Using Critical Thinking to Criticize Policies: The Use of Satire:
Funny or Die skewers secrecy of health care bill.
Essay Assignment (Choose One): Due October 3
Option 1:
In a 1,000-word essay, typed and double-spaced, support, defend, or complicate Adam Alter’s assertion that morally dubious, entrepreneurial technocrats are imposing addictive technologies on consumers and that these technologies have deficits that far outweigh their benefits. Be sure to use the Toulmin structure in which you include a counterargument-rebuttal section before your essay’s conclusion. You must include 3 credible sources in your Works Cited page.
Thesis #1 Sample in Support of Alter
McMahon had done a great service by assigning Irresistible, which effectively helps us in four compelling ways: identifying the morally bankrupt technocrats behind the curtain of our many technological enticements, identifying the addictive properties of those enticements, showing how these addictions are analogous to substance abuse, and by giving effective strategies for weaning ourselves off these addictive behaviors.
Thesis Sample #2 in Support of Alter
Irresistible is a priceless primer on Internet addiction, which helps us conquer our self-destructive behaviors in four major ways, including _______________, ___________________, _________________, and ____________________.
Thesis Sample #3 in Support of Alter
Irresistible is a valuable way of seeing that we are not "diseased" by tech addiction, as many would claim, but rather we are addicted to insidious environmental manipulations such as gamification and feedback loops that address our hard-wiring for love, attention, validation, and the Zeigarnik Effect.
Thesis Sample #1 Refuting Alter
Alter's Irresistible is a colossal flop that is heavily larded with alarmist fallacies, faulty comparisons, and hyperbolic claims that prove nothing other than that some people will become addicted to anything, reasonable people will always be inclined toward moderation, and that technocrats are not evil but simply business people who like all business people simply want our business. Please, McMahon, stop preaching to me about my smartphone behavior and teach me something I can really use, like a good grammar lesson and a clinic in logical fallacies. No disrespect intended, McMahon, but my Internet habits are doing just fine. Peace.
Sample Thesis #2 of Alter Refutation
While Alter does a good job of showing how we can get addicted to technology, his manifesto of the digital age can't remedy the fact that we must be tech literate, that our social and professional lives depend on being savvy with the very technology Alter criticizes, and that many of us will have careers in the very job space he excoriates.
Option 2:
In a 1,000 word essay, typed and double-spaced, develop an argumentative thesis that explains how Adam Alter's book informs the pathologies rendered in Andrew Sullivan's online essay, "I Used to be a Human Being." Be sure to use the Toulmin structure in which you include a counterargument-rebuttal section before your essay’s conclusion. You must include 3 credible sources in your Works Cited page.
Option 3:
A crucial life lesson is that we aren’t hard-wired to get hooked to the Internet and fragment our attention with social media and smartphone addiction. To do so is to be miserable knowing we wasted our life on nonsense. In contrast, we are hard-wired to have the humility and wisdom to know our time is limited and we must manage our time wisely working hard at tasks that are meaningful to us and that require great effort that should not be diminished by social media distractions and the like. Drawing from both Cal Newport’s Deep Work and Adam Alter’s Irresistible, develop an argumentative thesis that supports the above theme. Your essay should be 1,000 words and have 3 sources for your Works Cited.
Five Counterarguments
One. The toothpaste of technology is out of the tube. You can't put the toothpaste back. It's too late now.
Two. I may work in the very industry I'm being asked to condemn. This may not be a moral counterargument, but it is a practical or pragmatic one.
Three. As the novelty of social media wears off and people see what a waste of time it is, most of us will adapt and change our technology habits. For example, Facebook was exciting in 2009, but now I see it as a dumb junior high school dance, and I don't hang out there anymore.
Four. Our relationship with technology, including social media, is often complicated and full of contradictions. It's oversimplistic to say the way we use our tech is either good or bad. Tech can be both useful and a crutch at the same time. Therefore, Alter's claim about the addictive nature of technology, while true, doesn't embrace the depth and richness of that relationship.
