a work accident resulting in a severed foot and the foot’s owner being concerned about the twenty-five roubles he had left in the boot.
Without remorse for his dead wife, Nikolai uses his dead wife’s money to buy a country estate and transplants twenty gooseberry bushes to his property.
Three. Why does everyone, including the red dog and the cook, look like a pig at the estate? What does this all mean?
We matter to others. We affect others. Our life is not our own. Our own moral dissolution injures others as well. We get fat and our dogs and children get fat.
We can further infer that the fatness is a mental illness, the result of living a life without meaning. In our spiritual void, we seek eating as a substitute and get fatter and fatter as our souls get emptier and emptier.
We have gained the whole world (and gained weight), but we’ve lost our soul.
People who live in comfort, complacency, “fat off the land,” are maladapted to a life without meaning. Nikolai, the dog, and the chef, and others, all bloated with a penchant for seeming to grunt like pigs, are clearly in a state of maladaptation and moral dissolution. Human beings were meant to struggle and to be engaged with the real world. To retreat into comfort may be a fantasy, but it is a misguided one, which will surely result in some kind of pathology or other, overeating, gluttony, boredom, fatness, lethargy, acedia, a life without purpose.
In many ways, Nikolai is like those middle-class Americans who disappear into the suburbs, become complacent, withdraw into the TV room, and grow fat, their eyes glazed, their countenance zombie-like.
In the case of Nikolai, he becomes a bloat Fat God, commanding the local peasants call him “Your Lordship.” As Big Fish in Little Pond, he reinforces his rule by giving the peasants fake sick remedies, trinkets, and buckets of vodka. A state of drunkenness, it appears, is the only way to enable and tolerate this pompous False God with his protruding belly.
Our Lordship is surrounded by drunken sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear, that he is a sort of god, and of course, he begins to believe in their saccharine flattery and suffers a form of delusional grandeur on the scale of utter madness. Nikolai lives inside his echo chamber, what we could call solipsism.
Forgetting his peasant background, Nikolai truly believes he is a philanthropic nobleman when in fact he is a self-serving sloth and hedonist.
Nikolai becomes pathetic in a comical and sad way (lugubrious) as we see that he enjoys pronouncing his peasant name in an elevated elocution as if he is marinating in the glory of his nobility.
The contrast between his grandeur and his bloated, sluggish, infantile self is both comical and sad. We see that he gloats like a “child,” a man-child, someone who’s never grown up.
We see that Ivan is not impressed with the gooseberries because they are sour, but his brother laughs with giddy pleasure as he pops the berries in his mouth. He believes they’re great, so they are great. He is in love with his own illusion. To explain this, Ivan quotes the poet Pushkin (spelled differently today) who said, “the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
Four. What change takes place in Ivan during the brief period he visits his brother?
Seeing his brother happy, Ivan feels guilty and troubled because he is not happy for his brother’s joy; rather, he is in a state of despair.
Perhaps not all happiness is equal. Happiness apart from sanity, morality, and meaning is a false happiness, is the worst kind of happiness, and in fact is not worthy of being called happiness at all. It is a sort of diseased dream from an emotionally arrested man-child and therefore does not affirm life. Instead, Nikolai’s “happy dream” affirms that we can live in peace with our own self-induced hell and live fat, lethargic, and self-complacent existence while thinking “we have won.” Perhaps this vision of a man trapped in hell who has convinced himself of his own pathetic “happiness” is a vision that is too much for Ivan to bear. Perhaps this is why Ivan is in despair.
Later that night, Ivan’s despair and dread grows deeper at bedtime when Nikolai, like a drug addict, is unable to sleep as he gorges “again and again” on plates of gooseberries. He is trying to fill his emptiness while using his gooseberries as medication for his disease of being an isolated man-child living a life without purpose and meaning.
