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.”
February 18 Introduction; Homework #1 is to read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and in 200 words explain the difficulties of replacing animals with alternative proteins.
February 20 Alternative protein debate; Homework #2 is to read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and explain in 200 words how she supports her claim that non-religious societies are morally superior to religious societies.
February 25 Cover morality debate; Homework #3 is to read Sapiens up to page 60 and in 200 words explain how “limited liability companies” and “imagined realities” are part of the Cognitive Revolution.
February 27 Cover Cognitive Revolution in the context of the documentary Fyre. Homework #4 for next class: Read Sapiens, up to page 132 and in 200 words explain how Harari makes the claim that the Agricultural Revolution is history’s “biggest fraud.”
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 159.
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
Choice D
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
Sapiens & The Agricultural Revolution
Transition from Pre-agricultural period to Post-Agriculture
Harari observes that “nearly entire history” of Sapiens is pre-agricultural society, also known as foraging society or hunting and gathering society.
This historical period defines who we are today.
After foraging, Sapiens lived for 10,000 years in Agricultural Age: farmers and herders.
For only 200 years, we have lived in Industrial Age: urban laborers and office workers.
Gorging Gene
Our gorging gene is traced to our need to eat before competing predators could eat our kill and our discovery of sweet fruit. Of course, now we’re maladapted to all the calorie-dense food produced in the Industrial Age.
We may be slighter dumber with slightly smaller brains than foragers because foragers had to have everyday survival skills and know how to work in the environment whereas we can be lazy slobs, turn on a light, turn on a computer, flip a switch, order a pizza, and watch Netflix (49).
Overview
Agricultural Revolution (Farming) results in the following:
One. more work hours
Two. less nutrition
Three. inferior health (tooth decay, curved spines, stunted growth)
Four. more pregnancies
Five. more exploitation of women
Six. higher population density with more spread of disease
Eight. animal cruelty on a mass scale (factory farming)
Nine. More people bought into AR as best way of life possible in spite of contrary evidence because of powerful mythology of the "homeland" and other shared collective delusions of the imagination (thank you, Cognitive Revolution).
Ten. Working harder to become a better person became the work ethic, all based on a lie. This is a way of gaslighting people into participating in their own exploitation (getting punked).
Faustian Bargain
With all of these liabilities attached to AR, what is the appeal?
Farming is sign of stupidity and de-evolution.
According to Harari, farming is not a sign of intelligence and evolution. Farming is a sign of stupidity and de-evolution.
Keeping More People Alive in More Concentrated Areas Under Worse Conditions
The appeal or Faustian Bargain of wheat is that it offered more “food per unit of territory” and therefore allowed massive population expansion of Sapiens (82). We read: “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: The ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”
The Agricultural Revolution was not based on a legal fiction or a decision. The Agricultural Revolution was a “trap.” Harari calls it the “Luxury Trap.” I would call it the False Luxury Trap because I don't see any luxury.
In this trap, babies died more often from disease and malnutrition (less milk and more gruel) but so many more babies were being born that the population continued to grow. Yet life was brutal. In farming societies, 1 in 3 children died before turning 20.
Critical Thinking Failure
"Sapiens could not fathom the full consequences of their decisions"
Three. Why did Sapiens continue with the brutal farming life?
Sapiens “could not fathom the full consequences of their decisions.”
Being unable to fathom the consequences of our decisions leads to our demise. Take, for example, that most people continue to use smartphones and social media without knowing the effects of these gadgets that are taking up so much of people’s time. Gadgets hack our brain to our loss of free will.
We cannot fathom:
impact of agricultural revolution on us today
impact of smartphones as a necessity
impact of giving up our privacy through technology
impact of giving up our free will to A.I.
impact of man-made global warming
Harari succeeds in showing that Sapiens' greatest weakness is our failure to comprehend consequences of our actions
Foragers Vs. People Today
In many ways, foragers had a “more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle” than industrial Sapiens.
In affluent societies today, people work 45 hours a week with little free time and few friends, are full of stress, and overworked to deal with declining real wages. In developing countries, people today may work 80 hours a week and are essentially work bots.
In contrast, foragers had leisure time with one another and worked maybe 3-6 hours a day (50).
Foragers had a more diverse, nutritious diet as opposed to a diet of monocrops, same crops, and same food for farmers. Today, we load up on processed food and sugar.
Of course, Harari points out, foragers often led short, brutish lives, often rife with infanticide and similar atrocities, but on balance their lives could be richer and more affluent than the lifestyles of those in Agricultural and Industrial Periods.
AR Myth Persists
Can Myth of AR be eradicated by bloodshed or anything else?
The short answer is no.
Even after a tribe loses a war, it clings to its false myth. For example, Harari observes that the institution of slavery in the United States based on the myth of white supremacy resulted in the Civil War against forces that rejected the white supremacy myth, but even in the loss of the Civil War, many whites still proudly brandish the Confederate flag, venerate Confederate generals in the form of statues and monuments of various kinds, and hold white supremacy beliefs. Such people embrace what is called the false religion of The Lost Cause. Even after losing a war, such people cling to a racist ideology that gives them identity and meaning based on tribalistic narcissism.
Myths live because their adherents believe they come from God or are an “indisputable law of nature” or a necessary for keeping order or some other deeply held belief that the adherents share with their tribe.
Myths imbue the culture in the form of art, fairy tales, poetry, literature, TV, movies, etc. Look at the Jim Crow Museum on Youtube and you will find how white supremacy saturated American culture with myths of white superiority.
Dangerous Myths That Persist
The American myth of the masculine pioneer creates a deeply seated love for guns that does not exist in any other country.
The American myth of “follow your passion” deludes Americans into believing they will have their “dream job” if they are simply “true to themselves and their real inner passion,” when in fact only about 2% of people have a career that could be called their dream job. Most people work jobs to support themselves and their families, and they make the best of it regardless of how unpleasant the job usually is.
The myth of consumerism tells us we cannot be happy unless we work our butts off to buy lots of stuff we don’t need, and the myth works because the majority of people go down Consumer Road and often die there.
The myth of consumerism has infected our notion of marriage so that we desire to experience our spouse as a “consumer experience,” and if the experience is less than our expectations dictate, we are entitled to seek a new consumer experience in the form of a new spouse until “we get it right.”
Imagined Orders
What is the key question in understanding human history in the millennia after the Agricultural Revolution?
How did humans organize in mass cooperation networks when they lacked the biological instincts, such as ants and bees, to do so?
Humans created “imagined orders and devised scripts” (131).
These scripts created artificial hierarchies or economic and social stratification with Haves and Have-Nots, lords and serfs, royalty and peasants.
Harari breaks the system down into Superiors, Commoners, and Slaves, and this stratification was reinforced by some “divine code” or other.
People in power and privilege like to talk about “justice and equality” but only as a smokescreen in order to perpetuate their advantage over others.
Political and religious codes, Harari observes, are canards, deceptions, BS, that the powerful create to pacify and to shut up the masses.
These codes help maintain civil order and control, but they do little to help promote equality and justice.
Social codes, Harari observes, emphasize purity on one hand and pollution on the other. To scapegoat, marginalize, and eliminate a certain group of people (minorities, women, Jews, gays, to name a few Harari refers to on page 138), these people are dehumanized by the code.
Harari points out that the morally repulsive and abhorrent slave trade in America was supported by phony codes that supported ideas of white supremacy and black inferiority in order to get white people to cooperate with the evil system of slavery.
Harari further points out that many societies created codes that designated women as a man’s property. Universally speaking, humans have made man codes or patriarchal codes because, according one theory, men are more violent and aggressive (154). But in the end, Harari says no one theory can explain patriarchal systems.
Greatest Fraud
How does Harari’s argument above support his larger argument that the Agricultural Revolution is the greatest fraud perpetrated on the human race?
Clearly, exploiting of the less fortunate is part of the social control and mass cooperation, and Hurari makes the case these codes did not exist in forager society; rather, they flourished in the Agricultural Period.
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 has been a curse to Sapiens 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
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.
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.
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.”
February 18 Introduction; Homework #1 is to read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and in 200 words explain the difficulties of replacing animals with alternative proteins.
February 20 Alternative protein debate; Homework #2 is to read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and explain in 200 words how she supports her claim that non-religious societies are morally superior to religious societies.
February 25 Cover morality debate; Homework #3 is to read Sapiens up to page 60 and in 200 words explain how “limited liability companies” and “imagined realities” are part of the Cognitive Revolution.
February 27 Cover Cognitive Revolution in the context of the documentary Fyre. Homework #4 for next class: Read Sapiens, up to page 132 and in 200 words explain how Harari makes the claim that the Agricultural Revolution is history’s “biggest fraud.”
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 159.
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
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.
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 _______________________.
Your body paragraphs will support the above thesis mapping components.
Another Sample Thesis for Choice B (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.”
Sample Thesis
While I largely agree with Harari's critique of the Agricultural Revolution, his implication that we were better off as hunters and gatherers is fallacious when we consider _________________, __________________, _________________, and _________________________.
Be sure to have a counterargument section (1 or 2 paragraphs) before you reach your conclusion.
Your conclusion is a dramatic restatement of your thesis.
Lesson One Study Questions
One. That Sapiens is an exclusive species today emerging from several species of great apes is both “peculiar and incriminating.” Explain.
Evolution,the idea of human progression, may be a myth. We may grow in fits and bursts with episodes of regression.
Evolution Assumption Fallacy
Harari wants us to question common assumptions about Sapiens?
Why? In part because critical thinking is about questioning mindless assumptions.
For example, we assume humans are marching on an arc of progress toward justice and reason. Such an assumption may not be in concert with reality.
Social media is part of the Great Dumbing Down and is evidence that we are devolving or degenerating:
For example, social media may be causing us to reverse in two major ways: We're becoming infantile as we feature ourselves in narcissistic fashion, curators of our phony self.
We're giving up our private data to social media. This is stupid, not a sign of evolution.
We're reading and sharing weaponized fake news in the service of destroying democracy.
Other mindless assumptions:
Or we may assume that if we go to college and play by the rules, we'll find a good job, good real estate, a long, healthy life, and vibrant love to reward us for our toil.
Or we may assume that if we lose a big chunk of body weight and get lean and attractive, all our problems will be solved, the world will love us, and our newfound popularity will create a huge tidal wave that will carry us to the land of Milk and Honey.
Mindless Assumptions in Sapiens
Now let's look at a mindless assumption in the context of Sapiens:
Mindless Assumption #1
Humans are a dominant species with an indefinite shelf life. We like to think we, as humans, have an indefinite stay in the world's VIP room. We are here to stay. It's our birthright. But we're grossly mistaken.
We may be at the end. Think of global warming.
Reality
Humans are a fragile species that owing to their penchant for self-destruction have a tenuous shelf life.
The window of history of a dominant, exclusive species called Sapiens is rather small. Harari speculates that we won't last long relative to other species.
Humans are hard-wired to be violent and look for systems to exploit masses of people.
Further, it appears that as a species we tend to kill other species. Killing our competition appears to be part of our nature. Our tendency toward violence seems to contradict our self-aggrandizing name “homo sapien,” which means “wise man.”
Yuval Noah Harari's critics accuse him of being a misanthrope, someone who scorns the human race.
Three revolutions define Sapiens as the dominant species:
Cognitive Revolution from 70,000 years ago.
Agricultural Revolution from 12,000 years ago.
Scientific Revolution from 500 years ago.
Two. What are defining characteristics of Sapiens?
We have big brains relative to other mammals that suck 25% of our body’s energy.
