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/
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Excerpt from Annie Lowrey's "America's Invisible Pot Addicts" (headings my own):
Daily Use from 9-40%
Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha.
3 Causes of Pot Rising to Addiction Levels
But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances. Thousands of Americans are finding their own use problematic in a climate where pot products are getting more potent, more socially acceptable to use, and yet easier to come by, not that it was particularly hard before.
For Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, the most compelling evidence of the deleterious effects comes from users themselves. “In large national surveys, about one in 10 people who smoke it say they have a lot of problems. They say things like, ‘I have trouble quitting. I think a lot about quitting and I can’t do it. I smoked more than I intended to. I neglect responsibilities.’ There are plenty of people who have problems with it, in terms of things like concentration, short-term memory, and motivation,” he said. “People will say, ‘Oh, that’s just you fuddy-duddy doctors.’ Actually, no. It’s millions of people who use the drug who say that it causes problems.”
Users or former users I spoke with described lost jobs, lost marriages, lost houses, lost money, lost time. Foreclosures and divorces. Weight gain and mental-health problems. And one other thing: the problem of convincing other people that what they were experiencing was real. A few mentioned jokes about Doritos, and comments implying that the real issue was that they were lazy stoners. Others mentioned the common belief that you can be “psychologically” addicted to pot, but not “physically” or “really” addicted. The condition remains misunderstood, discounted, and strangely invisible, even as legalization and white-marketization pitches ahead.
Central Debate
The country is in the midst of a volte-face on marijuana. The federal government still classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug, with no accepted medical use. (Meth and PCP, among other drugs, are Schedule II.) Politicians still argue it is a gateway to the use of things like heroin and cocaine. The country still spends billions of dollars fighting it in a bloody and futile drug war, and still arrests more people for offenses related to cannabis than it does for all violent crimes combined.
Yet dozens of states have pushed ahead with legalization for medical or recreational purposes, given that for decades physicians have argued that marijuana’s health risks have been overstated and its medical uses overlooked; activists have stressed prohibition’s tremendous fiscal cost and far worse human cost; and researchers have convincingly argued that cannabis is far less dangerous than alcohol. A solid majority of Americans support legalization nowadays.
Marketing a Lie
Academics and public-health officials, though, have raised the concern that cannabis’s real risks have been overlooked or underplayed—perhaps as part of a counter-reaction to federal prohibition, and perhaps because millions and millions of cannabis users have no problems controlling their use. “Part of how legalization was sold was with this assumption that there was no harm, in reaction to the message that everyone has smoked marijuana was going to ruin their whole life,” Humphreys told me. It was a point Kleiman agreed with. “I do think that not legalization, but the legalization movement, does have a lot on its conscience now,” he said. “The mantra about how this is a harmless, natural, and non-addictive substance—it’s now known by everybody. And it’s a lie.”
Thousands of businesses, as well as local governments earning tax money off of sales, are now literally invested in that lie. “The liquor companies are salivating,” Matt Karnes of GreenWave Advisors told me. “They can’t wait to come in full force.” He added that Big Pharma was targeting the medical market, with Wall Street, Silicon Valley, food businesses, and tobacco companies aiming at the recreational market.
Sellers are targeting broad swaths of the consumer market—soccer moms, recent retirees, folks looking to replace their nightly glass of chardonnay with a precisely dosed, low-calorie, and hangover-free mint. Many have consciously played up cannabis as a lifestyle product, a gift to give yourself, like a nice crystal or an antioxidant face cream. “This is not about marijuana,” one executive at the California retailer MedMen recently argued. “This is about the people who use cannabis for all the reasons people have used cannabis for hundreds of years. Yes, for recreation, just like alcohol, but also for wellness.”
Pot Replaces Motivation
Evan started off smoking with his friends when they were playing sports or video games, lighting up to chill out after his nine-to-five as a paralegal at a law office. But that soon became couch-lock, and he lost interest in working out, going out, doing anything with his roommates. Then came a lack of motivation and the slow erosion of ambition, and law school moving further out of reach. He started smoking before work and after work. Eventually, he realized it was impossible to get through the day without it. “I was smoking anytime I had to do anything boring, and it took a long time before I realized that I wasn’t doing anything without getting stoned,” he said.
His first attempts to reduce his use went miserably, as the consequences on his health and his life piled up. He gained nearly 40 pounds, he said, when he stopped working out and cooking his own food at home. He recognized that he was just barely getting by at work, and was continually worried about getting fired. Worse, his friends were unsympathetic to the idea that he was struggling and needed help. “[You have to] try to convince someone that something that is hurting you is hurting you,” he said.
Weaponizing Marijuana Potency as a Consumer Product Is Big Money with Big Health Consequences
Lax regulatory standards and aggressive commercialization in some states have compounded some existing public-health risks, raised new ones, and failed to tamp down on others, experts argue. In terms of compounding risks, many cite the availability of hyper-potent marijuana products. “We’re seeing these increases in the strength of cannabis, as we are also seeing an emergence of new types of products,” such as edibles, tinctures, vape pens, sublingual sprays, and concentrates, Ziva Cooper, an associate professor of clinical neurobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, told me. “A lot of these concentrates can have up to 90 percent THC,” she said, whereas the kind of flower you could get 30 years ago was far, far weaker. Scientists are not sure how such high-octane products affect people’s bodies, she said, but worry that they might have more potential for raising tolerance, introducing brain damage, and inculcating dependence.
As for new risks: In many stores, budtenders are providing medical advice with no licensing or training whatsoever. “I’m most scared of the advice to smoke marijuana during pregnancy for cramps,” said Humphreys, arguing that sellers were providing recommendations with no scientific backing, good or bad, at all.
In terms of long-standing risks, the lack of federal involvement in legalization has meant that marijuana products are not being safety-tested like pharmaceuticals; measured and dosed like food products; subjected to agricultural-safety and pesticide standards like crops; and held to labeling standards like alcohol. (Different states have different rules and testing regimes, complicating things further.)
Health experts also cited an uncomfortable truth about allowing a vice product to be widely available, loosely regulated, and fully commercialized: Heavy users will make up a huge share of sales, with businesses wanting them to buy more and spend more and use more, despite any health consequences.
Prohibition Is Not the Answer: Regulation Is
This is not to say that prohibition is a more attractive policy, or that legalization has proven to be a public-health disaster. “The big-picture view is that the vast majority of people who use cannabis are not going to be problematic users,” said Jolene Forman, an attorney at the Drug Policy Alliance. “They’re not going to have a cannabis-use disorder. They’re going to have a healthy relationship with it. And criminalization actually increases the harms related to cannabis, and so having a strictly regulated market where there can be limits on advertising, where only adults can purchase cannabis, and where you’re going to get a wide variety of products makes sense.”
Still, strictly regulated might mean more strictly regulated than today, at least in some places, drug-policy experts argue. “Here, what we’ve done is we’ve copied the alcohol industry fully formed, and then on steroids with very minimal regulation,” Humphreys said. “The oversight boards of a number of states are the industry themselves. We’ve learned enough about capitalism to know that’s very dangerous.”
A number of policy reforms might tamp down on problem use and protect consumers, without quashing the legal market or pivoting back to prohibition and all its harms. One extreme option would be to require markets to be noncommercial: The District of Columbia, for instance, does not allow recreational sales, but does allow home cultivation and the gifting of marijuana products among adults. “If I got to pick a policy, that would probably be it,” Kleiman told me. “That would be a fine place to be if we were starting from prohibition, but we are starting from patchwork legalization. As the Vermont farmer says, I don’t think you can get there from here. I fear its time has passed. It’s generally true that the drug warriors have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
Then, there are THC taxes, designed to hit heavy users the hardest. Some drug-policy experts argue that such levies would just push people from marijuana to alcohol, with dangerous health consequences. “It would be like saying, ‘Let’s let the beef and pork industries market and do whatever they wish, but let’s have much tougher restrictions on tofu and seitan,’” said Mason Tvert of the Marijuana Policy Project. “In light of the current system, where alcohol is so prevalent and is a more harmful substance, it is bad policy to steer people toward that.” Yet reducing the commercial appeal of all vice products—cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana—is an option, if not necessarily a popular one.
Counterargument and Rebuttal Section of Your Essay
Where can we seek counterarguments? Websites that champion cannabis consumption, of course. So let's look at a cannabis blog.
Counterargument #1: Daily Wine Vs. Daily Pot, Faulty Comparison?
Perhaps most important might be reintroducing some reasonable skepticism about cannabis, especially until scientists have a better sense of the health effects of high-potency products, used frequently. Until then, listening to and believing the hundreds of thousands of users who argue marijuana is not always benign might be a good start.
There’s no shortage of other reasonable proposals, many already in place or under consideration in some states. The government could run marijuana stores, as in Canada. States could require budtenders to have some training or to refrain from making medical claims. They could ask users to set a monthly THC purchase cap and remain under it. They could cap the amount of THC in products, and bar producers from making edibles that are attractive to kids, like candies. A ban or limits on marijuana advertising are also options, as is requiring cannabis dispensaries to post public-health information.
According to organizations such as NIDA, these daily wine drinkers are “alcoholics” or “heavy drinkers”. Within their realm of rationalization, consuming anything daily means automatically you’re an addict.
Counterargument #2: People rely on daily substances all the time: Two Wrongs Make a Right Fallacy
However, it is important to make the distinction between daily use and addiction. For instance, if someone smokes up every single night after a long day of work to unwind…how does that make them an addict. Just because of the substance in question?
If you’re having trouble sleeping and go to a doctor, they will either prescribe you a regimen of exercises or some Zoloft to get you sleeping. Within this scenario, if you take Zoloft every night to go to sleep…are you addicted or just ‘medicating’?
And this is where Cannabis is also very different from every other type of recreational drug on the market. Due to the cannabinoid activity within the plant and the plethora of medical benefits these terpenes and cannabis provides to the endocannabinoid system; many people substitute cannabis for medicines like Zoloft.
Counterargument #3: Addicts are going to be addicts anyway; if it's not pot, it will be something else, so what the hell?
Of course, the psychological aspects of cannabis could play a role within the mental structure of an addict. However, for an addict…if it’s not one substance it’s another. If they aren’t addicted to cannabis, they would be addicted to food, sex or anything really.
Nonetheless, we can’t place heavy regulations on cannabis based on the reactions of a small minority of people.
Counterargument #4: Lots of things are dangerous, like cars. Should we illegalize cars?
Let me put it to you this way. Some people will inevitably crash their cars and kill other people. This is fact. Does this mean that we get rid of all cars, place limits on how fast cars can go?
We do have some regulation when it comes to cars though. We make sure they are road worthy, we have certain rules and guidelines within the public space…however we’re not placing limits on manufacturers. We’re not setting a National Top Speed of 60 MPH where every car manufacturer is forced to make cars that can only go 60 MPHs.
Similarly, placing restrictions on a budding industry, setting limitations on THC levels and so forth is irrational.
Counterargument #5: "You can't trust the government."
The only reason why “some people” are having issues with cannabis is because the government has been spreading misinformation about cannabis for decades. The “trust” in the government authority have diminished over time.
Rebuttal:
A lot of studies Lowrey refers to are independent academic studies, not government ones.
Counterargument #6: "Just be careful, bro."
Cannabis is a mind altering substance and you should always be careful when you’re playing with brain chemistry, however the problem doesn’t lie with the substance but rather education surrounding the substance.
Furthermore, addiction goes far beyond any particular substance. It has to do with identity, purpose, behavioral patterns, genetics and of course a sense of belonging.
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Essay Option Three.
Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
One. Why does Andrew Sullivan give up his smartphone and enter Internet Addiction Rehab?
His life as a curator of web news had taken over his life, had hijacked his brain, and had attacked his immune system. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened gradually. More and more, he became immersed in Internet activity, and his body and mind could not keep up with it.
He was losing his life. He was dying.
A spark of metacognition (self-awareness) kicked him in the pants and told him to go to rehab before it was too late.
His blogging was killing him while making him rich and famous:
We read:
“If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Years later, the joke was running thin. In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out. Four bronchial infections in 12 months had become progressively harder to kick. Vacations, such as they were, had become mere opportunities for sleep. My dreams were filled with the snippets of code I used each day to update the site. My friendships had atrophied as my time away from the web dwindled. My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?”