No longer despairing for only his brother, Ivan despairs for the whole human race, a delusional lot who live a life of vanity, hypocrisy, and falsehood. In short, Ivan affirms that life is a cynical joke without meaning, and this nihilistic vision overwhelms Ivan with a sense of sickness and rot.
People like Nikolai depress Ivan because they are so insulated from reality and so lacking in empathy that they are full of smug self-satisfaction and fail to lift a finger to help a world full of suffering, starving children, “and all the horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes.”
All this suffering goes on, Ivan thinks, because people are as selfish as his brother Nikolai: “apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible.” Nikolai retreated to his farm in part to avoid the suffering of the masses.
Ivan begins to hate the human race and wishes they were built differently. As he says, “Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him—illness, poverty, loss, and then on one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind—and everything is all right.”
Thinking these thoughts, Ivan feels that up until visiting his brother he has been living a life of superficial vanity and false contentment.
Ivan grows to believe that the pursuit of happiness is a sham and that the real aim should be to help suffering, to pursue a life of real meaning. He says, “Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our piddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!”
Ivan’s do-gooder philosophy seems just as extreme as his brother’s self-centered, hedonistic one. We read, “Ivan Ivanich’s story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor Aliokhin.” They found the story “tedious” and depressing and were tired and wished to go to bed.
Five. How does the story contrast a communal life and a solipsistic life and for what purpose?
Communal life requires empathy, cooperation, and adaptation. Solipsistic life requires nothing and is therefore a form of death.
Six. How does egotism infect everything Nikolai does including his acts of charity?
He descends more and more into narcissism and solipsistic hell. He’s outwardly pious but dying inside. Yes, he gives money to inflate his image, but he has contempt for the human race. This reminds me of Pascal who wrote we live for image more than for substance. He uses liquor to soak the peasants’ brains so the peasants will be his sycophants and treat him like a god worthy of lecturing them on the greater truths.
Seven. Explain Nikolai’s gooseberry fetish.
They must be fake, a mirage, a chimera because we read a quote by Pushkin: “Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts/Than hosts of baser truths.” What do they represent? Rosebud? Unconditional love? Transcendence? Permanence? All of the above? The way I see it, the gooseberries represent medication. Nikolai has a huge ego and going through the world with a giant ego is tiring. I would even say the ego poisons us. So what does this have to do with gooseberries? The gooseberries are like Alka-Seltzer you take after getting a bloated stomachache.
Eight. Why does Ivan say there is sadness to seeing people who have achieved fulfillment and happiness?
Could it be that this sadness is seeing the illusion and misguided passions that are behind this happiness so that what is happiness is something perverse? Perhaps the sadness is that people who think they’ve achieved happiness have in truth become complacent and self-satisfied with their isolation and mediocrity.
Perhaps the gooseberries represent a drug that produces self-hypnosis that we can deny the world’s suffering and experience happiness in a cocoon. Perhaps the gooseberries are an indulgence, a self-medication.
I remember when a professor agreed to help me and a few other students prepare for our Masters degree test, the professor's wife gave us store-bought cookies while he ate Danish, stacked high on a plate and we weren't allowed to touch the Danish.
Nine. What is Ivan’s psychological state after telling his friends the story of his brother Nikolai?
He is in a state of urgency to warn his friends about self-complacency and the false happiness of being idle and mediocre.
Ten. What is behind the pathology of wanting to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond?
Since we know the pond is small and that our feeling big is relative to the smallness of the pond, we are guilty of engaging in a delusion with self-awareness.
In other words, we are not innocent of our delusion of being a Big Fish. We are willing participants in our own delusion.
What can we infer about the character of someone who decides to be a willing participant in his own delusion?
For one, he’s a coward because he’s scared to compete on an even playing field. He doesn’t want real competition. He wants all of life’s games to be lopsided in his favor.
When I was a child playing with my plastic soldiers, my “side” had twice as many soldiers as the other side, so I could crush my enemy.
There’s something of the child in wanting to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond.