Five. A lot of the app addictions Alter mentions are "first world problems," to quote Fatima Bhutto.
Six. Alter's book could appear "shrill and alarmist," Gavin Francis writes. After all, Francis continues, everyone has catastrophic stories born from new technologies.
Seven. Alter isn't hard enough on tech companies, according to Tim Wu. Alter should propose "unethical practices" on companies that use insidious ways to addict us.
Or if you agree with the counterarguments, they are essay mapping components.
Sources You Can Use for Your Essay
Guardian Review by Fatima Bhutto
Guardian Review by Gavin Francis
Washington Post Review by Tim Wu
Agreement / Addition / Similarity
The transition words like also, in addition, and, likewise, add information, reinforce ideas, and express agreement with preceding material.
in the first place
not only ... but also
as a matter of fact
in like manner
in addition
coupled with
in the same fashion / way
first, second, third
in the light of
not to mention
to say nothing of
equally important
by the same token
again
to
and
also
then
equally
identically
uniquely
like
as
too
moreover
as well as
together with
of course
likewise
comparatively
correspondingly
similarly
furthermore
additionally
Opposition / Limitation / Contradiction
Transition phrases like but, rather and or, express that there is evidence to the contrary or point out alternatives, and thus introduce a change the line of reasoning (contrast).
although this may be true
in contrast
different from
of course ..., but
on the other hand
on the contrary
at the same time
in spite of
even so / though
be that as it may
then again
above all
in reality
after all
but
(and) still
unlike
or
(and) yet
while
albeit
besides
as much as
even though
although
instead
whereas
despite
conversely
otherwise
however
rather
nevertheless
nonetheless
regardless
notwithstanding
Cause / Condition / Purpose
These transitional phrases present specific conditions or intentions.
in the event that
granted (that)
as / so long as
on (the) condition (that)
for the purpose of
with this intention
with this in mind
in the hope that
to the end that
for fear that
in order to
seeing / being that
in view of
If
... then
unless
when
whenever
while
because of
as
since
while
lest
in case
provided that
given that
only / even if
so that
so as to
owing to
inasmuch as
due to
Examples / Support / Emphasis
These transitional devices (like especially) are used to introduce examples as support, to indicate importance or as an illustration so that an idea is cued to the reader.
in other words
to put it differently
for one thing
as an illustration
in this case
for this reason
to put it another way
that is to say
with attention to
by all means
important to realize
another key point
first thing to remember
most compelling evidence
must be remembered
point often overlooked
to point out
on the positive side
on the negative side
with this in mind
notably
including
like
to be sure
namely
chiefly
truly
indeed
certainly
surely
markedly
such as
especially
explicitly
specifically
expressly
surprisingly
frequently
significantly
particularly
in fact
in general
in particular
in detail
for example
for instance
to demonstrate
to emphasize
to repeat
to clarify
to explain
to enumerate
Effect / Consequence / Result
Some of these transition words (thus, then, accordingly, consequently, therefore, henceforth) are time words that are used to show that after a particular time there was a consequence or an effect.
Note that for and because are placed before the cause/reason. The other devices are placed before the consequences or effects.
as a result
under those circumstances
in that case
for this reason
in effect
for
thus
because the
then
hence
consequently
therefore
thereupon
forthwith
accordingly
henceforth
Conclusion / Summary / Restatement
These transition words and phrases conclude, summarize and / or restate ideas, or indicate a final general statement. Also, some words (like therefore) from the Effect / Consequence category can be used to summarize.
as can be seen
generally speaking
in the final analysis
all things considered
as shown above
in the long run
given these points
as has been noted
in a word
for the most part
after all
in fact
in summary
in conclusion
in short
in brief
in essence
to summarize
on balance
altogether
overall
ordinarily
usually
by and large
to sum up
on the whole
in any event
in either case
all in all
Obviously
Ultimately
Definitely
Time / Chronology / Sequence
These transitional words (like finally) have the function of limiting, restricting, and defining time. They can be used either alone or as part of adverbial expressions.