But the rewards were many: an audience of up to 100,000 people a day; a new-media business that was actually profitable; a constant stream of things to annoy, enlighten, or infuriate me; a niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation; and a way to measure success — in big and beautiful data — that was a constant dopamine bath for the writerly ego. If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.”
Sullivan described a certain anxiety I’ve read about in other Internet addicts, and I’ve seen it in myself during my worst times:
I tried reading books, but that skill now began to elude me. After a couple of pages, my fingers twitched for a keyboard. I tried meditation, but my mind bucked and bridled as I tried to still it. I got a steady workout routine, and it gave me the only relief I could measure for an hour or so a day. But over time in this pervasive virtual world, the online clamor grew louder and louder. Although I spent hours each day, alone and silent, attached to a laptop, it felt as if I were in a constant cacophonous crowd of words and images, sounds and ideas, emotions and tirades — a wind tunnel of deafening, deadening noise. So much of it was irresistible, as I fully understood. So much of the technology was irreversible, as I also knew. But I’d begun to fear that this new way of living was actually becoming a way of not-living.
Two. How does Sullivan suggest that the new technology is different from technologies of the past?
The new technology is infinite in its data, and it can penetrate our brains, hijack our brains, and manipulate our behavior through algorithms.
As he writes:
“We absorb this “content” (as writing or video or photography is now called) no longer primarily by buying a magazine or paper, by bookmarking our favorite website, or by actively choosing to read or watch. We are instead guided to these info-nuggets by myriad little interruptions on social media, all cascading at us with individually tailored relevance and accuracy. Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on. Silicon Valley’s technologists andtheir ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow. No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.
And the engagement never ends. Not long ago, surfing the web, however addictive, was a stationary activity. At your desk at work, or at home on your laptop, you disappeared down a rabbit hole of links and resurfaced minutes (or hours) later to reencounter the world. But the smartphone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing. Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives.”
Three. What is so scary for an Internet Addict who enters rehab?
In a word, silence. In silence, our demons that we’ve been tamping down with distractions come out of the woodwork, and we have to face them.
Another fear is boredom, or the boredom of the abyss. We’re conditioned to be repelled by boredom, as if it were a bad thing when boredom can be very productive and helpful.
Only in silence does our deepest psychic and soulful pain emerge, and we are overtaken by it, a terrifying but necessary event.
In Sullivan’s words:
“And then, unexpectedly, on the third day, as I was walking through the forest, I became overwhelmed. I’m still not sure what triggered it, but my best guess is that the shady, quiet woodlands, with brooks trickling their way down hillsides and birds flitting through the moist air, summoned memories of my childhood. I was a lonely boy who spent many hours outside in the copses and woodlands of my native Sussex, in England. I had explored this landscape with friends, but also alone — playing imaginary scenarios in my head, creating little nooks where I could hang and sometimes read, learning every little pathway through the woods and marking each flower or weed or fungus that I stumbled on. But I was also escaping a home where my mother had collapsed with bipolar disorder after the birth of my younger brother and had never really recovered. She was in and out of hospitals for much of my youth and adolescence, and her condition made it hard for her to hide her pain and suffering from her sensitive oldest son.
I absorbed a lot of her agony, I came to realize later, hearing her screams of frustration and misery in constant, terrifying fights with my father, and never knowing how to stop it or to help. I remember watching her dissolve in tears in the car picking me up from elementary school at the thought of returning to a home she clearly dreaded, or holding her as she poured her heart out to me, through sobs and whispers, about her dead-end life in a small town where she was utterly dependent on a spouse. She was taken away from me several times in my childhood, starting when I was 4, and even now I can recall the corridors and rooms of the institutions she was treated in when we went to visit.
I knew the scar tissue from this formative trauma was still in my soul. I had spent two decades in therapy, untangling and exploring it, learning how it had made intimacy with others so frightening, how it had made my own spasms of adolescent depression even more acute, how living with that kind of pain from the most powerful source of love in my life had made me the profoundly broken vessel I am. But I had never felt it so vividly since the very years it had first engulfed and defined me. It was as if, having slowly and progressively removed every distraction from my life, I was suddenly faced with what I had been distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree, I stopped, and suddenly found myself bent over, convulsed with the newly present pain, sobbing.”
Four. What are some of the dehumanizing effects of always being online?
We suffer the aforementioned nervous energy.
We find that being online has become, without us being aware of it, a full-time job that becomes more important than real relationships.
We don’t share space with loved ones because our attention becomes fragmented. Likewise, our personalities become just as fragmented.
In Sullivan’s words:
“But of course, as I had discovered in my blogging years, the family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together. They are, in Turkle’s formulation, “alone together.” You are where your attention is. If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.
By rapidly substituting virtual reality for reality, we are diminishing the scope of this interaction even as we multiply the number of people with whom we interact. We remove or drastically filter all the information we might get by being with another person. We reduce them to some outlines — a Facebook “friend,” an Instagram photo, a text message — in a controlled and sequestered world that exists largely free of the sudden eruptions or encumbrances of actual human interaction. We become each other’s “contacts,” efficient shadows of ourselves.”
Another type of dehumanization: losing satisfaction of doing focused work. As Sullivan writes:
“Yes, online and automated life is more efficient, it makes more economic sense, it ends monotony and “wasted” time in the achievement of practical goals. But it denies us the deep satisfaction and pride of workmanship that comes with accomplishing daily tasks well, a denial perhaps felt most acutely by those for whom such tasks are also a livelihood — and an identity.”
We also suffer the breakdown of community. As Sullivan observes:
So are the bonds we used to form in our everyday interactions — the nods and pleasantries of neighbors, the daily facial recognition in the mall or the street. Here too the allure of virtual interaction has helped decimate the space for actual community. When we enter a coffee shop in which everyone is engrossed in their private online worlds, we respond by creating one of our own. When someone next to you answers the phone and starts talking loudly as if you didn’t exist, you realize that, in her private zone, you don’t. And slowly, the whole concept of a public space — where we meet and engage and learn from our fellow citizens — evaporates. Turkle describes one of the many small consequences in an American city: “Kara, in her 50s, feels that life in her hometown of Portland, Maine, has emptied out: ‘Sometimes I walk down the street, and I’m the only person not plugged in … No one is where they are. They’re talking to someone miles away. I miss them.’ ”
Another form of dehumanization is dopamine addiction. Sullivan writes:
Has our enslavement to dopamine — to the instant hits of validation that come with a well-crafted tweet or Snapchat streak — made us happier? I suspect it has simply made us less unhappy, or rather less aware of our unhappiness, and that our phones are merely new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety.
In addition to dopamine addiction, your brain enters a zombie limbo state, where you don’t feel full emotions:
“He recalled a moment driving his car when a Bruce Springsteen song came on the radio. It triggered a sudden, unexpected surge of sadness. He instinctively went to pick up his phone and text as many friends as possible. Then he changed his mind, left his phone where it was, and pulled over to the side of the road to weep. He allowed himself for once to be alone with his feelings, to be overwhelmed by them, to experience them with no instant distraction, no digital assist. And then he was able to discover, in a manner now remote from most of us, the relief of crawling out of the hole of misery by himself. For if there is no dark night of the soul anymore that isn’t lit with the flicker of the screen, then there is no morning of hopefulness either. As he said of the distracted modern world we now live in: “You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you just feel … kinda satisfied with your products. And then you die. So that’s why I don’t want to get a phone for my kids.”
Yet another form of dehumanization in Sullivan’s view is the elevation of consumerism into a religion, which has replaced legitimate faith. Sullivan writes:
In his survey of how the modern Westlost widespread religious practice, A Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor used a term to describe the way we think of our societies. He called it a “social imaginary” — a set of interlocking beliefs and practices that can undermine or subtly marginalize other kinds of belief. We didn’t go from faith to secularism in one fell swoop, he argues. Certain ideas and practices made others not so much false as less vibrant or relevant. And so modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increasingly without faith is not because science has somehow disproved the unprovable, but because the white noise of secularism has removed the very stillness in which it might endure or be reborn.
Five. Why are we hostile toward silence and embrace the noise and chatter of the internet?
For one, as social creatures we are hardwired to love gossip. Gossip is part of the moral glue that keeps societies together.
For two, noise is confused with the sound of being busy, which makes us feel like we’re adhering to a work ethic. But in fact we’re not. We’re merely scatterbrained.
As Sullivan explains:
“Silence in modernity became, over the centuries, an anachronism, even a symbol of the useless superstitions we had left behind. The smartphone revolution of the past decade can be seen in some ways simply as the final twist of this ratchet, in which those few remaining redoubts of quiet — the tiny cracks of inactivity in our lives — are being methodically filled with more stimulus and noise.
And yet our need for quiet has never fully gone away, because our practical achievements, however spectacular, never quite fulfill us. They are always giving way to new wants and needs, always requiring updating or repairing, always falling short. The mania of our online lives reveals this: We keep swiping and swiping because we are never fully satisfied. The late British philosopher Michael Oakeshott starkly called this truth “the deadliness of doing.” There seems no end to this paradox of practical life, and no way out, just an infinite succession of efforts, all doomed ultimately to fail.
Essay Option Three.
Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Comparing Andrew Sullivan and Lacie
One. Both Andrew Sullivan and Lacie disconnect from real world and become embedded in digital world where sense of self is based on an artificial, arbitrary ranking system, one that is becoming real in China.
Two. Both Sullivan and Lacie become "all in" in making sure their sense of self is validated by the around-the-clock image responsibilities. The constant self-curating is exhausting and takes a toll that they cannot recognize in part because it is gradual.
Three. As Sullivan and Lacie become distracted by their social media ranking quest, they fail to address their real demons, which continue to fester inside them.
Four. Both Sullivan and Lacie unshackle from their social media bondage in the same manner: They both have a physical and mental breakdown. Hitting rock bottom becomes the prelude for self-liberation.
Five. No longer trapped in the social media matrix, they must confront raw feelings of animal rage, which is the beginning of a slow rebuilding process.
Sample Thesis Statements
Mediocre Comparison Thesis
Famous blogger and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan and Lacie Pound from "Nosedive" embark upon a similar self-destruction journey propelled by their deep dive into social media.
Improved Argumentative Thesis
When we compare the similar journey of self-destruction in famous blogger and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan and "Nosedive" protagonist Lacie Pound, we are presented with compelling evidence to delete our social media accounts and balance our digital lives with an analog existence that insulates us from the excesses and pathologies of self-curation.
Argumentative Thesis That Disagrees with Above
Examining the similar road to self-destruction of Andrew Sullivan and Lacie Pound proves nothing. Addicts, narcissists, and the weak-minded are going to glom onto any vehicle to their own ruin. But for every Lacie Pound, there are thousands of social media users who live a digital life absent the pathologies chronicled by Andrew Sullivan and fictional character Lacie Pound.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With a summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
Lesson on Using Sources (adapted from The Arlington Reader, fourth edition)
We use sources to establish credibility and to provide evidence for our claim. Because we want to establish credibility, the sources have to be credible as well.
To be credible, the sources must be
Current or up to date: to verify that the material is still relevant and has all the latest and possibly revised research and statistical data.
Authoritative: to ensure that your sources represent experts in the field of study. Their studies are peer-reviewed and represent the gold standard, meaning they are the sources of record that will be referred to in academic debate and conversation.
Depth: The source should be detailed to give a comprehensive grasp of the subject.
Objectivity: The study is relatively free of agenda and bias or the writer is upfront about his or her agenda so that there are no hidden objectives. If you’re consulting a Web site that is larded with ads or a sponsor, then there may be commercial interests that compromise the objectivity.
Checklist for Evaluating Sources
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer-reviewed read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Recommended Online Sources
New York Times
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
The Atlantic
The Hill
Liberal
The Nation
Mother Jones
Slate
The Daily Beast
The New Yorker
Axios
Politico
Vox
Conservative
National Review
The Weekly Standard
The American Spectator
The American Conservative
The Washington Times
The New American
FrontPage Magazine
The Christian Science Monitor
Cybercast News Service
Human Events
MLA Documentation Review
MLA documentation consists of two parts: parenthetical references in the text of your paper and your Works Cited page at the end of the paper.