So far the Big Fish in the Little Pond is a coward and a child.
Because he is never tested in the little pond, he resigns to a life of stagnation. He prefers a life of stagnation, what seems to him a stress-free and safe life, to the real world. He has chosen death over life.
His choice is not really safe. He has succumbed to the disease of a child’s warped fantasy of dominance in a kingdom too tiny and insignificant to lord over.
He is a false god living in his own grave.
Using an Analogy Or Extended Comparison As an Introduction:
During my first marriage I lived in a five-bedroom house, had four kids, the whole works. Then I got a divorce, remarried, and with the kids all grown up, I got into a three-bedroom house. I got divorced again, remarried and with all the alimony I had to fork out, I found it more practical for my third wife and me to live in a modest two-bedroom bungalow. I got divorced again and now I find myself living alone in a one-bedroom condo. The thing is the condo feels too big for me and I really hate doing housework. I prefer to drive my BMW up and down the Pacific Coast Highway. It relaxes me. Going back to the empty condo, however, is completely depressing. It’s a mess. I hate doing house chores. I’m sorry but at my age I’m simply not motivated to clean up around the house. That’s when I decided to say the hell with making mortgage payments. I sold the condo and moved into my Beamer. What a difference this has made in my life. For one, sleeping inside my car means I don’t have to get up at all hours of the night to make sure thieves haven’t stolen the rims or to wipe bird crap off the roof before it calcifies on the paint. You know how it is, getting up at four A.M. because you remember you forgot to vacuum the corn nut that your buddy got lodged underneath the passenger seat.
As I’ve indicated, I never spent time in my condo anyway. I don’t cook so my car doesn’t need an oven, just a toaster inside the glove box. I haul a port-a-potty so I don’t have to keep doing my business at restaurants. As far as showers go, I work-out at a gym three days a week. That’s more showering than any man needs.
As far as my car’s limited “closet space” goes, I don’t use a closet anyway. Then there’s your car cleanup, which inside a car is a helluva lot easier. There are fewer square inches in a car than your smallest apartment by a long shot. Besides, I’d rather detail my car than vacuum and mop my condo any day of the week.
Living inside my car seems kind of cozy. Like when I was a little kid and I took my baths inside the sink. Yeah, I’m talking about being a baby again. Feeling safe, comforted, and insulated inside the womb. I’m talking about the days when life was simple and I had a minimum of responsibilities.
This is it for me. Inside my car, I have found paradise.
The narrator of the above is a misguided soul who has stumbled across a false paradise based on cocooning inside his car. Similarly, we see that Nikolai has retreated into his own cocoon, the false paradise of his small country town in which he feeds his ego and disappears into a world of solipsism. This human tendency to retreat back into the womb is one of the major components of losing meaning and higher purpose, which also includes _____________, _____________, ________________, and _________________.
Posted at 10:40 AM in Man's Search for Meaning Lessons | Permalink | Comments (0)
1A Lecture Updated for 11-9-15: Final Essay 5 from Chapter 6 and Sherry Turkle's "Flight from Conversation" and Katy Waldman's Refutation Essay
Essay Assignment
Addressing Sherry Turkle, Curtis Silver (444), Keith O'Brien (464) and other writers covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that social media is the cause of major social pathologies. Specifically, does Sherry Turkle exaggerate the link between social media and social pathology, or is her analysis insightful and convincing? Explain in an argumentative essay.
Variation of the Same Assignment
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
The general prompt above has many variations in our text Acting Out Culture. Specific variations can be found on page 452, prompt 6; page 457, prompt 6; page 461, prompt 6; page 469, prompts 5 and 6; page 477, prompt 6; page 499, prompt 6; and page 503, prompt 6. You can formulate your thesis on one of these specific prompts or use the more general prompt above.
Possible Refutation Source:
The New Yorker Essay About How Kids Don't Read Takes the "Get Off My Lawn Genre" to New Depths by Katy Waldman
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Here is the EBSCO Host Video Tutorial for finding El Camino database sources.
