March 3 Cover the Agricultural Revolution. Homework #5: Read Sapiens to page 159 and in 200 words explain how “imagined orders and hierarchies” resulted in “unfair discrimination.”
March 5 Logical Fallacies and Signal Phrase review; Go over Sapiens to page 200.
March 10 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write first half of the essay.
March 12 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write second half of the essay.
March 17 Essay 1 Due on turnitin
Essay #1 (1,000 words)
You need minimum 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and look at two opposing camps on the role of alternative protein sources as a viable replacement for meat. One camp says we face too many obstacles to accept non-animal alternative proteins: evolution, taste, and cost, to name several. An opposing camp says we have the technology and the proven product in Impossible Foods and other non-meat proteins to replace animal protein. Assessing these two opposing camps in the context of Tad Friend’s essay, develop an argumentative thesis addresses the question: How viable is the push for tech companies to help climate change by replacing animals with alternative proteins?
Choice B
Read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and defend, refute, or complicate the author’s claim that non-religious societies offer a superior moral framework for human evolution than religious societies.
Choice C
In the context of the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, develop an argument about how Yuval Noah Harari's explanation of the Cognitive Revolution exposes human vulnerability to mass manipulation, deceit, and Groupthink.
Choice D
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
Choice B
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
You need minimum 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Sample Thesis and Outline
Harari makes a persuasive case that the AR is inferior to the Forager Age evidenced by __________________, ________________, ____________________, and ______________________.
Paragraph 1: Introduction explains the differences between foragers and inhabitants of the AR.
Paragraph 2: Thesis or claim
Paragraphs 3-6: Supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-rebuttal
Paragraph 8: Conclusion is powerful restatement of thesis
Sample Counterargument and Conclusion
While I love Sapiens as a life-altering book on how I regard the human race, where we came from, where we are today, and where we are going, I am not totally drinking the Noah Yuval Harari Kool-Aid. I in fact agree with those critics who observe that Harari commits a sort of implied Noble Savage Fallacy by suggesting that pre-agriculture society was vastly superior to the evils evident in a post-agricultural state. Ruthless tyrants indeed flourished in the Agriculture Age, but evil “shot-callers” have always been with us. Any microsociety has an Alpha who dominates the others. Where I agree with Harari is that the Agriculture Age scaled this evil because agriculture resulted in a population explosion.
Secondly, it is too late to fret over our morbidly obese, tooth-decayed post-Forager condition. The Genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. Rather than long to run through jungles in animal skins with our ripped bodies, we need to look at how we might flourish in a world sodden with mono-crops and a growing appetite for mass-produced animal flesh. Here, Harari argues that that A.I. might navigate us out of our self-destruction if we don’t kill ourselves first.
In sum, Harari’s Sapiens is a masterpiece, an unflinching critique of our violent and irrational appetites, our grand imagination, and our drive for dominance, which may or may not spell our demise.
Counterarguments: Noble Savage Myth
Possible counterarguments in Quillette: “Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer” by William Buckner
A related criticism is in Will Day-Brosnan's book review:
Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. His depiction of a foraging lifestyle (‘A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve’) unencumbered by the complexities and worries of civilisational living could be read as reactionary atavism. In this section, the bibliography and citations are also problematic, Harari makes claims for which it is difficult to trace a source. For example, he affirms that ‘loneliness and privacy were rare [amongst hunter gatherers]’; that the human population ‘was smaller than that of today’s Cairo’; that the ‘average ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point within minutes’; and that ‘hunter gatherers living today… work on average for just thirty five to forty five hours a week’ (52-6). If sources for these claims exist, they are very difficult to correlate with the text.
Signal Phrase Guidelines:
About 80% of your essay should be written in your voice with your words.
Another 20% of your essay will consist of quotations, paraphrase, and summary from credible sources of your choice. We call this "cited material."
When you introduce your cited material, you must use signal phrases.
Sample List of Signal Phrases (active as of 2-29-20)
When you cite material, paraphrases and summaries are with few exceptions superior to direct quotations.
You need minimum 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Signal Phrases
Purpose to Make Smooth Transition
We use signal phrases to signal to the reader that we are going to cite research material in the form of direct quotes, paraphrase or summary.
You can also call a signal phrase a lead-in because it leads in the quotation or paraphrase.