We walk upright on two legs, freeing our hands for fine motor skills, playing musical instruments, painting caves, and performing other forms of advanced communication.
We are born underdeveloped and as babies require a lot of nurture and protection. Without our parents, we'll be carried away by a giant pterodactyl and fed to the baby pterodactyls.
We have advanced rapidly from the middle of the food chain to the top of the food chain resulting in disrupting the ecosystem and killing other species, often to the point of extinction.
At the top of the food chain, we are shown to have ravenous appetites and brutally violent tendencies without proper checks to insure the world's safety and our own.
Unlike other mammals, we learned to use fire to alter our environment and to cook food that otherwise could not be digested efficiently.
Because we are insecure in our Top Dog Food Chain position, we are like “Banana Republic dictators” full of fear and anxiety over our apex role, and as a result we inflict cruelty, havoc, and destruction everywhere we reign. In other words, we are warmongers. Peaceful existence is the exception, not the rule (11).
Barbarian Throng
Reading Sapiens reinforces the Hobbesian notion of the “barbarian throng,” which can only be controlled by fear and rule of law.
The problem with seeing humans as barbarians is the tendency to ditch democracy for totalitarianism and the latter has a history of brutality, severed human rights, and genocide.
Critics of Harari, such as Rod Dreher, accuse him of being a hedonist, a materialist, and a misanthrope who sees human race improving through genetic editing.
Three. What two competing theories explain the emergence of Sapiens as the exclusive species?
One is Interbreeding Theory, which states that Sapiens and Neanderthals mated and evolved into the Sapiens we are today.
The second is Replacement Theory, which states that Sapiens committed genocide against other species, including the Neanderthals. If this theory is true, all of us can be traced back to East Africa from 70,000 years ago. If Replacement Theory is correct, we have some seriously violent hard-wiring in our DNA.
Most Sapiens have a religious-based belief that they are exclusive to the animal kingdom, superior and apart, but Harari claims humans are deluded; in fact, humans were related to other species, which they wiped out:
Soloensis and Denisova were wiped out 50,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were wiped out 30,000 years ago.
Flores Island dwarf-like humans were wiped out 12,000 years ago (18).
Cognitive Revolution
Four. How did language cause Sapiens to become more advanced than other species?
From 70,000 to 30,000 years ago, Sapiens embarked upon the Cognitive Revolution (described in Harari's Ted Talk video).
Objective Reality
Animals live exclusively in an objective reality. The zebra, for example, lives near the Nile River and must navigate across past hungry 20-foot crocodiles. The same zebra must be on the lookout for hungry lions and leopards. The zebra survives by paying keen attention to its objective reality.
Legal Fictions
Imaginative Reality or The Shared Imagination
Humans, too, survive by having a clear awareness of their objective reality, their actual physical environment.
But they have imposed another layer of reality over their physical reality. This added layer of reality is in the realm of the imagination, what Harari calls "legal fictions."
This second reality is the main ingredient of the Cognitive Revolution. This ability for humans to have a shared imagination is what separates humans from other animals. Furthermore, this shared imagination allows humans to dominate over the other animals.
Shared Imaginative Reality Leads to Mass Cooperation
No other animal engaged in an imaginary reality that would cause mass cooperation toward a shared goal.
Bees cooperate in the hive, but their cooperation is instinctive and rigid. Any changes in the environment that disrupt the cooperation cannot be met with an adaptive response from the honeybees. They will perish.
Dolphins and chimpanzees are less rigid and more flexible than honeybees in their cooperation. But the flexible cooperation of dolphins and chimps is limited to small numbers: These mammals need an intimate knowledge and trust of one another to be flexible in their cooperation.
Humans take cooperation to a higher level. Humans are both flexible in their cooperation and they can scale it to big numbers. They don't need intimate knowledge of one another. They rely on agreed fictions or collective imaginations to cooperate toward shared goals, values, and aspirations.
Because humans have advanced language skills, they can create these imaginary worlds with vivid detail.
Examples of Shifting Imaginary Worlds
In the Cognitive Revolution, we agree that an imaginary world presents a reality that is in our best interests.
For example, before the 20th Century, marriage was imagined as a family business arrangement in which men owned women as property. This was agreed upon in patriarchal (man-dominated) societies.
The good news is that marriages didn't end in divorce. The bad news is that women were treated like property.
By the 21st Century, patriarchal societies slowly transformed into consumer societies. The advent of photography, cinema, and television produced vectors for powerful consumer images.
The idea of marriage shifted from a business arrangement to one of Romantic Love.
Romantic Love is an imagined reality.
Imagined realities scaled that cooperation.
Harari calls these imagined realities fiction (27). He writes: "Any large-scale human cooperation--whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe--is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination." Belief in Christ or Allah can move millions, even billions, of people to perform the same rituals and adhere to the same behaviors and attitudes.
The love of coastal property can compel many people to work three jobs so they can live by the sea and work so many hours that they have no free time to walk along the beach.
A cadre of lawyers who never met each other can work together to free a man from prison because that prisoner represents the violation of human rights that this team of lawyers all wish to defend.
A business is a fiction.
Harari points to Peugeot SA as an example of a fiction. Peugeot makes cars and has factories, but if these material things did not exist, Peugeot, the brand, would still exist. It could use its money to make new factories, make new cars, and hire new managers.
Harari writes: "In short, Peugeot SA seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist?" He answers by writing the following: "Peugeot is a figment of our collective imagination. Lawyers call this a 'legal fiction.' It can't be pointed at; it is not a physical object. But it exists as a legal entity."
Harari goes on to explain that "Peugeot belongs to a particular genre of legal fictions called 'limited liability companies.' The idea behind such companies is among humanity's most ingenious inventions."
Legal liability companies accelerated human innovation.
Property had to shift from family to giant business, called a legal liability company:
Harari explains that a family business could be wiped out by litigation. Families could be sued into extinction, even lose family members to indentured servitude (30).
As a result, people imagined legal liability companies. A legal liability company, like Peugeot, outlives its founder Armand Peugeot, because the enterprise exists as a fiction.
Harari compares this fiction to demons and devils of the church. No one needs to see these demons and devils, but they exist in the imagination and are used to affect and control behavior.
Further, taking Holy Communion is based on a shared belief that exists in the collective imagination.
Harari then returns to the case of Peugeot SA in which the lawyer must follow "all the proper liturgy and rituals," "sacred procedures," and "hocus pocus" to make Peugeot exist as a legal fiction.
Function of these legal fictions:
Harari then asks what is the purpose of these legal fictions? He writes, "much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about god, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals. Just try to imagine how difficult it would have been to create states, or churches, or legal systems if we could speak only about things that really exist, such as rivers, trees, and lions" (31).
These fictions, such as Peugeot, "accumulate immense power."
We call these "fictions," "social constructs," or "imagined realities," but they are not lies. Unless they are charlatans, they believe in their fictions like wizards believe in their magic spells, demons, and gods.
Some Apple employees who work at the "Genius Bar" believe they are truly geniuses.
These fictions enable humans to cooperate in millions of numbers, and this capacity for mass cooperation allows humans to do good, evil, and destruction on a massive scale.
Review: How did “legal fiction” advance Sapiens to develop cities, political systems, and business enterprises?
We read one of the book’s most important passages: “Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths” (26).
Religious, nationalist, and judicial values and beliefs can bind alliances between people who have never met each other. They share a common commitment based on a common value system.
This value system is based on shared beliefs. These beliefs emerge from shared stories.
“Yet none of these things exist outside the stories people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings” (27).
To make a successful business, Harari asserts that we must be “powerful sorcerers” and “tribal shamans.” He uses the example of Peugeot. Like Rolex, Mercedes, and Apple, Peugeot is an entity that does not exist as a person or a group of persons, but as a brand, an idea, a symbol.
Giving value to a symbol or a brand is unique to Sapiens, and this activity has a great influence on human affairs.
Peugeot is a “legal fiction” and a “figment of our collective imagination” (29).
Peugeot is a corporation, a legal entity, an institution that pays taxes. Individuals are not sued, but the corporation Peugeot can be sued.
Peugeot as a legal fiction is what is called a limited liability company. Before Sapiens invented the limited liability company, they were at too much risk to have their own business because they, not the legal fiction, were liable in the event of being sued. Their children could be sold into servitude, they could lose all of their possessions, and they could be put into prison simply because they were liable for any shortcomings or violations their company presented.
Such legal exposure discouraged people from innovation. In the wake of a limited liability company, however, innovation flourished.
Therefore, limited liability companies, the product of legal fiction, are a huge force in accelerating creativity, business, and innovation.
Harari observes a comparison between religion and business: Both require a story and “hocus pocus” to emerge and exist in people’s collective imagination. Religion needs stories to supports its divine claims. Businesses need the legal magic of lawyers to produce paperwork with legal codes to create a fabrication.
These fabrications, or “legal fictions,” propel human lives in large numbers and disrupt the evolution of societies.
“Telling effective stories is not easy,” the author writes, but the successful, compelling stories create immense power for those in are held in authority of these stories because “millions of strangers to cooperate and to work towards common goals” (31).
A college is not a professor, a group of professors, or a bunch of administrators. A college is an idea, a legal fiction that provides a positive narrative to the community. This positive narrative is about upward mobility and personal enrichment. If the story does not corroborate with reality in some compelling way, the legal fiction or the brand is in danger of weakening or being completely upturned into something else.
When we speak of legal fictions, we are not speaking of lies. Harari writes:
“An imagined reality is not a lie.”
Rather, an imagined reality is a shared value or belief system such as “justice for all,” “diversity in education and the workplace,” “overcoming structural inequality,” “individualism over utilitarianism,” “sacrifice to the family and community and public duty over personal pleasure and personal fulfillment” and so on.
The above are imagined realities that millions of people may share and that millions of others may reject in favor of some contradictory belief system.
Sapiens Live in Dual Reality
Because of the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens live in a dual reality: the objective reality of the world around us and the imagined reality of value systems that are sustained by compelling stories (32).
Competing myths or stories can radically alter our value systems. For example, the author observes France in 1789 when myths supporting “divine right of kings” were supplanted by myths supporting “sovereignty of the people.”
In the United States with structural inequality getting worse and worse, American Millennials are not as friendly toward stories about American democracy and equality and therefore are not necessarily supportive of democratic ideals. Millennials may in fact reject stories that support notions of democratic ideals and equality.
Shared stories or “imagined realities” make humans cooperate toward common goals and have the effect of making Sapiens dominate all other species on the planet.
This is why we cannot overestimate the effects of “legal fictions” or “imagined realities” on the Apex Predator status of Sapiens.
One of the biggest effects of legal fictions is trade. We trade objects based on the object’s value, and the value is based on some story.
Apple computer is a story about creativity, hipster coolness, and innovation.
Rolex and Mercedes are stories about achieving the ultimate in success of “making it.”
Such stories existed tens of thousands of years ago for jewels, spices, fabrics, precious metals, etc.
Trade established the need for trust and trade stimulated world travel, further propelling Sapiens toward world domination (36).
Shared imagined realities also created culture. In fact, culture is defined as a shared imagined reality and the ways this shared imagined reality manifests itself.
Before the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens were defined by biology but after the Cognitive Revolution Sapiens were defined by imagined realities, which comprised of their culture.
The story of Romantic Love as a consumerist idea is this:
Women can buy soaps, hair products, cosmetics and engage in activities that will bring them to the apotheosis of pulchritude (physical beauty) and they can exact high demands on men in courtship. By doing these two things: achieving maximum beauty and physical attraction while demanding that a man "step up his game" in courtship, a woman transforms man, a disgusting beast unworthy of love, into a noble savage slavishly devoted to monogamy in the pursuit of his True Love.