You can find EBSCO Host on A-Z List of Links
On EBSCO Master Premier I looked up some sample searches:
"facebook depression"
"Internet attention span"
"social media empathy deficit"
"facebook loneliness"
Here are the steps you take to use El Camino database:
One. Go on El Camino College website.
Two. Click on Library.
Three. Click on Schauerman Library.
Four. Click on Database Access.
Five. Click on A-Z List of Databases.
Six. Click on one of the three EBSCO host links.
Seven. Limit results to Full Text.
Eight. Put in your key search words.
Nine. Click on HTML or PDF Full Text.
Ten. For you MLA Works Cited, click on Cite MLA under Tools whenever available. Cite is fourth from top for PDF. It's clearly labeled with HTML.
Try with "social media depression."
"The Flight from Conversation" by Sherry Turkle
Student Essay That Addresses Turkle's Essay
Critique of Turkle's Essay
Sherry Turkle's Video Summary
One. We're letting tech take us places we don't want to go.
She's talking about a psychological state, a demonic state, in which we date the angel that turns out to be the devil.
Two. Tech devices change not just what we are but who we are.
Tech is compromising our humanity, our friendships, our ability to enjoy solitude, and our skills at self-reflection.
Three. Crazy, dysfunctional behavior is the new normal.
For example, many text while giving eye contact, a sort of phony connecting.
We text at church, funerals, and sacred places. We take "salvation selfies" as we emerge from the baptism water.
We hang out at Starbucks for five hours and say the next day what a great time we had when in fact we we're "alone together" on our smartphones.
Four. We aspire to the "Goldilocks effect": not too close, not too far.
In other words, we want control of our environment. We prefer control to the messy lack of control from real human interaction.
We no longer want real conversations that take place in real time and that cannot be controlled. Texting becomes the preferred option.
In extreme cases, we're willing to dispense with people and prefer Siri or sociable robots.
Five. We take little sips of tweets and posts and other data bites and the hope is that eventually all these little sips will lead to one big nutritional gulp. But this hope is built on a canard. All we have is nothing.
Six. Our escape from conversation compromises the skills that also help us in self-reflection.
People who converse well also self-reflect well, and the opposite is true.
Seven. We expect more from technology and less from each other.
We need the latest upgrades and refreshes and innovations in tech even as we keep more and more people at a distance.
Eight. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy.
Intimacy requires honesty, loss of control, and vulnerability, but the rewards are humor, emotional completeness, and life fullness.
We're averse to the demands of friendship, which require commitment, loss of control, and vulnerability.
Nine. We suffer from "alone anxiety."
We can't be at a red light without checking texts and Facebook status.
We connect through texting and other ways not as a sign of our fullness as human beings but from a place of fear, fragmentation, desperation, loneliness, and angst (the restless anxiety that results from not knowing who we are, from having no purpose, and from languishing in the existential vacuum).
Turkle says "connection is a symptom, not a cure" for our sense of loneliness.
The more we connect, the more desperate we become, which in turn compels us to connect even more. This addiction becomes a vicious cycle.
Ten. Turkle says, "I share; therefore I am."
This is a delusion. Sharing is an expression of fragmentation and desperation and the loss of selfhood.
Turkle observes, "We're using people as spare parts to repair our fragile and broken selves."
Eleven. Turkle's secret sauce to the human condition is this: Solitude is the prerequisite for real connection.
"If we can't be alone, we'll be more lonely." We need to learn to be alone, and that means not sharing all the time on social media.
Identifying Claims and Analyzing Arguments from Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition
We’ve learned in this class that we can call a thesis a claim, an assertion that must be supported with evidence and refuting counterarguments.
There are 3 different types of claims: fact, value, and policy.
Claims of Fact
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “Claims of fact are assertions (or arguments) that seek to define or classify something or establish that a problem or condition has existed, exists, or will exist.