A parenthetical citation consists of the author’s last name and a page number.
(Fielding 213)
When you use a signal phrase, which is the preferred way to introduce a reference, you include only the page number:
According to environmental activist Brian Fielding, the number of species affected is much higher (213).
When referring to a work by two authors, include both authors’ names.
(Strange and Hogarth 53)
When citing a work with no listed author, include a short version of the title.
(“Small Things”)
When citing a source that is quoted in another source, indicate this by including the abbreviation qtd.in.
According to Kevin Kelly, this narrow approach is typical of the “hive mind” (qtd. in Doctorow 168).
When you are referring to the entire source rather than a specific page or when the source does not include page numbers, you must cite the author’s name in the text of your paper rather than in a parenthetical reference.
In fact, if you are referring to an author for the first time in your essay, you should rely on an introductory signal phrase and not simply rely on the parenthetical reference.
You must document all information that is not common knowledge, whether you are summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting. Common knowledge is factual information that is not limited to the domain of an elite circle of experts but can be found in so many sources that we say the information is ubiquitous or everywhere.
With direct quotations, include the parenthetical reference and a period after the closing quotation marks.
According to Doctorow, this is “authorship without editorship. Or authorship fused with editorship” (166).
When quoting a passage of more than four lines (which I discourage unless you think it’s absolutely necessary), introduce the passage with a complete sentence, followed by a colon. Indent the entire passage one inch (usually 10 spaces) from the left margin, and do no use quotation marks. Place the parenthetical reference after the final punctuation mark.
Always start your Works Cited page on a separate page, the last page of your essay.
Center the heading Works Cited at the top of the page.
List entries alphabetically by the author’s last name—or by the title’s first word if the author’s name is not given. However, when we alphabetize a title, we don’t include the article a or the.
Double-space your entries in the same way you double-space your entire essay.
Each entry begins at the left-hand margin and is not centered.
Italicize all book and periodical titles just like you do you in your essay.
Use a short version of the publisher’s name (Penguin rather than Penguin Books) and abbreviate University Press (as in Princeton UP or U of Chicago P).
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.
4-17 Homework #11 due: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write a 3-paragraph essay about the alleged delayed development Millennials face from smartphones and helicopter parents. Show CNN Special Report: Being 13.
4-22 Homework #12 due: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why mass incarceration is America’s greatest scandal. I recommend you see documentary 13th on Netflix. See various essays and videos about for-profit prisons by Shane Bauer.
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Counterarguments
One. We do not exist in a monolithic economic class. Why doesn't Twenge address poverty and depression? Is her causal analysis an over simplification? Is she conveniently omitting social and economic factors that contribute to today's generation's psychological state of depression, helplessness, and general malaise? I'd say yes it is. For example, The New Yorker observes there is a new type of Millennial fiction that captures today's hopelessness.
Two. Why one generation? Everyone is depressed and anxious from smartphones and related social media platforms, according to all studies. Why pick on one group of people?
Three. Screen time is correlated with poverty: The more poor we are, the more we're on our screens, the more we're debased and depressed by a compromised existence, as Nellie Bowles writes about digital use in her essay. So there is a connection between screen time and depression, but poverty seems to be more connected to more screen time than does wealth.
Four. Young people are overworked and face a declining American dream. They also suffer from burnout. Why aren't these factors addressed in teen depression? Anne Helen Petersen, writing for Buzzfeed, writes about this burnout.
Five. The problem isn't that Twenge doesn't address reality. The problem is that Twenge just addresses a sliver of reality and she lacks a comprehensive grasp of the problem of teen depression and arrested development.
Six. I have a lot of young students who are not addicted to their smartphones, but they suffer huge financial pressure, they suffer from food and home insecurity, they suffer from huge sleep deficits, and they suffer from lack of private space to do their homework. In totality, these challenges contribute to depression and anxiety in ways that are not discussed in Twenge's essay.
Summary of Critique:
Twenge’s statistics need to address economic class:
“Take a more granular look at the full range of usage, and it looks like the biggest risk of unhappiness is among those poor twelfth graders who don’t use social media at all. Quick! Someone get those kids a smartphone!”
We should consider that as parents work more to struggle to pay for higher cost of living with stagnant wages, they are tuning out their children more.
Now that parents have smartphones, they are tempted to disappear on their phones and withdraw from their children.
We read:
Zussman summarizes his findings with words that could just as easily apply to today’s smartphone-wielding parents:
Parents are, indeed, influenced by competing activity. They resort to a level of behavior that might be called “minimal parenting.” At this level of parenting, positive behaviors are regarded as expendable and are curtailed when parental load limits are reached. Although parents remain available to the children, they are slower to respond and interact with them for shorter periods, and their attention shifts rapidly among the two children and the task. They must continue to exert some control over the children, however, and negative behaviors may be increased in minimal parenting because they are seen as methods of obtaining rapid compliance.
Continuing in Psychology Today:
1) the data the author chooses to present are cherry-picked, by which I mean she reviews only those studies that support her idea and ignores studies that suggest that screen use is NOT associated with outcomes like depression and loneliness or that suggest that active social media use is actually associated with positive outcomes like resilience.
2) the studies she reviews are all correlational, meaning that the researchers merely observed associations between certain variables (e.g., smartphone use and depression). These studies leave open the possibilities that such associations are due to smartphones causing depression, depression symptoms causing greater use of smartphones, or a third variable, such as number extracurricular activities, causing both to rise and fall together. To actually know whether smartphone use causes depression, we'd have to assign large groups of adolescents perfectly matched on all number of variables to a long period where one group uses smartphones extensively and the other does not, and then watch to see whether depression levels rises more in one group versus the other. But even then we'd have to be careful to have the non-smartphone users have something else to do with their time that was carefully matched to smartphone use on time and engagement and social connectedness. Twenge is careful to note at several points this weakness of the research, explicitly calling out the correlational nature of the data. However, other places she says things like, "Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent."
3) the studies she reviews largely ignore social contexts and how people differ, instead reporting only average effects and correlations. Emerging evidence indicates that like every other question psychologists can think to ask about human behavior, screen use and its association with psychological well-being varies based on a multitude of contextual and personal variables - for instance, how you use media, when you use it, and what else is going on in your life. For instance, this article by Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein uses a careful design that takes into account these sorts of factors and concludes that "moderate use of digital technology is not intrinsically harmful and may be advantageous in a connected world."
Nowhere is Twenge's bias more obvious to me than in some research that she actually does review but then casts aside as seemingly irrelevant to her thesis - namely, the vast counter-evidence to the "destroyed generation" thesis contained in her headline. In the introduction to the piece she notes that this generation has sharply lower rates of alcohol use, teen pregnancies, unprotected sex, smoking, and car accidents than previous generations. This is what a destroyed generation looks like?
Moreover, there is good reason to think that smartphones and social media may have positive effects as well as negative effects. Routinely feeling connected to your social peers could have beneficial effects. Clive Thompson has written an entire book reviewing the evidence that technology may be amplifying our intelligence, our productivity, and our "ambient awareness" of each other's worlds. Kristelle Lavallee, Content Strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health out of Boston Children's Hospital, told me in an interview about many of the beneficial effects of social media on adolescent development. For instance, teens can find other teens interested in the same social movements, connect with teens across the globe on interests like music and fashion, and feel embedded in a social network filled with meaning.
Analysis or Rebuttal of Counterargument
The Psychology Today author says if we let kids use phones in moderation, they’ll be okay, but my counterargument is this: smartphones are created to NOT BE MODERATE. ADDICTION IS THEIR SOLE PURPOSE.
Twenge is not very interested in possible financial reasons for general change. In her scholarly work, she has suggested that market cycles fluctuate rather than follow a consistent trend, and that makes economics a poor explanatory variable. In iGen, she writes off the importance of the 2007–09 recession because “[u]nemployment, one of the best indicators of how the economy is affecting real people, peaked in 2010 and then declined.” Aside from the unemployment rate being a notoriously unreliable indicator of how the economy is affecting real people, that is a profoundly incurious sentence. There have been major changes to the nature of work and employment over the past few decades, and for Twenge to more or less ignore all of it because unemployment is back under 5 percent seems like more than an error. It hints at something deeper about why the book exists.
The 313-page book is broken into (by my count) 99 bite-size sections, and features 123 half-page charts, the “vast majority” (author’s words) of which come from four national surveys on youth attitudes and behaviors. That structure makes for a breezy read, but there’s only so much substance anyone can fit in so few pages. Evidence and ideas are presented without interrogation or critique. Twenge conducted 23 interviews (of up to two hours) with young people, and their quotes — along with some internet-sourced anecdotes — provide minor qualitative support. Mixed together and squirted into three-page section molds, it all feels pat and formulaic, more like a detailed corporate research dossier than an earnest work of inquiry.
Sometimes, though, the research is just sloppy. “The Internet — and society in general — promotes a relentless positivity these days,” Twenge writes in one section. “Social media posts highlight the happy moments but rarely the sad ones.” Only five pages later, Twenge introduces the reader to a teen named Laura and her Tumblr page, “a depressed person life [sic].” “Her pain is starkly evident in her posts,” Twenge writes, “which include ‘That’s how depression hits. You wake up one morning afraid that you’re going to live.’” Twenge likes the post so much, she uses it as a section title, and it is a good line — which is probably why Laura reblogged it from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s iconic Gen-X memoir Prozac Nation.
If the deleterious impact of smartphones is the premise of iGen, then Twenge has two main conclusions: “Overall, iGen is good news for managers” and “iGen’ers are scared, maybe even terrified.” Instead of investigating the possible links between these two findings, Twenge offers the managers suggestions for luring iGeners, like referring to the office’s “safe environment.” But at the end of the day, corporations have no interest in making their workers feel safer when fear makes them “less likely to expect more pay for less work.” (Twenge could have phrased it in the opposite direction, as “more likely to expect less pay for more work,” which would have clarified the stakes for employers.) This connection between an increase in the rate of exploitation and an increase in fear within the cohort would be by far the strongest argument in iGen, if Twenge had bothered to make it. Why didn’t she?
The term “millennial” was invented by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who’d been stars of the generational-consultant industry since their 1991 book Generations. Coining “millennials” made Strauss and Howe name brands — even though critics found their book Millennials Rising decidedly lightweight — and in a 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Eric Hoover put Howe’s speaking rate between $5,000 and $14,000 a pop plus expenses, with too many offers to take them all. The two authors also formed a consultancy called LifeCourse Associates, which lists clients “from Disney to the U.S. Marine Corps.” Compared to all that, book money is chump change.
Twenge is featured in the 2009 Chronicle article, too, as a second-tier speaker ($1,000 to $5,000), but with a more skeptical and data-based view than the optimistic Strauss and Howe. With iGen — her own coinage — Twenge looks to be the next marquee name as the millennial boys fade from prominence. That helps explain why there’s more in the book about how textbook manufacturers can engage students (“interactive activities” and “lower their reading level”) than why most iGeners oppose the capitalist system that has gone largely uncontested by Americans for 50 years. It helps explain why she poses questions like “How can managers get the most out of the newest generation in the workforce?” or says things like “Car manufacturers should take heart” and “this is good news for advertisers and marketers.”
When David Brooks (of all people) reviewed Millennials Rising, he wrote that, “This is not a good book, if by good you mean the kind of book in which the authors have rigorously sifted the evidence and carefully supported their assertions with data. But it is a very good bad book. It’s stuffed with interesting nuggets.” Twenge seems to have followed that description like a map; iGen is a nugget cluster with the rigor of a sales brochure. I have little doubt it will take her all the way to the bank.
While Twenge makes some convincing points about smartphones hurting young people, her diagnosis fails to persuade when we consider that her analysis of teen depression and teen arrested development is so specific that it leaves us with an oversimplification, it gives us faulty causation, and it obfuscates more compelling causes of teen depression such as financial and family deficits, and even parents who are smartphone addicts.
For your counterargument, you might address her claim that low unemployment proves that poverty is not the cause of teen depression.