at the present time
from time to time
sooner or later
at the same time
up to the present time
to begin with
in due time
as soon as
as long as
in the meantime
in a moment
without delay
in the first place
all of a sudden
at this instant
first, second
immediately
quickly
finally
after
later
last
until
till
since
then
before
hence
since
when
once
about
next
now
formerly
suddenly
shortly
henceforth
whenever
eventually
meanwhile
further
during
in time
prior to
forthwith
straightaway
by the time
whenever
until now
now that
instantly
presently
occasionally
Many transition words in the time category (consequently; first, second, third; further; hence; henceforth; since; then, when; and whenever) have other uses.
Except for the numbers (first, second, third) and further they add a meaning of time in expressing conditions, qualifications, or reasons. The numbers are also used to add information or list examples. Further is also used to indicate added space as well as added time.
Space / Location / Place
These transition words are often used as part of adverbial expressions and have the function to restrict, limit or qualify space. Quite a few of these are also found in the Time category and can be used to describe spatial order or spatial reference.
in the middle
to the left/right
in front of
on this side
in the distance
here and there
in the foreground
in the background
in the center of
adjacent to
opposite to
here
there
next
where
from
over
near
above
below
down
up
under
further
beyond
nearby
wherever
around
between
before
alongside
amid
among
beneath
beside
behind
across
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.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth-grade essay but not a college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as an extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions
One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:
It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.
You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.
Men who are jealous are cheaters.
We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” as thus:
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel, they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.
George Will writes in his essay "How Miserable It Must be to be a Progressive":
Life is exhausting — and daily choices are unbearably burdensome — for some Americans who are so comfortably situated that they have the time and means to make themselves morally uncomfortable. They think constantly about what they believe are the global ripples, and hence the moral-cum-political ramifications, of their quotidian decisions. And they are making themselves nervous wrecks.
Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:
Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.
Example of Definition
In his essay "The Complacent Intellectual Class," Neil Theasby writes:
I WOULD LIKE TO COIN A PHRASE, the complacent intellectual class, to describe the overwhelming number of pundits, thought leaders, and policy wonks who accept, welcome, or even enforce slovenly scholarship. These people might, in the abstract, like research that maintains the highest standards, they might even consider themselves academics or bona fide researchers, when in fact they have lost the capacity of maintaining even the most basic standards of rigor.
I am motivated to do so after reading Tyler Cowen’s new book The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. I propose the term with some trepidation. Cowen—a George Mason University economist, libertarian theorist, and “legendary blogger” (to quote the book’s inset)—is often a smart commentator who puts his finger on a lot of interesting social phenomena, introduces novel ideas, and proves worth reading from time to time.
But books are different from blog posts and op-eds. And this book fails so glaringly that it makes me despair for this country’s literary culture and intellectual life in general. So let me use Cowen’s latest venture to illustrate what we should all demand from the work of our intellectual class, lest our nation continue to vegetate in the pretend-thinking of #AspenIdeas pseudo-academia.
Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes a life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is a source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Spencer Kornhaber begins with a quote in his essay "Lady Gaga's Illness Is Not a Metaphor":
“Pain without a cause is pain we can’t trust,” the author Leslie Jamison wrote in 2014. “We assume it’s been chosen or fabricated.”
Jamison’s essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” unpacked the suffering-woman archetype, which encompasses literature’s broken hearts (Anna Karenina, Miss Havisham) and society’s sad girls—the depressed, the anorexic, and in the 19th century, the tubercular. Wariness about being defined by suffering, she argued, had led many modern women to adopt a new pose. She wrote, “The post- wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don’t cry too loud; don’t play victim.” Jamison questioned whether this was an overcorrection. “The possibility of fetishizing pain is no reason to stop representing it,” she wrote. “Pain that gets performed is still pain.”