Grammarian Diana Hacker writes that signal phrases make smooth transitions from your own writing voice to the quoted material without making the reader feel a "jolt."
For students, signal phrases are an announcement to your professor that you've "elevated your game" to college-level writing by accessing the approved college writing toolbox.
Nothing is going to make your essay more impressive to college professors than the correct use of signal phrases.
Purpose to Provide Context
Signal phrases not only establish authority and credibility. They provide context or explain why you're using the sourced material.
Example:
As a counterpoint to Yuval Noah Harari's contention that Foragers lived superior lives to Farmers, we read in culture critic Will Day Brosnan: "Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. His depiction of a foraging lifestyle (‘A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve’) unencumbered by the complexities and worries of civilisational living could be read as reactionary atavism."
Same Example with Different Context:
Concurring with my assertion that Harari is misguided in his Noble Savage mythology, we read in culture critic Will Day Brosnan: "Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. His depiction of a foraging lifestyle (‘A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve’) unencumbered by the complexities and worries of civilisational living could be read as reactionary atavism."
Different Example for Supporting Paragraph
Further supporting my contention that not all calories are equal, we find in science writer Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories that there are statistics that show . . ."
Signal Phrase Comprised of Two Sentences
English instructor Jeff McMahon chronicles in his personal blog Obsession Matters that his opinion toward comedian and podcaster Nate Nadblock changed over a decade. As McMahon observes: "Since 2010, I had found a brilliant curmudgeonly podcaster Nate Nadblock a source of great comfort & entertainment, but recently his navel-gazing toxicity, lack of personal growth, and overall repetitiveness has made him off-putting. Alas, a 10-year podcast friendship has come to an end."
Use the above templates and don't worry: you're not committing plagiarism.
As a counterpoint to X,
As a counterargument to my claim that X,
Giving support to my rebuttal that Writer A makes an erroneous contention, Writer B observes that . . .
Concurring with my assertion that X,
Further supporting my contention that X,
Writer X chronicles in her book. . . . As she observes:
Purpose of Credentials: Establishing Authority and Ethos
We often include credentials with the signal phrase to give more credibility for our sourced material.
The acclaimed best-selling writer, history professor, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari excoriates the Agricultural Revolution as "the greatest crime against humanity."
Lamenting that his students don't enjoy his music playlist in the writing lab, college English instructor Jeff McMahon observes in his blog Obsession Matters: "Two-thirds of my students in writing lab don't hear my chill playlist over classroom speakers because they are hermetically sealed in their private earbud universe content to be masters of their own musical domain."
You don't have to put the signal phrase at the beginning. You can put it at the end:
"The Agricultural Revolution is the greatest crime against humanity," claims celebrated author and futurist Yuval Noah Harari.
You can also put the signal phrase in the middle of a sentence:
Racism, sexism, worker exploitation, and pestilence afflicted the human race during the Agricultural Revolution, claims celebrated futurist Yuval Noah Harari, who goes on to make the bold claim that "the Agricultural Revolution was the greatest crime perpetrated against humanity."
"Covid-19 fears make me recall Don Delillo's novel White Noise," writes Jeff McMahon in his blog Obsession Matters, " especially the Airborne Toxic Event chapter in which pestilence affords us a rehearsal for our own mortality."
Partial List of Signal Phrases
acknowledges adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes
Varying placement and types of signal phrases helps you avoid monotony, makes you a more impressive writer, and gives you more ethos.
Examples of a signal phrases:
We are fools if we think we were put on Planet Earth to be happy. That is the fantasy of a four-year-old child. Ironically, this infantile pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy. In the words of John Mellencamp: “I don’t think we’re put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we’re put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.”
The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. As we read in Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits' essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."
Variation of the above:
The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. According to Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits in his essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."
Toolbox of Explaining Transitions
After you present the signal phrase and quoted, summarized, or paraphrased material, what do you write?
You explain what you just cited.
To do so, you need a toolbox of transitions:
Writer X is essentially saying that
In other words, X is arguing that
By using these statistics, X is making the point that
X is trying to make the point that
X makes the cogent observation that
X is essentially rebutting the philosophical movement that embraces the position that
X's main point is that
The essence of X's claim is that
Here is a good college link for in-text citations.