For example, Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow argues that Jim Crow practices that notoriously oppressed people of color still exist in an insidious form, especially in the manner in which we incarcerate black and brown men.
In The Culture Code Rapaille argues that different cultures have unconscious codes and that a brand’s codes must not be disconnected with the culture that brand needs to appeal to. This is the problem or struggle that all companies have: being “on code” with their product. The crisis that is argued is the disconnection between people’s unconscious codes and the contrary codes that a brand may represent.
Many economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that there is major problem facing America, a shrinking middle class, that is destroying democracy and human freedom as this country knows it. Krugman and others will point to a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, a growing class of temporary workers that surpasses all other categories of workers (warehouse jobs for online companies, for example), and de-investment in the American labor force as jobs are outsourced in a world of global competition.
All three examples above are claims of fact. As Greene and Lidinsky write, “This is an assertion that a condition exists. A careful reader must examine the basis for this kind of claim: Are we truly facing a crisis?”
We further read, “Our point is that most claims of fact are debatable and challenge us to provide evidence to verify our arguments. They may be based on factual information, but they are not necessarily true. Most claims of fact present interpretations of evidence derived from inferences.”
A Claim of Fact That Seeks to Define Or Classify
Greene and Lidinsky point out that autism is a controversial topic because experts cannot agree on a definition. The behaviors attributed to autism “actually resist simple definition.”
There is also disagreement on a definition of obesity. For example, some argue that the current BMI standards are not accurate.
Another example that is difficult to define or classify is the notion of genius.
In all the cases above, the claim of fact is to assert a definition that must be supported with evidence and refutations of counterarguments.
Claims of Value
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of fact is different from a claim of value, which expresses an evaluation of a problem or condition that has existed, exists, or will exist. Is a condition good or bad? Is it important or inconsequential?
In other words, the claim isn’t whether or not a crisis or problem exists: The emphasis is on HOW serious the problem is.
How serious is global warming?
How serious is gender discrimination in schools?
How serious is racism in law enforcement and incarceration?
How serious is the threat of injury for people who engage in Cross-Fit training?
How serious are the health threats rendered from providing sodas in public schools?
How serious are Brand codes and their connection or disconnection with the consumer’s unconscious codes?
Claims of Policy
Greene and Lidinsky write, “A claim of policy is an argument for what should be the case, that a condition should exist. It is a call for change or a solution to a problem.
Examples
We must decriminalize drugs.
We must increase the minimum wage to X per hour.
We must have stricter laws that defend worker rights for temporary and migrant workers.
We must integrate more autistic children in mainstream classes.
We must implement universal health care.
If we are to keep capital punishment, then we must air it on TV.
We must implement stricter laws for texting while driving.
The Importance of Using Concession with Claims
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’”
“Often a writer will signal a concession with phrases like the following:”
“It is true that . . .”
“I agree with X that Y is an important factor to consider.”
“Some studies have convincingly shown that . . .”
Identify Counterarguments
Greene and Lidinsky write, “Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and conflicting opinions.”
Developing a Thesis
Greene and Lidinsky write that a thesis is “an assertion that academic writers make at the beginning of what they write and then support with evidence throughout their essay.” They then give the thesis these attributes:
Makes an assertion that is clearly defined, focused, and supported.
Reflects an awareness of the conversation from which the writer has taken up the issue.
Is placed at the beginning of the essay.
Penetrates every paragraph like the skewer in a shish kebab.
Acknowledges points of view that differ from the writer’s own, reflecting the complexity of the issue.
Demonstrates an awareness of the readers’ assumptions and anticipates possible counterarguments.
Conveys a significant fresh perspective.
Working and Definitive Thesis
In the beginning, you develop a working or tentative thesis that gets more and more revised and refined as you struggle with the evidence and become more knowledgeable of the subject.
A writer who comes up with a thesis that remains unchanged is not elevating his or her thinking to a sophisticated level.