Jamison’s work might come to mind when watching Lady Gaga’s new documentary, Gaga: Five Foot Two, or when reading about the singer postponing her European tour. The pop star this month informed the world that she suffers from fibromyalgia, which causes chronic muscle pain. In the documentary, she visits the doctor, she curls up on a couch, she cries in agony. On Instagram, she prays while holding a rosary. The caption is a lengthy apology to her fans for having to postpone upcoming performances due to her condition.
While forthright, Gaga’s statements about her struggle have been somewhat couched in embarrassment—and the public has responded with both sympathy and skepticism. “I use the word ‘suffer’ not for pity, or attention, and have been disappointed to see people online suggest that I’m being dramatic, making this up, or playing the victim to get out of touring,” she wrote. It’s not the first time she’s been doubted or criticized about something that her body has gone through. When hip surgery made her cancel her 2013 tour, some folks accused her of faking her injury because of underwhelming ticket sales.
In many ways, this skepticism is deeply familiar. It is a documented fact that women tend to report more pain than men—but also that their pain is seen as less credible, with women less likely to be given strong pain relievers, facing inordinately long wait times to be treated, and likely to be told that their problems are mental or emotional rather than physical. It’s not hard to draw a line from the presumptions underlying that inequality to the gendered way that literature and music about suffering is often classified. It’s also easy to see how such attitudes give rise to the “post-wounded” affect Jamison writes about.
This bias is, in fact, so familiar that there are scripts that a plugged-in, empathetic person might use to respond to Gaga. “Believe women,” goes the mantra of campaigns to curb sexual assault. “Believe the patient,” counsels medical literature on the topic of pain. But Gaga’s situation presents another test of compassion and trust. Believe the pop star? Who’d be so gullible as to do that?
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
We read in "Why 'fake news' is an antitrust problem" by Sean Illing:
Five of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization are tech companies. In the past 10 years, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook have all joined Microsoft at the top of the list.
Each of these companies dominates its primary market, and is gradually expanding its reach into secondary markets. Have they become too big? Are they full-fledged monopolies at this point? And if so, should we rein them in?
To get answers to these questions, I reached out to Sally Hubbard, a senior editor of tech antitrust enforcement at the Capitol Forum, a nonpartisan legal investigative company that offers analysis to policymakers and industry stakeholders. I asked her to walk me through the case for using antitrust laws to regulate the major tech companies.
Antitrust laws exist in order prevent monopolization, which occurs when a company so dominates a market that it effectively eliminates the possibility of competition. This is tricky when it comes to a tech company like, say, Google, which has a monopoly in the search market but not in the digital advertising market.
Antitrust enforcement, at least in the past 40 years or so, has focused on protecting consumers from high prices due to a lack of competition. But the problems created by tech monopolies are different: Consumers aren’t paying higher prices to use these platforms, but they are handing over massive amounts of personal data and allowing companies like Facebook and Google to disproportionately influence the news and information Americans consume.
We don’t need to bust up these companies, Hubbard says, but there are very good reasons to use antitrust law to promote more competition in this space. “Fake news,” she told me, “is partly an antitrust problem” because the dominant algorithms of Facebook and Google control the flow of information. If there were more competition, purveyors of fake news would have to figure out how to game more algorithms.
There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.
8,000 students walk through El Camino's Humanities Building every week. Only 10% will pass English 1A. Only 3% will pass English 1C.
99% of my students acknowledge that most students at El Camino are seriously compromised by their smartphone addiction to the point that the addiction is making them fail or do non-competitive work in college.