Thesis with No Concession
Twenge sounding the alarm bells about smartphones causing a "ruined generation" is third-rate self-promotional propaganda larded with logical fallacies, hyperbole, and sloppy research. To be more specific, her alarm bells about smartphones ruining a generation fail to persuade when we consider her self-contradictions, her "cherry-picked studies," her faulty causation, her dismissal of smartphones' positive effects, her dismissal of economic strain, her failure to consider minimal parenting, and her failure to define in any convincing way her notion of a "ruined generation."
Thesis That Defends Twenge with a Concession
While Twenge's research methods are somewhat faulty, she does a persuasive job of showing how the smartphone is curtailing a generation's growth and contributing to depression by connecting pathological, addictive behaviors that are replacing a healthy normal growing-up process.
Thesis That Defends Twenge by Objecting to McMahon's Lecture
In an exhibition of quintessential virtue signalling, McMahon is eager to discuss the young generation's malaise in terms of economic hardship, lack of personal space, and lack of sleep; however, these factors, however true they may be, do not contradict Twenge's claim that smartphones are afflicting young people with very specific types of pathologies and addictive behaviors that are connected to smartphones and smartphones alone.
Thesis That Defends McMahon While Refuting Twenge
To discuss the connection of smartphones and young people's depressive pathologies is irresponsible without giving these pathologies context in terms of economic hardship, lack of private space, and lack of sleep because, as McMahon correctly observes, smartphone addiction does not exist in a vacuum; rather this insidious addiction is debilitating precisely because of the social factors that McMahon rightly says should be included in Twenge's overreaching, oversimplified analysis.
Adam Gopnik from “The Caging of America”
We give longer sentences for the same crime than all other countries in the world.
Over 400 teenagers in Texas have life sentences.
6 million Americans are under “correctional supervision.” There are 2.4 Americans in prison.
In 1980, there were 220 Americans in prison for every 100,000 people. In 2010 that number has jumped to 731. No developed country in the world comes close to this.
Here’s some evidence or data for our immoral prison system being part of The New Jim Crow: In two decades prison spending is up 600%. Here’s the warrant, the logic that connects the data to the claim that the modern prison system is part of The New Jim Crow: The money incentive, not smart and moral public policy, is the driving force.
Gopnik: The US prison system is the “moral scandal of American life.” It’s a scandal most Americans are indifferent to because they’re sedated by the blue pill in The Matrix. Reading Gopnik’s essay and Alexander’s book is the equivalent of taking the red pill.
Today’s prison policy is influenced by 19th Century America when prison was seen as a slave plantation.
There is a landmark book that analyzes the corruption of our prison system. It’s Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz. It reinforces many of the points made in The New Jim Crow.
We see an evil marriage of public policy and private interests: Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, enjoys financial growth that is dependent on America’s growing arrest rate (which is 90% people of color). The company’s stockholders want more arrests (not caring about the racial disparities and draconian nature of those arrests for all people) because they want to see their stock grow and grow. To make sure their stockholders are happy, CCA “spends millions lobbying legislators” to serve the purpose of the stockholders. Human rights can be damned as far as they’re concerned. They want their money.
The above example evidences that America is less of a democracy and more of an oligarchy. The word oligarchy is Greek which means the state is ruled by a only a few. In fact the Greek root oligos means “few.” We can conclude—and this would be in my conclusion of my paper when I restated my thesis—that to perpetuate The New Jim Crow is not only about the perpetuation of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow; it’s about a country being degraded into a corrupt oligarchy. I emphasize this because a conclusion should show the wider ramifications of your claim’s message.
Backlash and hostility against blacks in the face of the Reconstruction Era, a period of poor white resentment
Stereotypes of black males and predators and lazy ne’er-do-wells.
Strict unemployment laws against blacks and job discrimination, a disastrous combination.
No interracial relationships, seating, eating, hotels, rooms, etc. In other words, complete segregation. These laws kept a rift between poor whites and blacks and prevented them from forming an alliance.
KKK interference with black voting.
KKK lynchings of black men with no arrests.
An overall “terrorist campaign” against blacks (31)
Tens of thousands of blacks were “arbitrarily arrested” for “mischief” and “insulting gestures” (31).
Let's be clear: Mischief and insulting gestures are terms open to wide interpretation.
Black prison convicts had no human rights; they were as good as dead (31)
A new form of slavery emerged: black labor from prison (32)
Civil Rights foreshadowed the Birth of Mass Incarceration, AKA Jim Crow 2.0:
The Civil Rights Movement merged with the Poor People’s Movement and this alliance between poor whites and blacks threatened to challenge the distribution of wealth. A new racial control, splitting whites and blacks again (see 47-49), had to be established. See pages 39 and 40. Whites had to see blacks as “criminals” and pay taxes to erect a multi-billion-dollar prison system that employs over 2.5 million people.
President Reagan and other conservatives demonized the Civil Rights Movement:
We see on page 48 that the helping of the poor became “enabling welfare queens and criminal predators,” and in essence was ballooning this huge criminal underclass, which had to be controlled with The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration.
In this Jim Crow 2.0 there was no explicit racist language. Instead a new language was created based on words like criminality, welfare bums, food stamp abusers and these terms became codes for poor black people, the “undeserving others” (49).
The Effects of the War on Drugs and Criminals:
On page 49 we read that “overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.”
Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991.
Antidrug spending grew from $38 to $181 million.
Agencies for drug treatment, prevention, and education were dramatically reduced.
The budget for National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 to $57 million from 1981 to 1984.
Department of Education suffered cuts from $14 million to $3 million.
All of these cuts and the demonization of the black inner cities as crack dens happened during huge economic collapse, a time when poor blacks were most vulnerable. We read, for example, that in the big cities black employment for blue-collar jobs went from 70% of all blacks working, in the late 1970s, to 28% by 1987.
During this time manufacturing jobs moved to the white suburbs and only 28% of black fathers had access to an automobile so they could drive from the cities to the suburbs.
These job losses were accompanied by increased incentives to sell drugs. “Crack hit the streets in 1985” (51).
Crack did indeed eviscerate the black community. But the government response was wrong. The correct response can be seen in Portugal. During a period of high drug use, Portugal decriminalized drugs and invested in treatment, prevention, and education and in ten years addiction and drug-related crime plummeted (51). But conservatives decided to wage a war against the “enemy.” And the media got into the act with images of “crack whores,” “crack babies,” and “gangbangers.” See page 52.
The Portugal study speaks to America's motives. Do we choose a solution, prison, that makes more criminals or do we choose a solution, decriminalization, which reduces drug use? Why would we choose the wrong path? If a parent learns that education disciplines a child more than spanking, why would the parent stick to spanking?
In 1988, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act with a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of cocaine base with no evidence of intent to sell. And this law applied to first-time offenders.
The American people, 64%, supported this new drug war and they imprisoned huge numbers of black men but could feel colorblind and non-racist, because in their minds this was not about race; it was about criminality and drug use. But white drug users weren’t going to prison in the same numbers. A new racial caste system through mass incarceration was born (55).
Democrats didn’t want to appear soft on crime, so Clinton more than any other president did more to create the racial undercaste with a variety of bills (57).
Under Clinton, felons could not get public housing and other benefits. They lost all rights as human beings and lived under the shadow of oppression, just like in the days of Jim Crow (57).
By 1996, the penal budget doubled while food stamps and other benefits were slashed.
Ninety percent of those admitted in prison for drugs were black or Latino and yet the War on Drugs used race-neutral language. Jim Crow 2.0 was born.
Single leading cause of rising incarceration:
Drug offenses, which account for two thirds of the rise and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 (60). There are more people in prisons and jails today for just drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.
We read on page 60 that most prisoners are first offenders arrested for possession, not selling. In 2005, four out of five were arrested for possession only, not selling.
Another glaring fact: In the 1990s, marijuana was the leading cause for arrest. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. By 2007 one in every 31 adults were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.
"Reasonable Cause" and War on Drugs:
First, the Fourth Amendment, the law against search and seizures, has been eradicated since a cop can say he had “reasonable cause” to do a drug search. This results in police harassment and intimidation in poor communities as the police can do warrantless searches (63).
Second, law enforcement can now use invasive means to do drug surveillance and forced drug tests and use of informants and allow the forfeiture of cash, property, and other belongings (62). So we see a huge economic motive to make these arrests.
Third, consent searches are now police policy and studies show that most people, intimidated by the police, will consent (66). As a result, human rights are being violated under the huge umbrella of "reasonable cause."
Fourth, the police can now rely on a pretext traffic stop (failing to make a turn signal or going 1 MPH over speed limit, to cite 2 examples) and use that stop as an excuse to do a drug search (67). Many people are forced to spread eagle on the ground during these searches. Ninety-nine percent of these people being investigated are innocent but left humiliated. The majority of these people are of color.
The author asks why would the police choose to arrest such an astonishing percentage of the American public for minor drug crimes (between 1980 and 2005 drug arrests more than tripled)?
Especially since drug use was in decline when the War on Drugs began in the early 1980s.
Here we get to the crux of the matter: The system’s design was control with tangible and intangible benefits. And these benefits were a “massive bribe” offered to state and local law enforcement. Millions of dollars are given to local law enforcement. The military gives weapons, including bazookas, helicopters, night-vision goggles (74).
SWAT raid inappropriate for the War on Drugs:
Trauma, disproportion, and financial incentives. Each drug arrest brought $153 in funding, so the more arrests, the more money. See page 78.
Other dramatic changes took place under the Reagan Administration during the War on Drugs:
On page 78, we see that the police now had the right to seize and keep everything for themselves, including cash and other assets. State and local police could keep up to 80 percent of assets’ value. This in turn increased police budgets. So not only was the prison industry expanding into a multi-billion-dollar business, police departments were getting richer with the incentive to make more arrests. Between 1988 and 1992 alone, this forfeiture law amassed over a billion dollars in assets.
And the targets of these arrests were poor because they lack the means to hire an attorney and defend themselves. And since the poor represent easy cash, the police are encouraged to engage in illegal shakedowns, searches, and threats in search of forfeitable cash (80).
The big drug kingpins, the ones presumably targeted by the Drug War, go free because they can afford attorneys. It’s the little man who gets put in jail, so the War on Drugs fails on that level as well (79). For example, an investigation showed that when a person arrested can pay 50,000 dollars from drug profits seized would earn 6.3 year sentence reduction and agreements of $10,000 reduced trafficking charges by three-fourths (80).
After a poor person is arrested his chances of being free from the legal system are forever thin:
On page 84 we see that thousands of defendants are escorted through the courts with no legal counsel at all. Eighty percent of the defendants cannot hire a lawyer. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, we read that the defender office had only two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases and 4,000 misdemeanor cases each year (85). We further read that defendants often plead guilty, even when innocent, without understanding their legal rights or what is occurring (86).
In most cases there is not trial because there is a plea bargain which results in a reduced sentence but carries with it a lifetime of stripped human rights: he can’t get government benefits or get a job. He’ll be under constant surveillance. The condition is called by Loic Wacquant a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality” (95).
We currently have 2.3 million in the prisons and another 5.1 million on probation or parole (94).
According to Human Rights Watch, 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison are African American (98).
Violent crimes are at historically low levels yet mass incarceration is on the rise (101).
Of the 7.3 million under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison (101).
The prison system encourages criminality so that 68% of those released from prisons are back in 3 years (94). And only a small minority for violent crimes.
The poor were targeted by the media at the onset of the Drug War as pathological and created an “us vs. them” mentality (105).
“Drug criminals” became a code word for black and this makes sense when we consider that about 90% of those arrested are poor black males (105).
Jim Crow 2.0 Is War on Drugs
Excerpt from Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow:
What is the single leading cause of rising incarceration?
Drug offenses, which account for two thirds of the rise and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 (60). There are more people in prisons and jails today for just drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.
We read on page 60 that most prisoners are first offenders arrested for possession, not selling. In 2005, four out of five were arrested for possession only, not selling.
Another glaring fact: In the 1990s, marijuana was the leading cause for arrest. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. By 2007 one in every 31 adults were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.
What rules, if any, dictate the War on Drugs?
First, the Fourth Amendment, the law against search and seizures, has been eradicated since a cop can say he had “reasonable cause” to do a drug search. This results in police harassment and intimidation in poor communities as the police can do warrantless searches (63).
Second, law enforcement can now use invasive means to do drug surveillance and forced drug tests and use of informants and allow the forfeiture of cash, property, and other belongings (62). So we see a huge economic motive to make these arrests.