Only a rare genius could spit out a meaningful thesis that defies revision.
Not just theses, but all writing is subject to multiple revisions. For example, the brilliant TV writers for 30 Rock, The Americans, and The Simpsons make hundreds of revisions for just one scene and even then they’re still not happy in some cases.
Four Models for Developing a Working Thesis
The Correcting-Misinterpretations Model
According to Greene and Lidinsky, “This model is used to correct writers whose arguments you believe have misconstrued one or more important aspects of an issue. This thesis typically takes the form of a factual claim.
Examples of Correcting-Misinterpretation Model
Although LAUSD teachers are under fire for poor teaching performance, even the best teachers have been thrown into abysmal circumstances that defy strong teaching performance evidenced by __________________, ___________________, ________________, and _____________________.
Even though Clotaire Rapaille is venerated as some sort of branding god, a close scrutiny exposes him as a shrewd self-promoter who relies on several gimmicks including _______________________, _______________________, _________________, and ___________________.
The Filling-the-Gap Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The gap model points to what other writers may have overlooked or ignored in discussing a given issue. The gap model typically makes a claim of value.”
Example
Many psychology experts discuss happiness in terms of economic wellbeing, strong education, and strong family bonds as the essential foundational pillars of happiness, but these so-called experts fail to see that these pillars are worthless in the absence of morality, as Eric Weiners’s study of Qatar shows, evidenced by __________________, __________________, ___________________, and _____________________.
The Modifying-What-Others-Have-Said Model
Greene and Lidinsky write, “The modification model of thesis writing assumes that mutual understanding is possible.” In other words, we want to modify what many already agree upon.
Example
While most scholars agree that food stamps are essential for hungry children, the elderly, and the disabled, we need to put restrictions on EBT cards so that they cannot be used to buy alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and other non-food items.
The Hypothesis-Testing Model
The authors write, “The hypothesis-testing model begins with the assumption that writers may have good reasons for supporting their arguments, but that there are also a number of legitimate reasons that explain why something is, or is not, the case. . . . That is, the evidence is based on a hypothesis that researchers will continue to test by examining individual cases through an inductive method until the evidence refutes that hypothesis.”
For example, some researchers have found a link between the cholesterol drugs, called statins, and lower testosterone levels in men. Some say the link is causal; others say the link is correlative, which is to say these men who need to lower their cholesterol already have risk factors for low T levels.
As the authors continue, “The hypothesis-testing model assumes that the questions you raise will likely lead you to multiple answers that compete for your attention.”
The authors then give this model for such a thesis:
Some people explain this by suggesting that, but a close analysis of the problem reveals several compelling, but competing explanations.
Final Essay
The essays in Chapter 6 address the alleged pathologies resulting from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, and even altered brain development.
In an argumentative essay, support, refute, or complicate the assertion that social media is harmful for our social, cultural and intellectual development. Be sure to address at least two essays from Chapter 6. One of the essays can be used as a source. You will need at least 4 other sources for a total of 5 sources.
Thesis Response
In today’s digital age, it may be true that we suffer from an empathy deficit, narcissism, shortened attention span, and online shaming; however, these pathologies are less the cause of social media than the symptoms of a dystopian culture built on income inequality evidenced by _______________, ________________, ______________, and ____________________.
Another Thesis Response
While income inequality is surely the cause of some of our social pathologies, we have to attribute even more of the blame on social media such as Facebook, which is responsible for __________________, __________________, _________________, and ________________________.
What are causes of our loneliness and disconnection other than social media?
Moving into the suburbs
Growing debt equals more work hours.
Sub-living wages equals more work hours.
Anxiety and stress of "trying to stay afloat" impedes time and money for social life.
Addictive personalities will find whatever is available to feed their addiction. All addictive behavior leads to isolation and disconnection.
We live in an addictive society. Social media and consumerism have joined forces to make us addicts.