That the divorce rate, between 50-70% depending on what part of the country you survey, contradicts this narrative, doesn't matter.
The consumer imagined reality of Romantic Love persists in our collective consciousness.
In Smithsonian interview, Harari elaborates on imagined realities in society and how they stabilize and bond societies:
Humanity's greatest invention is religion, which does not mean necessarily mean belief in gods. Rather, religion is any system of norms and values that is founded on a belief in superhuman laws. Some religions, such as Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, believe that these superhuman laws were created by the gods. Other religions, such as Buddhism, Communism and Nazism believed that these superhuman laws are natural laws. Thus Buddhists believe in the natural laws of karma, Nazis argued that their ideology reflected the laws of natural selection, and Communists believe that they follow the natural laws of economics.
No matter whether they believe in divine laws or in natural laws, all religions have exactly the same function: to give stability to human institutions. Without some kind of religion, it is simply impossible to maintain social order. During the modern era religions that believe in divine laws went into eclipse. But religions that believe in natural laws became ever more powerful. In the future, they are likely to become more powerful yet. Silicon Valley, for example, is today a hot-house of new techno-religions, which promise us paradise on earth with the help of new technologies. From a religious perspective, Silicon Valley is the most interesting place in the world.
Imagined Realities Translate into Distinct Societies
Autocratic Despot
Ethno-Nationalism
Theocracy
Democracy: human rights, equality, justice, freedom, individuality
The latter is the most appealing to most humans who will flee to those societies, which will enjoy technological and general innovation.
Language, Gossip, and Shared Values
Unlike other animals, humans can use language to gossip, to pain pictures of other humans that either detestable or enviable. We avoid certain behaviors so we don't become of the object of gossip about the detestable human being and as a result are shunned in the realm of reproduction. We are drawn to other behaviors that would generate gossip so that we could be the topic of conversation that paints us in a venerable and admirable light so that we would be desirable in terms of reproductive success. In this regard, we share common values.
Cooperating within the tribe would win us "Brownie Points." Not cooperating would paint us as pariahs. Therefore, most of us were motivated to cooperate and show reciprocity within the tribe.
Gossip allowed us to separate decent people from cheats. Apes could not gossip. We developed social networks far more advanced than apes because largely in part of our capacity for gossip.
To this day, we love gossip. We are obsessed with gossip. We watch "reality TV" that focuses on gossip. When we hang out with friends, our primary activity is gossip. Gossip is in our DNA.
Gossip thrives in the social media age. Twitter is in your face gossip full of "hot takes."
Downside of Gossip
Downside of gossip is that we talk behind people's backs. We are all naturally born back-stabbers. Mark Twain famously said that if we could be the fly on the wall and listen to what our friends said about us when they didn't know we were listening, none of us would have any friends.
Gossip about our reality was only the beginning.
Beyond Gossip, Language Takes an Even More Radical Turn
Harari says our radical departure from other animals is in our capacity to live in an invisible or imagined reality: "Yet the truly unique feature of our language is not its ability to transmit information about men and lions. Rather, it's the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist at all. As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched or smelled.
Unlike animals, we live in a shared imagination:
Legends
Myths
gods
religions
religious fables
idea of an afterlife
idea of monogamy and "living happily ever after."
idea of virtue
idea of moral dissolution (disintegration)
politics such as nation states
economics such as money being worth X (this bill is the value of three cheeseburgers)
brands such as Apple, Mini Cooper, Google represent a type of human and a type of lifestyle
laws based on "human rights," something we imagine to exist
We imagine a $10 Casio on a certain type of man and a $20K Rolex on another type of man.
Racism is an imaginary idea that certain people agree upon to base their identity and behavior.
Nationalism is an imaginary idea that affects our identity and behavior.
Tribalism and other "isms" are imagined realities that affect our identity and behavior.
Collective Imagination: Or Shared Fictions
We don't just imagine things. We imagine things collectively.
Gossip limited our social cooperation to groups of about 150 members.
***
How does the pre-agricultural period affect Sapiens today?
Harari observes that “nearly entire history” of Sapiens is pre-agricultural society, also known as foraging society or hunting and gathering society.
This historical period defines who we are today.
After foraging, Sapiens lived for 10,000 years in Agricultural Age: farmers and herders.
For only 200 years, we have lived in Industrial Age: urban laborers and office workers.
Our gorging gene is traced to our need to eat before competing predators could eat our kill and our discovery of sweet fruit. Of course, now we’re maladapted to all the calorie-dense food produced in the Industrial Age.
We may be slighter dumber with slightly smaller brains than foragers because foragers had to have everyday survival skills and know how to work in the environment whereas we can be lazy slobs, turn on a light, turn on a computer, flip a switch, order a pizza, and watch Netflix (49).
Foragers
In many ways, foragers had a “more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle” than industrial Sapiens. In affluent societies today, people work 45 hours a week with little free time and few friends, are full of stress, and overworked to deal with declining real wages. In developing countries, people today may work 80 hours a week and are essentially work bots.
In contrast, foragers had leisure time with one another and worked maybe 3-6 hours a day (50).
Foragers had a more diverse, nutritious diet as opposed to a diet of monocrops, same crops, and same food for farmers. Today, we load up on processed food and sugar.
Of course, Harari points out, foragers often led short, brutish lives, often rife with infanticide and similar atrocities, but on balance their lives could be richer and more affluent than the lifestyles of those in Agricultural and Industrial Periods.
Six. Why is human visitation to Australia one of the “most important events in history”?
We see how destructive Sapiens are to ecosystems living apart from human contact.
We see Sapiens as the “deadliest species in the annals of planet Earth” (64). Within a few thousand years, all of the continent’s giant animals became extinct.
Sapien colonization on any new landfront is a massive disaster. Sapiens leave mass destruction in their wake.
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 the book Sapiens and credible source of your choice. We call this "cited material."
When you introduce your cited material, you must use 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."
Essay Topic 1: The Gospel According to Archie Costello
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that Archie Costello’s nihilistic worldview is vindicated by the novel’s events.
Consider the loss and devastation in the novel:
Jerry’s loss of his mother
Jerry’s loss of respect for his father who cocoons himself into a shell of apathy, numbness, and mediocrity so that he doesn’t have to feel the grief of losing his wife to cancer.
Jerry’s loss of himself to peer pressure
Jerry’s loss from betraying the values of his mother
Jerry’s compromised self resulting from his pride in his mini-rebellion or put it this way: Jerry takes pride in disturbing the universe, as we read in this strange essay online. Here is an excellent film review that explains the ending difference.
Jerry’s loss of faith in the adult world, which is seen as duplicitous and corrupt
Jerry sees primitive behavior that obliterates all social norms, leads to violence, and destroys any kind of moral code.
Archie’s loss of self-mastery and self-control that he once prided himself in after he realized he “punked himself with his own BS”
Essay Topic 2: Psychological Determinism
Defend, refute, or complicate the assertion that the novel is a refutation of the notion of free will in favor of psychological determinism.
Essay Topic 3: Stanford Prison Experiment
Develop a thesis that compares the theme of dehumanization in the novel and the Stanford Prison Experiment, relying on YouTube videos for the latter.
Essay Topic 4: The Sins of Pride and Despair
Develop a thesis that addresses the notion that The Chocolate War is a sermon raging against the dangers that result from the sins of pride and despair and that both sins are inextricably linked to one another. You could develop this topic with a character study of Archie Costello or a comparison between Archie and Brother Leon.
Study Questions
One. Discuss the themes of violence, brutality, dehumanization, and determinism in the first chapter.
We see Jerry Renault getting slammed on the football field, described as “a toy boat, caught in a whirlpool.”
He has no self-agency; rather, he is a piece in a larger machine in which there are no social norms.
The first adult we see, the football coach, is described as looking like “an old gangster.”
There is no moral code in this novel, only the code of power.
We see that Jerry is living without his mother who has died from cancer, and he has nowhere to turn for comfort or emotional support. He carries his grief in a world that worships power and violence.
Two. How is Archie introduced as a sort of Devil in Chapter 2?
Archie, a high-ranking member of the Vigils who dishes out “assignments,” believes in nothing of goodness or substance. There is only image, public relations, slick marketing campaigns, manipulation of others. The purpose of life is to gain power by manipulation of others through BS. Why? Because there is no such thing as truth. Corruption rules the day, so be the most corrupt of all.
Archie assumes the worst in people. Because he is miserable, he assumes, through projection, that everyone is as miserable as he is, and if they are not, he wants them to join him because misery wants company.
Archie suffers from the sin of pride, the belief that “he knows it all,” has everything figured out, and that his actions reflect his super knowledge of the world. In truth, he is a slave to the despair of nihilism, is desperately lonely, and lives in a personal hell disconnected from others, the universe, the world, and from any kind of higher purpose or meaning. He is a member of the walking dead.
Archie’s utter loneliness and disconnection make him feel in the depths of his heart the misery of despair, yet he conceals this recalcitrant despair from himself by fabricating an image of the superior know-it-all who is proud of who he is. His pride and despair feed each other.
Essay 1 Options for Essay 1 Due on March 9 and needs 2 sources for Works Cited
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. For a second source, you can use “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
February24 Go over Newport online chapters 1-3. Homework #2 for February 26: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and in 200-word paragraph, explain the dilemma parents face when struggling with their children’s homework.
February 26 Go over the homework debate. Homework #3 for next class: Read S-2 Sentence Fragments in your electronic Little Seagull Handbook and report on the following: What is a fragment? What are the types of fragments? Do the 3 Practice Quizzes, report your score, and explain how confident you are about avoiding fragments for your essays.
March 2 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Do Homework Check 3 for S-2 Sentence Fragments. Our goal is to write an introduction paragraph, thesis paragraph, and one or two supporting paragraphs. Homework #4 for next class: Read S-3 Comma Splices, Fused Sentences and explain how to identify and edit comma splices and fused sentences. Take the 4 Practice quizzes, report your scores, and explain how confident you are about avoiding these errors in future essays.
March 4 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Our goal is to write two supporting paragraphs, a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph, a conclusion, and a Works Cited page. Go over Homework #4, Comma Splices and Fused Sentences.
March 9Essay 1 Due on turnitin.
Suggested Essay Structure:
Paragraph 1: Explain the homework dilemma facing America for your introduction.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that agrees or disagrees with Greenfeld's contention that his daughter is assigned too much homework and this overload points to a broader problem about homework in American society.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph in which you anticipate how your opponents will oppose your thesis and your rebuttal to their counterargument.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion: Dramatic reiteration of your thesis.
1,000 words
Sources and Signal Phrases
You must use at least 2 sources and 6 signal phrases for your essay.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
Karl Taro Greenfeld writes a sympathetic account of the struggles that he and his daughter must suffer to keep up with his daughter's homework. They feel there is a gun pointed at their heads 24/7, they are sleep deprived, they feel constantly behind in the homework, and the father's complaints to his daughter's teacher are met with the standard "I'm merely following the core standards and if you wish me to demote your daughter to the remedial class, I can make that happen." Not willing to compromise his daughter's educational standing, he backs down, but he wishes to make the case that the American education system is so caught up in teaching core standards that it is unleashing a torrent of homework on children to their detriment.