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
Gavin Francis writes in his book review "Irresistible: Why We Can't Stop Checking, Scrolling, Clicking, and Watching":
The school near the GP practice where I work held an internet safety evening recently, subtitled “How to Keep Your Child Safe Online”. It was in the school hall, hosted by police officers, and explained the role of something called the “Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre”. The blurb on the leaflet promised parents of children between five and 11 would learn more about the dangers of the internet, and in particular, social media. I’m not sure when it became normal for kids to have to cope with malicious online messages, and be savvy about paedophiles masquerading as peers. In Irresistible, Adam Alter makes the frightening case that even without these hazards, modern connectivity threatens the health of not just our children, but everyone.
A child I knew of killed herself after a humiliating post was shared widely around her school. An adolescent patient told me that he wakes three or four times each night to check his phone for messages, and struggles to concentrate in class. Last week a social worker told me that children in an “at-risk” family were being neglected – the mum lying on the sofa playing with her phone while the kids put themselves to bed. I know a six-year-old who walks with his hands held to his chest, thumbs blurred by movement, adopting his dad’s habitual posture, though he doesn’t yet have a phone.
Ta-Nehisi Coates from "My President Was Black":
In the waning days of President Barack Obama’s administration, he and his wife, Michelle, hosted a farewell party, the full import of which no one could then grasp. It was late October, Friday the 21st, and the president had spent many of the previous weeks, as he would spend the two subsequent weeks, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Things were looking up. Polls in the crucial states of Virginia and Pennsylvania showed Clinton with solid advantages. The formidable GOP strongholds of Georgia and Texas were said to be under threat. The moment seemed to buoy Obama. He had been light on his feet in these last few weeks, cracking jokes at the expense of Republican opponents and laughing off hecklers. At a rally in Orlando on October 28, he greeted a student who would be introducing him by dancing toward her and then noting that the song playing over the loudspeakers—the Gap Band’s “Outstanding”—was older than she was. “This is classic!” he said. Then he flashed the smile that had launched America’s first black presidency, and started dancing again. Three months still remained before Inauguration Day, but staffers had already begun to count down the days. They did this with a mix of pride and longing—like college seniors in early May. They had no sense of the world they were graduating into. None of us did.
Jeff McMahon:
When my daughter was one and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.
One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”
That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.
This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity.”
As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:
“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”
Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:
My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.
But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.
Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.
The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.
Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.
America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that modeling a health system from other developed countries is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.
Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.
Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.
Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.
From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:
The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.
Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:
Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?
Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?
Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?
Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your well-being that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?
Eleven. Present the reader with a hypercritical point of view that shows off your assured writing voice.
As we read in "Whitewash" by Chris Lehmann:
LIKE A RECUMBENT SLOTH JOLTED INTO A PANICKED FLIGHT RESPONSE, David Brooks has belatedly noticed the rancid politics of right-wing racial confrontation. The New York Times’ most venerable voice of conservative moderation is here to inform you, gentle reader, that the deranged incursion of Trumpinistas into the corridors of conservative power has transformed his beloved GOP into “more of a white party in recent years.” He seeks to nail down the flagrantly bogus argument that the Republicans had, over much of their modern career, been within the bounds of “basic decency on matters of race” via a single cherry-picked statistic: “A greater percentage of congressional Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats.”
Twelve: Use an attention-getting analogy or comparison:
Tim Wu opens his essay "Subtle and Insidious, Technology Is Designed to Addict Us":
Thirty years ago, we accepted secondhand smoke, sugary sodas for kids and tanning salons as simple facts of life. What will we think is crazy 30 years from now? That we lived without enough sleep? Treated animals so badly?
Thirty years ago, we accepted secondhand smoke, sugary sodas for kids and tanning salons as simple facts of life. What will we think is crazy 30 years from now? That we lived without enough sleep? Treated animals so badly?
If psychologist and marketing professor Adam Alter is right, the answer may be our use of addictive technologies. By his account, we have casually let ourselves become hooked in a manner not unlike Victorians taking cocaine and opium, thinking it no big deal. We, like them, are surprised at the consequences.
"Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?"