Third, consent searches are now police policy and studies show that most people, intimidated by the police, will consent (66). As a result, human rights are being violated under the huge umbrella of "reasonable cause."
Fourth, the police can now rely on a pretext traffic stop (failing to make a turn signal or going 1 MPH over speed limit, to cite 2 examples) and use that stop as an excuse to do a drug search (67). Many people are forced to spread eagle on the ground during these searches. Ninety-nine percent of these people being investigated are innocent but left humiliated. The majority of these people are of color.
How does white drug use differ from black drug use?
We read on page 99, that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students. Equal percentages use marijuana.
White drug dealers do their dealing, not on street corners like the poor, but in more discreet settings (100).
Crack cocaine, the major drug in black offenses, creates sentences that bring punishment with one hundred times more severity than offenses involving powder cocaine (the white drug) as we see on page 112. Crack law is unfair since plain cocaine results in far fewer sentences, a ratio of 100:1. Fair sentencing act may change this.
In Jim Crow 2.0, racial language is not used; there is a code that includes the type of drugs that will result in strong convictions. These strong convictions will be exacted on poor people of color, not white people with economic resources.
Why would there be huge resistance to reforming the New Jim Crow and Mass Incarceration?
We read on page 230 that if we got back to the incarceration rates of the 1970s, before the War on Drugs, we’d have release 4 out of 5 prisoners. This would reduce prison jobs and would be met with all-out war from the 700,000 prison guards, administrators, service workers and other prison personnel.
In a report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics in 2006, the U.S. spent $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial, and legal activities in 2003. This is a tripling of expenses since 1982.
The justice system employed almost 2.4 million people in 2003. If 4 out of 5 prisoners were released, far more than a million prison employees would lose their jobs.
Private sector also has an investment in prison growth and the mass incarceration of helpless and vulnerable people of color. For example, former vice president Dick Cheney has invested millions in private prisons. His bank account depends on the incarceration of more and more black men (230).
On page 231, the author gives a sample of “prison profiteers” who look for new ways to increase the prison business, with the targets always being the same: poor black men, the people this country has abandoned.
Consider this: On page 237 we read that 75% of all incarceration has no impact on crime, that if between 7 and 8 prisoners out of 10 were released, there’d be no change in crime; however, this 75% generates $200 billion annually. It’s a money-making device.
The moral bankruptcy of the New Jim Crow is that this multi-billion-dollar economy has been built on the backs of poor black men whom America doesn’t give a damn about. There’s an “it ain’t me” mentality that is morally loathsome and detestable.
Lexicon
One. Racial Caste System:
We had a caste system, based on the creation of race, during the time of slavery and during Jim Crow, but now we have Jim Crow 2.0 and a new racial caste system: a disproportionate number of black men in prison (7 black men for every white man) based on so-called "due process," which targets the poor and people of color. The United States is 5% of the world's population, yet we imprison 25% of all the world's prisoners.
As a country, we have an immoral appetite for putting people, especially poor people of color, in prison.
Two. Jim Crow:
During Reconstruction after the Civil War poor white farmers were angry that their lives were no better than the recently freed black people. White politicians, who needed those poor white votes, exploited the poor farmers' grievances by implementing Jim Crow, a system that separated black Americans into horrible conditions, racism, sub-wage work, failed schools, nonexistent government support, etc.
White politicians catered to the white supremacy religion of the poor white people who, having little, only could cling to their pathetic "religion" of white supremacy.
Three. Black Exceptionalism and the denial of racism in America:
Black Exceptionalism is the idea that since Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Oprah, and others have "made it,"; therefore, there can't possibly be racism and that any failure on a black person's part results from an individual failure of will and character.
We read in The Autobiography of Malcolm X that since the beginning of America, white people love to parade black people "who made it" to assuage white guilt for slavery, racism, and Jim Crow.
Four. False Equivalency Argument When Discussing Racism and Slavery:
Now some people will say, "But other people, including people of color, have enslaved others? What do you say to that?"
My response:
Slavery is unique to America because an entire country of white people drank the White Supremacy Kool-Aid to justify an evil that was exacted for over 100 years, perpetuating in ugly forms of Jim Crow to this day.
So when we talk about slavery, we must consider
scale
duration
brainwashing
pervasiveness (an entire country brainwashed or an outlier group of rogue criminal?)
Five. Colorblind Code Language as the New Racist Language: using code words to demonize a race: "thugs, felons, stamp abusers, welfare queens . . ."
Race-Based Social Control (21), various institutions control African Americans; first slavery, then Jim Crow, then the US Prison System, AKA Jim Crow 2.0. Institutions die but "are reborn in new form."
Trifold Narrative of the book: Slavery (born of a religious mass psychosis called White Supremacy), Jim Crow, Jim Crow 2.0
Summary of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow
In the New Jim Crow, or Jim Crow 2.0, we replace offensive racial epithets, now banned, with the term “criminals.”
These "criminals" are mostly poor people of color and they are the new undercaste and they are denied human rights. They can’t vote, get housing, jobs, etc.
The author thought ten years ago it was stupid to compare today’s war on drugs to Jim Crow (post civil war oppression of African Americans), that such a comparison would make people think you’re crazy, but the evidence has shown that indeed such a comparison is compelling.
"Only crackpots would compare the plight of black America today with Jim Crow, or worse, with slavery." The author had these thoughts but her research showed her otherwise. There is a system designed to incarcerate black and brown Americans and this system makes money, a huge prison system. And it gains political points for politicians. Both the prison industry and the politicians, MA will show, make their careers off the blood and backs of brown and black people.
Here are some key features of the New Jim Crow, AKA, The War on Drugs:
The War on Drugs started in 1982 and picked up momentum in 1985 when the black community was demonized as a Crack Den. These demonized images saturated TV news and gave a very thin slice of African Americans, not the whole picture.
The Drug War started when crime and drug use was on decline and the author suggests that it started as a form of social control.
In thirty years, the number of US prisoners increased from 300,000 to over 2 million.This number has gone unquestioned
The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized country. Such a fact speaks volumes about our freedom and our democracy and our morality.
In Germany, 93 out of 100,000 adults are incarcerated; in the US, the number is 8 times that amount or 750 out of 100,000.
Between 1960 and 1990 crime rates in Finland, Germany, and US were the same but during that time the US incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate decreased 60 percent, and the German rate remained unchanged. The author seems to suggest we have unsavory motives for our high incarceration rate.
Indeed, a New Yorker essay "The Caging of America" traces the moral bankruptcy that informs the US prison system.
The majority of US prisoners are black and brown men. Black men outnumber white men 7 to 1 yet are only 13 percent of the population. We call this disparity the "racial caste system."
Black and brown men are, in spite of similar rates of drug activity to whites, imprisoned 20-50 times greater than whites.
In Washington D.C. 3 out of 4 black men will be in prison.
In major cities throughout the US, 80% of black men have criminal records.
But illegal drug activity is not greater among blacks. Illegal drug activity happens in similar numbers among the different races.
The growth of US prisons is the largest form of race-based social control in world history.
Experts agree that prisons make more crime; they don’t reduce crime, yet there is an incentive to grow the prison industry: It makes billions of dollars (and employs about 2.5 million people) and as long as this money is made on the backs of black and brown men, the media and the public remain indifferent.
Racial caste system is hard to fight.
Because it is largely invisible and insidious with code words but evidence for its existence is overwhelming as we can see from the statistics above.
And because we throw people in prison under "due process," from the Bill of Rights, which we worship like some kind of God. We get so caught up with "due process," that we become blind to the results of this "due process."
Continuum of the racial caste system
Slavery, Jim Crow, and Jim Crow 2.0, AKA The War on Drugs, is “a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom.” The new laws and customs put black and brown men into mass incarceration at disproportionate rates when their drug activity is not higher than other people’s.
This incarceration makes black and brown men members of the undercaste or second-class citizens based on prison label or criminal label, not prison time. Once labeled, they are denied citizen rights to vote, to serve jury duty, to work, etc.
On page 21, we see that when one type of racial oppression dies, a new one takes its place, what Reva Siegel has called “preservation through transformation.”
We no longer use racist language; we call people of color criminals or felons. Prison is the new form of control.
In American history, we see control over people of color has been largely to appease lower-class whites, who feel trapped at the bottom of society. The privileged whites throw the poor whites a dog bone: “Even though you’re poor, we’ll make people of color even more poor and even less privileged than you.”
We read further that Jim Crow was a reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation, the abolishment of slavery and it is the author’s contention that Mass Incarceration is the reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. See page 22.
Some claim to bathe in the glory of colorblindness and black exceptionalism (the idea that great blacks such Obama, Oprah, Bill Cosby, etc., and say these black celebrities are proof that blacks can climb the American ladder. However, according to Alexander, these arguments actually provide the essential tools for Jim Crow 2.0.
On page 14 we read, and this point will be developed later in the book, that they make us feel good for not having bigotry and hostility toward people of color while we have something far worse: indifference. Indifference to what? To quote the author, “A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch” (15).
The privileged whites had to appease poor whites. See the case of Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion on page 24. By appeasing Bacon, rich whites broke up the alliance between poor whites and blacks.
Tragedy of racism and slavery
During America’s Colonial period, there was no such thing as race. People of light and dark skin color worked side by side oblivious of race. The idea of race didn’t become prominent until European imperialism and American slavery a few hundred years ago. To kill and exploit people with justification, the term “savages” was created to replace human beings.
During slavery, white supremacy became a religion that “served to alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery and the democratic ideals espoused by whites . . .” (26). This religion endured beyond slavery.
American government is founded on property ownership and privilege over equal rights.
We see on page 25 that James Madison said the nation ought to be constituted “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”
We read further that the Constitution “was designed so the federal government would be weak” in relation to private property and the “states to conduct their own affairs.”
Economic incentives created Jim Crow in the aftermath of slavery’s abolishment.
Southern regions depended on the labor of former slaves or those economies “would surely collapse.”
Adam Gopnik's "The Caging of America" makes a persuasive case that mass incarceration is a new insidious form of Jim Crow evidenced by ___________________________________, ____________________, ______________________, and ____________________.
While the analogy between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0 (mass incarceration) offers some faulty comparisons, by and large the comparison is a compelling and persuasive one when we consider ___________________, __________________, ________________________, and _______________________.
While I will accept some parallels between Jim Crow and mass incarceration, the analogy collapses under close scrutiny when we consider no one forced victims of Jim Crow to deal or take drugs, that Jim Crow existed before Civil Rights laws were passed, and that Jim Crow has been made illegal in our modern society.
The rejection of the analogy between Jim Crow 1.0 and mass incarceration (Jim Crow 2.0) based on the specious argument that we have banned Jim Crow laws is either deliberately misguided or baldly ignorant of Michelle Alexander's research into the insidious ways the current so-called "War on Drugs" oppresses people of color by using coded language, dog whistles, and a prison system that profits off of exploiting mostly young brown and black men.
The War on Drugs narrative to explain America's crisis of mass incarceration is no longer persuasive in light of studies about violence and over-reaching prosecutors who are more responsible for locking people up than the drug war.
4-17 Homework #11 due: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write a 3-paragraph essay about the alleged delayed development Millennials face from smartphones and helicopter parents. Show CNN Special Report: Being 13.
4-22 Homework #12 due: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why mass incarceration is America’s greatest scandal. I recommend you see documentary 13th on Netflix. See various essays and videos about for-profit prisons by Shane Bauer.
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
One. The phone is the new “chaperone” or evil babysitter for teens. Teens have retreated into the igloo of their smartphones where they hibernate from life and suffer delayed development.
Not just teens, but parents turn to their smartphones as their default setting for the way to spend their day and night. The smartphone is an opium box plugged into the brain 24/7.
Two. The radical shift of smartphone overuse started in 2012 when smartphones became a “necessity.” We call this the iGen generation. Recent studies show that up to 84% of teens have a smartphone.
Not having a smartphone is a form of ostracism, feeling like one is a misfit who is “off the grid.” To feel invisible is one of modern culture’s greatest horrors.
Three. Rates of teen depression and suicide have “skyrocketed” since 2011 and we have the “worst mental-health crisis is decades.”