While I agree with a lot of Greenfeld's observations, I sadly and reluctantly must argue against him. Our teachers have no choice but to continue to push lots of homework on our children in the cause of teaching core standards, in the cause of getting us caught up in STEM, in the cause of acknowledging that career competition is far more ruthless than when Greenfeld was a child, and in the cause of holding teachers accountable for exercising high classroom standards.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,000-word essay
8 Paragraphs, 130 words per paragraph, approx. 1,000 words (1,040 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-5: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 6 & 7: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Sample Response from Parent's Point of View
Teachers, I get it. You need to teach the core standards. You’ve got administration breathing down your neck and giving you ulcers because they want to make sure your students pass all the tests so you can keep your job and maybe even get a raise. So let’s make a deal. Let’s do the core standards in class, not at home. That’s right. Let’s cut the homework. Why? Because you know math, right? I mean, you are a teacher, yes? So let’s do the math. Most parents work, just like you. We don’t have the luxury of being a stay-at-home parent to curate our kids’ homework. Why? Because we’ve got bills to pay. By the time we get the kids home, make them dinner, have them shower, brush their teeth, and get some much needed physical exercise after being cooped up in a cage all day (you cut PE classes, remember?), we don’t have diddly squat time for homework.
But you’ve got time. You’ve got our kids from 9 to 3. That’s six hours you get to spend working on core standards. That’s more time than we’ve got.
Teachers, time isn’t the only issue. It’s the quality of the homework itself. Too often you give our kids busy work. This amounts to photocopied worksheets from a 15-year-old workbook you bought on Amazon that got an average one-star rating. You’re being lazy by larding on a bunch of busy work on our kids. Stop it. You’re not the solution, teacher. You’re part of the problem.
Teachers, we want our children to be more than overworked mediocrities jumping through your hoops. We want our kids to have time to do exceptional work whether it be joining student government, joining the chess club, or leisurely reading. Your busy work, on the other hand, is turning them into brain-dead, sleep-deprived zombies.
Teachers, you’re part of a broken, dysfunctional system, and my family is paying the price.
We need to start fixing the system, and we can begin by cutting out the unnecessary homework.
Should We Give Homework to Children?
One. What are Karl Taro Greenfeld’s concerns about his daughter Esmee’s homework?
One, memory over logic: Esmee chants the mantra, “Memorization, not rationalization,” suggesting it is better to saturation the brain the mindless memory rather than learn logic and the process of higher thinking.
So there is a concern for the type of homework.
Two, unreasonable volume of homework: But secondly, there is a concern for the sheer volume of homework. Esmee is doing three to four hours of homework to pass standardized tests based on core learning requirements that the school is legally bound to perform. In addition to the rigors of 3-4 hours of homework, Esmee, who is 13, is only getting 6.5 hours sleep a night.
Thirdly, Esmee’s pressure to do well in her homework is causing her to fake sleep, get up, and do more homework behind her parents’ backs.
Fourth, when Esmee tries to do his daughter’s homework, he finds it a daunting task. One night is 79 pages of a memoir, a Life Science assignment, and Algebra.
Fifth, the textbooks, such as the one in Life Science, are written in overwrought, crappy academic style that makes them unreadable for anyone, let alone a 13-year-old child.
Sixth, without doing any research, American schools are trying to play catch-up with other countries that are crushing us, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), but our solution may be worse than the problem.
Seven, When a parent such as Greenfeld, approaches a teacher with concern about his daughter’s lack of sleep and overall burnout, the teacher threatens to demote child to remedial class.
Eight, Greenfeld compares parent-teacher conferences to speed dating.
Nine, at times Greenfeld wonders if they have brainwashed his daughter into accepting overwork as natural work since she feels assured she is battle-tested for high school. In a broader problem, we seem to be a culture acclimated to a term coined by Derek Thompson, “Workism,” as he expounds in an essay.
Thompson writes:
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.
Homo industrious is not new to the American landscape. The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it.
No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing. Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per employee fell by about 40 percent in Germany and the Netherlands—but by only 10 percent in the United States. Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later, than people in comparably rich societies,” wrote Samuel P. Huntington in his 2005 book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.
In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job.
“We’ve created this idea that the meaning of life should be found in work,” says Oren Cass, the author of the book The Once and Future Worker. “We tell young people that their work should be their passion. ‘Don’t give up until you find a job that you love!’ we say. ‘You should be changing the world!’ we tell them. That is the message in commencement addresses, in pop culture, and frankly, in media, including The Atlantic.”
Is America Making Burnout the New Normal?
My students are burned out.
Here are 7 takeaways from my college students:
One. Most of my students are decent people trying to play by society’s rules so they can climb the economic ladder.
Two. Most of my students show up to class with a chronic sleep deficit.
Three. Most of my students don’t have big chunks of time to study and contemplate the joys of education for its own sake. Rather, my students grit their teeth and squeeze in college with the rest of their frantic schedule.
Four. Most of my students live in a state of constant financial insecurity.
Five. Most of my students are playing academic catch-up to make up for wasted time in high school.
Six. The cumulative effect of the above pressure points makes most of my students feel constantly stressed and exhausted, a condition they face with a mix of stoicism and depression.
Seven. The state of affairs described above has gotten progressively worse since I started teaching college in the 1980s.
In Contrast:
My wife’s school district where she teaches sixth grade give limits based on grade: 10 minutes per grade level.
For example, a third-grader gets 30 minutes, a sixth grader gets 60 minutes, and so on.
Also, anything more than 2 hours is considered counterproductive, according to major Stanford Study. In addition, Psychology Today draws from several studies to recommend only one hour of homework a night.
McMahon's Thesis
While some of the homework given in the service of core standards looks like it is fulfilling its mission of helping my daughters achieve high standards in reading, writing, and math, I find that there is inconsistency in the quality of the homework depending on the teacher. One of my twin daughters has reasonable, high-quality homework; however, the other twin has a teacher who gives busy work, makes the students do long handouts that come from old workbooks purchased on Amazon with low customer ratings, has homework that is given without any lesson or context to give the homework meaning or explanation, and who lards long homework assignments as if the volume were a sign of the teacher's high quality when in fact the opposite is true. Perhaps, then, the problem isn't the homework; it's the teacher.
Townsend writes that she is obliged to prepare her students for college. She writes:
I teach biology at the Charles School, a five-year early-college high school in Columbus, Ohio. I believe that my job is to prepare my students for college. In order to do that, I teach a wide variety of topics including cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology, using the National Science Standards. I teach each topic in depth so that the students understand and appreciate the information. I teach them about the scientific method, lab procedures, and scientific writing, all skills they will need in college. It’s a lot to fit into one short year, and my class requires a lot of effort from my students.
Townsend wish she could have students do more in-class work to reduce homework load, but the students aren’t efficient with their time. As she writes:
Unfortunately, many kids choose to socialize when I give them time to work on their own. The students always say, “I’ll just do this for homework” and neglect to get much, if any, of the assignment done in class. Then, they come home with a pile of homework, which many parents assume the teachers assigned at the end of class.
Townsend goes on to say that homework may be difficult, but it trains kids for adulthood:
A few times a year, I require students to write a scientific paper. We spend a significant amount of time on these assignments at school, but effort outside of class is required as well. And I think that’s great. Schoolwork prepares students for work-related tasks, financial planning, and any project that ends with the feeling of a job well done. Long-term planning, projects, and deadlines are a key part of adulthood.
Townsend also argues that homework is necessary to compete on the world stage:
Nevertheless, some parents think their kids are getting too much work. One argument, which Greenfeld uses, is to compare American students with those in other countries. In his article, Greenfeld cites the fact that students in many overseas countries are scoring higher than American children, while being assigned less homework. He uses Japan as an example. In 2011, Japan was ranked fourth in science scores in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. But according to a study cited in Greenfeld’s article, Japanese students are actually assigned less homework by their teachers. Why, then, do they achieve more? The answer comes when you look at the differences in our cultures and our views on education. Japanese teachers may not be assigning much homework, but it turns out that Japanese kids are doing plenty of homework anyway.
I spoke with Chris Spackman, who is the English as a Second Language coordinator at my school. Chris taught for 13 years in Japan, and served on the Board of Education in the city of Kanazawa. I asked him why Japanese kids are scoring so high on achievement tests despite having relatively little homework. “Because Japanese kids go to juku,” he answered. He went on to explain that juku is a common after-school program that prepares Japanese kids for achievement testing. In Japan, senior high school is not required or guaranteed. Instead, students compete for spots at prestigious high schools by scoring high on achievement tests. “Some schools are for art, or college prep,” says Chris. “You have to study hard in junior high to get into the high school that you want.” In high school, Japanese kids continue to go to juku so that they can get into the college they want as well. So, Japanese kids do academic work outside of school, just not necessarily work assigned by their classroom teacher.
Townsend finishes her essay by arguing that a compromise should be made and for parents to realize that teachers are fighting for their kids’ best interests:
There is room for compromise on the homework debate. In their book Reforming Homework, Richard Walker and Mike Horsley state that while homework isn’t very beneficial for younger kids, it’s still beneficial for older students. I agree. I’ve learned, while preparing my students to start college early, that study skills become much more important than they were in primary school. It’s also important for teachers to assign work that’s high in quality, instead of quantity. The vast majority of teachers I know are careful to only assign work that’s important for student success. Remember, teachers have to grade all of these assignments – we wouldn’t want to spend extra time grading papers that have no value.
In the comments on Greenfeld’s article, some readers assume that teachers don’t have our students’ best interests at heart. But usually, teachers who aren’t incredibly devoted to their students don’t last in the profession. The teachers who do stay are committed to giving the best education to their students. We wouldn’t be assigning that homework, giving that test, or reading that book if we didn’t truly believe it was worthwhile. All we ask is that you trust us, just a little.
Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
How can I use them?
Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.
Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell and Hanson,…
As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …
Smith and Johnson state that …
Some scholars have shown…
Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)
In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.
“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)
As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.
“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)
Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.
“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher
When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.
Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, TheGuardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
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 college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as 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 _______________.
Washington, D.C. may soon be littered with the political bodies of people who believed they could spin their way out of the impact of the new Bob Woodward book, Fear. I’ve been to the Washington rodeo enough times to know that Woodward’s methodical, grinding style of investigation doesn’t lend itself to escaping unscathed, especially for bad actors and loose cannons. Hell, as a young Department of Defense aide in 1990, I saw it up close when his book, The Commanders, led to the firing of USAF Chief of Staff Mike Dugan. He had tapes then, as he does now.
This week, it’s Donald Trump’s turn under Woodward’s political electron microscope, and the President’s hissy-fit reaction tells us how close Woodward’s work has struck. Trump knows his White House staff, up to and including his daughter, thinks he’s off the rails, a danger to himself and the country, and unable to execute the duties of a Waffle House manager much less the President of the United States.
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.
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 ________________.
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 are life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is 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 __________________.
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
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:
When my daughter was one years old 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.
Healthcare
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.
Civil War in America
In the South, it is still common to hear white people speak of the Civil War by denying its connection to the evils of slavery and treason. Rather, it is commonly spouted by white people in the south that the Civil War was the result of "Northern aggression" and "state rights," but these explanations are odious poppycock and are part of America's shameful history of fake news, which afflicts our country like an ugly, festering cancer sore to this very day.
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?'
Paragraph 1: For your introduction, summarize Karl Taro's Greenfeld's description of burnout as he and his daughter attempt to do what appears to be an onslaught of homework and the teacher's response when the father presents his complaint.
Paragraph 2: Make a claim that argues for or against the kind of rigorous homework discussed in the two essays above.
Paragraphs 3-6: Develop body paragraphs that support your claim.