What can we attribute to Facebook as a misery cause?
It encourages the envy from social comparison and FOMO (fear of missing out).
But can we blame Facebook if we have let it become our default when we're looking for connection?
Do we confuse connection with real bonds? What's the difference?
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Essential and Nonessential Clauses
Birthdays that land on a Monday are a bummer.
Birthdays, which can be costly, are overrated.
Circle the relative clause and indicate if it’s essential with a capital E or nonessential with a capital N. Then use commas where necessary.
One. I’m looking for a sugar substitute that doesn’t have dangerous side effects.
Two. Sugar substitutes which often contain additives can wreak havoc on the digestive and nervous system.
Three. The man who trains in the gym every day for five hours is setting himself up for a serious muscle injury.
Four. Cars that operate on small turbo engines don’t last as long as non-turbo automobiles.
Five. Tuna which contains high amounts of mercury should only be eaten once or twice a week.
Six. The store manager who took your order has been arrested for fraud.
Seven. The store manager Ron Cousins who is now seventy-five years old is contemplating retirement.
Eight. Magnus Mills’ Restraint of Beasts which is my favorite novel was runner up for the Booker Prize.
Nine. Parenthood which is a sort of priesthood for which there is no pay or appreciation raises stress and cortisol levels.
Ten. I need to find a college that specializes in my actuarial math major.
Eleven. UCLA which has a strong actuarial math program is my first choice.
Twelve. My first choice of car is the Lexus which was awarded top overall quality honors from Consumer Reports.
Thirteen. Mangoes which sometimes cause a rash on my lips and chin area are my favorite fruit.
Fourteen. A strange man whom I’ve never known came up to me and offered to give me his brand new Mercedes.
Fifteen. My girlfriend who was showing off her brand new red dress arrived two hours late to the birthday party.
Sixteen. Students who meticulously follow the MLA format rules have a greater chance at success.
Seventeen. The student who tormented himself with the thesis lesson for six hours found himself more confused than before he started.
Eighteen. There are several distinctions between an analytical and argumentative thesis which we need to familiarize ourselves with before we embark on the essay assignment.
Nineteen. The peach that has a worm burrowing through its rotted skin should probably be tossed in the garbage.
Twenty. Peaches, which I love to eat by the bucketful are on sale at the farmer’s market.
Twenty-one. Baseball which used to be America’s pastime is declining in popularity.
“The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” by Curtis Silver
One. How have friendships been degraded in the age of social media?
Once built on sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and deep bonds, friendships, now redefined in the age of social media, have become more of a notion of metrics (“how many friends you have?”) than traditional characteristics that define friendship.
With the new metrics system of having over 1,000 friends, one is hoarding huge numbers for bragging rights rather than forging life-lasting connections based on effort and reciprocity.
Social media friendships are largely defined by the lack of effort to maintain them with a “like” button.
We’re now hoarding friends rather than cultivating friendships. We become degraded into petty-brained narcissists in the process.
According the Dunbar Number Theory, we can maintain 150 friendships in social media. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, based his number on a 1990s primate study. That study is now applied to social networks.
Two. Why does Curtis Silver disagree with the Dunbar Number Theory of 150?
For one, social networks are constantly shifting so we don’t even know who our “friends” are, or are not, at any given time.
For two, Dunbar’s theory was based on personal relationships, not online ones. We may be able to apply Dunbar’s theory to a certain point, but probably a lower number.
Three. Curtis Silver asks the question, “What is a friend?”
Silver quotes the Oxford dictionary: It is “a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.”
The problem with social media “friends” is that any mutual affection proves to be too minute or insignificant.
To use a cliché I like, with social media connections there is too often “not enough skin in the game.” In other words, nothing is really at stake in these online friendships.
Four. Have friendships been diminishing before social media?
We read that in fact they have. Silver writes, “According to a 2006 study in the journal American Sociological Review, Americans have been suffering a loss in number and quality of friendships since 1985. The study states that 25% of Americans have no close friends, and the average of that overall per person has dropped from four to two. . . .”