Here is a good Purdue Owl link for in-text citations.
Logical Fallacy of Denialism and Fake Reality Bubbles in Age of Social Media
Denialism is rejecting reality, facts, and inconvenient truths by surrounding oneself in one's social media information bubble.
One. Lazy "research" at "University of Google."
Two. Drowning in a sea of irrelevancies rather than relying on peer-reviewed studies.
Three. People feel emboldened to challenge science because of their ideological tribe, which gives them power in numbers.
Four. Viral or trending information, even when a lie, quickly becomes truth.
Five. People want validation from their tribe more than they want to pursue truth.
Six. Conspiracy theories get pumped up on social media with false studies, and the majority do not know how to discern real from fake Intel.
Seven. Confirmation bias is available on social media: We cherry-pick evidence that conveniently fits our worldview. Perhaps we see some confirmation bias in Yuval Noah Harari's claim that AR is inferior to Hunter-Gatherer Society.
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time-consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not a personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is everyday foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant to be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in a home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it a placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
Essay 1 Option Outlines
Essay 1 Is Due March 17 on turnitin
Turnitin Class ID & Enrollment Key:
Class ID: 23791862
Enrollment Key: strength
Choice A
Read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and look at two opposing camps on the role of alternative protein sources as a viable replacement for meat. One camp says we face too many obstacles to accept non-animal alternative proteins: evolution, taste, and cost, to name several. An opposing camp says we have the technology and the proven product in Impossible Foods and other non-meat proteins to replace animal protein. Assessing these two opposing camps in the context of Tad Friend’s essay, develop an argumentative thesis addresses the question: How viable is the push for tech companies to help climate change by replacing animals with alternative proteins?
Sample Introduction and Thesis #1:
The viability problem with alternative burgers like Impossible Foods’ version is a matter of whole vs. processed foods. Is the Impossible Burger a whole food? Clearly, it is not. It is a highly processed food thing larded with oil and sodium, so that anyone like myself aspiring to good health is going to stay away from any kind of Frankenstein Patty. If we want to stop eating beef, then we need not replace our “old girlfriend” with her inferior twin. We need to start anew with no such baggage. Therefore, while the Impossible Burger is a sort of bait and switch, offering a more environmentally-friendly version of a burger, it is not a viable alternative to beef because it is still junk food and should not be looked at as a desirable food for healthy eating. At best, it should be looked at like pizza, an occasional foray into a “cheat meal.”
Explanation of the Above Thesis
In the above example, the writer would focus on why “Frankenstein Patties” are not healthy for regular eating.
But this may not be enough material for a 1,000-word essay, so let’s revise:
Sample Thesis #1 Revised:
Frankenstein Patties may be trendy and hyped in our social media environment, but they are not a viable replacement for beef burgers because they are not healthy alternatives, they are too costly, and they do not satisfy the human inborn craving for real meat.
Sample Thesis #2
While I will concede that the oil and sodium used in vegan burgers are not ideal, feeding the world’s burger appetite with Impossible Burger and other alternatives is a good thing because we need to curtail the greenhouse emissions from cows, we desperately need to save water that is used in raising cows, we need to discourage animal cruelty, and we need to forge paths of feeding the world with sources that can accommodate our planet’s population explosion.
Sample Thesis #3
Since animal cruelty and attacking our environment for the sake of beef burgers are both unacceptable, we have to find a powerful marketing campaign to make plant-based burgers a viable replacement for meat. We can and must do this by making plant-based burgers cool in terms of elevated social status, macho in terms of appealing to “the Joe Rogan bros,” and affordable so that the regular consumer can buy what are now overpriced vegan burgers. Looking at the effective vegan propaganda in the documentary The Game Changers, featuring professional fighter James Wilks, is an effective model for this marketing campaign.
Sample Thesis #4
The claim that we should rely on “powerful marketing” to appeal to “Joe Rogan bros” is an absurdity that makes a mockery of a critical thinking class’ Three Pillars of Argumentation, logos, ethos, and pathos. It is illogical to promote a processed burger soggy with canola oil and sodium, thus a violation of logos. It is not credible to reference the slick albeit highly flawed propaganda piece The Game Changers, thus a violation of ethos. It is demoralizing to promote processed foods as a substitute for succulent beef burgers, thus a violation of pathos.