"Microfame Game" from New York Magazine
Microfame Rules for Success
One. Self-publish on a blog or YouTube or Instagram or all of the above.
Two. Stylize to set yourself apart. Sitting at a desk or just being a talking head isn't going to cut it. You need to have some kind of schtick.
Three. Overshare: Share everything you do in life with images, vlogs, diary entries, weight-loss journeys: upload "fauxparazzi" photos, which are "non-famous" photos of yourself curated to look as if you are famous.
Four. Respond to your fans, and that means all of them. Happy fans mean more subscribers.
Five. Find alliances in the social media community to promote your brand. You will promote their brand as well and live in a mutual kiss-butt society.
Six. Diversify: The more things you can do the better so you can achieve what's called "multichannel distribution" like Tila Tequila.
Seven. Create phony controversy, get into phony disagreements with other YouTubers and the like. Be contrarian and provocative for their own sake.
Eight. Persist in order to stay relevant.
Does all this sound fun to you?
Remember, millions of people are addicted to the goal-setting embedded in the above 8-Point System for Microfame.
Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants
“I Need to Check My Email”
We have developed a “check-in” habit for email, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of media based on our hard-wiring.
John Watson, a psychologist-turned-advertising-executive, knows we have no free will based on his knowledge of the B.F. Skinner experiments.
Watson knew we could be conditioned through rewards and punishments like B.F. Skinner’s pigeons. We were no different than birds.
We could be conditioned to “peck at little buttons to receive our little snacks.”
We are motivated most effectively by “variable reinforcement,” not knowing for sure if the email or Facebook post will render rewards, but hopeful that it will.
This constant hopeful state is what keeps us addicted to the routine of checking emails and other websites.
The Rise of Facebook
In 2004, Facebook spread across American campuses and it was reported that students skipped classes and stopped doing their homework to be on Facebook.
The appeal was many:
“Augmented representation of self”
One could “constantly refine one’s profile” and “marvel at one’s numerically and geographically determined social cachet.”
In 2009, it presented the “like” button, which fostered behavioral reinforcement making us like the pigeons pecking at buttons to get their little snack.
It made you feel personally, socially, and professionally disadvantaged if you weren’t on Facebook.
It promoted the idea of self as a brand
It became “proper etiquette to use Facebook for announcing important developments in one’s life.”
It supplanted the holiday card.
It chronicled children’s milestones.
It appealed to our addiction to gossip and became the equivalent of social grooming in primates.
Overview of Andrew Sullivan's "I Used to be a Human Being"
Virtual Living Gradually Sucks Us In
Living on the web has become normal. Everyone does it. It’s “ubiquitous.” It first seemed insane to post every 20 minutes. Now everyone does it. A world of addicts doesn’t seem like a big deal. We're all in addiction hell together.
Besides, it doesn't feel like hell. It's fun, right? Sullivan thought so till his Internet addiction almost killed him.
Sullivan is in a rehab center surrendering his phone. His health is deteriorating with frequent bronchial infections. He’s losing friends. He doesn't know how to be silent anymore. He’s about to write an essay titled “I Used to be a Human Being.”
He lost his humanity without thinking twice about it because everyone else was as well. If everyone is going crazy, then I don’t feel so crazy. I’m just like them.
Plus being on the Internet all day and night seemed like a winning move.
Being an Internet Star Has Its Appeal
Constant attention from a huge audience of hundreds of thousands of people
Constant commenting and conversational exchanges
Constant distractions, so one is never bored
A feeling of relevance and importance
Internet data helping us measure our ever-rising success and giving us the thrill of goal-setting
The Internet promises us More and More, an infinitely high layer-cake of wonder and possibility.
Signs of Addiction
He couldn’t read books without wanting to check the web.
He couldn’t be alone with his thoughts without wanting to check the web.
He couldn’t have real friends without wanting to leave them for the web.
He was addicted to attention-fragmentation.