Studies I’ve read about income inequality in America have pointed to the late 1970s and early 1980s as a turning point in which Americans had to fight harder to join the middle class. Perhaps working more jobs and in general being too busy for friends is a factor. In other words, perhaps economics is a cause of dwindling friendships.
“Dude, I’m too busy for friends. I’m too busy taking care of business.”
If this is true, then social media isn’t the cause of diminished friendships; it’s the symptom of economic hardship.
Five. What is the connection between social media and “sharing”?
Silver suggests that we share too much private information on social media so that intimate personal details are no longer sacred or special and that experiencing some sort of degraded intimacy with our “friends,” we stop connecting on a deep level with our real friends.
We could call this Sharing Fatigue, which reveals a pathological contradiction: We’re compelled like addicts to share all our private stuff on one hand but on the other hand we’re numb to all the sharing we do. Sharing Fatigue turns us into zombies.
Silver suggests that this zombie state degrades our concern for others and that it’s more difficult to be a real friend who is “grounded in a concern” for the other friend.
Additionally, all the social media sharing we do is too often less about making a connection with others and more about advertising “The Big Me,” to use a term coined by David Brooks who laments our digital age of self-aggrandizement and general boasting.
Six. What is the effect of our existence in a large matrix of social connections called “friends”?
We are now performing for this large audience and as we perform, cultivating an image for “our fans,” we lose empathy, develop narcissism, and become lost in an image that is disconnected from our true selves.
In an earlier chapter about celebrity culture, we studied the disconnect between celebrity and personhood.
Would a social critic be justly accused of bombast and hyperbole for pointing out that cut off from empathy and creeping toward narcissism and solipsism we’re heading into some mass psychosis? I’ll leave it for you to decide.
I will tell you that I’ve spoken with some students who tell me they not only have time for real friends; they don’t have time for social media as well, to the point that they don’t have a Facebook account or any other similar form of social media. Perhaps their being too busy works in their favor.
The Atlantic article, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" could be a research link.
Another worthy research link is The New Yorker article "How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy."
“Open and Closed” by Evgeny Morozov
One. What is “openness”?
Openness is open and unlimited access to technology and information. We read, “Openness is today a powerful cult, a religion with its own dogmas.” We further read that, “This fascination with ‘openness’ stems mostly from the success of open-source software, publicly accessible computer code that anyone is welcome to improve. But lately it has been applied to everything . . .”
Openness can be subversive, countercultural, anarchist, populist, green, educational (MOOCS, massive open online courses) and about becoming independent from “The Man.”
Two. What are some problems with “openness”?
For one, its vague definition is an umbrella for too many things to be a coherent system.
For two, the alleged democracy of openness seems fragile when we ask who decides what issues openness will address and how those issues will be addressed.
Alas, there is a ringleader and this contradicts the notion of openness.
For three, openness is less about accountability and more about “how many apps can be built on top of it.”
Three. What is the author’s thesis?
In paragraph 4 we read, “One doesn’t need to look at projects like Defcad to see that “openness” has become a dangerously vague term, with lots of sex appeal but barely any analytical content. Certified as ‘open,” the most heinous and suspicious ideas suddenly become acceptable.” For example, making automatic rifles becomes okay because it's "open."
This openness, or what Morozov calls solutionism, is "the latest opiate of the (iPad-toting) masses.
This "opiate" or drug blinds its believers from the scary truth: Destruction, mayhem, and evil can be created in this unchecked environment of "openness."
Sample Research Thesis
"Openness," a word coined by Evgeny Morozov, will not pave the road to Utopia but, like Morozov argues, will bring on catastrophe and social pathology like we've never seen before because _____________, _____________, _______________, and _______________.
Morozov's alarmist analysis of "openness" is misguided when we consider _______________, ________________, _________________, and __________________.
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