For many reasons, but mostly it’s the opium machine teens carry with them all the time. Three or more hours a day results in 35% more risk for suicide. Antidepressants are up 300%.
Four. iGen doesn’t go out, date, or drink. These numbers are down from 85% to 56%.
Five. Working part-time is down from 77% to 55%. One might infer that smartphone use sucks energy and motivation required to work. The smartphone may be a precursor to an era of mass unemployment.
Six. iGen does less homework. We see Boston Globe report about teens on smartphones losing motivation to accomplish anything, including homework.
Seven. In sum, iGen isn’t developing. At 18, they’re more like 15. Why?
Eight. iGen sleeps with their phones and they suffer from sleep deprivation.
One. We do not exist in a monolithic economic class. Why doesn't Twenge address poverty and depression? Is her causal analysis an over simplification? I'd say yes it its.
Two. Why one generation? Everyone is depressed and anxious from smartphones and related social media platforms, according to all studies. Why pick on one group of people?
Three. Screen time is correlated with poverty: The more poor we are, the more we're on our screens, the more we're debased and depressed by a compromised existence, as Nellie Bowles writes about digital use in her essay.
Four. Young people are overworked and face a declining American dream. They also suffer from burnout. Why aren't these factors addressed in teen depression? Anne Helen Petersen, writing for Buzzfeed, writes about this burnout.
Five. The problem isn't that Twenge doesn't address reality. The problem is that Twenge just addresses a sliver of reality and she lacks a comprehensive grasp of the problem of teen depression and arrested development.
Six. I have a lot of young students who are not addicted to their smartphones, but they suffer huge financial pressure, they suffer from food and home insecurity, they suffer from huge sleep deficits, and they suffer from lack of private space to do their homework. In totality, these challenges contribute to depression and anxiety in ways that are not discussed in Twenge's essay.
Summary of Critique:
Twenge’s statistics need to address economic class:
“Take a more granular look at the full range of usage, and it looks like the biggest risk of unhappiness is among those poor twelfth graders who don’t use social media at all. Quick! Someone get those kids a smartphone!”
We should consider that as parents work more to struggle to pay for higher cost of living with stagnant wages, they are tuning out their children more.
Now that parents have smartphones, they are tempted to disappear on their phones and withdraw from their children.
We read:
Zussman summarizes his findings with words that could just as easily apply to today’s smartphone-wielding parents:
Parents are, indeed, influenced by competing activity. They resort to a level of behavior that might be called “minimal parenting.” At this level of parenting, positive behaviors are regarded as expendable and are curtailed when parental load limits are reached. Although parents remain available to the children, they are slower to respond and interact with them for shorter periods, and their attention shifts rapidly among the two children and the task. They must continue to exert some control over the children, however, and negative behaviors may be increased in minimal parenting because they are seen as methods of obtaining rapid compliance.
Continuing in Psychology Today:
1) the data the author chooses to present are cherry-picked, by which I mean she reviews only those studies that support her idea and ignores studies that suggest that screen use is NOT associated with outcomes like depression and loneliness or that suggest that active social media use is actually associated with positive outcomes like resilience.
2) the studies she reviews are all correlational, meaning that the researchers merely observed associations between certain variables (e.g., smartphone use and depression). These studies leave open the possibilities that such associations are due to smartphones causing depression, depression symptoms causing greater use of smartphones, or a third variable, such as number extracurricular activities, causing both to rise and fall together. To actually know whether smartphone use causes depression, we'd have to assign large groups of adolescents perfectly matched on all number of variables to a long period where one group uses smartphones extensively and the other does not, and then watch to see whether depression levels rises more in one group versus the other. But even then we'd have to be careful to have the non-smartphone users have something else to do with their time that was carefully matched to smartphone use on time and engagement and social connectedness. Twenge is careful to note at several points this weakness of the research, explicitly calling out the correlational nature of the data. However, other places she says things like, "Eighth-graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent."
3) the studies she reviews largely ignore social contexts and how people differ, instead reporting only average effects and correlations. Emerging evidence indicates that like every other question psychologists can think to ask about human behavior, screen use and its association with psychological well-being varies based on a multitude of contextual and personal variables - for instance, how you use media, when you use it, and what else is going on in your life. For instance, this article by Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein uses a careful design that takes into account these sorts of factors and concludes that "moderate use of digital technology is not intrinsically harmful and may be advantageous in a connected world."
Nowhere is Twenge's bias more obvious to me than in some research that she actually does review but then casts aside as seemingly irrelevant to her thesis - namely, the vast counter-evidence to the "destroyed generation" thesis contained in her headline. In the introduction to the piece she notes that this generation has sharply lower rates of alcohol use, teen pregnancies, unprotected sex, smoking, and car accidents than previous generations. This is what a destroyed generation looks like?
Moreover, there is good reason to think that smartphones and social media may have positive effects as well as negative effects. Routinely feeling connected to your social peers could have beneficial effects. Clive Thompson has written an entire book reviewing the evidence that technology may be amplifying our intelligence, our productivity, and our "ambient awareness" of each other's worlds. Kristelle Lavallee, Content Strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health out of Boston Children's Hospital, told me in an interview about many of the beneficial effects of social media on adolescent development. For instance, teens can find other teens interested in the same social movements, connect with teens across the globe on interests like music and fashion, and feel embedded in a social network filled with meaning.
Analysis or Rebuttal of Counterargument
The Psychology Today author says if we let kids use phones in moderation, they’ll be okay, but my counterargument is this: smartphones are created to NOT BE MODERATE. ADDICTION IS THEIR SOLE PURPOSE.
Twenge is not very interested in possible financial reasons for general change. In her scholarly work, she has suggested that market cycles fluctuate rather than follow a consistent trend, and that makes economics a poor explanatory variable. In iGen, she writes off the importance of the 2007–09 recession because “[u]nemployment, one of the best indicators of how the economy is affecting real people, peaked in 2010 and then declined.” Aside from the unemployment rate being a notoriously unreliable indicator of how the economy is affecting real people, that is a profoundly incurious sentence. There have been major changes to the nature of work and employment over the past few decades, and for Twenge to more or less ignore all of it because unemployment is back under 5 percent seems like more than an error. It hints at something deeper about why the book exists.
The 313-page book is broken into (by my count) 99 bite-size sections, and features 123 half-page charts, the “vast majority” (author’s words) of which come from four national surveys on youth attitudes and behaviors. That structure makes for a breezy read, but there’s only so much substance anyone can fit in so few pages. Evidence and ideas are presented without interrogation or critique. Twenge conducted 23 interviews (of up to two hours) with young people, and their quotes — along with some internet-sourced anecdotes — provide minor qualitative support. Mixed together and squirted into three-page section molds, it all feels pat and formulaic, more like a detailed corporate research dossier than an earnest work of inquiry.
Sometimes, though, the research is just sloppy. “The Internet — and society in general — promotes a relentless positivity these days,” Twenge writes in one section. “Social media posts highlight the happy moments but rarely the sad ones.” Only five pages later, Twenge introduces the reader to a teen named Laura and her Tumblr page, “a depressed person life [sic].” “Her pain is starkly evident in her posts,” Twenge writes, “which include ‘That’s how depression hits. You wake up one morning afraid that you’re going to live.’” Twenge likes the post so much, she uses it as a section title, and it is a good line — which is probably why Laura reblogged it from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s iconic Gen-X memoir Prozac Nation.
If the deleterious impact of smartphones is the premise of iGen, then Twenge has two main conclusions: “Overall, iGen is good news for managers” and “iGen’ers are scared, maybe even terrified.” Instead of investigating the possible links between these two findings, Twenge offers the managers suggestions for luring iGeners, like referring to the office’s “safe environment.” But at the end of the day, corporations have no interest in making their workers feel safer when fear makes them “less likely to expect more pay for less work.” (Twenge could have phrased it in the opposite direction, as “more likely to expect less pay for more work,” which would have clarified the stakes for employers.) This connection between an increase in the rate of exploitation and an increase in fear within the cohort would be by far the strongest argument in iGen, if Twenge had bothered to make it. Why didn’t she?
The term “millennial” was invented by William Strauss and Neil Howe, who’d been stars of the generational-consultant industry since their 1991 book Generations. Coining “millennials” made Strauss and Howe name brands — even though critics found their book Millennials Rising decidedly lightweight — and in a 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Eric Hoover put Howe’s speaking rate between $5,000 and $14,000 a pop plus expenses, with too many offers to take them all. The two authors also formed a consultancy called LifeCourse Associates, which lists clients “from Disney to the U.S. Marine Corps.” Compared to all that, book money is chump change.
Twenge is featured in the 2009 Chronicle article, too, as a second-tier speaker ($1,000 to $5,000), but with a more skeptical and data-based view than the optimistic Strauss and Howe. With iGen — her own coinage — Twenge looks to be the next marquee name as the millennial boys fade from prominence. That helps explain why there’s more in the book about how textbook manufacturers can engage students (“interactive activities” and “lower their reading level”) than why most iGeners oppose the capitalist system that has gone largely uncontested by Americans for 50 years. It helps explain why she poses questions like “How can managers get the most out of the newest generation in the workforce?” or says things like “Car manufacturers should take heart” and “this is good news for advertisers and marketers.”
When David Brooks (of all people) reviewed Millennials Rising, he wrote that, “This is not a good book, if by good you mean the kind of book in which the authors have rigorously sifted the evidence and carefully supported their assertions with data. But it is a very good bad book. It’s stuffed with interesting nuggets.” Twenge seems to have followed that description like a map; iGen is a nugget cluster with the rigor of a sales brochure. I have little doubt it will take her all the way to the bank.
While Twenge makes some convincing points about smartphones hurting young people, her diagnosis fails to persuade when we consider that her analysis of teen depression and teen arrested development is so specific that it leaves us with an over simplification, it gives us faulty causation, and it obfuscates more compelling causes of teen depression such as financial and family deficits, and even parents who are smartphone addicts.
For your counterargument, you might address her claim that low unemployment proves that poverty is not the cause of teen poverty.
4-17 Homework #11 due: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write a 3-paragraph essay about the alleged delayed development Millennials face from smartphones and helicopter parents. Show CNN Special Report: Being 13.
4-22 Homework #12 due: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why mass incarceration is America’s greatest scandal. I recommend you see documentary 13th on Netflix. See various essays and videos about for-profit prisons by Shane Bauer.
4-29 Homework #14 due: Read “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts” and in 3 paragraphs explain the dangers of legalized pot. See Netflix Explained episode about history of marijuana.
5-1 Peer Edit
5-6 Essay # 4 due
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Option Two: Read Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” and write an essay that argues for or against Twenge’s claim that smartphones combined with helicopter parenting are resulting in delayed development of Millennials and Generation Z (born after mid 90s). You may refer to CNN Special Report: Being Thirteen.
Option Three. Develop an argumentative thesis that compares the spiritual evisceration and mental dissolution in Andrew Sullivan’s essay “I Used to be a Human Being” with Netflix Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” You may consult Sherry Turkle’s YouTube Ted Talk “Connected But Alone.”
Option Four: Read Adam Gopnik’s “The Caging of America” and write a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow.” Refer to the Netflix documentary 13th.
Watch Hasan Minhaj video (on both Netflix under Patriot Act and YouTube) and support, refute, or complicate the assertion that the presidential administration is undermining civil rights to the detriment of American democracy and freedom. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For example, defenders of the administration would argue that their policies strengthen America against terrorism.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,200-word essay
9 Paragraphs, 135 words per paragraph, approx. 1,200 words (1,215 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-6: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 7 & 8: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Digital Habits Have Taken Away Our Freedom: Jaron Lanier and Cal Newport
10 Arguments for Deleting Social Media Account
Additional media and books to consider:
Black Mirror episode: “Nosedive”
Irresistible by Adam Alter
LikeWar by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking
World Without Mind by Franklin Foer
Essay #4 Due Date: 5-6-18
You need a minimum of 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Option One: Read Tristan Harris’ “Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones,” “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” and his Ted Talk video. Then develop a thesis that evaluates the validity of his claim that technology, especially smartphones, are not empowering us but “hijacking” our freedom and autonomy and working against our best interests. You may refer to Sherry Turkle’s Ted Talk “Connected, But Alone?”