Paragraph 7: Write a counterargument and rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Write a conclusion that restates your thesis with emotional power
Signal Phrases
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.
We include the author's background information to give author credibility or ethos in our argumentation.
After we cite the information, we present our own analysis to show how this material supports our argument.
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."
Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
How can I use them?
Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.
Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell and Hanson,…
As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …
Smith and Johnson state that …
Some scholars have shown…
Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)
In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.
“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)
As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.
“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)
Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.
“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher
When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.
Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, TheGuardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.
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.”
February 18 Introduction; Homework #1 is to read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and in 200 words explain the difficulties of replacing animals with alternative proteins.
February 20 Alternative protein debate; Homework #2 is to read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and explain in 200 words how she supports her claim that non-religious societies are morally superior to religious societies.
February 25 Cover morality debate; Homework #3 is to read Sapiens up to page 60 and in 200 words explain how “limited liability companies” and “imagined realities” are part of the Cognitive Revolution.
February 27 Cover Cognitive Revolution in the context of the documentary Fyre. Homework #4 for next class: Read Sapiens, up to page 132 and in 200 words explain how Harari makes the claim that the Agricultural Revolution is history’s “biggest fraud.”
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 159.
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
An expanded study, from an earlier post, of Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
One. What is a binary view of the universe?
Morality (moral code of right and wrong) Vs. Nihilism (idea that life has no meaning, there is no such thing as right or wrong, vice or virtue; all one can do is live a life of pleasure and then die).
Two. What is Anderson's main critique?
Common Proposition of Religion: Without faith, morality is impossible
Anderson presents a critique to the proposition that without the notion of God people will turn to a life of immorality an nihilism.
For it is argued by many that without a belief in God, the world won't have a healthy fear of divine punishment and embrace an "anything goes" approach to life.
Three. Is the fear of God an antidote to violence and chaos?
Some argue that even if religion isn't true, we need it to put the fear of God in the hearts of the barbarian horde and keep evil and chaos at bay.
Many religious people make a similar claim: We need God to give us a moral foundation, and that without this foundation, we will dissolve into chaos, anarchy, and anything goes.
God is the author of morality, according to this logic. In the absence of God, we have no morality.
Empirical Evidence May Contradict Above
Over the last three decades, I have gotten to know families, through my students, who are not explicitly religious; however, these families have strong moral values: love, loyalty, commitment, sacrifice, etc.
It appears that family bonds generate their own kind of morality.
I have seen religious people who are good and religious people who are evil. Therefore, I have doubts that religion based on a belief on God, has a monopoly on morality.
Five. What is the common Christian argument?
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson begins her essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”with a common Christian argument that the “evil tree” of evolution, atheism and secularism grows evil branches: “abortion, suicide, homosexuality, the drug culture, hard rock, alcohol,” to give a partial list.
Anderson explains that religion objects to evolution on moral grounds and that “the basic cause of this immorality is atheism.”
Six. How do we know difference between right and wrong without a religious text?
Theists would have us believe that in the absence of religion the world would succumb to chaos and moral dissolution.
Christian apologist William Lane Craig argues that without God-ordained morality we cannot know the difference between right and wrong. Everything would be permitted. We would plummet into nihilism and decay.
Anderson shows insight in making the claim that theists have a gut hostility toward atheism, not because of solid evidence for a belief in God, but because of a conviction that “without God, morality is impossible.”
Seven. What is Anderson's claim?
She then presents her thesis, which is that not only do we not need religion to flourish morally as a society but also that religion is too often an impediment to moral development.
Eight. Does belief in hell help steer us toward moral behavior?
Anderson's thesis contradicts the Jesus of the Four Gospels who believed we had to love God with all our heart.
Also, he encouraged us to fear eternal hell to develop our morality. Whenever we are tempted to commit an immoral act or sin, we should contemplate our rotting in hell.
Many of us have been raised to believe that following Jesus’ words are the only way to the Moral Path. Some would argue that a belief in a literal hell is for taming wild children, that as adults mature they see that immorality is its own punishment (just as virtue is its own reward). Perhaps some people are more mature than others. Some people need the fear of hell while others can mature beyond such a stick to repel them from immorality.
Fear of the stick (hell, for example) to be good is not the sign of a mature adult.
Enticed by the carrot (heaven, for example) to be good is not the sign of a mature adult.
Fear of punishment and enticement through reward is inferior morality, according to Anderson.
Anderson dismisses the idea that religion provides motivation for morality. The idea that people should be enticed with heavenly rewards or threatened with hell is in fact off-putting: “On this view, people must be goaded into behaving morally through divine sanction. But this can’t be right, either. People have many motives, such as love, a sense of honor, and respect for others, that motivate moral behavior.” In fact, she points out, Pagan societies are just as morally robust as religious ones.
Nine. If morality doesn't come from religion, then where does it come from?
Anderson sees morality as not a byproduct of religion but as a natural occurrence in any healthy society. Morality evolves to make societies more stable and cooperative.
As Anderson explains, morality does not belong to religion; rather is a natural occurrence in any healthy secular or religious society.
She writes, “Every society, whether or not it was founded on theism, has acknowledged the basic principles of morality, excluding religious observance, which are laid down in the Ten Commandments. Every stable society punishes murder, theft, and bearing false witness; teaches children to honor their parents; and condemns envy of one’s neighbor’s possessions, at least when such envy leads one to treat one’s neighbors badly.”
Secular societies banned immoral behavior long before religion, according to Anderson.
People have been aware of these moral codes, Anderson observes, “long before they were exposed to any of the major monotheistic religions. This fact suggest that moral knowledge springs not from revelation but from people’s experiences in living together, in which they have learned that they must adjust their own conduct in light of others’ claims.”
Is this true?
However, one could argue that pagan societies were not as morally robust as religious ones. For example, Elaine Pagels, who is not a religious fundamentalist, points out in her book Adam, Even and the Serpent, that in ancient societies, pagans threw unwanted babies away on the curb to be taken away in the garbage dumps while Christians did not engage in this abhorrent act.
We should remember that Elaine Pagels is no friend of religious fundamentalism, the kind that preaches heaven and hell in the traditional sense.
Ten. How does Anderson rate the morality that we get from the Bible?
Anderson claims that the Bible most often actually degrades morality.
The great turn in the essay is where Anderson explains the moralistic argument: If something leads to moral rot, we should reject it. Not only does Anderson argue that atheism does not lead to moral rot, she argues, in a big twist, that it is theism, especially organized religion from the Old and New Testaments, that creates moral abominations and catastrophes.
The God of the Bible is so full of whimsy, caprice, cruelty, tyranny and other abominations that this God can make anything appear to be good, including lots of things that are very, very bad.
Anderson writes that, “God could make any action right simply by willing it or by ordering others to do it. This establishes that, if the authority of morality depends on God’s will, then, in principle, anything is permitted.”
Crimes of the Old and New Testament: God-ordered genocide, tribalism, slavery, stonings, sexism, homophobia, witch burnings, heretic torture, hell-philia (love of hell doctrine so that one's revenge fantasy can see one's enemies face eternal torment in the flames of hell)
Anderson anticipates that theists would defend their God by saying that “God would never do anything morally reprehensible Himself, nor command us to perform heinous acts.” But Anderson will have none of us. She will devote the next portion of her essay—a rather large chunk—to detailing many heinous acts done in the name of God. She plumbs the Old Testament for all kinds of war, murder, genocides, plagues, curses, famines, infanticide, slavery, adultery-spurred stonings, and finishes one litany-laden paragraph with “This is but a sample of the evils celebrated in the Bible.”
Anderson is equally repulsed, morally, by the New Testament. She disdains Jesus’ “family values” and the doctrine of eternal damnation. Anderson is equally offended by Jesus dying for our sins and becoming the “scapegoat for humanity.” She argues that “scapegoating contradicts the whole moral principle of personal responsibility.” She is also offended that God needs to kill his son to forgive humanity. He should be able to forgive humanity “straightaway.”
Slavery in the Bible
The Old and New Testaments, human chronicles confined to their age, treat slavery as if it were normal and morally acceptable. If they were truly divine, some say, they would give us an unequivocal condemnation of slavery so that immoral people could not use the Bible to justify slavery.
Anderson sees cruelty in the Bible.
Her verdict of the Bible is that it is a disgrace and an abomination. She writes, “I find it hard to resist the conclusion that the God of the Bible is cruel and unjust and commands and permits us to be cruel and unjust to others.” Here are religious doctrines that on their face claim that it is all right to mercilessly punish people for the wrongs of others and for blameless error, that license or even command murder, plunder, rape, torture, slavery, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. So we should reject the doctrines that represent them as right.”
Anderson then looks at way theists could be decent by glossing over reprehensible Bible passages and leaving fundamentalism to become liberal theists, because she concludes, “that there is no way to cabin off or soft-pedal the reprehensible moral implications of these biblical passages. They must be categorically rejected as false and depraved moral teachings.” Liberal theists can reject these teachings; fundamentalists cannot.
Anderson later observes that the Bible contains good and bad passages and that the picking and the choosing depends on our moral character: “the Bible is more like a Rorschach test: which passages people choose to emphasize reflects as much as it shapes their moral character and interests.” Our beliefs, Anderson observes, are often the result of “cognitive bias” and self-interest.
Anderson is further repulsed by the biblical God’s “raw power,” which people tend to worship in fear rather than rational understanding and love. Quoting Thomas Hobbes, Anderson explains that people, including the biblical scribes, often worship “raw power” for its own sake regardless of moral considerations.
Eleven. How does Anderson evaluate the fact that several religions make competing claims about having the single truth?
Different religions claim to have the "one truth":
Anderson gives a personal account of an annual summer fair she attends. Many different religious people give out information in their booths. They all claim to be right while disparaging others’ beliefs. For Anderson, the major religions are no better than mountebanks L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and others. The major religions are no more legit than “Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone.”
Anderson takes offense to the non credible evidence used to defend religion: “revelations, miracles, religious experiences, and prophecies, nearly all known only by testimony transmitted through uncertain chains of long-lost original sources.”
These flimsy bits of evidence, Anderson writes, “systematically generate contradictory beliefs, many of which are known to be morally abhorrent or otherwise false.”
Twelve. So if not religion, then where does moral authority come from?
So if we have no faith in God, Anderson asks, where does moral authority come from? Having definitively rejected theism, Anderson writes that we humans, not God, are responsible for moral authority. Our authority is not absolute. Rather morality is part of “reciprocal claim making, in which we work out together the kinds of considerations that count as reasons that all of us must heed, and thereby devise rules for living together peacefully and cooperatively, on a basis of mutual accountability.”
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.
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.”
February 18 Introduction; Homework #1 is to read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and in 200 words explain the difficulties of replacing animals with alternative proteins.
February 20 Alternative protein debate; Homework #2 is to read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and explain in 200 words how she supports her claim that non-religious societies are morally superior to religious societies.
February 24 Cover morality debate; Homework #3 is to read Sapiens up to page 60 and in 200 words explain how “limited liability companies” and “imagined realities” are part of the Cognitive Revolution.
February 26 Cover Cognitive Revolution in the context of the documentary Fyre. Homework #4 for next class: Read Sapiens, up to page 132 and in 200 words explain how Harari makes the claim that the Agricultural Revolution is history’s “biggest fraud.”
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 159.
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
“Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” by Tad Friend
Study Questions
One. What compelling reason is there for the food industry to create an alternative to animal protein?