Sample Thesis #5
That we should encourage plant-based burgers using similar rhetorical strategies in The Game Changers is not at all a violation of The Three Pillars of Argumentation. To the contrary, making more powerful branding can indeed be performed while adhering to the topnotch pillars of ethos, logos, and pathos. It is logical to pave ways of alternative proteins to meat as animal products can no longer meet the demands of the world’s growing human population, thus logos. It is credible to find ways to provide plant-based burgers that offer more protein than their beef counterparts, thus ethos. It is inspiring and ethically sound to find plant-based proteins to spare the torture that is inflicted on cows and other animals, thus pathos.
Sample Outline for Frankenstein Patty Essay Assignment
Paragraph 1, your introduction, explain in the context of Tad Friend’s essay why there is an intense race with millions of dollars being invested, in replacing meat burgers with vegan burgers. This race is for money, saving the environment, and relieving animals of cruelty. Elaborate on these issues.
Paragraph 2, your thesis, stake a claim on the viability of plant-protein burgers.
Paragraphs 3-5 are your supporting reasons for your claim or thesis.
Paragraph 6 is your counterargument-rebuttal in which you address your opponents’ objections to your argument.
Paragraph 7, your conclusion, is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Your last page is your MLA Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Choice B
Read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and defend, refute, or complicate the author’s claim that non-religious societies offer a superior moral framework for human evolution than religious societies.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1, your introduction, write a profile of someone you know who demonstrates strong morals and put this person in a religious or non-religious framework.
Paragraph 2, transition from your profile to your claim or thesis in which your defend or refute Elizabeth Anderson's claim that religion is not only not necessary for morality but actually an impediment to morality.
Paragraphs 3-6: your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8, your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Sample Thesis Statements
Supporting Elizabeth Anderson
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson makes a persuasive case that flourishing secular societies develop superior morality to religious ones because secular societies rely on universal or common law to implement justice, not prejudicial religious law, which may or may not exact justice (for example, most religious texts encourage slavery, sexism, and homophobia), because religions have so much toxic baggage contained in their doctrine the only way their believers can market their faith as savory is by cherry-picking passages, emphasizing the good lines and "back-pedaling" the bad ones; and finally, secular societies are better positioned to encourage virtue for its own sake rather than push heaven and hell incentives, which are primitive and childish methods for encouraging moral behavior.
Refuting Elizabeth Anderson
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson's attempt to make the claim that secular societies provide superior morality to religious ones collapses under her misguided view of religion in which she distorts the essence of religious belief; her failure to see that secular societies only provide the most superficial morality for a semblance of order while failing to address the wickedness and urgent need for salvation in the hearts of humanity; her failure to see that adhering to secular society norms is no morality at all but rather conformity to civilizations that emphasize worldliness, not spiritual sacrifice, as the human ideal; and her failure to see that religious values are far more universal than secular ones, which often clash depending on which part of the world they arise.
Mini Essay That Refutes Both Atheist Elizabeth Anderson and Religious Arguments for Morality
Atheists like Elizabeth Anderson and religious people like William Lane Craig who claim to have the answer to morality are both wrong.
In fact, morality is such a rare thing and is practiced with such impotence and futility in the face of immorality that for all intents and purposes morality does not exist at all.
Non-religious evangelist Elizabeth Anderson claims that secular societies create morality through “reciprocal claim making,” but this is no morality at all; it is rather a sort of moral minimalism in which people test the boundaries of doing what they can get away with as long as people don’t make claims against them. This is not morality or even decency. This is conforming to society’s laws only when one feels that to fail to do so will have unpleasant consequences.
Religious people, too, are wrong about morality, claiming that religion is the only source of goodness and morality. On the contrary, religion usually doesn’t make people moral. People are either good or bad, and then they use religion to exacerbate whatever preconditions roil inside them. A good person will use religion to exercise the goodness that is already there. But a jackass before finding religion is usually still a jackass after his religious conversion. Both strident atheists and religious zealots can be bullies and jerks.
Finally, people who claim to be religious only do so at the service of convenience. If their faith is tested so that they must carry their Cross to use courage, self-denial, and sacrifice to live their faith, they usually fail to do so. The atheist vegan and the religious crusader who are both fully committed to their cause are rare breeds and owe their commitment, not to their atheist or religious ideology, but to their innate psychological hard-wiring.