“Multitasking” was to engage in no tasks at all; it was a worthless endeavor.
Adapting to New Technology
We adapted to the printing press, TV, computers, and other technologies. But what about the web? Is it different? Is it too early to tell? Could we have met our match here?
We read, “No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.”
Smartphone Made the Internet a 24/7 Affair:
Sullivan writes:
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.
Smartphone Grew Rapidly
Sullivan observes:
And it did so with staggering swiftness. We almost forget that ten years ago, there were no smartphones, and as recently as 2011, only a third of Americans owned one. Now nearly two-thirds do. That figure reaches 85 percent when you’re only counting young adults. And 46 percent of Americans told Pew surveyors last year a simple but remarkable thing: They could not live without one. The device went from unknown to indispensable in less than a decade. The handful of spaces where it was once impossible to be connected — the airplane, the subway, the wilderness — are dwindling fast. Even hiker backpacks now come fitted with battery power for smartphones. Perhaps the only “safe space” that still exists is the shower.
Am I exaggerating? A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times. Most of these interactions were for less than 30 seconds, but they add up. Just as revealing: The users weren’t fully aware of how addicted they were. They thought they picked up their phones half as much as they actually did. But whether they were aware of it or not, a new technology had seized control of around one-third of these young adults’ waking hours.
An Alien Could Notice the Abrupt Change But Not Us
Sullivan points out:
Just look around you — at the people crouched over their phones as they walk the streets, or drive their cars, or walk their dogs, or play with their children. Observe yourself in line for coffee, or in a quick work break, or driving, or even just going to the bathroom. Visit an airport and see the sea of craned necks and dead eyes. We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.
If an alien had visited America just five years ago, then returned today, wouldn’t this be its immediate observation? That this species has developed an extraordinary new habit — and, everywhere you look, lives constantly in its thrall?
Sullivan has similar thoughts about the Internet as does Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work:
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.
Indeed, the modest mastery of our practical lives is what fulfilled us for tens of thousands of years — until technology and capitalism decided it was entirely dispensable. If we are to figure out why despair has spread so rapidly in so many left-behind communities, the atrophying of the practical vocations of the past — and the meaning they gave to people’s lives — seems as useful a place to explore as economic indices.
**
In other words, without prolonged focus, we cannot master a craft and derive the deep joy of such mastery.
Our Dependence on Dopamine and Instant Validation Has Made Us More Miserable, Not Happier
Sullivan observes:
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 an essay on contemplation, the Christian writer Alan Jacobs recently commended the comedian Louis C.K. for withholding smartphones from his children. On the Conan O’Brien show, C.K. explained why: “You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away,” he said. “Underneath in your life there’s that thing … that forever empty … that knowledge that it’s all for nothing and you’re alone … That’s why we text and drive … because we don’t want to be alone for a second.”
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.”
**
In other words, constant media locks us into a sort of zombie state where we don’t confront our inner demons, but we don’t encounter deep joy as well. We are compromised as humans and less happy.
It appears we are maladapted to this much of a technology onslaught. We need huge periods of silence, Sullivan argues, for us to reclaim our humanity.
But look around. Who’s enjoying large stretches of silence? Everyone is constantly checking their smartphone.
The Paranoid Old People Defense of the Internet
When people say, “Old people are always paranoid about technology. Ever since the beginning, old people were saying the typewriter, the phone, the TV, the computer will ruin the world.”
But we’re not talking about technology as a quality so much as we’re talking about the sheer QUANTITY, an overwhelming wave the inundates us.
The Silence of a Library
Sullivan points out that places of worship and libraries require silence because they are pointing to modes of being that are beyond the constant noise and chatter we live in. The deep life of the spirit and the intellect and the imagination require silence.
Death at the hands of the Internet is slow:
The Internet nickels and dimes us to death, slowly chipping away at our time and our souls until we’re tattered zombies dependent on dopamine and validation.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth-grade essay but not a college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as an extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