We read that raising cattle depletes water and creates greenhouse gas:
Meat is essentially a huge check written against the depleted funds of our environment. Agriculture consumes more freshwater than any other human activity, and nearly a third of that water is devoted to raising livestock. One-third of the world’s arable land is used to grow feed for livestock, which are responsible for 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Razing forests to graze cattle—an area larger than South America has been cleared in the past quarter century—turns a carbon sink into a carbon spigot.
When the world’s one and a half billion beef and dairy cows ruminate, the microbes in their bathtub-size stomachs generate methane as a by-product. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, some twenty-five times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide, cattle are responsible for two-thirds of the livestock sector’s G.H.G. emissions.
Every four pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London—and the average American eats that much each month.
Two. Why are fake burgers the focus as opposed to fake steak or fake prime rib?
Because 60% of beef is ground up for burgers.
Three. Before Impossible Burger and Beyond Beef burgers, what has been the state of veggie burgers?
They have been a form of punishment for masochists, people who don’t care about their food but are vegan virtue-signalers eager for self-punishment on the road to being a social justice warrior.
We read: “The existing plant-based armory was unpromising; veggie burgers went down like a dull sermon.”
Impossible Burger doesn’t target vegans. It targets meat eaters, so the Impossible Burger is designed to taste, bloody, fatty, salty, and decadent. Anything less is a failure.
As a result of its target consumer, 95% of Impossible Burger customers are meat eaters.
Four. What are some of the technical marvels of the Impossible Burger?
We read that it is more sustainable, is nutritionally superior to beef (higher in protein but also higher in sodium and vegetable oil), has the luxury taste and feel of beef thanks in part to molecule heme, but falls short a bit in the tactile department:
Brown assembled a team of scientists, who approached simulating a hamburger as if it were the Apollo program. They made their burger sustainable: the Impossible Burger requires eighty-seven per cent less water and ninety-six per cent less land than a cowburger, and its production generates eighty-nine per cent less G.H.G. emissions. They made it nutritionally equal to or superior to beef. And they made it look, smell, and taste very different from the customary veggie replacement. Impossible’s breakthrough involves a molecule called heme, which the company produces in tanks of genetically modified yeast. Heme helps an Impossible Burger remain pink in the middle as it cooks, and it replicates how heme in cow muscle catalyzes the conversion of simple nutrients into the molecules that give beef its yeasty, bloody, savory flavor. To my palate, at least, the Impossible Burger still lacks a beef burger’s amplitude, that crisp initial crunch followed by shreds of beef falling apart on your tongue. But, in taste tests, half the respondents can’t distinguish Impossible’s patty from a Safeway burger.
Five. Do meat producers feel threatened by Impossible Burger?
No, they have too deep of an infrastructure, provide too many jobs and have so much diversity of business, including leather and pharm. Currently, alternative burgers are only 0.1% of the burger market.
We read:
Meat producers don’t seem too worried that Brown will rid the earth of livestock by 2035. The three largest meatpacking companies in America have combined annual revenues of more than two hundred billion dollars. Mark Dopp, a senior executive at the North American Meat Institute, a lobbying group, told me, “I just don’t think it’s possible to wipe out animal agriculture in sixteen years. The tentacles that flow from the meat industry—the leather and the pharmaceuticals made from its by-products, the millions of jobs in America, the infrastructure—I don’t see that being displaced over even fifty years.”
Six. In addition to harm to the environment, what health risks are associated with beef eating?
Cancer and cardiovascular disease are two problems. We read:
In the past decade, venture capitalists have begun funding companies that view animal meat not as inflammatory, or as emblematic of the Man, but as a problematic technology. For one thing, it’s dangerous. Eating meat increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer; a recent Finnish study found that, across a twenty-two-year span, devoted meat-eaters were twenty-three per cent more likely to die. Because antibiotics are routinely mixed into pig and cattle and poultry feed to protect and fatten the animals, animal ag promotes antibiotic resistance, which is projected to cause ten million deaths a year by 2050. And avian and swine flus, the most likely vectors of the next pandemic, pass easily to humans, including via the aerosolized feces widely present in slaughterhouses. Researchers at the University of Minnesota found fecal matter in sixty-nine per cent of pork and ninety-two per cent of poultry; Consumer Reports found it in a hundred per cent of ground beef.
Seven. What is difficult-to-attain Holy Grail in making an alternative burger?
Umami. What is this?
We read in Merriam-Webster:
A Japanese scientist was the first to discover the savory taste of the amino acid glutamic acid, which was found to occur in soup stocks made with seaweed. This fifth basic taste - alongside sweet, sour, salty, and bitter - was named umami, meaning "savoriness" in Japanese. Umami can be experienced in foods such as mushrooms, anchovies, and mature cheeses, as well as in foods enhanced with monosodium glutamate, or MSG, a sodium salt derived from glutamic acid.
We read:
It’s easy enough to replicate some animal products (egg whites are basically just nine proteins and water), but mimicking cooked ground beef is a real undertaking. Broadly speaking, a burger is sixty per cent water, twenty-five per cent protein, and fifteen per cent fat, but, broadly speaking, if you assembled forty-two litres of water you’d be sixty per cent of the way to a human being. Cooked beef contains at least four thousand different molecules, of which about a hundred contribute to its aroma and flavor and two dozen contribute to its appearance and texture. When you heat plant parts, they get softer, or they wilt. When you heat a burger, its amino acids react with simple sugars and unsaturated fats to form flavor compounds. The proteins also change shape to form protein gels and insoluble protein aggregates—chewy bits—as the patty browns and its juices caramelize. This transformation gives cooked meat its nuanced complexity: its yummy umami.
Eight. In addition to the difficulty to achieving mouth feel, nutritional standards, and the elusive umami quality, what other challenges do alternative burger companies face?
One could be biological evolution. We may be hard-wired to crave animal meat. Eating meat can be a way of machismo signalling for greater reproductive success.
We read:
Maple Leaf Foods, a Canadian company, is building a three-hundred-million-dollar facility in Indiana to make alternative proteins. But its C.E.O., Michael McCain, told me, “The human body has been consuming animal protein for a hundred and fifty thousand years, and I honestly think that’s going to continue for a really long time.”
Climate change, which now drives our hunt for meat substitutes, originally drove hominids to turn to meat, about two and a half million years ago, by making our usual herbivorean foodstuffs scarce. Eating animals added so much nutrition to our diets that we no longer had to spend all our time foraging, and we developed smaller stomachs and larger brains. Some scientists believe that this transformation created a powerful instinctive craving. Hanna Tuomisto, a Finnish professor of agricultural science, recently wrote, “This evolutionary predilection explains why eating meat provides more satisfaction compared to plant-based food and why so many people find it difficult to adopt a vegetarian diet.”
An inborn meat hunger remains a hypothesis; meat is the object of many human urges, including the urge to construct all-encompassing theories. In the book “Meathooked,” Marta Zaraska writes, “We crave meat because it stands for wealth and for power over other humans and nature. We relish meat because history has taught us to think of vegetarians as weaklings, weirdos, and prudes.” The anthropologist Nick Fiddes goes further, declaring, in “Meat: A Natural Symbol,” that we value meat not in spite of the fact that it requires killing animals but because it does. It’s the killing that establishes us as kings of the jungle.
Ethan Brown, of Beyond Meat, suspects that nibbling plant patties doesn’t exude the same macho vibe. A bearded, gregarious, six-foot-five man who played basketball at Connecticut College, he has retained a squad of athlete “ambassadors” to help dispel that perception. When I visited Ethan at the company’s offices, in El Segundo, California, he pointed me to a 2009 study of Ivory Coast chimpanzees which suggested that males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success. “Men usually give women the meat first, at dinner, before the sex—you want to be a protein provider,” he said. “Do you think if you take a woman out and buy her a salad you get the same reaction?”
It’s worth noting that the Neanderthals, who subsisted almost entirely on meat, were outcompeted by our omnivorous ancestors. In any case, Ethan told me, meat no longer serves its original purpose, and “we can use the expanded brain that meat gave us to get us off of it.”
Eight. For Beyond Meat, what are the 4 arguments for replacing beef burgers?
We read:
Ethan said that he launched Beyond Meat to mitigate meat’s effects on “human health, climate change, natural resources, and animal welfare—we call them ‘the four horsemen.’ ” One consequence of this compendious mission, with its attention to people’s health—and to their concerns about health, warranted or not—is that Beyond, unlike Impossible, uses only ingredients taken more or less directly from nature.
Nine. What is a good summary of the challenges in making an alternative burger?
Soy is associated with dangerous hormone disruption.
Pea protein tastes like cat urine.
Wheat protein has an awful texture that can create a gag reflex.
Vegetable burgers have more sodium and oil than beef burgers.
Evolutionary hard-wiring may make people crave beef.
The cost of a “tech burger” for producer and consumer remains high.
Ten. What is a good summary of why we need to stop eating beef?
We are ruining our climate at a rate that is equivalent to mass suicide.
We can’t feed meat to the world population by 2050.
We need to stop animal cruelty.
Beef creates heart and rectal disease.
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.
Essay 1 Options for Essay 1 Due on March 2 and needs 2 sources for Works Cited
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. For a second source, you can use “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
February24 Go over Newport online chapters 1-3. Homework #2 for February 26: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and in 200-word paragraph, explain the dilemma parents face when struggling with their children’s homework.
February 26 Go over the homework debate. Homework #3 for next class: Read S-2 Sentence Fragments in your electronic Little Seagull Handbook and report on the following: What is a fragment? What are the types of fragments? Do the 3 Practice Quizzes, report your scored, and explain how confident you are about avoiding fragments for your essays.
March 2 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Do Homework Check 3 for S-2 Sentence Fragments. Our goal is to write an introduction paragraph, thesis paragraph, and one or two supporting paragraphs. Homework #4 for next class: Read S-3 Comma Splices, Fused Sentences and explain how to identify and edit comma splices and fused sentences. Take the 4 Practice quizzes, report your scores, and explain how confident you are about avoiding these errors in future essays.
March 4 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Our goal is to write two supporting paragraphs, a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph, a conclusion, and a Works Cited page. Go over Homework #4, Comma Splices and Fused Sentences.
March 9Essay 1 Due on turnitin.
Study Questions
One. What revelation does Thomas, the Buddhist Monk, make as he finds how to crack the koan codes (word puzzles) and become an enlightened Buddhist practitioner?
Too your passion is a canard, a dead-end, a chimera, and an illusion for the following reasons:
One. Sometimes you think you know your passion, but you don't.
Two. Sometimes your passion fills you on a caprice, a whim, an impulse and is therefore short-lived.
Three. Following your passions could blind you from their impracticality and make you homeless.
Four. Knowing your passions requires experience. You don't just know your passions without first delving into various interests and comparing them.
McMahon's passions:
radio announcer
writer
pianist
comedian
public intellectual
Cal Newport's Aspiring Monk was on a fool's errand.
For example, the aspiring monk followed his passion, to pursue Buddhism to the extreme, and he felt empty, he felt he was the same person he was before, he felt the same urge to find meaning.
His passion had betrayed him.
Cal Newport juxtaposes Thomas’ failed quest with an obsession that Newport has had for a long time, the very obsession that provides impetus for this book we’re reading: Why do some people end up loving what they do while others fail to be happy and feel empty and wasted in their efforts?
Trying to find a professor job in a struggling economy in 2010, Newport’s prospects were bleak. How could he find happiness in such bleak circumstances?
As Newport embarked on his quest to discover why some people find happiness in their work while others do not, he concluded that passion was overrated.
In fact, he ended up rejecting the Passion Hypothesis, the idea that we find happiness by following our passion. “Follow your bliss” is a false path, a canard, a dangerous cliché.