Overview of the Essay Topic
How does social media in the smartphone age hijack our freedom and autonomy and work against our best interests?
The following should be considered for your body paragraphs (mapping components of a thesis):
One. Social media is now a portable crack machine that puts us inside a dopamine feedback loop resulting in a gradual behavior modification and addiction that can entrap even the smartest, most disciplined individuals because the addictive nature of social media is not a bug; it's a feature.
Two. When we are addicted to anything, including social media's intermittent rewards, we become a nastier, meaner, dumber version of ourselves.
Three. Because we are tribalists, we are vulnerable to social anxiety and social status as it pertains to our social media interactions. Long-term social media immersion results in anxiety and eventually into acute depression.
Four. Not only do we become addicted; our addiction makes us willing participants in our own submission to data mining so that we are the product of the social media companies who sell our most private date to other business entities without our knowledge and consent.
Five. Social media by its very nature tends toward fakery, manipulation, propaganda, and "fake news" because in grabbing attention from the reptilian part of our brains, social media is in a "race to the bottom" to get outrage. This sense of outrage is essential for maximizing clickbait and revenue for the social media companies.
Six. As we adapt to the "race to the bottom," we become more polarized as a society and this polarization degrades democracy while strengthening fascism and totalitarianism.
Counterarguments that need to be addressed:
One. Social media is free so people of all economic classes can participate in it.
Two. Everyone can participate in the marketplace of ideas. You don't have to be a professional journalist to have a blog or a vlog. Therefore, social media helps spread democracy.
Three. Social media gives us access to information that we've never had before.
Four. Social media helps us connect to people all over the world in ways that were once impossible.
If you want to do an alternative essay on the same topic:
Related Topic About Social Media: Should We Censor Racist Trolls?
Cats integrate with society but essentially remain independent and free. Humans on the other hand will find that their brains get hijacked in the manner Tristan Harris explains.
What’s scary about getting our brains hijacked is that we don’t know they’re getting hijacked. The process is so gradual it feels natural. We become enslaved to the devil because we deny his existence. He ruins us by helping us in our denial. Such is the devil that lurks behind social media. We don’t know our lives we’re ruined with addiction until we’re deep in the muck of it.
Addiction sneaks up on you and catches you unawares.
We’re more like dogs and Facebook or some other social media site has become our Master.
Portability of the Machine destroys our free will.
Lanier observes that the smartphone is a “cage we carry around with us everywhere we go.” Many of us bring our smartphones to bed. Many of my students are so tethered to their smartphones they have a pathological need to attend to it during class. They think this is normal, but this is not normal. This is addiction.
Addiction and Data Mining
We’re being tracked, receiving engineered feedback, and being mined for our data.
We are being molded into specimens for advertising manipulation.
We are being siloed into our political tribe’s bubble.
The Machine causes behavior modification.
We are living in a world beyond advertising.
We are now living in a bubble of “continuous behavior modification.” I refer you to Adam Alter’s book Irresistible.
Lanier writes that we are test subjects in an experiment, and we are not even aware of this.
We should be alarmed, but most of us are not. We are asleep at the wheel, so to speak.
Social media empires are “behavior modification empires,” so writes Lanier.
We become trapped in a short-term dopamine feedback loop.
We get hit with dopamine when we receive likes, followers, and positive feedback. This dopamine becomes a short-term substitute for real self-esteem, real self-confidence, and a real sense of an adult self, but of course this dopamine, like any drug, fails and our tattered self remains the tattered rag that it is.
Jason Lanier is arguing that by becoming addicted to these “short-term dopamine feedback loops” on social media we have lost our free will.
Social media addiction is connected to the growing divisiveness and polarization of society.
Lanier argues that the underlying force of both social media addiction and polarization is behavior modification that leads to helpless addiction. This helpless addiction makes us “crazy.” We’re crazy for more and more dopamine fueled by outrage and short-term self-esteem as we lose sight of real cognitive skills to be full realized adults.
“The addict gradually loses touch with the real world and real people. When many people are addicted to manipulative schemes, the world gets dark and crazy” (10).
The Tech Lords who make us addicted to social media know it’s bad for us.
These very same Tech Lords who design social media don’t allow their children to use social media or gadgets. They send their children to expensive Waldorf schools where technology isn’t allowed.
“Don’t get high on your own supply.”
These Tech Lords know they’re dealing with dangerous addiction because they hire consultants who work with gambling sites to maximize addiction (14).
Social pressure becomes an unhealthy force in the world of social media.
“People are keenly sensitive to social status, judgment, and competition. Unlike most animals, people are not only born absolutely helpless, but also remain so for years. We only survive by getting along with family members and others. Social concerns are not optional features of the human brain. They are primal.”
When we receive negative feedback on social media: being ignored, being scorned, being insulted, or being rejected, we experience hurt. We experience physical and emotional pain.
This hurt is a powerful force in controlling our behavior. We feel compelled to curate an existence to others that they would approve of. Social media pours gasoline on the fire of our desire for others’ validation and approval.
Social Anxiety
The resulting social anxiety from social media is probably enough reason to delete our social media accounts.
When we feel rejected, our social anxiety turns into depression, dejection, and despondency.
For those of us who are already vulnerable to this type of social anxiety and depression, social media is a nightmare scenario.
Rewards and punishments as the primary tools for controlling our behavior is called behaviorism.
Rewards and punishments (behaviorism) degrade human beings.
On page 18, Lanier writes:
“In the bigger picture, in which people must do more than conform in order for our species to thrive, behaviorism is an inadequate way to think about society. If you want to motivate high value and creative outcomes, as opposed to undertaking rote training, then reward and punishment aren’t the right tools at all.”
The Tech Lords don’t want behaviorism to affect their children. They don’t want their children to be Pavlovian dogs in a behavior modification experiment. That’s why they ban their children from social media and gadgets. The children go to Waldorf schools where they grow organic produce in a garden, make soup for lunch, and do creative projects in class.
We’re seeing the Upper Classes enjoy their power by not being tethered to behavior modification of social media.
The rest of us are like a giant underclass being mind-controlled by the social media and gadgets that the 1% foist upon us. We’re being punked.
Propaganda
The Tech Lords use propaganda: euphemisms for their mind control over us. They love to use the word “engagement,” which really means we’re Pavlovian dogs beholden to punishments and rewards.
We are addicts. Addicts are not engaged. Addicts are mind-numbed zombies, the opposite of engagement.
Lanier also prefers “manipulator” to “advertiser” (19).
The Tech Lords are running “empires of behavior modification.”
We fall prey to hidden manipulators.
Lanier argues that the hidden manipulators can make us zombies more often than not. Free will is not absolute. We will zone out from time to time. However, when we fall prey to the hidden manipulators, we become zombies more and more to the point that we lose more and more free will. Our behavior becomes more and more meaningless (23).
The problem is we all have small devices and we’re being manipulated by a few Tech Lords. But the problem goes deeper.
New business model is getting you addicted.
Being manipulated by social media is the new business model that everyone wants to emulate.
Your measured behavior change is now a product (25).
Social media is like a house made with lead. If you live in the social media world, lead toxins will poison and kill you (26).
Nine. What is BUMMER?
Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an empire for Rent (27).
To elaborate, BUMMER is a “statistical machine that lives in the computing clouds.”
BUMMER has enough data to predict human behavior.
Using BUMMER platforms degrades us, makes us a worst version of ourselves.
6 Parts of the BUMMER Machine
A = Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy
B = Butting into everyone’s lives
C = Cramming content down people’s throats
D = Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible
E = Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else.
F= Fake mobs and Faker Society
People “weird and nasty online.”
People become their worst selves online, nasty, belligerent, ill-tempered. Why?
Ordinary people’s behavior is modified for the worse by the online behavior modification: attention. You must get attention. That is the online force.
Ordinary people begin to seek fake power by dominating others online. This need to dominate makes people act belligerent.
Lanier says ordinary people become “assholes because assholes get the most attention.”
Therefore, we’ve arrived at Part A of the BUMMER Machine: Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy.
We are now placed under surveillance.
Lanier observes that our gadgets are mining our personal date 24/7. We act as if this is normal, but it is not.
We have become product to Tech Lords. We pay them to manipulate us and use us for future manipulation. We act as if this is normal.
We’ve arrived at B: Butting into everyone’s lives.
We are manipulated by personalized content.
Algorithms choose our content and experience and therefore modify our desires by choosing what to cram down our throats. We think we made the choice, but the algorithm made the choice. We’ve arrived at C: Cramming content down people’s throats.
We get lost in a feedback loop.
People don’t realize they’re being manipulated by getting positive feedback. Customized feeds are designed to maximize our addictions. Of course, Tech Lords say they’re “engaging” us, but in reality that is a sneaky way of saying they are making us addicted to their product. We’ve arrived at D: Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible.
Clickbait affects the quality of news.
Websites don’t get paid on quality of content. They get paid on clicks or traffic. If phony news gets higher traffic than real news, then real news may compromise itself to compete with the fake news. We’ve arrived at E: Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else.
Fake people have taken over social media.
Social media has become a place of weaponized misinformation. That is the dominant purpose, according to LikeWar by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.
Trolls, bots, A.I., fake people, cat fishers, and so on populate social media in giant hordes. We don’t know who’s who.
This brings us to F: Fake mobs and Faker Society
Facebook and Google are the biggest users of BUMMER?
Facebook and Google. The more a company uses BUMMER the more it attracts trolls like Russian operatives trying to destroy democracies around the world.
Jaron Lanier on Wolf Pack Aggression, Fakery & Meaninglessness
One. How does Lanier compare the Asshole Personality Factor to drug addiction?
Social media leads to addiction, which leads to radical personality change. To become an addict is for a normal person to lose her best self to her monster self.
The addict is in a constant state of neediness and deprivation, looking for the next hit. Smartphone nation is a nation of addicts.
Addiction is about selfishness.
The addict “is always deprived, rushing for affirmation.” He is nervous, “compulsively pecking at his situation.” He is selfish, self-absorbed, and too “wrapped-up” in his addictive cycle to have empathy for others (39).
Addicts succumb to a “personal mythology of grandiosity.” This grandeur speaks to their colossal insecurity.
Social media addicts are aggressive: They victimize others and they play the victim.
Social media addicts become competitive trolls trying to “win points” in arguments and become more and more belligerent.
Lanier notices when he was a prominent blogger at Huffpost he received a torrent of belligerent emails. He noticed manipulation and a prominent phony AH Factor, the result of personalities conforming to online addiction.
Of all the arguments against social media, this is the one that he is most emotional and “visceral” about.
How Social Media Creates Assholes
Simple syllogism: Assholes get the most attention. Social media creates attention addiction. Therefore, social media creates assholes.
Two. What is Solitary/Pack switch?
Lanier says we all have an inner troll. The troll is the pack wolf. We are more happy and more free as the solitary wolf.
But social media makes us pack wolves.
We all have a Solitary/Pack switch for our inner wolf.
Social media flips the Pack switch on. We become obsessed with our ranking in the wolf pack. Where we stand in our social hierarchy is our everything, so much that we lose contact with reality. Loyalty to the pack becomes more important that any adherence to reality, so if our pack denies climate change, we deny climate change to the death.
If our pack supports a racist politician, we justify our support of this racist politician. We may deny that this politician is racist even if overwhelming evidence supports the contrary.
This Pack Behavior is ruining America. It’s making us divided against each other. Social media has accelerated Pack Behavior in ways we cannot even imagine because in part in a very short period of time close to 2.5 billion people worldwide are on social media.
Pack behavior also creates a social outrage machine on Twitter where people will gang up on someone who is perceived as being bad. People get like sharks tasting blood. Take the case of Justine Sacco, for example.
Solitary Wolf
In contrast to being a Pack Wolf, a Solitary Wolf is an independent critical thinker who isn’t beholden to groupthink or being beholden to conforming to the pack.
Pack Behavior on Facebook and Twitter
Where you stand in the social hierarchy in Facebook and Twitter worlds becomes important because the social media environment manipulates you based on rewards and punishments. Rewards are likes and followers, which produce dopamine. We get addicted to dopamine and begin to behave in ways that will enhance our social esteem on these platforms, what Lanier calls “BUMMERland.”