To recap, most people are indecent, most people are unchanging since birth regardless of their ideology, most people put convenience over their ideals, and most people only behave as morally as they are forced to do so, engaging in a sort of moral minimalism, which is so pathetic as to not be deserved to be called morality at all.
Therefore, I am neither swayed by atheist Elizabeth Anderson or Christian William Lane Craig. Both are blinded by their respective ideologies and eager to push their beliefs while conveniently ignoring the moral depravity I’ve accurately and cogently described. Nor have Anderson or Craig refuted any of my trenchant points in the slightest. Their arguments are so flimsy, trivial, and misguided that I found this entire exercise of rebuking them rather boring, and I am now prepared to take a long nap. God, I can't wait till I graduate college, when I'll no longer have to submit to this insufferable torture and bull-crap.
Choice C
Develop a thesis about the power of manipulation and deception of Harari's notion of Imagined Reality by addressing the fraud evident in the Netflix documentary Fyre (Links to an external site.).
Paragraph 1: We will define cognitive revolution according YNH.
Paragraph 2: We will write a thesis similar to this: The Netflix documentary Fyre shows how the Cognitive Revolution creates imagined realities that work in the service of hucksters, hacks, sociopaths, and mountebanks who can spin an imagined reality or narrative resulting in mass manipulation, self-deception, a quest for status, and _______________________.
Paragraphs 3-5: Your body paragraphs will support the above thesis mapping components.
Paragraph 6: Counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 7: Conclusion, powerful restatement of your thesis.
Another Sample Thesis for Choice C (Netflix documentary Fyre)
The colossal ****show so splendidly rendered in the Netflix documentary Fyre is largely the result of Groupthink evidenced by _______________, ______________, ______________________, and ___________________.
Choice D
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
You need minimum 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Sample Thesis and Outline
Harari makes a persuasive case that the AR is inferior to the Forager Age evidenced by __________________, ________________, ____________________, and ______________________.
Paragraph 1: Introduction explains the differences between foragers and inhabitants of the AR.
Paragraph 2: Thesis or claim
Paragraphs 3-6: Supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-rebuttal
Paragraph 8: Conclusion is powerful restatement of thesis
Sample Counterargument and Conclusion
While I love Sapiens as a life-altering book on how I regard the human race, where we came from, where we are today, and where we are going, I am not totally drinking the Noah Yuval Harari Kool-Aid. I in fact agree with those critics who observe that Harari commits a sort of implied Noble Savage Fallacy by suggesting that pre-agriculture society was vastly superior to the evils evident in a post-agricultural state. Ruthless tyrants indeed flourished in the Agriculture Age, but evil “shot-callers” have always been with us. Any microsociety has an Alpha who dominates the others. Where I agree with Harari is that the Agriculture Age scaled this evil because agriculture resulted in a population explosion.
Secondly, it is too late to fret over our morbidly obese, tooth-decayed post-Forager condition. The Genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. Rather than long to run through jungles in animal skins with our ripped bodies, we need to look at how we might flourish in a world sodden with mono-crops and a growing appetite for mass-produced animal flesh. Here, Harari argues that that A.I. might navigate us out of our self-destruction if we don’t kill ourselves first.
In sum, Harari’s Sapiens is a masterpiece, an unflinching critique of our violent and irrational appetites, our grand imagination, and our drive for dominance, which may or may not spell our demise.
Counterarguments: Noble Savage Myth
Possible counterarguments in Quillette: “Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer” by William Buckner
A related criticism is in Will Day-Brosnan's book review:
Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. His depiction of a foraging lifestyle (‘A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve’) unencumbered by the complexities and worries of civilisational living could be read as reactionary atavism. In this section, the bibliography and citations are also problematic, Harari makes claims for which it is difficult to trace a source. For example, he affirms that ‘loneliness and privacy were rare [amongst hunter gatherers]’; that the human population ‘was smaller than that of today’s Cairo’; that the ‘average ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point within minutes’; and that ‘hunter gatherers living today… work on average for just thirty five to forty five hours a week’ (52-6). If sources for these claims exist, they are very difficult to correlate with the text.
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