Two. What common thread holds Newport’s book together?
The importance of developing a high-quality ability that cannot be easily replicated so that one is not easily replaceable is one of the dominant themes of this book.
How to develop such an ability is another theme.
Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
Steve Jobs, as we know him, is a myth.
Not only is Steve Jobs a myth, he perpetuated a myth: “The only way to be great at your work is to love what you do. Don’t settle. Keep searching until you find your passion.”
“Follow your passion. Life is for the living.”
“Passion is the engine to living a life.”
Steve Jobs’ words are a disingenuous, empty clichés; they are false; they are dangerous; and he didn’t even apply those words to his life, his real life, not the mythical one people have been led to believe about him.
Steve Jobs is a perpetrator of the Passion Hypothesis, which says the following: The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then to find a job that matches this passion.
Three. What is the real Steve Jobs story?
He never followed his passion to create Apple computer. Before Apple, he was living as a hippy on a commune and doing work with Atari. He traveled as a sort of nomad or vagabond, dabbling in Zen Buddhism, but really he lived the life of a dilettante, doing casual work here and there.
But then he needed money, and he Steve Wozinak who helped Steve Jobs sell model-kit computers at $500 a piece. Steve Jobs had no passion and no vision for some giant company that would take over the world. He wanted quick cash. That was it.
Once he saw an opportunity to make even bigger money, Steve Jobs busted his butt doing deep work to make himself competitive against the other people trying to make money in the same computer space.
Had Steve Jobs followed his passion, to be a lazy Buddhist monk living in Zen communes and travelling here and there, he would have never been able to compete against the burgeoning computer engineers.
He would have floundered.
He would have been a nobody.
He would have been a professional bum.
He would have been an annoying quasi-spiritual Zen-cliché-larded mountebank.
Steve Jobs Became Successful Because He Didn’t Follow His Passion
Steve Jobs didn’t follow his passion. He followed an opportunity and delivered by developing in himself a unique ability that made him valuable to others.
Following your passion is a lie.
Following your passion is canard.
Following your passion is the kiss of death.
Following your passion is an empty cliché spewed by sanctimonious, brain-dead mediocrities.
Cal Newport points out that Steve Jobs became passionate AFTER he mastered his craft, AFTER he honed his talent, AFTER he developed unique skills that allowed him to navigate a world-dominating computer company.
Three. What is famous radio broadcaster Ira Glass’ advice on becoming successful?
Much to the disappointment of the interviewers who wanted Glass to pontificate on the notion of “following your bliss,” Glass gives some sobering advice:
First, you’re going to suck at what you do. You have to go through the drudgery and mental strain of moving through your suck at it phase and reach a point of mastery.
It’s the endurance and drive to move past your “I suck at it” phase and reach a higher level of expertise that accounts for success and happiness.
You have to develop your Tedium Muscle to make breakthroughs and elevate your craft to a higher level.
Cal Newport goes on to explain that we can’t know what our passion is in the beginning. It’s rare that people have a clearly defined passion at a young age.
I can only think of one exception: George Carlin, the famous comedian, told Terry Gross on Fresh Air that he knew he was going to be a comedian when he was in the fifth grade.
But that is the exception, not the rule.
We should live by the general rule.
Complex Career Origin Principle
Cal Newport writes: “Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the single idea that all you have to do is follow your passion.”
Real Passion Principle: Time and Mastery
“Passion takes time.” You have to cultivate it with deep work, undistracted focus on your craft.
To support the above, Yale researcher Amy Wizesniwski wanted to look at job happiness. She divided jobs in 3 ways:
One. A job is a way to pay the bills.
Two. A career is a path toward increasingly better work.
Three. A calling is work that is an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.
Dream Job Fallacy
Mastery is greater than passion as a factor for happiness.
Having a “dream job” wasn’t the key to happiness, AW found. She found that it was time spent on the job and mastery of the job.
Her findings contradict the lame Passion Hypothesis, that childish, infantile myth that all you have to do is find your passion and as soon as you get the job you are instantly happy. “You followed your bliss! Oh happy you!”
Complexity to Consider: You don't have a passion and build a master for it; quite the contrary, you may have to build a mastery or at the very least a baseline of competence in order to have enough knowledge to have an authentic passion.
“Passion is a side effect of mastery.”
Develop your mastery first. Then the passion comes as a natural result.
This reminds me of something Viktor Frankl writes: Don’t aim to be happy. Aim for a life of purpose and meaning and then happiness will be an unintentional byproduct.
Rule #1: Don’t Follow Your Passion
Steve Jobs, as we know him, is a myth.
Not only is Steve Jobs a myth, he perpetuated a myth: “The only way to be great at your work is to love what you do. Don’t settle. Keep searching until you find your passion.”
“Follow your passion. Life is for the living.”
“Passion is the engine to living a life.”
Steve Jobs’ words are a disingenuous, empty clichés; they are false; they are fatuous; they are dangerous; and he didn’t even apply those words to his life, his real life, not the mythical one people have been led to believe about him.
Steve Jobs is a perpetrator of the Passion Hypothesis, which says the following: The key to occupational happiness is to first figure out what you’re passionate about and then to find a job that matches this passion.
Three. What is the real Steve Jobs story?
He never followed his passion to create Apple computer. Before Apple, he was living as a hippy on a commune and doing work with Atari. He travelled as a sort of nomad or vagabond, dabbling in Zen Buddhism, but really he lived the life of a dilettante, doing casual work here and there.
But then he needed money, and he Steve Wozinak who helped Steve Jobs sell model-kit computers at $500 a piece. Steve Jobs had no passion and no vision for some giant company that would take over the world. He wanted quick cash. That was it.
Once he saw an opportunity to make even bigger money, Steve Jobs busted his butt doing deep work to make himself competitive against the other people trying to make money in the same computer space.
Had Steve Jobs followed his passion, to be a lazy Buddhist monk living in Zen communes and travelling here and there, he would have never been able to compete against the burgeoning computer engineers.
He would have floundered.
He would have been a nobody.
He would have been a professional bum.
He would have been an annoying quasi-spiritual Zen-cliché-larded mountebank.
Real Passion Principle: Time and Mastery
“Passion takes time.” You have to cultivate it with deep work, undistracted focus on your craft.
To support the above, Yale researcher Amy Wizesniwski wanted to look at job happiness. She divided jobs in 3 ways:
One. A job is a way to pay the bills.
Two. A career is a path toward increasingly better work.
Three. A calling is work that is an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.
Having a “dream job” wasn’t the key to happiness, AW found. She found that it was time spent on the job and mastery of the job.
Her findings contradict the lame Passion Hypothesis, that childish, infantile myth that all you have to do is find your passion and as soon as you get the job you are instantly happy. “You followed your bliss! Oh happy you!”
“Passion is a side effect of mastery.”
Develop your mastery first. Then the passion comes as a natural result.
This reminds me of something Viktor Frankl writes: Don’t aim to be happy. Aim for a life of purpose and meaning and then happiness will be an unintentional byproduct.
Newport's Career Manifesto
A CAREER MANIFESTO: Be a Craftsman or a Craftsperson
Career advice has fallen into a terribly simplistic rut. Figure out what you’re passionate about, then follow that passion: this idea provides the foundation for just about every guide to improving your working life.
The Career Craftsman rejects this reductionist drivel.
The Career Craftsman understands that “follow your passion and all will be happy” is a children’s tale. Most people don’t have pre-existing passions waiting to be unearthed. Happiness requires more than solving a simple matching problem.
The Career Craftsman knows there’s no magical “right job” waiting out there for you. Any number of pursuits can provide the foundation for an engaging life.
The Career Craftsman believes that compelling careers are not courageously pursued or serendipitously discovered, but are instead systematically crafted.
The Career Craftsman believes this process of career crafting always begins with the mastery of something rare and valuable. The traits that define great work (autonomy, creativity, impact, recognition) are rare and valuable themselves, and you need something to offer in return. Put another way: no one owes you a fulfilling job; you have to earn it.
The Career Craftsman believes that mastery is just the first step in crafting work you love. Once you have the leverage of a rare and valuable skill, you need to apply this leverage strategically to make your working life increasingly fulfilling. It is then — and only then — that you should expect a feeling of passion for your work to truly take hold.
The Career Craftsman thinks the idea that “societal expectations” are trying to hold you down in a safe but boring career path is a boogeyman invented to sell eBooks. You don’t need courage to create a cool life. You need the type of valuable skills that let you write your own ticket.
The Career Craftsman never expects to love an entry level job (or to stay in that job long before moving up).
The Career Craftsman thinks “is this my calling?” is a stupid question.
The Career Craftsman is data-driven. Admire someone’s career? Work out exactly how they made it happen. The answers you’ll find will be less romantic but more actionable than you might expect.
The Career Craftsman believes the color of your parachute is irrelevant if you take the time to get good at flying the damn plane in the first place.
“Drivel” of the Passion Mindset
Or if you reject the craftsman mindset, you can have the passion mindset, which asks how much value your job is offering you.
Newport argues it is only by producing the craftsman mindset that you can create work that you love.
In terms of maturity, the craftsman mindset is the approach of a mature, fully realized human being.
In contrast, a passion mindset is the approach of a naive, immature, lazy narcissist.
Seven. What is the pre-existing passion principle and why does Cal Newport reject it?
There are some who argue that musician Jordan Tice and comedian Steve Martin, both referenced in Newport’s book, are master craftsman who work hard because they are doing so in the service of something they love, in work they are passionate about.
Newport rejects this argument. In the entertainment business, “the tape doesn’t lie.” Both performers work super hard because they want to improve their performance.
They both actually have doubt about their vocations as musician and comedian respectively.
What they are sure about is that if they are going to be good they are going to have to engage in deep work.
Both Jordan Tice and Steve Martin have developed consistent habits of hard work as the foundation of improving their craft.
They have developed a craftsman mindset.
Eight. Why does a craftsman mindset produce a great job?
Only by creating a great craft, bringing great product to the job, does a person have a great job, which Newport observes is distinguished by three ingredients:
Creativity: Ira Glass reinvented radio.
Impact: Steve Jobs affected the way the world uses technology.
Control: Craftsman are not micromanaged by their bosses because of the value they bring to the job.
Nine. What is career capital?
One, great work, which is rare and valuable.
Two, great workers, who have rare and valuable skills.
Three, craftsman mindset, which is determined to be so great they can’t ignore you.
Always Know How Much Career Capital You Have Before Making Career Change
On Cal Newport’s blog, he elaborates on the life of Lisa Feuer, who is featured in his book:
The Courage Fallacy
In 2005, Lisa Feuer quit her marketing job. She had held this same position throughout her 30s before deciding, at the age of 38, that it was time for something different.
As the New York Times reported in an article from last summer, she wanted the same independence and flexibility that her ex-husband, an entrepreneur, enjoyed. Bolstered by this new resolve, Lisa invested in a $4000 yoga instruction course and started Karma Kids Yoga — a yoga practice focused on young children and pregnant women.
Lisa’s story provides a pristine example of what I call the choice-centric approach to building an interesting life. This philosophy emphasizes the importance of choosing better work. Having the courage to leave your boring but dangerously comfortable job — to borrow a phrase from Tim Ferriss — and instead follow your “passion,” has become the treasure map guiding this philosophy’s adherents.
But there’s a problem: the endings are not always so happy…
Tedium Is Necessary: Build Your Tedium Muscle
Why did Jordan Tice excel in guitar in ways that Cal Newport did not in spite of their equal years of playing time?