We will also share outrage of the Pack.
We can become an inner troll as a result.
Lanier’s conclusion: Exit BUMMERland.
Three. How does fakery grow exponentially on social media?
Because behavior modification steers people to be fake versions of themselves, curating some grandiose self, everything else that generates from social media is likewise fake (54).
BUMMER amplifies everything that is fake because in part fake gets attention; real does not.
How Lies Beat the Truth
Armies of fake people gather to “steal the oxygen in the room” so that real voices can’t be heard (55).
If swarms of trolls repeat lies over and over, how do truth-tellers spend time on real news when they have to waste their time refuting lies, which becomes an exercise in futility.
When trolls accused President Obama of being a Muslim terrorist who didn’t have a birth certificate to prove that he was born in America, the media wasted a lot of time rebuking a lie that was so preposterous that it should not have been even addressed, but because of huge movement propagated this lie, the lie could not be ignored. The lie “stole the oxygen in the room,” so to speak.
Holocaust Deniers on Facebook
Zuckerberg allows Holocaust deniers to have a voice on Facebook as we read in this Guardian article.
Fake News Makes Money for Social Media Sites
Fake accounts spreading sensational fake news get a lot of hits and traffic for Facebook and YouTube, so these platforms profit from lies.
Fake news makes lots of money and is hard to detect, as we see in this Washington Post article.
Writing fake news can make individuals more than $10,000 a month on AdSense according to this Washington Post article.
Social Media Profits from Tribalistic Partisan Hatred of The Other
Fair-minded news is too boring for social media platforms, which appeal to our lowest reptilian self, so social media news by its very nature is tribalistic, partisan, hateful, and reptilian. As a result, America has never been so divided (57).
Fake News Is Dangerous
The mass lie that vaccination shots are dangerous and the cause of autism gains steam on social media platforms so that parents deny their children proper vaccinations. This can result in epidemics of measles and other life-threatening diseases.
People who immerse themselves in BUMMER cannot think critically. They are loyal to their tribe but disconnected from reality.
Four. How does social media remove context?
Social media replaces any context you give to your content with its own context, based on algorithms. “You are no longer a name but a number” (65). He continues: “A number is public verification of reduced freedom, status, and personhood.” In other words, living in social media’s algorithm-based context is a prison.
Five. How is social media destroying empathy and human connection?
Two ways: tribalism by isolating us in our own filter bubbles and the loss of public space to inward smartphone absorption.
Filter bubbles alters our reality and cuts us off the reality of others, as explained in this Ted Talk video of 9 minutes.
Consider we live in our own filter bubbles.
Consider we are cut off from our sense of physical space as we get and more and more plugged in to our smartphones.
Consider we become loyal to our tribe by expressing rage against our foes on the Social Outrage Machine of social media.
Consider all of the above, and you’ll see we’re becoming a people cut off from one other. This should concern us for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is violence.
Six. How does social media strip us of our capacity for happiness?
Social media makes its profits by winning our attention, so much so that these “attention merchants” are motivated to turn us into addicts. Addiction spells the end of happiness. As Jaron Lanier writes: “It will dole out sparse charms in between the doldrums as well, since the autopilot that tugs at your emotions will discover that the contrast between treats and punishment is more effective than either treats or punishment alone. Addiction is associated with anhedonia, the lessened ability to take pleasure from life apart from whatever one is addicted to, and social media addicts appear to be prone to long-term anhedonia” (82).
Anhedonia is the self-imposed prison of isolation and futile pleasure from a life that is beholden to addiction.
Lesson #4: Connection Between Financial & Emotional Insecurity
One. What is the connection between emotional and financial insecurity?
Social media like Google and Facebook are “free” but this is not really a free service. The cost is huge.
Being free meant Facebook and Google exploded. Huge user base and billions of dollars were made quickly.
Just as quickly, over 2 billion people worldwide became “part-time lab rats” in a diabolical mind control experiment.
Advertising grew and grew on these “free” sites to the point that they became part of “mass behavior modification” (97).
Tech entrepreneurs got super rich and the giant customer base became miserable addicts beholden to the social media “drugs.”
Two. Why would paying for services be better than “free” BUMMER?
For one, the pay distribution would be bigger: More people would make money.
Should you pay Sam Harris directly for his podcast or let him get paid through royalties via some kind of AdSense venue? He probably gets paid 20 times more by direct payment rather than ad royalties.
For two, paying a vendor directly improves content. For example, we pay for HBO, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and their content is excellent. Compare their content to a YouTuber who makes Adsense revenue.
For three, BUMMER is an unhealthy barter system. Lanier writes: “Let us spy on you and in return you’ll get free services.”
Three. How is BUMMER a disease on Martin Luther King’s dream of the moral arc of justice?
Martin Luther King posited that over time, life’s moral arc tended toward justice. This is described in Timothy Snyder’s book The Road to Unfreedom as the politics of inevitability. It is inevitable that over time the human race gets better: more just, more smart, more moral, more decent.
But there is another vision of the world. We might call it the Pendulum View. The pendulum swings back and forth between justice and evil; kindness and cruelty; love and hate.
Lanier argues that BUMMER destroys the moral arc narrative and makes us tribalistic assholes unable to sustain the kind of democracy that would lift humanity toward the kind of justice Martin Luther King describes (107).
BUMMER weaponizes misinformation to spread racist totalitarianism throughout the world (109).
Themes from World Without End by Franklin Foer
Mold You Into Their Image Is Not Free
We read that social media tech entrepreneurs are attention merchants who make money from stealing your life. This is why social media is not free.
“More than any previous coterie of corporations, the tech monopolies desire to mold humanity into their desired image of it.”
Tech companies don’t make money by helping you preserve your free will. They make money by automating everything you do. You are a lab in a behavioral modification experiment. Your social media is not “free.”
GAFA stays dominant by enslaving you to their product. What is GAFA, as the Europeans call it? GAFA is the following: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.
Social Media Is Taking Us to Point of No Return
Foer writes: “Once we cross certain thresholds--once we transform the values of institutions, once we abandon privacy--there’s no turning back, no restoring our lost individuality.”
GAFA controls our diet of information resulting in them controlling our behavior. No one anticipated that a few institutions could control billions of people. This is a dream come true for tech giants.
This is a nightmare for individualism and freedom.
This concentration of power from the monopolies results in the “homogenization” of behavior. This spells death.
Facebook Steals Free Will:
“While it creates the impression that it offers choice, Facebook paternalistically nudges users in the direction it deems best for them, which also happens to be the direction that thoroughly addicts them. It’s a phoniness most obvious in the compressed, historic career of Facebook’s mastermind.”
Algorithms Replace Free Will
Foer writes: “Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the right direction.”
You are a transparent lab rat:
Foer writes: Facebook can predict users’ race, sexual orientation, relationship status, and drug use on the the basis of their ‘likes’ alone. It’s Zuckerberg’s fantasy that this data might be analyzed to uncover the mother of all revelations, ‘a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about.’”
Amazon’s Growing Monopoly
Amazon’s monopoly control is explained by Hasan Minhaj in his Netflix show The Patriot Act.
One. How do so many of us become exhausted and broken by our internet habits?
The internet becomes our boss by making constant demands on our attention. We work so hard to please all the internet forces beckoning us 24/7.
We don’t even know we’re a slave. It happens gradually.
We lose uninterrupted time to focus on creating our better selves. We lose focus.
Internet companies’ success is based on making us addicted. That is their job.
The internet fosters anger and outrage because attention gets traffic, so the internet makes us an angrier, more outraged, more obnoxious version of ourselves, according to techno-philosopher Jaron Lanier.
Over time, Newport observes we lose our autonomy. We become addicts and slaves to the Internet Attention Merchants.
Two. What is the challenge of digital minimalism?
We can’t go back in time. Technology is here to stay. We must learn to reap the benefits while minimizing its liabilities.
Another challenge is to see the futility of “taking a break” or taking a “digital Sabbath” or a “digital cleanse.” Like junk food, Internet use can’t be purged from time to time. Rather, we need to change our overall habits.
Newport writes: What you need is a “full-fledged philosophy of technology use, rooted in your deep values, that provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them and, equally important, enables you to confidently ignore everything else.”
Such a philosophy seeks to find the sweet spot between the Neo-Luddites, who reject all technology as evil, and the Quantified Self Enthusiasts, who want to embrace technology in every micro task of their existence.
Three. What is the value of focus?
Focus excludes chaos and distraction and makes us concentrate on what makes us achieve excellence and become happy. Internet and social media are about distraction. But we need focus.
Newport quotes Marcus Aurelius: “You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?”
The more we can be digital minimalists, Newport argues, the more we can focus on what makes life satisfying and reverent.
To achieve focus, we must engage in “aggressive action” to combat the pitfalls of social media: mental and spiritual disintegration. Our “hyper-connected world” or “humming matrix of chatter and distraction” is leaving us hyper-disconnected.
Technology became a Frankenstein monster that overtook us and killed our focus. When Steve Jobs first conceived the iPhone, he saw it as an iPod that would keep a phone number directory to make phone calls and play music, not a “general purpose computer” that we carry in our pockets and take to bed with us.
What’s crazy is that the radical influence of Facebook and smartphones on our lives was “unplanned and unexpected.” We have not had time to process this sucker punch to the face.
Four. What are the unforeseen effects of smartphones and social media?
Newport concedes that you can find tech people who use their smartphones and social media to increase their productivity and self-promotion, but this is just a “thin slice” of what is happening.
On a much broader scale, the average social media user has been rapidly losing self-control.
“It’s not about usefulness, it’s about autonomy.”
This loss of autonomy was unplanned, but once the tech lords realized they could control the masses and make money from this, they capitalized on it.
The “nerd gods” are “selling addictive product to children,” to quote Bill Maher.
As Tristan Harris says on Anderson Cooper and his many videos, the smartphone is a slot machine.
Silicon Valley is not programming apps; they’re are programming people.
Five. Is it true that technology is neutral; what makes technology good or bad is how we use it?
The answer is no. Technology is not neutral. It is designed to be addicting, polarizing, and mentally disintegrating. Bill Maher: “Big Tobacco wants your lungs. The App Store wants your soul.”
Six. What specifically is the crack cocaine that gets us hooked on social media?
Here it is: “Intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.”
By intermittent, we are saying the positive reinforcement is unpredictable and erratic in its dishing out rewards; this becomes more addicting than predictable rewards.
Regarding social approval: Since Paleolithic times, we have been hardwired to gain social approval from the tribe in order to increase our survival and status in the group. We are hardwired to want approval.
The converse is a true: A lack of feedback causes anxiety and distress. What is wrong with us? We then do jumping jacks on social media and get lost down social media rabbit holes trying to win approval, the very thing the Tech Lords want for their profits.
When you tag or like someone on social media, they feel obliged to reciprocate; this in effect creates a social-validation feedback loop.
The Tech Lords are “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology,” the very thing a hacker does, so says Sean Parker.
What’s the net sum of this? We have lost control of our digital lives.
Newport cites Adam Alter, author if a book I taught two years ago: Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology.
Compulsive social media use “is not the result of a character flaw, but instead the realization of a massively profitable business plan.”
Seven. What is Newport’s central argument throughout the book?
Newport is not arguing whether or not social media and Internet devices are useful or not. He is arguing about how we’ve lost our autonomy.
Eight. What is the book’s most powerful metaphor about gaining our self-control and overcoming addiction?
He cites Plato’s Chariot with Two Horses Metaphor.
We are the driver of the chariot. We have two horses pulling the chariot, our good horse and our crappy horse. When we surrender to digital world, we energize and strengthen the crappy horse, which takes control of our chariot, resulting in our loss of control and direction.
The takeaway is to see how every situation we’re in is an opportunity to strengthen our good or bad horse.
Newport’s “concrete plan” is to show how digital minimalism is a way of strengthening our good horse and weakening our bad one.
Lesson Two. Based on Chapter 2 and 3
One. What makes it difficult to free ourselves from smartphone and general internet addiction?
The habits we have are “culturally ingrained,” and they are backed by “power psychological forces” that makes us feel that we are losing control.
Newport argues that no small tweaks will cure us of our dysfunction; rather, we need a “philosophy of technology use” (36).