“Discomfort with mental discomfort is a liability in the performance world.”
You must work through the discomfort to reach higher limits of your talent. Only then can you achieve breakthroughs and develop a skill that is rare and valuable.
Jordan practiced, and this meant a lot of repetitious tedium.
In addition to doing deep work, Jordan got instant feedback.
We learn that deep work is most effective when a teacher or mentor figure gives us feedback as we make our progress.
In contrast, Cal played casually. Jordan became a professional. Cal became a guitar-playing dilettante.
What is the 10,000-Hour Rule?
Excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum of hours to accomplish. We’re not just talking any hours. We’re talking deep work hours, that is undistracted focus entailing a lot of mental discomfort.
Being willing to do 10,000 hours of deep work is a trait we see in people who labeled as geniuses like Mozart and Bill Gates.
Genius does not exist without deep work.
Talent without deep work is a flop, a dud, and a waste.
Is hard work enough to reach a level of mastery?
No. Deep work leads to deliberate practice, which requires feedback. Without deliberate practice and feedback, even a talented hard-working person will hit a plateau.
What are the Five Habits of a Craftsman?
1: Decide what capital market you are in. There are 2 kinds of markets –
Winner-take-all: One killer skills with a few winners all over the world (e.g. Hollywood script writer)
Auction: Diverse collection of skills. Here, there are many different types of career capital and each person might generate their own unique collection (e.g. CEO of a Fortune 500 company)
2: Identify your capital type. Ignore this if you are in a winner-take-all market as there’s only one type of capital. (i.e. be among the top 10 script writers in the world to make it in Hollywood)
For an auction market, however, seek open gates i.e. opportunities to build capital that are already open to you. Open gates get us farther faster. Skill acquisition is like a freight train: Getting it started requires a huge application of effort, but changing its track once it’s moving is easy. (e.g. keep moving upwards in an organization and then laterally instead of trying to move laterally and start from scratch)
3: Define “good.” Set clear goals. For a script writer, the definition of “good” is clear – his scripts being taken seriously.
4: Stretch and destroy.Deliberate practice – that uncomfortable sensation in our heads that feels like physical strain, as if neurons are physically re-forming into new configurations.
5: Be patient. Look years into the future for the payoff. It’s less about paying attention to your main pursuit, and more about your willingness to ignore other pursuits that pop up along the way to distract you.
Six. What is the power of control and how does control result in job happiness?
Giving people more control at work increases their happiness, fulfillment, and engagement.
But you cannot earn safe control without career capital. Think of the lady who quit her job to run yoga studios. She had to go on food stamps.
The Economics of Remarkable Lives
As the recession hit, Lisa’s business struggled. One of the gyms where she taught closed. Two classes offered at a local public high school were dropped due to under-enrollment. The demand for private lessons diminished.
In 2009, she’s on track to make on $15,000 — not nearly enough to cover her expenses.
This, of course, is the problem with the choice-centric approach to life: it assumes that a much better job is out there waiting for you. The reality, however, is often more Darwinian: much better jobs are out there, but they’re only available to people with much better skills than most of their peers.
As I’ve argued before, the traits that make a remarkable life remarkable — flexibility, engagement, recognition, and reward — are highly desirable. Therefore, to land a job (or start a business) that returns these rewards, you must have a skill to offer that’s both rare and valuable.
It’s simple economics.
Lisa didn’t have a skill that was rare or valuable. She did receive professional Yoga training, but the barrier to entry for this training was the ability to write a tuition check and take a few weeks worth of classes. This skill wasn’t rare or valuable enough to guarantee her the traits she admired in the lives of successful entrepreneurs, and as soon as the economy hiccuped she experienced this reality.
Her courage to follow her “passion” was not enough, in isolation, to improve her life.
The Value of Nerves
This brings me back to the (perhaps) controversial title of this post. If you’re in a job that’s boring but tolerable, and you feel nervous about quitting, you might consider trusting this instinct. Your mind might be honing in on the economic truth that you don’t have a skill rare and valuable enough to earn you a substantially better deal somewhere else. Because of this, your mind understandably reacts to your career day dreams with jitters.
On the other hand, those who have built up highly desirable skills rarely feel much nervousness about the prospect of switching jobs. They’ve probably had other job offers, or can name a half-a-dozen clients that would pay handsomely for their consulting services.
For example…
Tens of thousands of bored cubicle dwellers fantasize about building their own companies. (Writers have built lucrative careers around pitching this message.) Most of these workers, however, are nervous about this idea due to the very real possibility that their business ventures will fold, leaving them, like Lisa, broke, without health insurance, and worse off than before.
By contrast, earlier this year I received a call from a head hunter trying to recruit me to work at a Manhattan-based start-up incubator that would, in essence, pay me to think up and try out business ideas. (Jeff Bezos was in a similar position at D.E. Shaw when he came up with the idea for Amazon.com.)
My point is that if I wanted to start my own company (which I don’t), I wouldn’t feel nervous. The reason is clear: By earning a PhD in computer science at MIT I developed a skill that’s rare and valuable to this particular economic segment. The market has made this value clear to me; ergo, no nerves.
The Hard Focus-Centric Approach
Though I’m not nervous about the idea of starting my own company, I am, at this point in my career, nervous about the path that most interests me: becoming a professor at a quality research university.
Instead of paralyzing me, however, these nerves provide wonderful clarity. My goal during my postdoc years now centers on eliminating this nervousness. To do so, I need to make myself unambiguously one of the top candidates in the computer science academic job market. This, in turn, requires incredibly high-quality research that promises to push my research sub-fields forward. This specific goal has trickled down into concrete changes in my day to day work habits. Most notably, I’ve recently rebuilt my schedule around hard focus, and I spend much more time reading the research literature and thinking about the long-term direction of my short-term work.
In other words, nervousness can provide more than just sober-minded warning. It can also help guide you in your efforts to build a remarkable life. Instead of grappling with vague worry — “Am I stupid for wanting to try this new career path?” — you can focus your energy toward a clear metric: building up a valuable skill until you’ve eliminated this nervousness.
Jobs to Avoid
One, the job offers you few opportunities to distinguish yourself with rare and valuable work.
Two, the job makes you focus on useless or morally wrong activities.
Three, the job forces you to work with people you don’t like.
Essay 1 Options with Suggested Outlines for Essay 1 Due on September 16
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. Your second source will be “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
Suggested Outline with Sample Thesis:
Paragraph 1: Write a cautionary tale of someone who followed the Passion Hypothesis or simply define the Passion Hypothesis.
Paragraph 2: Make a claim or argument in defense or refutation of Newport's thesis that the Passion Hypothesis is an impediment to success.
Thesis Example for Paragraph 2:
"Cal Newport's argument that we should shun the Passion Hypothesis and replace it with a craftsman's mindset is convincing (is not convincing) because ______________, ______________, _________________, and ______________________.
Paragraphs 3-6: Develop body paragraphs that support your claim.
Paragraph 7: Write a counterargument and rebuttal to show reader you've considered opposing views.
Paragraph 8: Write a conclusion that restates your claim or thesis with emotional power.
Introduction Paragraph
You could start your essay with an introduction about someone you know who followed his or passion with or without the desired result.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
Stanley was a big proponent of "follow your dreams." After he graduated from high school in 1977 and took some acting classes at a local community college, he dropped out to move to Los Angeles where he spent the 1980s working as a waiter and trying to make a break into Hollywood. He spent his money on coaches, mentors, acting gurus, body language masters, voice instructors, New Age positive thinking experts, all in an attempt to step up his game. He landed a few small parts here and there, just enough work to make him feel he was on the verge of making it. His optimism grew in the 1990s when he met some film directors who gave him some small roles and hinted at getting him larger roles when the opportunity came. Feeding on these dreams while living in a squalid apartment in the 1990s, Stanley continued to live a life of abject obscurity and futility with the hope that he just had to follow his dream and be persistent and that these two qualities would guarantee his success. He remained inside this delusional bubble for nearly two more decades while he lived in a roach-infested apartment in downtown L.A. where he supplemented his income by delivering plasma and working as a masseuse, a job he had to give up when his hands become afflicted with arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome. At the age of 60, around 2018, Stanley got strep throat and couldn't afford antibiotics since none of his part-time gigs offered health insurance. Curled into the fetal position on his apartment's bare mattress with roaches crawling over him, he wept as he felt betrayed by the fact that he had done what the American Dream told him to do: He sacrificed everything to follow his passion and remained tenacious over four decades to bring his dreams to fruition, but he knew in that moment that he was a pathetic, miserable failure, and that his dreams had soured and curdled into rotten milk.
This curdling of our dreams and the false promise of following those dreams is explored in Cal Newport's important book So Good They Can't Ignore You and his accompanying YouTube video "'Follow Your Passion' Is Bad Advice" in which Newport makes a persuasive case for replacing the Passion Hypothesis with the craftsman mindset. His claim rests on four compelling observations. Passion without spending time mastering a craft is worthless. Passion is not some low-hanging fruit that we pick from a tree, but an asset we develop over 10,000 hours of sustained hard work and tedium. Only 2% of the human race work at a "dream job." Most of us must find happiness because we are a "dream employer" who is valued based on the mastery of our craft. And finally, courage to pursue your dream without an honest of assessment of your capital is dangerous and self-destructive.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,000-word essay
8 Paragraphs, 130 words per paragraph, approx. 1,000 words (1,040 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-5: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 6 & 7: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Signal Phrases
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.
We include the author's background information to give author credibility or ethos in our argumentation.
After we cite the information, we present our own analysis to show how this material supports our argument.
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."
Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
How can I use them?
Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.
Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell and Hanson,…
As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …
Smith and Johnson state that …
Some scholars have shown…
Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)
In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.
“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)
As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.
“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)
Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.
“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher
When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.
Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, TheGuardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
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 college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as 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 _______________.
Washington, D.C. may soon be littered with the political bodies of people who believed they could spin their way out of the impact of the new Bob Woodward book, Fear. I’ve been to the Washington rodeo enough times to know that Woodward’s methodical, grinding style of investigation doesn’t lend itself to escaping unscathed, especially for bad actors and loose cannons. Hell, as a young Department of Defense aide in 1990, I saw it up close when his book, The Commanders, led to the firing of USAF Chief of Staff Mike Dugan. He had tapes then, as he does now.
This week, it’s Donald Trump’s turn under Woodward’s political electron microscope, and the President’s hissy-fit reaction tells us how close Woodward’s work has struck. Trump knows his White House staff, up to and including his daughter, thinks he’s off the rails, a danger to himself and the country, and unable to execute the duties of a Waffle House manager much less the President of the United States.
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.
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 ________________.
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 are life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is 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 __________________.
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
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:
When my daughter was one years old 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.
Healthcare
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.
Civil War in America
In the South, it is still common to hear white people speak of the Civil War by denying its connection to the evils of slavery and treason. Rather, it is commonly spouted by white people in the south that the Civil War was the result of "Northern aggression" and "state rights," but these explanations are odious poppycock and are part of America's shameful history of fake news, which afflicts our country like an ugly, festering cancer sore to this very day.
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?'
Paragraph 1: For your introduction, summarize Karl Taro's Greenfeld's description of burnout as he and his daughter attempt to do what appears to be an onslaught of homework and the teacher's response when the father presents his complaint.
Paragraph 2: Make a claim that argues for or against the kind of rigorous homework discussed in the two essays above.
Paragraphs 3-6: Develop body paragraphs that support your claim.
Paragraph 7: Write a counterargument and rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Write a conclusion that restates your thesis with emotional power
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